Telecomix is a decentralized cluster of
net activists, committed to the
freedom of expression
Freedom of speech is a principle that supports the freedom of an individual or a community to articulate their opinions and ideas without fear of retaliation, censorship, or legal sanction. The right to freedom of expression has been recog ...
and is a name used by both WeRebuild and Telecomix. WeRebuild is a collaborative project used to propose and discuss laws as well as to collect information about politics and politicians. The Telecomix is the operative body that executes schemes and proposals presented by the WeRebuild. On September 15, 2011, Telecomix diverted all connections to the Syrian web, and redirected internauts to a page with instructions to bypass censorship.
Moreover, "Telecomix circulated the ways of using landlines to circumvent state blockages of broadband networks" during the
Egyptian Revolution of 2011. Also in 2011, Telecomix had a large release of
Blue Coat surveillance log files, allegedly revealing vast interception in
Syria
Syria ( ar, سُورِيَا or سُورِيَة, translit=Sūriyā), officially the Syrian Arab Republic ( ar, الجمهورية العربية السورية, al-Jumhūrīyah al-ʻArabīyah as-Sūrīyah), is a Western Asian country loc ...
, which was analyzed and made public from the "telecommunist cluster" of Telecomix. The leak had previously been criticized for possibly revealing too much sensitive information about Syrian users by security researcher and hacker
Jacob Appelbaum
Jacob Appelbaum (born 1 April 1983) is an American independent journalist, computer security researcher, artist, and hacker. He studied at the Eindhoven University of Technology and was a core member of the Tor project, a free software network ...
.
History
![Telecomix Solarworks Server](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/19/Telecomix_Solarworks_Server.jpg)
The organization was created at April 18, 2009, as a suggestion following a seminar about surveillance, the
legislative changes regulating the
National Defence Radio Establishment
The National Defence Radio Establishment ( sv, Försvarets radioanstalt, FRA) is a Swedish
government agency organised under the Ministry of Defence. The two main tasks of FRA are signals intelligence (SIGINT), and support to government authorit ...
(FRA), and other laws processed in the
European Parliament
The European Parliament (EP) is one of the legislative bodies of the European Union and one of its seven institutions. Together with the Council of the European Union (known as the Council and informally as the Council of Ministers), it adopts ...
at the time. The audience was asked to help stop the surveillance laws that were about to be passed in the European Parliament. The evening after the seminar a spontaneous bifurcation started and someone threw a cipher. It was then Telecomix was born.
During the first months of Telecomix' existence, focus was mostly on the
Telecoms Package
The Telecoms Package was the review of the European Union Telecommunications Framework from 2007 – 2009. The objective of the review was to update the EU Telecoms Framework of 2002 and to create a common set of regulations for the telecoms indus ...
, the
Data Retention Directive and the laws regulating the
FRA
A friar is a member of one of the mendicant orders founded in the twelfth or thirteenth century; the term distinguishes the mendicants' itinerant apostolic character, exercised broadly under the jurisdiction of a superior general, from the ol ...
. Work consisted of gathering information about the laws and the political processes involved, public conversations with legislators and art projects.
As the organization grew larger, the definition and boundaries of the cluster became more undefined. According to one interview, an activist described it as "an ever growing bunch of friends that do things together" consisting of "
..roughly 20 extremely active members, 50 active and some 300 total including lurkers".
Origins
Telecomix has their roots in a heterogenous activist and hacker scene. Many of the founding members had followed and participated in and around
Piratbyrån
Piratbyrån ( "The Pirate Bureau") was a Swedish think tank established to support the free sharing of information, culture, and intellectual property. Piratbyrån provided a counterpoint to lobby groups such as the Swedish Anti-Piracy Bureau.
...
and
The Pirate Bay
The Pirate Bay (sometimes abbreviated as TPB) is an online index of digital content of entertainment media and software. Founded in 2003 by Swedish think tank Piratbyrån, The Pirate Bay allows visitors to search, download, and contribute ma ...
