Cb-coop

Vision

Europe should be a place where free and uncontrolled life is possible. There should not be any filtering, blocking, manipulation or surveillance of communication (neither content nor connection information). We are against discrimination or racism (like proactive policing and profiling).

Side-Effects

This prohibits (examples):

• blanket and indiscriminate communications data retention
• blocking of websites
• three strikes
• pnr (except planing and organizing business in a privacy-friendly way)
• dragnet investigations
• ...

Appeal

I know everyone is busy. But that's exactly the reason, why we need to work together on specific topics. A lot of this stuff has already been worked on by different people in different countries. This content needs to be translated and shared.

Goal

Establish a loose cross-border cooperation to demand the protection of these fundamental rights of freedom and democracy. It is important to coordinate events, efforts and campaigning in Europe and beyond. We could effectively share time and resources to work on special topics.

Idea

The idea is to call upon the participation of privacy organizations, non privacy organizations (workers unions, lawyers, journalists, …) and non-attached people to help to campaign for this vision. We start with a minimal set of tools (wiki, maillinglist) and a lot of tasks and topics.There needs to be a few people making a start on these topics, but also keeping it an open discussion. Everyone is invited to join (no commitment required) and to do whatever he/she is able to do. Some will just listen in for a while and they will decide for themselves if and to what specific tasks or discussions they want to contribute. What we need for starters:

• Wiki (I think a dedicated English wiki would be best)
• mailing list (We could use akv-international or a dedicated one)
  • a few voluntary coordinators
  • a few voluntary people working on a task together

Tasks

Some ideas of initial “easy to organize” activities/tasks (please feel free to add new tasks and ideas):

Topic	Description	would like to help / can contribute
open letters against surveillance	A webpage where people can write emails to all MEPs, to all of their countries MEPs, or to a special MEP. The letters (without sender) are published. There is also an option to upload the responses and discuss them.	pgamerx
creating a web page	collect, update and translate already available content
	design
	creating creative cartoons to illustrate the issues of surveillance and controlling communication
	consolidate the cases of abuse	pgamerx
shape our demands	Many of our demands are already part of local law or the European human rights convention, but have been diluted over time or are not properly enforced by the governments
prepare explanations for different target audiences	differnt groups (journalists, worker unions, lawyers, ...) have different issues with matters like data retention or censorship
invitation-packages	a letter and condensed information to send to affected groups like journalists, worker unions, lawyers, ...
content-discussion	most of this is already there, but needs to be consolidated and published topics pro and cons impact of surveillance impact of controlling content and access effectiveness of measures alternatives	pgamerx
ask people to introduce themselves on joining the mailing list	no personal data, just I am here because ... my main interest is ... I have some experience in ... and would like to support ...
local contact/observer	we need people reporting about the development on certain topics in their countries informing local organizations and activists about international actions handle local questions and requests
no idea	I have no idea how, but would like to support

What went wrong so far

We had a few attempts in starting a European movement, which didn’t work outso far. There were many people interested in this topic. So what went wrong?

• We had no infrastructure
  • There is a need for basic tools, to work together on a long distance basis (mailing list, wiki)
• We had nothing solid to work on
  • There was a lot of drive, but no tasks to fulfill.
• No one made the start for the discussion
  • It is always hard to initiate a topic or conversation
• No offers to participate?
  • To get people to commit themselves, they need to participate.
• Everything took to long
  • It is important to start while there is still drive

If we could get over a certain threshold, this would run by itself.

Concerns

There are many concerns.

• My organization will not support others, because we would not berecognized any more.
  • We are fighting for a common goal, so we should fight together
  • If you would get recognized depends on how you present yourself, this could very well be your chance to be recognized at all.
• There is no structure, no rules, no one responsible. How should thischaos work?
  • Yes, there will be a little chaos
  • Yes, it might sometimes be a little annoying
  • Yes, there are some people that don’t know the word “polite”.
• But, from my experience it is absolutely astonishing how dedicated and qualitative most of the discussions are and how many people can work on a common goal together.
• This already exists :EDRI.
  • EDRI members are all privacy or civil rights organizations, but our idea is bigger (normal people, other organizations).
  • EDRI should be part

Timetable (just draft)

Date	Topic
25th of June - 6th July	enhance, discuss and find supporters for this idea (small group)
6th of July - 10th of July	enhance, discuss and find supporters for this idea (EDRI, akv-international, personal contacts, .......)
6th of July - 10th of August	define tasks and coordinate the basics
10th of August - 14th of August	inviting people to join (on CCC Summer camp)
14th of August - 16th of September	create a flyer to invite the voice of the public to join us
17th of September - 19th of September	invite people @ Brussels protest / Lobbying weekend
20th of September - 4ever	keep discussions interesting and work on topics together