Local Groups Resources/Ideas for Local Group meetings

Groups can really do anything, and we welcome new ideas! Here are a few suggestions; you could organise a speaker led meeting, a skills based workshop, a campaign action meeting, hold a joint meeting with another group and explore the intersections they have with digital rights, attend a public event/exhibiton, or even go and see a digital rights film or theatre production.

Activists and surveillance talk

• Human rights and environmental activists have often been the target for surveillance and policing. OpenDemocracy has done a small study of attitudes of activists towards surveillance and found it severely lacking. This could be a great event to do in partnership with local campaign groups (e.g. UK Uncut, Amnesty International and Friends of the Earth). The authors of the study are now living in Scotland.
• Joint meetings are a fantastic way to build long term links with other groups in your local community and explore the intersections they have with digital rights.
• ORG Leeds found a website that includes a directory of over 200 Leeds campaign groups, see if you can find a similar website for your local area. ORG Leeds created a mailing list and are offering the groups to attend privacy workshops.

Blocked! project

• The government is promoting filters to prevent children and young people from seeing content that is supposed to be for over 18s, but in reality filters block much more than they are supposed to, which means information is being censored.
• You can hold a meeting to spread the word in your local area why filters block many websites that are not harmful and what they can do to get involved. You can reach out to people who have been blocked by mistake and ask them to speak about their experiences.
• The Blocked! project is always looking for volunteers to add more cool features to it. You can hold a meeting where a group of you decide to spend a few hours giving your time to develop the project (e.g. software development, testing, translation).
• You can let your local MP know what you think by contacting them directly, writing a group letter (jointly with other local groups) to your local newspaper or by attending a local meeting (surgery) with your MP.

Citizenfour documentary

• The documentary gives "audiences unprecedented access to filmmaker Laura Poitras and journalist Glenn Greenwald’s encounters with Edward Snowden in Hong Kong, as he hands over classified documents providing evidence of mass indiscriminate and illegal invasions of privacy by the National Security Agency."
• Hold a screening of the documentary and then organise a discussion afterwards to talk about the issues that were raised. You could contact someone of expertise within the field of surveillance/someone involved with the creation of the film to attend the meeting to share their ideas.
• These types of meetings are usually very successful and accessible as they are a fun and easy way to meet up. A challenge in creating new supporters is the fear that you need to have deep knowledge or even expertise to understand or participate, documentaries release some of that pressure.
• Our Screen - you can request a film screening at cinemas. The cinemas set what times/dates they can show a film via the service, and if the film you want is listed on the site you can request a screening. People must then pledge to buy tickets for the movie, if enough (the cinema sets the threshold) tickets are sold the film will be shown.

Cryptoparty (digital security training / how to protect yourself online)

• When promoting the meeting make sure that you explain to people why they need to protect themselves online and that the workshop is for everyone. You don't need to be a tech wizard to attend, think about questions such as what is privacy, and what does online security mean. You can give human stories explaining how different groups have had their privacy and safety taken away online.
• Always raise awareness of campaign actions people can take to protect their rights to privacy and free speech online. For example, you can let your local MP know what you think about mass surveillance by contacting them directly, writing a group letter (jointly with other local groups) to your local newspaper or by attending a local meeting (surgery) with your MP.
• It can be tricky to cater for everyones skills levels at a Cryptoparty, if you have two trainers and a large group you can break the group up and work on different tools.
• You can organise a training workshop for a specific audience and explain to them how online security and surveillance affects them directly. For example; activist groups, LGBTQ groups, religious groups, feminist groups. Alternatively search your local area to see if there is a pre existing cryptoparty group that you can join forces with!
• ORG Cryptoparty guide
• ORG Aberdeen Cryptonoise meet up
• ORG Zine: making Cryptoparties inclusive
• ORG Birmingham blog: 7 top tips for protecting your online privacy
• ORG Leeds beginner privacy workshop
• ORG Sheffield privacy tools resources
• ORG North East Cryptoparty resources
• Electronic Frontier Foundation tutorials
• How to organise a Cryptoparty
• Cryptoparty handbook
• EPIC online guide to practical privacy tools
• Digital security for everyone - beginners guide
• Privacy for kids booklet by EDRI

De-Google-ify your life!

• Organise a workshop offering free practical advice for replacing (or at least supplementing) Google services with independent services which do a better job of respecting people's privacy and reducing dependence on the internet giant.
• Find out more about Francis' brilliant workshop for ORG Birmingham here.

Digital Economy Bill

• ORG has several concerns in the following areas of the DE Bill. These include: risk of loss and online copyright infringement, age verification for online pornography and data sharing.
• You can put on a meeting that focuses on one of our three concerns and invite different groups of people that are impacted by the Bill.
• You can let your local MP know what you think about the Bill by signing our campaign petition, writing a group letter (jointly with other local groups) to your local newspaper or by attending a local meeting (surgery) with your MP.

Do Not Track documentary series

• Do Not Track is a personalised documentary series that explores different aspects of how the modern web is increasingly a space where our movements, our speech and our identities are recorded and tracked. You can watch all seven of the episodes (they are all five minutes long). It's an interactive experience that asks you to answer questions to reveal how you are tracked online.
• Hold a screening of all of the episodes and then organise a discussion afterwards to talk about the privacy issues that were raised.
• These types of meetings are usually very successful and accessible as they are a fun and easy way to meet up. A challenge in creating new supporters is the fear that you need to have deep knowledge or even expertise to understand or participate, documentaries release some of that pressure.

