Digitalcourage
Registered association | |
Purpose | Politics, freedom, privacy |
---|---|
Location | |
Official language | german, english |
Staff | 13 (2018) |
Website | digitalcourage.de (english version) |
Formerly called | FoeBuD (until Nov 2012) |
Digitalcourage – known until November 2012 as FoeBuD (
Campaigns
The group is known for organising the German Big Brother Awards. These negative awards recognise “companies, institutions and persons who act in a prominent and sustained way to invade people's privacy or leak (personal) data to third parties”. An annual award ceremony featuring “winners” in various categories is organised by Digitalcourage.[3]
To highlight the privacy implications of bonus or customer “loyalty” cards, the organisation issued the so-called “Privacy Card”. Its design mirrored the popular “Payback” card and it bore the number of a regular card registered in FoeBuD's name. Users collected bonus points on behalf of FoeBuD, sharing one and the same customer profile. After 2,000 of these cards were being used, Payback disabled FoeBuD's registration and card contract.
Since October 2003, Digitalcourage has been active on the issue of RFID and founded a campaign called “StopRFID” to accompany the introduction of this technology from a critical perspective.
FoeBuD has organised or supported various complaints at the German
FoeBuD was a co-founder of the German Working Group against
In response to the threat to anonymity posed by data retention, Digitalcourage is running a
Earlier activities: mailbox systems
In 1987, a mailbox (bulletin board) system named BIONIC was created and operated by FoeBuD members. Objectives were to run a mailbox without censorship and to deny unlimited rights to the system's administrators, regulating conflicts through the community instead. BIONIC became the birthplace of several early mailbox networks. The mailbox and linked networks were an early "home on the net" for many groupings in the left or "alternative" political spectrum.
Eric Bachman, a BIONIC user and FoeBuD member, instigated the
Origins and name
FoeBuD co-founders Rena Tangens and padeluun had been active in the
Eventually, an association with charity status was formed. The organisation's full name, "association for the promotion of public mobile and immobile data exchange" (German: Verein zur Förderung des öffentlichen bewegten und unbewegten Datenverkehrs), and the acronym FoeBuD were conceived as a parody of the language used by the telecommunications operator Deutsche Bundespost, which was then the state authority and monopolist for telephone and postal communications. Telecommunications equipment was heavily regulated on the German network, and the devices that were available often had names and acronyms that appeared bureaucratic and cumbersome. As FoeBuD's activities and reputation spread outside the hacker scene and the historic background has largely been lost, the name was often perceived as just obscure.[citation needed]
As the organisation was nearing its 25th anniversary, it was perceived that the name FoeBuD had turned from an in-joke into an obstacle for the group's publicity. A new name was sought, and eventually "Digitalcourage" was chosen and announced on 17 November 2012.[7]
Recognition
The ZaMir network was chosen for an award named "sense/information" (German: Sinnformation) by the Green parliamentary party in the German parliament (Bundestag) in 1998. FoeBuD received a nationally reputed award, the Theodor Heuss medal, for its civil rights activities in 2008.[1]
Sources
- ^ a b "über uns" ("about us"), German page on the FoeBuD website.
- ^ EDRi members, on the EDRi website.
- ^ Big Brother Awards Germany (much of the content, including award speeches, available in English)
- ^ Digitalcourage: Zensurfreier DNS-Server, published 9 December 2020.
- ^ Die Künstler als Katalysatoren (The artists as catalysts). German article on activities in art, music etc. before FoeBuD's foundation.
- ^ Public Domain, full list of events on FoeBuD website (German).
- ^ EDRi-gram 10.22 on the name change, published 21 November 2012.