Telephony and Activism

The Means of
Communication
• Social Justice organizations have traditionally
had no access to powerful telephony tools
• Zero, or marginal, budgets
• No organizational capacity to work with
Carriers or TelCos
• Just a strong desire to evoke positive social
change

The RNC in New York

• August 2004 - Asterisk 0.9.7
• 500,000 people protesting in the New York streets.
• We were in San Francisco,Vancouver, and in a cabin at 3000
ft in Northern California.

RNC VoIP Info Line
• Text-to-Speech for Mobile RSS updates from
Indymedia
• Event Calendars using TTS and RSS
• Live Radio Call-in
• Streaming MP3 Radio Stations
• Total cost: $7

SMS - TxtMob
• Action alerts via SMS
• Simple web-based signup
• SMS groups
• The problem: Spam Filters

2004 Elections
• Last-minute project: 3 weeks, 4 developers
• Volunteer Coordination
• Polling Place Information

Mass Messaging
• BIG Groups - 20,000 Volunteers
• Deliver messages by state
• Time sensitive: delivery within 20 minutes
• Repeat several times a day

Mass Messaging is Hard
• Massive obstacles accessing 1000 lines
• VoIP resellers are good at promises
• Not so good at delivering
• Call quality issues – delays, drops.
• Never delivered projected volume of calls,
but system was used at 1/10th capacity

Vote by SMS
• Send out SMS with polling place info
• Young Democrats signed up (no, really) to
be contacted with their polling place info
• How do you do this in 2004 without SMSC,
after experience of TxtMob blockage?

P2P SMS
• Java Applets, loaded in-browser
• Communicate with central server
• Carrier lookup (85%, no access to number
portability info)
• Database of carrier SMS-Me email addresses
(e.g., 4155551212@tmomail.com)
• Email SMS from web browsers, ~200/minute

Election Project Costs
• VoIP Message Delivery: $1500, including 15
servers from ServerBeach and ~5 rounds of
VoIP contract negotiation.
• SMS Delivery: $0

The End?
(we really hope not)

Elsewhere
• Philippines
• Africa
• Spain
• Portland
• Future Projects

Ring Tones
• Philippines, txtpower.org
• Most popular ring tone in the country
• Presidential corruption scandal, remixed
with pop songs
• Catalyst for Pro-Democracy Protests

Frontline SMS
• SMS Management for remote applications
• Clinic data collection systems in the
developing world
• Clandestine Radio - Zimbabwe listener
feedback system

Human Rights
• Rapid alert system to
prevent human rights
abuses in the Congo
• Mobile phones with
solar chargers
• Vital communications
link for rural
communities

Women’s Rights
• Campaign for Treaty on the Rights of
Women
• SMS petition gathering
• News updates to campaigners via sms
• Members who have no other electronic
news media

Spain
• Terrorist attacks 3 days
before elections
• Government reaction of
disinformation
• Popular response with
protests coordinated via
SMS messages

Portland
• Community TelCo
• Use Sipura 3000 to provide POTS access
• Collectivize resources, migrate to VoIP-only

Freedom to
Communicate
• Walled gardens are a
(very real) form of
censorship
• Beyond a “pay to play”
TelCo system
• Email, the Web, Linux,
Asterisk are empowering
technologies
• Freedom to Innovate and
Dissent

You!
• Lots of work to be done
• Encrypted, anonymous Voicemail
• Pay is terrible, hours are killer
• Personal reward is immense
• Just like Open Source