How does surveillance affect minorities talk

• The meeting could raise awareness of how online security and surveillance affects minority groups disproportionately. You could also explore the issues of excessive policing and profiling. This could be a good event to do in partnership with local religious minority groups, or anti-racist groups.

Investigatory Powers Act

• You could educate people about the Investigatory Powers Act and how this affects everyone's digital rights (you can explain the act in the promotion of the meeting and show why people need to protect themselves now more than ever).
• Organise a day where you get your friends and family to start using Signal for private phone messaging.
• Work with a local theatre group to do a flashmob in a public place in the theme of surveillance.
• See the Cryptoparty section of this page for more resources on how to protect yourself online.
• See the Walking tour of... section of this page for more meeting ideas.

Lightning Talks

• In a lightning talk each speaker gets 5 minutes and 15 slides (20 seconds per slide) to share their ideas about an issue relating to digital rights (for example it could link to human rights, tech issues, consumer rights), and then the whole groups gets to discuss it. Whether you're new to public speaking, or already experienced, lightning talks are a great opportunity to learn, practice and improve on skills which you can use to give more formal presentations. If you’ve never given a talk before, we'd like to hear from you all the same. We'd like this to kick start many conversations that benefit the group, its members and the ORG community. But this event is also about having fun, and sharing thoughts and ideas.
• ORG London have put on a number of successful Lightning Talks with ORG supporters - September 2015 meeting and November 2016 meeting

Mozilla Maker Party - EU copyright

• Organise a Mozilla Maker Party to make illicit digital culture and raise awareness of what people can do to achieve real, progressive changes in copyright. Sign the petition here.
• Check out ORG Birmingham's blog on their meeting to find out what they did to make it a success.
• Copyright For Creativity have engaging YouTube videos (under their #FixCopyright channel).

Opt out of mobile phone analytics

• You can organise a meeting raising awareness of the campaign and what people can do to take action and invite different groups of people that have been impacted.
• You can let your local MP know what you think by contacting them directly, writing a group letter (jointly with other local groups) to your local newspaper or by attending a local meeting (surgery) with your MP.

ORG book talk

• Invite one of the authors of the ORG book to come and speak about their work and how it links with ORG's campaigns.
• You could also hold a monthly reading club where everyone reads a chapter of the ORG book and then discusses the ideas that were raised and what your group can actively do about it.

ORG staff speaker

• Contact us to request a member of the ORG staff or a member of our Advisory Council come to your Local Group and give a talk on a digital rights issue. Here are some examples of what Local Groups have done in the past - ORG London meeting and ORG Manchester meeting.

ORG Wiki-Edit-a-Thon

• Organise a meet up with supporters to edit the ORG Wiki page. This could involve adding and editing content on a particular issue, and updating out of date pages. This is really useful as it builds a database of knowledge to help both our campaigns and the public.
• Full Fact did a EU Edit-a-Thon with Wikimedia UK.

Police Surveillance

• Organise a meet up to explore what police use of IMSI-catchers means for our human rights and civil liberties and what we can do to challenge indiscriminate surveillance.
• This would be a great event to organise jointly with other human rights groups that work on surveillance issues.
• Take a look at ORG's Birmingham's event for more information.

The Internet's Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz documentary

• The documentary "follows the story of programming prodigy and information activist Aaron Swartz. From Swartz's help in the development of the basic internet protocol RSS to his co-founding of Reddit, his fingerprints are all over the internet. This is a personal story about what we lose when we are tone deaf about technology and its relationship to our civil liberties".
• The film is on Netflix and is currently on YouTube.
• Hold a screening of the documentary and then organise a discussion afterwards to talk about the issues that were raised. You could contact someone of expertise within the field of digital rights/someone involved with the creation of the film to attend the meeting to share their ideas.
• These types of meetings are usually very successful and accessible as they are a fun and easy way to meet up. A challenge in creating new supporters is the fear that you need to have deep knowledge or even expertise to understand or participate, documentaries release some of that pressure.
• Our Screen - you can request a film screening at cinemas. The cinemas set what times/dates they can show a film via the service, and if the film you want is listed on the site you can request a screening. People must then pledge to buy tickets for the movie, if enough (the cinema sets the threshold) tickets are sold the film will be shown.

Threat Modeling workshop (what are digital security threats)

• When promoting the meeting make sure that you explain to people why they need to understand the threats online, and that the workshop is for everyone (you don't need to be a tech wizard to attend). You can give human stories explaining how different groups have had their privacy and safety taken away online.
• 'An introduction to threat modeling’ in Surveillance Self Defense by EFF

Trade justice and digital rights talk

• Link up with trade justice groups (War on Want and Global Justice Now) to discuss hosting a talk about including digital rights in a new narrative of trade justice. The talk could cover a wide range of issues; copyright and (lack of) net neutrality, closed-source software, age verification censorship, Internet access and Brexit negotiations.

University academic talk

• Find out if there are academics in your local area that work on surveillance, privacy and free speech online issues and ask them to come and speak about their research.
• You could also join up with university groups that work on digital rights issues.

Walking tour of...

• Team up with other surveillance focused groups to organise a walking tour of your local area's surveillance network or spy base. Here is an example of a surveillance walking tour in New York.