Reposted from the binaryfreedom.info mailing list
If you are organizing with a group that believes a better world is possible and spend your energy trying to realize it, and if this world you envision is not beholden to corporate interests as our current one is, then there is something ironic and sad about using tools paid for by corporate advertising revenues to get the job done. /Hey, let’s organize a boycott, this message brought to you by Coca-Cola/.
And it’s not just a matter of words. “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they pull the plug on your communication channel,then do you win?” If we are really planning to shake the boat, we need to realize that none of these (closed source, walled garden) networks are going to stand with us when we start to threaten shareholder value.
There are options out there that are built by activists like you with the right knowledge to create these tools for all of us, in a open environment.
An example of this software is crabgrass, by the riseup network, you can find it in beta at:
http://we.riseup.net

--Rek2

Greenpeace UK is reporting that brazillian logging companies have been hiring hackers to do their dirty work for them.  Greenpeace reports:

"To monitor the amount of timber leaving the Amazon state of Pará, the Brazilian environment ministry did away with paper dockets and two years ago introduced an online system. Companies logging the rain forest for timber or charcoal production are only allowed to fell a certain amount of timber every year and this is controlled by the use of transport permits issued by the state government's computer system."

Apparently now the logging companies have started hiring hackers to break into this system and change the amount of trees they are allowed to harvest.  107 logging companies all colluded to hire hackers to give them unlimited logging access to the Amazon rain forest totaling 1.7 million cubic meters of illegal timber so far. The Brazilian public prosecutor is suing the companies for 2 billion reais.  The Brazilian police have so far arrested 30 hackers associated with this since April 2007 when they started investigating.

Of course the Brazilian police will only end up arresting the hackers and not arrest any of the people who own the logging companies who hired the hackers in the first place.  As usual, the law comes down hardest on the poor and the CEOs get a slap on the hand.  The Greenpeace Brazil office had "pointed out before that this method of controlling the transport of timber was subject to fraud. And this is only the tip of the iceberg, because the same computer system is also used in two other Brazilian states."

This all comes at a time when the Brazilian government is voting to raise the amount of legal logging from %20 to %50 on Amazon land.  They arrest hackers for helping loggers cut more and then they raise the amount they are allowed to log.  The real problem here is not hackers, it is the Brazilian government allowing the logging of one of the last rain forests to the point of destruction and setting up insecure technological solutions is not going to help that.  The real solution to this problem is to stop ALL logging of the rain forest.

http://london.indymedia.org.uk/articles/203
Published: Sunday 09 November 2008 16:54

by Yossarian, IMC London, yossarian (at) aktivix.org

There has been controversy recently on the global imc-communication and
imc-tech lists over the issue of a $200,000 grant application sent to
the Knight Foundation by IMC Boston to do Drupal development work for
Indymedia sites.

The grant application was blocked by IMC Rosario in Argentina. As a
working technical volunteer who has been building a new Indymedia
website for the past year or so, I think this whole debate has raised
some interesting issues related to code, corporate monopolies, and the
dilemmas faced by a humble developer who's trying to help start a
revolution.