EME protest

Direct Action - Sat, May 13th 2017 - March on W3C Headquarters in Cambridge.

Mission Statement

Local developers, thinkers, artists, and digital citizens will join together to apply public pressure on W3C ahead of Tim Berners-Lee announcement about the future of EME. Our mission is to check the enormous influence and market pressure from the Tech Industry through physical mobilization and community education. We will do this by Marching on W3C’s headquarters, located in the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), using targeted messaging, protest signs, distributing literature. The hope is to activate and educate the community of academics around Cambridge and increase the potential damage to reputation for W3C’s political endorsement of EME.

Plan of Action:

Ethics In Tech Activists will meet on Cambridge City Hall Lawn at 2p.m. to get in formation: distribute signs, literature packets to marchers, and apply anti-face detection make-up (colorful shapes that obfuscate identity recognition). We will then proceed to march down Mass Ave towards MIT. The idea is educate bystanders by distributing literature and engaging in discussion. Members of the march most knowledgable about the issue will be in charge of canvasing the public, These point-people might split off to spend more time with an individual before rejoining the group.

Upon reaching MIT CSAIL, the march will deliver a message to W3C in the form of a prepared speech. We will then continue on to the Google and Microsoft Buildings to deliver a message of “You Don’t Own Our Voices” We will then loop back to Mass Ave and continue demonstrating and educating the public in front of the MIT campus.

We do not have a permit for this action, as we are not addressing any governmental body, rather a private company. In order to make sure we are not shut-down or have any issues with law enforcement, we will not be using as amplification devices (voice power only) and we will stick to the sidewalks, no occupy private or public space, no going inside any buildings, no blocking traffic. or crosswalks

Sign Making Party -1302 Commonwealth Ave, Apt 23, Allston, 02134 - Thursday, May 11th

The night before the march Ethics In Tech will host a sign making party at our studio in Allston. Participants are encouraged to join the meeting in-order to get on message, make signs, and network with local activists/artists. Also we will test out our anti-face detection make-up.

Contact Ethics in Tech - trllmstudio@gmail.com

Strategy/Goals

We want to demonstrate the power of consumer/activist pressure on private non-consumer facing companies.We plan to embed ethics into the decisions about technology that beyond the reach legislation. It is very important to bring people together under an action that is proactive. This is a proving ground for our strategies and we hope to apply the same tactics to more insidious companies using DRM like John Deere and generally problematic and unchecked companies like Palantir.

Joining with the Free Software Society will be a huge boost to our brand and really help us recruit local activists by the legitimacy that FSF brings to the action.