. There is membership overlap with The Julia Group and
La Quadrature du Net
La Quadrature du Net ('' Squaring the Net'' in French) is a French advocacy group that promotes digital rights and freedoms for its citizens. It advocates for French and European legislation to respect the founding principles of the Internet, ...
, as well as with the
hackerspace
A hackerspace (also referred to as a hacklab, hackspace, or makerspace) is a community-operated, often "not for profit" ( 501(c)(3) in the United States), workspace where people with common interests, such as computers, machining, technology, ...
s Forskningsavdelningen in
Malmö
Malmö (, ; da, Malmø ) is the largest city in the Swedish county (län) of Scania (Skåne). It is the third-largest city in Sweden, after Stockholm and Gothenburg, and the sixth-largest city in the Nordic region, with a municipal populat ...
,
Gothenburg
Gothenburg (; abbreviated Gbg; sv, Göteborg ) is the second-largest city in Sweden, fifth-largest in the Nordic countries, and capital of the Västra Götaland County. It is situated by the Kattegat, on the west coast of Sweden, and has ...
Hackerspace and Sparvnästet in
Stockholm
Stockholm () is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in Sweden by population, largest city of Sweden as well as the List of urban areas in the Nordic countries, largest urban area in Scandinavia. Approximately 980,000 people liv ...
. As Telecomix has a very vague concept of being a "member" of the group (the only formal ritual is to enter their IRC chat), it is however difficult to assess with certainty what their origins are.
According to Marcin de Kaminski, who gave one of the earliest interviews on Telecomix's first project (which used to be under the domain telekompaketet.se, now with a new unrelated site owner), he points to a heritage line from Piratbyrån via a sudden side-project called Tapirbyrån ("The Bureau of
Tapir
Tapirs ( ) are large, herbivorous mammals belonging to the family Tapiridae. They are similar in shape to a pig, with a short, prehensile nose trunk. Tapirs inhabit jungle and forest regions of South and Central America, with one species inh ...
s", which is an anagram of the word Pirate in Swedish), which then led to the formation of Telecomix. Apart from this statement by de Kaminski, there are no known written records of this story, and no member of Tapirbyrån has yet confirmed nor denied it.
As Telecomix was founded, the initial work consisted of engaging parliamentary politics, to serve as an interface between concerned communities and politicians. As the work gradually moved over to direct interventions and rescue operations, the cluster moved over to a gradually more militaristic rhetoric, with heavy influences from 1990s-style
crypto-anarchism
Crypto-anarchism or cyberanarchism is a political ideology focusing on protection of privacy, political freedom, and economic freedom, the adherents of which use cryptographic software for confidentiality and security while sending and receiving ...
.
However, during 2011 some Telecomix activists have given interviews and talks at various technology-related conferences under their real names. This is in stark contrast to the earlier practice of eschewing real and individual names in favour of using Telecomix as a collective pseudonym.
Rasmus Fleischer
Rasmus Fleischer (born 19 April 1978 in Halmstad) is a Swedish historian, essayist and musician. He earned his Ph.D. in history in 2012 with a dissertation that was also published as a book of 640 pages: "The political economy of music: Legislat ...
argues that the formation of Telecomix signified the end of a long era of pirate rhetoric, and instead shifted attention to a
hacktivist
In Internet activism, hacktivism, or hactivism (a portmanteau of '' hack'' and '' activism''), is the use of computer-based techniques such as hacking as a form of civil disobedience to promote a political agenda or social change. With roots in h ...
approach to politics. Moreover, Christopher Kullenberg describes how "Telecomix News Agency" was shaped as a consequence of close online and offline friendships in connection with the trial against
The Pirate Bay
The Pirate Bay (sometimes abbreviated as TPB) is an online index of digital content of entertainment media and software. Founded in 2003 by Swedish think tank Piratbyrån, The Pirate Bay allows visitors to search, download, and contribute ma ...
in his manifesto ''Det Nätpolitiska Manifestet''.
