Telecomix is a decentralized cluster of

net activist Internet activism involves the use of electronic-communication technologies such as social media, e-mail, and podcasts for various forms of activism to enable faster and more effective communication by citizen movements, the delivery of particular ...

s, 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 rights, right to freedom of expression has been r ...

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 The 2011 Egyptian revolution, also known as the 25 January Revolution (;), began on 25 January 2011 and spread across Egypt. The date was set by various youth groups to coincide with the annual Egyptian "Police holiday" as a statement against ...

. Also in 2011, Telecomix had a large release of Blue Coat surveillance log files, allegedly revealing vast interception in

Syria Syria, officially the Syrian Arab Republic, is a country in West Asia located in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Levant. It borders the Mediterranean Sea to the west, Turkey to Syria–Turkey border, the north, Iraq to Iraq–Syria border, t ...

, 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 April 1, 1983) is an American independent journalist, computer security researcher, artist, Hacking (innovation), hacker and teacher. Appelbaum, who earned his PhD from the Eindhoven University of Technology, first became not ...

History

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 (, 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 authorities and state-owned companie ...

(FRA), and other laws processed in the

European Parliament The European Parliament (EP) is one of the two 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 ...

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

Data Retention Directive The Data Retention Directive (Directive 2006/24/EC), later declared invalid by the European Court of Justice, was at first passed on 15 March 2006 and regulated data retention, where data has been generated or processed in connection with the ...

and the laws regulating the FRA. 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 ( "The Pirate Bureau") was a Swedish think tank established to support the free sharing of information, culture, and intellectual property. provided a counterpoint to lobby groups such as the Swedish Anti-Piracy Bureau. In 2005 released an a ...

and

The Pirate Bay The Pirate Bay, commonly abbreviated as TPB, is a free searchable online index of Film, movies, music, video games, Pornographic film, pornography and software. Founded in 2003 by Swedish think tank , The Pirate Bay facilitates the connection ...

. 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, m ...

, 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, sci ...

s Forskningsavdelningen in

Malmö Malmö is the List of urban areas in Sweden by population, third-largest city in Sweden, after Stockholm and Gothenburg, and the List of urban areas in the Nordic countries, sixth-largest city in Nordic countries, the Nordic region. Located on ...

Gothenburg Gothenburg ( ; ) is the List of urban areas in Sweden by population, second-largest city in Sweden, after the capital Stockholm, and the fifth-largest in the Nordic countries. Situated by the Kattegat on the west coast of Sweden, it is the gub ...

Hackerspace and Sparvnästet in

Stockholm Stockholm (; ) is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in Sweden by population, most populous city of Sweden, as well as the List of urban areas in the Nordic countries, largest urban area in the Nordic countries. Approximately ...

. 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 Suidae, pig, with a short, prehensile nose trunk (proboscis). Tapirs inhabit jungle and forest regions of South America, South and Centr ...

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-anarchy, crypto-anarchism, cyberanarchy or cyberanarchism is a political ideology focusing on the protection of privacy, political freedom, and economic freedom, the adherents of which use cryptographic software for confidentiality and se ...

. 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: Legislati ...

argues that the formation of Telecomix signified the end of a long era of pirate rhetoric, and instead shifted attention to a

hacktivist 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. A form of Internet activism with roo ...

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

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 Net neutrality, sometimes referred to as network neutrality, is the principle that Internet service providers (ISPs) must treat all Internet communications equally, offering User (computing), users and online content providers consistent tra ...

held by the Swedish Government in 2009, to influence the implementation of the Telecoms Package.

Projects and operations

Streisand

A project created and hosted by Telecomix was the Streisand project, named after the

Streisand effect The Streisand effect is an unintended consequences, unintended consequence of attempts to hide, remove, or Censorship, censor information, where the effort instead increases public awareness of the information. The term was coined in 2005 by ...

. The aim is to mirror certain types of content that gets blocked or censored.

WeRebuild

WeRebuild
was a decentralized

wiki A wiki ( ) is a form of hypertext publication on the internet which is collaboratively edited and managed by its audience directly through a web browser. A typical wiki contains multiple pages that can either be edited by the public or l ...

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 and in 2019 as part of Symantec’s Enterpri ...

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 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 A black fax is 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, thus costi ...

), 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 that it represents, as in ...

contains a variety of symbols. The origins remain unclear, but one common interpretation is that the

pyramid A pyramid () is a structure whose visible surfaces are triangular in broad outline and converge toward the top, making the appearance roughly a pyramid in the geometric sense. The base of a pyramid can be of any polygon shape, such as trian ...

in the middle is a symbol of kopimi philosophy, a project originally started by

. Moreover, the lightning arrows seem to originate from the logo of

Televerket (Sweden) Televerket was a Government agencies in Sweden, 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- ...

, the old telecoms monopoly of Sweden. The star (also present on Televerket symbol) is a symbol of telecommunism, and the

Omega Omega (, ; uppercase Ω, lowercase ω; Ancient Greek ὦ, later ὦ μέγα, Modern Greek ωμέγα) is the twenty-fourth and last letter in the Greek alphabet. In the Greek numerals, Greek numeric system/isopsephy (gematria), it has a value ...

sign is a symbol of resistance, as in

Ohm's law Ohm's law states that the electric current through a Electrical conductor, conductor between two Node (circuits), points is directly Proportionality (mathematics), proportional to the voltage across the two points. Introducing the constant of ...

. This interpretation of the symbols is sometimes referred to as the

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 and

freemasonry Freemasonry (sometimes spelled Free-Masonry) consists of fraternal groups that trace their origins to the medieval guilds of stonemasons. Freemasonry is the oldest secular fraternity in the world and among the oldest still-existing organizati ...

. In an article in French Magazine Lesinrocks,Anonymous, LulzSec: les énigmatiques bannières des hacktivistes
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

meme A meme (; ) is an idea, behavior, or style that Mimesis, spreads by means of imitation from person to person within a culture and often carries symbolic meaning representing a particular phenomenon or theme. A meme acts as a unit for carrying c ...

s and imitation rather than through rules and regulations".

Jellyfish Jellyfish, also known as sea jellies or simply jellies, are the #Life cycle, medusa-phase of certain gelatinous members of the subphylum Medusozoa, which is a major part of the phylum Cnidaria. Jellyfish are mainly free-swimming marine animal ...

are an important part of the symbolism of Telecomix, circulating both as a

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 and disorder, order arises from local interactions between parts of an initially disordered system. The process can be spont ...

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-anarchy, crypto-anarchism, cyberanarchy or cyberanarchism is a political ideology focusing on the protection of privacy, political freedom, and economic freedom, the adherents of which use cryptographic software for confidentiality and se ...

. Their projec
Cryptoanarchy.orgArchived
aims at promoting cryptographic research and security technologies.

Cameron

The organization maintains a MegaHAL 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