Welcome

Comrades,

I'll plan to start using this blog soon to put some privacy / related info up that we're talking about at work & in the community -- especially as we head into contract bargaining season. Folks are getting interested of late, for a number of reasons -- major themes include:

• personal and community safety
• meaningful dialog about consent
• employers' perceived entitlement to employee cell phones coupled with their absolute lack of understanding or concern about individual privacy (often conflated with compliance or security -- but not at all the same), and in some cases willingness to mislead and even lie to employees on this topic.
• work-life / private-life boundaries
• the marriage of big-tech with government and law enforcement
• censorship
• ...and many more -- certainly the impact of AI touches everything now

The question I get most is about which tools to use -- so I've started a post on that (it will evolve over time, so check back now and then) -- you can find it here: https://listed.to/@dissentious/64229/privacy-tools. I hope you'll leave feedback, share your favorite tools, and ask a lot of questions.

If you have some time and a little artistic sense -- and if you like putting little zines together with focused info -- e.g., "How to ProtonMail"; or "How to DNS" -- or whatever the topic may be -- formatted into bite-sized privacy improvements that folx can learn about in the coffee shop, reproduce, and pass around -- I'd love to work with you -- please reach out! You want to write a post for this blog -- let me know.

Privacy literacy really isn't hard -- and can I just be candid for a moment here -- I hear people put themselves down a lot in this space -- but they shouldn't. A little simplifying and demystifying could get us a ways toward where we need to go -- we'll see if this blog can help -- but ultimately, learning is about taking small steps, a spirit of inquiry and curiosity, personal reflection, a sense of adventure... We can do this.

For those curious -- this blog will be a labor of love -- I won't get paid for anything here. If you're feeling like you really want to contribute something, I can recommend some good groups in town, or interesting privacy projects you can read about online -- or you know...buy a beer for a union volunteer, or a neighbor or colleague and spend a little time together. Subscribe for email updates if that's convenient for you; or bookmark this site and check back on it now and then for new posts.

In solidarity,

-dissentious