Practical Ways to Defend your Freedom of Speech

by Brad Taylor

(http://www.fr33agents.com/474/practical-ways-to-defend-your-freedom-of-speech/)

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has released a White Paper [pdf here] suggesting ways for activists to use technology to protect free speech against censorship and retaliation from authoritarian regimes. The paper points out that the internet and other communication technologies have radically increased the scope for the dissemination of ideas, but has also given governments new means of discovering and punishing dissent. Some of the advice may be a little extreme for western countries at present, but it always pays to think ahead. It offers six practical ideas to protect your own freedom of speech, and four ways you can help others:

Ways to help yourself:

1. Understand Risk Assessment: Identify the risks you face, how serious they are, are prioritize your responses.
2. Beware of Malware: “If a government is able to install malware on the computer you are using, then it doesn’t matter what other steps you take: your files and communications will be subject to surveillance.”
3. Choose the Least-Risky Communications Channels: Talking in person or over encrypted internet connections is good; talking over the phone or sending SMS, not so much.
4. Use Encryption to Prevent Surveillance and Censorship of your Web Usage: Tor!
5. Be Careful of What and Where You Publish: Don’t use your own name [Damn it!], use secure connections, and avoid hosting companies with a commercial presence in your country (since they’re more likely to give you up to the Feds).
6. Use a Tor Bridge: Make it harder for authorities to know you’re using Tor, and keep the encryption alive even if shut off access to the public Tor network.

Ways to help others:

1. Run a Tor Relay: Donate bandwidth to relay encrypted traffic between Tor nodes.
2. Run a Tor Bridge: Like a relay, only secret.
3. Run a Tor Exit Node: Connect the Tor network with the rest of the internet.
4. Run a Proxy for Friends: Help out friends in places where censorship and surveillance are bigger problems.

There is much more information at the Surveillance Self-Defense Project. There’s not much you can do to change government policy, but there are many ways to render the edicts of the state ineffective.

Upside Down Flag Has Vet in Fight for 1st Amendment Rights

Dispute Over Flag Protest Erupts in Wisc. Village

by Robert Imrie

(http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2009/07/11-0)

WAUSAU, Wis. - An American flag flown upside down as a protest in a northern Wisconsin village was seized by police before a Fourth of July parade and the businessman who flew it - an Iraq war veteran - claims the officers trespassed and stole his property.

This photo provided by Susan Willems taken July 5, 2009 shows an American flag being flown upside down, a day after it was removed by local police, in Crivitz, Wis. The flag being flown upside down as a protest in a small northern Wisconsin village was seized by police before a Fourth of July parade. The businessman flying the flag claims police trespassed and stole his property. (AP Photo/Susan Willems)

A day after the parade, police returned the flag and the man's protest - over a liquor license - continued.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Wisconsin is considering legal action against the village of Crivitz for violating Vito Congine Jr.'s' First Amendment rights, Executive Director Chris Ahmuty said.

"It is not often that you see something this blatant," Ahmuty said.

In mid-June, Congine, 46, began flying the flag upside down - an accepted way to signal distress - outside the restaurant he wants to open in Crivitz, a village of about 1,000 people some 65 miles north of Green Bay.

He said his distress is likely bankruptcy because the village board refused to grant him a liquor license after he spent nearly $200,000 to buy and remodel a downtown building for an Italian supper club.

Congine's upside-down-flag represents distress to him; to others in town, it represents disrespect of the flag.

Hours before a Fourth of July parade, four police officers went to Congine's property and removed the flag under the advice of Marinette County District Attorney Allen Brey.

Neighbor Steven Klein watched in disbelief.

"I said, 'What are you doing?' Klein said. "They said, 'It is none of your business.'"

The next day, police returned the flag.

Brey declined comment Friday.

Marinette County Sheriff Jim Kanikula said it was not illegal to fly the flag upside down but people were upset and it was the Fourth of July.

"It is illegal to cause a disruption," he said.

The parade went on without any problems, Kanikula said.

Village President John Deschane, 60, an Army veteran who served in Vietnam, said many people in town believe it's disrespectful to fly the flag upside down.

"If he wants to protest, let him protest but find a different way to do it," Deschane said.

Congine, a Marine veteran who served in Iraq in 2004, said he intends to keep flying the flag upside down.

"It is pretty bad when I go and fight a tyrannical government somewhere else," Congine said, "and then I come home to find it right here at my front door."

© 2009 Associated Press