Creating an Online Civil Liberties Organisation

This advice is constantly under revision. Please send any comments to:
Michael Baker <mbaker@pobox.com>
PO Box 5, Flaxley SA 5153, Australia. Phone +618 8388 8439

This is based on "Creating an Online Civil Liberties Organisation" which first appeared in FidoNews 11-24, 13 Jun 1994

I first wrote this in January 1994, updated it for Fidonews and have now revised it in the light of my experience of the foundation of Electronic Frontiers Australia over the past two years. This article is about setting up organisations which will promote the use of, and protect the rights or freedoms of users of electronic communications.

First some general background.

The opportunities, the threats and what to do about it

Networks like FidoNet and the Internet with their online conferences and virtual communities and email have opened up a new medium for the exchange of ideas and information. With the continuing fall in cost and increase in power and capabilities of computers and networking technology, these empowering and rapidly expanding media are becoming more and more accessible, and more and more vital. So far users of such technology have been able to utilize it's capacity for "many-to-many" communication, in which anyone can be a creator and distributor as well as a reader or consumer, with very few restrictions on what they say, or who they say it to. It is as if each person has access to their own printing press.

So the opportunities are there talk to anyone and listen to what anyone wishes to announce. However there are those who have a tendency to oppose such opportunities. In Australia we call such people wowsers. {wowser (wou'z3r) n. [Aust. Slang] an extremely puritanical person, esp. a killjoy or teetotaller - Collins Australian Pocket English Dictionary, 5th reprint of first edition, Australian Editor: W.A. Krebs, 1985, William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. Sydney.}

Wowsers have allies in the press and government. They tend to want to restrict or control what others can and cannot do, and they often have respectable-sounding reasons for wanting to control others. However if they do achieve their end, then we shall all be the poorer - we shall have lost some of our most cherished and guarded fundamental freedoms - privacy, freedom of expression... etc.

There are two basic ways to handle such threats, one is to react to them when they occur. The other is to go out and promote the type of future you want. It is the latter that I favour. By actively promoting what we want we have more chance of setting the agenda.

How to set up an online civil liberties organisation

If you want to form an online civil liberties organisation I have these suggestions:

• Decide what geographic area your organisation should cover. Here are some questions to consider.
  • Is there a national online civil liberties organisation in your country?
  • If not seriously consider setting one up, your country probably needs one.
  • If there is why not join the existing organisation?
  • If there is already a national organisation, do you want to set up a local organisation to deal with local issues?
  • What is your local geographic area?
• What size is your country or area? If it takes more that two hours to travel from one end to the other by common means of transport you will probably find it difficult to set up many face to face meetings. You will need to set up decent communications.
• If you possibly can, get and use email addresses on the Internet and FidoNet, and any other widely used net in your country or area.
• Find other like minded people. Post messages in likely UseNet newsgroups and mailing lists stating what you want to do and ask who wants to do it with you. It's just like voting (grin): "Post early, Post often." I started EFA with a question like "Do you know of an organisation like the Electronic Frontier Foundation in Australia, or would you like to help me form one?"
• Get access to FidoNet echos and post articles there also. If you can't get access to any of them yourself then find someone who does and get them to post articles.
• If you have access to it read comp.org.eff.talk and post messages there. comp.org.eff.talk is gated to the INET.EFF.TALK fidonet echo, and the eff-talk@eff.org mailing list (ask eff@eff.org to join).
• Find someone on the Internet who is willing to set up an a mailing list, and someone else who can set up a Usenet newsgroup, and a FidoNet sysop who can set up an echo, for coordinating your activities. Get the mailing list gated to the echo and the newsgroup.
• Find a volunteer coordinator, membership coordinator, public/press relations officer, newsletter editor, webmaster, ftpmaster, and listmaster.
• Establish a web site and possibly an ftpsite.
• Find one or more BBS willing to make available important files to the BBS community.
• Set a target date for the establishment of your organisation. (In December 1993 I set a target of having EFA incorporated in February 1994. EFA was incorporated in May 1994. If the situataion in your country is anything like Australia there will be issues to be dealt with now. Don't take too long to get set up.)
• Via the echo/mailing list/newsgroup agree on the objectives of your new organisation.
• Similarly agree on its (legal) structure, how it will operate, what activities it will engage in, and what categories and costs of membership it will have.
• Try and avoid having all of your discussions on one *net (like Fidonet or Internet) to the exclusion of the other(s).
• If progress is too slow form a working group to move the action forward. Invite those who are actively doing something (like setting up the mailing list/echo/newsgroup, membership coordinator, newsletter editor, etc.)
• Decide if it will be a volunteer supported organization, or if it will be staffed (and where the funding for this will come from and how to get it.)
• Agree on who will be the first office holders in your new organisation, and ways of raising money and other forms of support, educating people about the missions and issues of the organization, how to encourage participation, if and when to start or participate in events such as conferences and conventions, etc.
• Keep Stanton McCandlish <mech@eff.org>, of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, informed of your progress. Several people who worked on setting up EFA first heard of it from Stanton's activities, and he is maintaining a list of like minded organizations, the Online Activism Organizations List.
• Announce the formation of your new organisation on echos and newsgroups and ask people to join it.

International Contacts

Some organisations like EFF already exist or are being formed in several countries. For details see the Online Activism Organizations List.

Why not form a local chapter of the EFF?

One of the first things I did was to contact EFF. Part of the advice I received was that EFF doesn't have chapters due to the administrative overhead involved. However, their board is encouraging others all over the place to use Electronic Frontier in local organization names, to make this as recognizable as possible and to foster a sense of united purpose.

Metaphysical footnote

Let us dwell on what could go right. The more we think of the future we want, the more likely it is to come about, particularly when there are many of us thinking about it. That is not to say that we should ignore dangers and threats. We should be aware of them but not dwell on them. This is just another way of saying that we should go out and say what future we want, rather than just react and fight proposals which will lead to futures we don't want.

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mbaker@pobox.com

last updated 4 August 1996.