With great honor, Aspiration gets to join Jack and Jamila from Palante Technology Cooperative for a session on “PGP Encryption for Our Movements” at the Allied Media Conference in Detroit on June 19-22, 2014. The AMC is a “collaborative labratory” where activists, techies, artists, and educators create and share transformative media. We always have a great time!

To start, we’re making a resource list to provide additional places where folks can learn about email encryption. Below are lots of links for further reading to help demystify the world of PGP (Pretty Good Privacy), and the tools you need to get started. We’ll post more on session take aways after the conference.

AMC Session: “PGP Encryption for Our Movements”

Description: In the face of rampant surveillance by powerful forces, how can we protect ourselves while communicating online? OpenPGP is open source software lets users encrypt data and verify the source of an email or file. In this workshop we’ll cover the basics of what activists and organizers need to know about OpenPGP: what it’s for, how it’s used, and the benefits it offers to our movements. Participants will leave with an understanding of how they can use encryption for increased privacy and security in their day-to-day work and next steps for starting to use OpenPGP themselves.

Resources: What to read

• Email Self-Defense: How to set PGP up
  https://emailselfdefense.fsf.org/
• Encryption Works: How to Protect Your Privacy in the Age of NSA Surveillance
  https://pressfreedomfoundation.org/encryption-works
• Why King George III Can Encrypt
  https://freedom-to-tinker.com/blog/randomwalker/why-king-george-iii-can-encrypt/b
  (an alternate set of metaphors for understanding how it works)
• Little Brother by Cory Doctorow
  http://craphound.com/littlebrother/download/
• Riseup.net
  https://help.riseup.net/en/security/message-security/openpgp/gpg-best-practices
  (geeky but useful for some folks)
• Edward Snowden’s video on gpg for journalists
  
  http://vimeo.com/97065220

Next Steps: How to get started

Here are the current tools we use to set up and use PGP Encryption for email. Download the tools from the Social Source Commons Toolbox below.

Tools based on Operating System

Each operating system may require a different set of tools to get things working. Here’s the right combination for you if you are using an Apple, Microsoft, or Linux machine.

• Unix/Linux
  ThunderBird with Enigmail
• OSX – Apple
  OSX GPG Tools with Mac Mail or;
  ThunderBird with Enigmail
• Windows – Microsoft
  ThunderBird with Enigmail

Share your resources

We hope you find these useful. Please share your resources and we will add them to the list.

What do you use to learn encryption, especially for grassroots activists and nonprofits?

Thank you Jamila Khan, Jack Aponte, Josh Levinger, Joshua Black and Jessica Steimer for helping to find PGP resources and providing extremely useful information on our PGP journey!

Happy encrypting!

best,
misty