Cybersecurity Clinic for Activists

Are you worried about your emails showing up on Wikileaks? What if your constituents’ home addresses were leaked, or your organization’s website was hacked and covered with pro-Trump slogans? Activist organizations need cybersecurity to protect against attacks like these.

There are many cybersecurity guides online, but most are written for individuals who are unlikely to be specifically targeted, rather than for activists or organizations. Activists need extra security precautions because their work puts them at higher risk. Organizations need to find ways to collaborate and share data securely.

This event is for local activists to do the following:

* Figure out your “threat model”: What data do you need to protect, who do you need to protect it from, how can those people attack you, and how do you protect against those attacks?

* Ask professional security experts questions (e.g. “my computer did this, does that mean it has been compromised?”)

* If you know what tool you should be using (e.g. a password manager), but you need some help setting it up, CMU students will be available to guide you through the process.

We will start with a short presentation about cybersecurity, 15-30 minutes, and then the rest of the event will be small group discussions with experts and hands-on work.

We won’t be able to answer every question. If this event is well-attended, we will make it a repeating event. We want to serve as a resource to keep our local activist community safe.

Organized by CMU students in Students for Urban Data Systems (SUDS) and Tech 4 Society.

Note from the organizers: The Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh is holding a Personal Privacy Workshop on Saturday March 4. The two events should be complementary. Link: http://www.carnegielibrary.org/event/personal-privacy-workshop/2017-03-04/