Those of you who attended last month’s meetup at BOM might remember that we had a special guest in the form of multimedia journalist, Chevening Scholar (FCO) and MA Social Media student Thomaz Pirez (@Thomaz_pirez). Thomaz had asked if he could make a short video about ORG Birmingham as part of a project he’s doing on social media.
Continue reading New ORG Birmingham video and putting digital rights on the General Election agenda
The office of the West Midlands Police and Crime and Commissioner has used national security and law enforcement exemptions found within the Freedom of Information Act legislation to refuse our request for more information on the oversight arrangements in place to safeguard the West Midlands Police’s use of covert mobile surveillance capabilities.
If you follow us on Twitter (@OpenRightsBrum), you’ve probably picked up on the fact that we’re rather excited about our next meetup on Tuesday (21 March), where we’ll be looking at how the proposed Espionage Act threatens journalism and public interest whistleblowers.
Continue reading Reminder: Espionage Act meetup this Tuesday (21 March)
At last week’s meetup on how mobile phone users are spied on in Birmingham we drew heavily on the great job The Bristol Cable did of revealing police purchases of covert surveillance devices, known as IMSI catchers. Interestingly, just yesterday (1 March) The Bristol Cable published a follow-up story, revealing how in the months since a majority of Police and Crime Commissioners they had featured in their story, including the West Midlands Police and Crime Commissioner have stopped publishing the monthly expenditure information which was central to their investigation.
Thank you to everyone who joined us at Birmingham Open Media (BOM) on Wednesday for our exploration of how the police are covert surveillance technology known as IMSI catchers to spy on hundreds of mobile phone users at a time. Here’s a round-up of the evening, in case you missed it or would like to know more.
Continue reading Event round-up: How are mobile phone users spied on in Birmingham?
Join us at Birmingham Open Media at 6.30pm on Wednesday 22 February for our first meetup of 2017. We’ll be looking at how polices in the West Midlands are covertly using devices- known as IMSI-catchers or Stingrays – to indiscriminately intercept and hack up to 500 phones every minute. We’ll be exploring what police use of IMSI-catchers means for our human rights and civil liberties and what we can do to challenge indiscriminate surveillance.
Continue reading Meetup: learn about how mobile phone users are spied on in Birmingham
On Tuesday evening we met at Centrala arts space in Digbeth to hold our first ever held our first ever Mozilla Maker Party. The purpose of the evening was to make people aware of EU plans to change copyright in ways that threaten creativity and freedom of expression on the internet. `Attendees worked with Birmingham-based digital artist Antonio Roberts to create satirical memes and rebellious selfies to highlight the flaws in the EU’s plans and make the case for a copyright system which is able to keep up with how we lives our lives now.
Continue reading ORG Birmingham Mozilla Maker Party helps fix copyright one meme at a time
Last night (17 October) Open Rights Group Birmingham organiser Francis Clarke attended a talk on surveillance by Professor David Lyon of the Surveillance Studies Centre at Queen’s University in Canada. Here Francis shares his notes from the event along with his thoughts on what civil liberties campaigners can learn from Professor Lyon’s talk.
Continue reading Is everyday surveillance a religious issue?
We’re pleased to say our #SaveOurSources event at BOM last Wednesday Wednesday (28 September) was a great success. Thank you to all our speakers and everyone who contributed to the event by asking questions in person and via social media.
Here’s a round-up of the event, including links to presentation and other useful resources. Please also check out #saveoursources on Twitter to get a flavour of what we discussed.
If you were inspired by last week’s event, please scroll to the bottom of this page to take action. You can find links below to simple steps you can take to support media freedom and also protect your own online security and privacy.
