The Research Center for Proxy Politics aims to explore and reflect upon the nature of medial networks and their actors, that is, machines and things as well as humans. The proxy, a decoy or surrogate, is today often used to designate a computer server acting as an intermediary for requests from clients. Originating in the Latin procurator, an agent representing others in a court of law, proxies are now emblematic of a post-representational political age, one increasingly populated by bot militias, puppet states, ghostwriters, and communication relays. During the period of the project (September 2014 to August 2017) the center will host a series of workshops at the Universität der Künste, Berlin, revolving around a wide range of relevant topics including the politics of digital networks, the political economy of crypto-currencies, the genealogy of networked thought, the mediality of physical landscapes and strategies of opacity. The center will also conduct material, experimental, investigations into the conception and construction of alternative networks, or alternets.
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(TEXT) 14/02 2017

Practical Security and Privacy Guidelines

Mick Halsband, Boaz Levin

      Security vs Innocence

 

The main concern with data security is to balance between having your devices seem innocent and having your devices be secure.

Security can sometimes be incriminating.

For these reasons we have separate recommendations for day-to-day (safe & anonymous) usage; and extreme security scenarios (safest but not innocent).

Try to find a balance which makes sense with your individual concerns and threats on the one hand; and with your individual work habits and resources on the other.

Lastly, it is better to have average security all the time, than perfect security once in a blue moon.

 

     Best everyday practices for some security and anonymization

 

Activate a VPN

Open an anonymous browser window (private (firefox) or incognito (chrome))

Use anonymous search engines (duckduckgo.com, startpage.com)

 

     Best practices for high-security scenarios

 

Activate TOR browser

Follow these guidelines

 

     Security setup

 

Secure your browser
https://www.eff.org/Https-Everywhere

Use encrypted online storage
https://tresorit.com/nonprofit

Use secure signal messenger
https://whispersystems.org/

Use a secure email account
https://mail.protonmail.com/

Use a different secure password for each service with a password manager
PC/Mac, Android, iPhone

Device encryption
PC/Mac, iPhone, Android

 

     For further reading

 

Berlin based non-profit tactical-tech comprised a list of tools and best practices

https://securityinabox.org/en

A very comprehensive guide overview

https://www.privacytools.io/


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