Help the Open Rights Group, UK's EFF equivalent | Hacker News Reader

Help the Open Rights Group, UK's EFF equivalent

66 pointsmattmanser14 comments

The ORG is the UK's EFF equivalent and needs your help, today the open rights group is half way to their goal of 300 new members:

https://www.openrightsgroup.org/join/

With the election coming up we need to get them to their goal!

Funding is to:

- Build a tool together which tells you where your local candidates stand on privacy and surveillance.

- Run local hustings across Britain, together with other NGOs and charities to make sure you can ask your candidates tough questions on civil liberties.

- Take part in a Don’t Spy on Us bus tour around the country to engage voters on surveillance.

- Hold meetings with candidates to put digital rights in the minds of new MPs.

- Create question guides so that you feel confident talking to your candidates about these issues.

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I consider the ORG like I might consider a union for tech workers. It's far from the same thing, but it does work to protect the fundamental freedoms that allowed us to train for our profession.

If you work in the technology industry in the UK, please consider paying "union dues" to stop the bizarre laws which haven't been thought out and just don't make any sense (eg. "ban encryption", "backdoors in everything"), and instead force politicans to pass technology-affecting laws that actually make sense.

It's a small price to pay out of your paycheck if you consider that it's effectively insurance for all your future paychecks.

[I'm a passive ORG supporter but otherwise have no affiliation]

It's strange, there's already a professional association (the British Computer Society) but they're not useful. They're very conservative/blue chip, not very "Internet culture" at all.

Even more ludicrously there's the Worshipful Company of Information Technologists.

(I too am an ORG donor and got involved with the consultation on Scottish identity database)

Jim Killock(Director of ORG) toured around Scotland last week to talk about a Scottish National Identity scheme. The audio I recorded of him is on the internet archive here[1]

[1]: https://archive.org/details/JimKillockScottishID

Erm... https://www.edirectdebit.com/openrightsgroup/pending.aspx

How do I join?

Maybe there was a temporary problem with the link but this is working for me just now: https://secure.edirectdebit.com/Open-Rights-Group/Join-us2/D...

https://secure.edirectdebit.com/Open-Rights-Group/Join-us2

There is a URL on the screen for those with Chrome problems, I used it and it worked.

Thanks, worked for me too.

From the title and description, where the ORG is described as the "UK's EFF", I got the impression that the ORG is affiliated with the EFF, but on the website it seems that it isn't. Maybe it would have been better described as the "UK's EFF equivalent".

Changed, I didn't mean to give that impression! I'm not one of the ORG, just seen them speak at a Nottingham tech meetup and donate, so my fault, not them!

Cheers, Matt. Also just joined. Been meaning to for a while now. Also based in the Midlands. Will hopefully get a chance to get involved this year.

Thanks.

They're not formally affiliated, but they're not entirely unrelated either; Danny O'Brien is the link. https://www.openrightsgroup.org/about/history

Cool! I had no idea this existed even though I work in the open data and transparency space.

If you're in Oxford, we're setting up a local branch of ORG http://www.meetup.com/ORG-Oxford

Love to see some of you at our first meeting.

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