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Mobile technology is being used by citizens all over the world as the most affordable and massively adopted piece of technology. How can we harness this technology for advancing human rights and civil society participation? This dialogue is a space to share and discuss many ideas for "Using Mobile Phones for Action."
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[Photo: from the Private Sector Development blog]
Using Mobiles | SMS (Short Message Service)
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Intro
Mobile technology is being used by citizens all over the world as the most affordable and massively adopted piece of technology. How can we harness this technology for advancing human rights and civil society participation?
Our outstanding resource practitioners for the November-December tactical discussion shared and discussed many ideas for "Using Mobile Phones for Action". You can still contribute your ideas, questions and experiences!
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Philippe Duhamel - in his interTactica blog - Harnessing new technology for new tactics provides some great examples to get our creative ideas flowing.
- Sending out an SMS -- Supporting human rights work and activism with text messaging, or SMS - Short Messaging Service - functionality
- Organizing demonstrations -- Such as the Orange Revolution in Ukraine
- Coup de text -- Like ousting a president, it happened in the Philippines
- Protest Ringtones -- Highlighting corruption, it's being used in the Philippines
Links from the dicussion:
More like "being realistic"
Hi Wendy
You raise a very good point, and all NGOs using mobiles in the human rights field need to be aware of a wide number of security issues. These not only apply to the organisations using the devices, but also to members of civil society that they may encourage to submit information via SMS or video, or whatever. Mobile phones, as traceable devices, can place people in specific places at specific times, and as such put the owners at possible personal risk. Most people don't realise this.
Tactical Tech will soon be releasing information on mobile phone security (http://www.tacticaltech.org) and MobileActive published a Strategy Guide on the subject (see http://mobileactive.org/resources/login).
It will probably come as a surprise how much information mobile phones make available to the networks they're connected to. That information is of great interest to oppressive regimes (among others), so it's worth finding out more before you undertake a mobile phone project of any kind. In some countries, peoples' lives could depend on it.
So, far from being negative, you raise a hugely valuable and interesting point, Wendy,
Ken