ORG Birmingham Halloween Social shows digital rights and fun aren’t mutually exclusively

Thank you to everyone who joined us at BOM on Monday evening for our first-ever Halloween Social. After some initial nerves over whether anyone besides local organiser Francis would embrace the Halloween theme, our event proved fancy dress, trick or treat Haribo sweets and digital rights activism can mix.

Join us for our Halloween Social

With our digital rights under threat by governments and corporations, the world can seem a pretty scary place for people who care about ensuring our rights come with us when we go online. Give yourself the night off worrying by joining us for our first-ever ORG Birmingham Halloween Social on Monday 30 October.

New ORG Birmingham video and putting digital rights on the General Election agenda

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.

West Midlands Police and Crime Commissioner refuses mobile surveillance Freedom of Information request

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.

Reminder: Espionage Act meetup this Tuesday (21 March)

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.

West Midlands Police and Crime Commissioner not publishing key transparency information which previously revealed covert mobile surveillance

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.

Event round-up: How are mobile phone users spied on in Birmingham?

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.

Meetup: learn about how mobile phone users are 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.

ORG Birmingham Mozilla Maker Party helps fix copyright one meme at a time

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.

Is everyday surveillance a religious issue?

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.