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.
Please join us at Birmingham Open Media on 17 February for a special workshop focused on helping you reclaim your online privacy and security.
At the session you’ll find out more about how companies and governments are tracking you online and why this is bad news for your human rights and puts you at greater risk of being a victime of online crime. More importantly, we’ll show you some simple, practical steps you can take to boost your online privacy and security without having to totally change the way you use the internet.
At the session you’ll also have the chance to find out the latest news about the government’s plans to greatly expand surveillance and hacking through the Investigatory Powers Bill (AKA the Snoopers’ Charter) and what you can do to stop it becoming law.
We want the workshop to be as practical as possible so please bring along your laptop, tablet and/or smartphone so that we can show you some great apps, browser extensions and other tips.
As usual, you can find out more and RSVP for our events via our Meetup page
A big thank you goes out to our hosts Birmingham Open Media (BOM), who have supported Open Rights Group Birmingham from day one. If you’re not familiar with the work they do, you can visit BOM Tuesdays to Saturdays between 10.30am and 5pm.
Keep in touch
You can keep in touch with all the latest developments by following us on Twitter @OpenRightsBrum.
See you on the 17th!
Francis
Open Rights Group Birmingham
With there being just 3 more sleeps to go until Open Rights Group Birmingham (ORG Birmingham) launches on Wednesday (if you haven’t signed up yet, you can do so from here), I wanted to share with you some interesting updates.
Here comes the merch
Firstly, and perhaps most importantly, the central team at ORG have kindly sent me what can only be described as a motherlode of merch. Should you be able to make our meetup on Wednesday you will be able to get your hands on some rather nifty looking ORG stickers and leaflets to help you spread our message on digital rights far and wide. I hope you’re excited about the merch as I am.
Draft Agenda
Secondly, I had a good chat during the week with Lydia Snodin, ORG’s local groups coordinator. Lydia’s given me some tips and generally boosted my confidence about hosting our first ever meet-up.
While our first meet-up is most definitely intended to be friendly, relaxed and informal, Lydia has recommended we work to a basic structure so that everyone gets a chance to contribute and we make the most of our time together.
Here’s my first attempt at an agenda. I’ve tried to structure our meetup so that the most important bits happen early on so that people who need to leave early can still contribute. As ever, your feedback is very much appreciated.
6-6.30: Arrival and registration/sign-up
Introduction to the Snoopers’ Charter and what it could mean for digital rights.
Keep Yourselves Refreshed – BYOB policy
I am reliably informed our hosts for the evening, Birmingham Open Media (BOM), will be able to make us a cup of tea or coffee. Beyond that, they might struggle as we will be using the venue out of hours and access to facilities will be limited.
To keep things fun, I’ll be doing my best party host impression and will supply some snacks and soft drinks. If you’re thinking of coming it would be great if you could bring along some snacks and drinks. BOM are pretty relaxed about people bringing alcoholic drinks into the venue provided we are responsible. If you can stretch to bringing refreshments for you plus one more, we should have plenty of food and drink for everyone to enjoy.
OPEN RIGHTS GROUP BIRMINGHAM 