In the book ''Svenska Hackare'' ("Swedish Hackers"), the two technology journalists, Daniel Goldberg and Linus Larsson, describe how WeRebuild (a project name used by Telecomix) appeared on a seminar on
net neutrality
Network neutrality, often referred to as net neutrality, is the principle that Internet service providers (ISPs) must treat all Internet communications equally, offering users and online content providers consistent rates irrespective of co ...
held by the Swedish Government in 2009, to influence the implementation of the
Telecoms Package
The Telecoms Package was the review of the European Union Telecommunications Framework from 2007 – 2009. The objective of the review was to update the EU Telecoms Framework of 2002 and to create a common set of regulations for the telecoms indus ...
.
Projects and operations
Streisand
A project created and hosted by Telecomix was the Streisand project, named after the
Streisand effect. The aim is to mirror certain types of content that gets blocked or censored.
WeRebuild
WeRebuildwas a decentralized
wiki
A wiki ( ) is an online hypertext publication collaboratively edited and managed by its own audience, using a web browser. A typical wiki contains multiple pages for the subjects or scope of the project, and could be either open to the pu ...
page containing Telecomix information and projects.
Egypt Operations
During the internet blackout in early 2011, Telecomix released a video stating that they would launch series of attempts at restoring internet connectivity by means of old modems, faxes and rerouting of traffic.
Syria Operations
Similar in approach to the Egypt operations, the organization was intervening in Syrian networks. The most notable event was when Telecomix released log files from
Blue Coat Systems
__FORCETOC__
Blue Coat Systems, Inc., was a company that provided hardware, software, and services designed for cybersecurity and network management. In 2016, it was acquired by and folded into Symantec. In 2019 was, as part of Symantec Enterpris ...
surveillance equipment. Blue Coat Systems were eventually forced to admit that their devices were used in Syria, although they had not been directly sold to the country.
search.telecomix.org
Telecomix hosted a search service based o
Seeks, an open-source Peer-to-Peer
distributed search engine A distributed search engine is a search engine where there is no central server. Unlike traditional centralized search engines, work such as crawling, data mining, indexing, and query processing is distributed among several peers in a decentrali ...
with an emphasis on user privacy. Seeks implements a decentralized peer-to-peer architecture: install Seeks on your machine, server or laptop, and automatically start sharing results. While users share queries over the Peer-to-Peer network, Seeks protects your privacy by sending encrypted query fragments to peers. This scheme makes it difficult for other peers to devise your initial query.
Blackthrow
Telecomix members often experiment with unorthodox encryption technologies. One such project was the "Blackthrow" concept computer (sharing some etymology with the word
Black fax
The term black fax refers to a prank fax transmission, consisting of one or more pages entirely filled with a uniform black tone. The sender's intention is generally to use up as much of the recipient's fax ink, toner, or thermal paper as possible ...
), described as:
Due to the questionable legality of Blackthrow computers, Telecomix maintains no records of such devices being live and running.
Logo
The
logo
A logo (abbreviation of logotype; ) is a graphic mark, emblem, or symbol used to aid and promote public identification and recognition. It may be of an abstract or figurative design or include the text of the name it represents as in a wordma ...
contains a variety of symbols. The origins remain unclear, but one common interpretation is that the
pyramid
A pyramid (from el, πυραμίς ') is a structure whose outer surfaces are triangular and converge to a single step at the top, making the shape roughly a pyramid in the geometric sense. The base of a pyramid can be trilateral, quadrilat ...
in the middle is a symbol of
kopimi philosophy, a project originally started by
Piratbyrån
Piratbyrån ( "The Pirate Bureau") was a Swedish think tank established to support the free sharing of information, culture, and intellectual property. Piratbyrån provided a counterpoint to lobby groups such as the Swedish Anti-Piracy Bureau.
...
. Moreover, the lightning arrows seem to originate from the logo of
Televerket (Sweden)
Televerket was a Swedish State authority acting as a state-owned corporation (public enterprise), responsible for telecommunications in Sweden from 1853 until 1993. Originally it was named Kongl. Elektriska Telegraf-Werket (literally: Royal Elec ...
