The Occupy Movement is on the move again. This time it’s not to a new physical space, but into the digital realm.
Inspired perhaps by WikiLeaks head Julian Assange’s assertion that “Facebook in particular is the most appalling spying machine that has ever been invented,” some activists are developing a parallel technology that aims to tie together all the various platforms that Occupy groups around the world are using. Essentially, the group hopes to form one secure Anti-Facebook for the Movement.
In an interview with Wired, developers Ed Knutson and Sam Boyer laid out the key elements of the technology they intend to use:
- OpenID, an online identity tool that allows people to sign in using a preexisting ID that is constant across social media platforms
- OAuth, which authorizes secure API calls and allows users to sign in with preexisting IDs but protects the log-in information.
- RDF, Resource Development Framework, which connects different platforms and allows information to be identified by type, so that, for example, one group can publish its Protocols on a Joomla site and activists searching the overall network would be able to access that information within the network, without having to go to the particular site themselves.
The collaborative, activist, and cross-platform aspects of the site differentiate it from other Facebook rivals like Diaspora, which focuses on user privacy and straightforward social networking. How similar it is to the recently announced Friends of WikiLeaks site, however, remains to be seen, although they share a focus on activism and offline connections.
“These are standards that have been around for a while, and we are not reinventing the wheel,” Boyer said in the interview.
Indeed, back in early November some breakaway Occupy Vancouver activists started a site to do the same thing for Canada. How have they been succeeding? Well, things don’t look good, since the URL is now up for grabs.
The cornerstone of security in the new network are real-life referrals—a member will have to vouch for you before you can have access. Once in, you can then put forward new members as well. But as any decent hacker could tell you, the weakest link in any system is generally the “wetware.”
That is, the people.
Photo by raincoaster