Radical Librarians Collective actively seeks enhance our community’s knowledge of digital privacy, and the (digital) rights of individuals. The aim of this is to enable librarians to increase their own ability to protect their privacy, but also for that of the library patrons with which they work. In a world where our online behaviour is tracked and traced by commercial entities to enhance their profit-making based on our uses of our personal data, and where data is recorded and indexed by the state in regressive and over-broad systems of surveillance, the importane of this work cannot be overstated.
We work closely with leading organisations, such as the Library Freedom Project in order to be aware of the social and political rationale for digital privacy rights, and also to seek expert skills and knowledge in the continually evolving world of cryptographic tools that offer us some protection online and in the digital realm.
We do not claim to be the leading experts in this field, but many members have immersed themselves in the community of privacy activists and development to add depth to our passion for the principle of digital rights and autonomy. As such, we have run CryptoParties, but are looking to embed many aspects of good privacy practice into our regular sessions, with key signing as a standing item on the agenda at regional meetings- to offer continual support to technical and non-technical users, teachers, trainers, and practitioners.
We offer support, training, and configuration advice on, amongst a range of related and tangential areas:
-Mobile telephone security (encrypted messaging and calls, device encryption, best practice, behaviours etc.)
-Secure passphrase creation and storage
-Off-the-record and metadata free instant messaging and file sharing
-Private browsing (installing and using Tor browser and the Tor network, privacy enhancing plug-ins and extensions for popular browsers like Firefox etc.)
–GPG emails (email encryption)
-Advice on FLOSS software, hosting Sandstorm (for personally hosted web apps for collaborative work to migrate away from Google’s suite), and secure operating systems
-VPNs
-Data minimisation
Feel free to contact us at rlc@riseup.net with any specific queries or even to arrange some informal discussions or training!