, the old telecoms monopoly of Sweden. The star (also present on Televerket symbol) is a symbol of telecommunism, and the
Omega
Omega (; capital: Ω, lowercase: ω; Ancient Greek ὦ, later ὦ μέγα, Modern Greek ωμέγα) is the twenty-fourth and final letter in the Greek alphabet. In the Greek numeric system/isopsephy (gematria), it has a value of 800. The wo ...
sign is a symbol of resistance, as in
Ohm's law
Ohm's law states that the current through a conductor between two points is directly proportional to the voltage across the two points. Introducing the constant of proportionality, the resistance, one arrives at the usual mathematical equat ...
. This interpretation of the symbols is sometimes referred to as the
Gothenburg
Gothenburg (; abbreviated Gbg; sv, Göteborg ) is the second-largest city in Sweden, fifth-largest in the Nordic countries, and capital of the Västra Götaland County. It is situated by the Kattegat, on the west coast of Sweden, and has ...
interpretation, as many of the founding members are from this town. Others have, however, associated the symbols in the logotype with secret societies, due to several of them being associated with the
Illuminati
The Illuminati (; plural of Latin ''illuminatus'', 'enlightened') is a name given to several groups, both real and fictitious. Historically, the name usually refers to the Bavarian Illuminati, an Enlightenment-era secret society founded on ...
and
freemasonry
Freemasonry or Masonry refers to fraternal organisations that trace their origins to the local guilds of stonemasons that, from the end of the 13th century, regulated the qualifications of stonemasons and their interaction with authorities ...
.
In an article in French Magazine Lesinrocks,
[Anonymous, LulzSec: les énigmatiques bannières des hacktivistes](_blank)
Lesinrocks, 2011-11-17. Fabrice Epelboin argues that the pyramid in the Telecomix logo symbolizes power, and that "it is bordered by a bunch of elements - the Omega, the lightning, the star - the challenge ahead". In the same article Fabrice d'Almeida, historian of the propaganda images describes the logo as "giving the impression of a large machine capable of unleashing great energy".
Jellyfish
Telecomix often refer to oceanic concepts when describing their overall structure. They state that "a
siphonophoric organism transmitting its genome through
memes and imitation rather than through rules and regulations".
Jellyfish
Jellyfish and sea jellies are the informal common names given to the medusa-phase of certain gelatinous members of the subphylum Medusozoa, a major part of the phylum Cnidaria. Jellyfish are mainly free-swimming marine animals with umbrella- ...
are an important part of the symbolism of Telecomix, circulating both as a
meme and as an organizational concept guiding participants in evolving the organization. In June 2009 a blog post on "jellyfish memetics" was posted at a Telecomix-affiliated blog, arguably sparking a great interest within Telecomix for the philosophical implications of decentralized
self-organization
Self-organization, also called spontaneous order in the social sciences, is a process where some form of overall order arises from local interactions between parts of an initially disordered system. The process can be spontaneous when suff ...
.
Datalove
The notion of "datalove" appeared for the first time in one of several manifestos written by Telecomix, as to "inspire the body-politic to incarnate creatively via totemized teleportation-flows of datalove". The concept of datalove has been the leitmotif for several spawned projects . Site with interactive Datalove-experience.
Crypto-anarchism
The organization contributes to the general theme of
Crypto-anarchism
Crypto-anarchism or cyberanarchism is a political ideology focusing on protection of privacy, political freedom, and economic freedom, the adherents of which use cryptographic software for confidentiality and security while sending and receiving ...
. Their projec
Cryptoanarchy.orgArchived
aims at promoting cryptographic research and security technologies.
Cameron
The organization maintains a
MegaHAL
MegaHAL is a computer conversation simulator, or "chatterbot", created by Jason Hutchens.
Background
In 1996, Jason Hutchens entered the Loebner Prize Contest witHeX a chatterbot based on ELIZA. HeX won the competition that year and took the $20 ...
speech bot named Cameron. According to one member it is "a computer generated representation of all of us".
Cameron has become a core symbol for Telecomix, and her function in governing the actions of the activists remains obscure.
References
External links
* {{Dead link, date=February 2022
Intellectual property activism
Digital rights organizations
Cyberwarfare