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@ntnsndr @pdbowman Nathan, I'm talking with Paul about beefing up my co-op's cybersecurity, possibly including moving to a server outside the US. Seems to me that MayFirst would be a good option. Is this a thing we could request as part off our hosting plan? Are others talking about doing this?

Nathan Schneider

@Steve @pdbowman I think all of May First's servers are in New York, but I might be wrong about that. @mayfirst ?

@ntnsndr @Steve @pdbowman @mayfirst Most May First servers are in NY.
Server location is good info if you are doing a climate threat analyst,
but not as relevant as the jurisdiction of your hosting provider for a
legal threat analysis. No prosecutor wants our servers and their encrypted hard drives, they want your data, so they will send both you and us subpoenas and/or search warrants for the data they want and threaten us with existential fines if we refuse.

@ntnsndr @Steve @pdbowman @mayfirst See mayfirst.coop/en/legal/ for more details on real world legal
threats regarding data for activists. Resistance is possible, so
supporting a movement hosting provider is really important. But you
shouldn't have a false sense of security.

mayfirst.coopMay First Movement Technology

@ntnsndr @Steve @pdbowman @mayfirst For those of us concerned about our digital privacy heading into
another Trump presidency, I think we should collectively challenge our
selves to a data cleanse. How much data can we all delete from online
services between now and Trump's inauguration? Deleting data from
corporate providers reduces our surveillance footprint and deleting from
any provider reducing our carbon footprint. All of it makes us less
vulnerable to search warrants.

@jamiem @ntnsndr @pdbowman @mayfirst I'm not sure what I'd cleanse. It's not as if there's some detail buried deep in our documents that a bad actor would seek out. The thing that makes us a target is our entire business model. Most of our workers and most of our clients are immigrants.

@Steve @jamiem @ntnsndr @pdbowman

(1/3) any items that we don't really need in a cloud can be cleaned up. What we need for our work can be downloaded to our devices, keep our backups up to date and deleted from the cloud. Data mining does not work with isolated items but precisely with the amount of information that we consider innocuous and that allows them to profile and predict our actions and relationships.

@Steve @jamiem @ntnsndr @pdbowman

(2/3) We agree that there is a huge problem in the business model but waiting for the business model to change to start taking action is not enough. Especially because deleting unnecessary stuff is a technically very simple action that makes it possible to both decrease our network profiling (and the profiling of our family and activist networks)...

@Steve @jamiem @ntnsndr @pdbowman

(3/3) ...and also greatly supports the environmental impact of servers running and consuming water, energy and cooling processes 24/7 to make available emails or information that really doesn't need to be available all the time because we don't need it. It's a win-win!