I mentioned the California Surveillance Sweep effort in Walking the Walk on Privacy.
Just a reminder:
Join EFF on Saturday, April 9 for a first-of-its-kind crowdsourcing campaign to hold California law enforcement agencies accountable for their use of surveillance technologies.
Volunteers like you will help us track down the privacy and useage policies of law enforcement agencies across California and add them to our database. We’ll show you how to do it, and you can be anywhere with an Internet connection to participate.
That was yesterday and I got word this morning that the effort was a complete success!
The EFF will be announcing more details but I wanted to give a quick shout out to everyone who participated in this effort!
It isn’t a hammer strike against the forces of darkness but then successful resistance rarely has that luxury.
The project design made participation easy and some elements that should be repeated in the future are:
- Each volunteer was sent a set of small tasks which could be completed in a short period of time. Data entry immediately followed each task, generating a sense of accomplishment.
- The data entry form was short and well labeled and designed.
- Multiple volunteers got the same tasks to enable cross-checking
- Users chose one-time handles for this project only, encouraging a sense of being in the “resistance.” We’re all human and grouping is something that comes naturally to us. Even with anonymous others in a common cause. Encourage that feeling.
Every project will be different but those principles are the ones I observed in operation in the California Surveillance Sweep.
Others?