Blogs

We at the Progressive Technology Project stand in solidarity with Black-led protests in Minneapolis and other cities around the country in response to the murder of George Floyd by police. We stand with movements rising up to resist police and state violence. We stand in solidarity in the fight for the lives and liberation of Black people…Indigenous peoples…and People of Color Communities. We believe that change comes from the grassroots, through movements led by people of color from the global majority who have been systematically excluded from the power and wealth that they have produced.

Beyond COVID 19 and Disaster Capitalism: Why We Need Sustainable, Secure Left Tech Infrastructure for Social Justice Movements

in general

May 6, 2020

by Jeremy Saunders, Co-Executive Director of VOCAL-NY and Board Chair of Progressive Technology Project, and Alice Aguilar, Executive Director of Progressive Technology Project Image credit: “Photogamer — Jan 22, 2008” by RedRaspus is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 Covid-19 has exposed the failures of our health, economic, and emergency response systems. Our priorities now are to take care of ourselves and one another, creating communities of care. Front-line movement groups are organizing to respond to the immediate needs of their communities, while struggling to move much of their on-the-ground organizing work online.

Amazon and Palantir feel the heat

in general

July 12, 2019

Progressive Technology Project staff joined many Powerbase using organizations this week to protest both Palantir and Amazon’s contracts and complicity with ICE. Over a hundred people showed up monday morning in front of Palantir’s office. Several days later, hundreds more protested Amazon’s annual developers conference at the Javitz Center in New York. Over the last several years, corporate technology’s true colors have been emerging: Facebook’s pathological disregard for privacy, Google’s employment of over 120,000 temp and contract workers (more than half their total workforce), and Yahoo’s security breach exposing 3 billion accounts just to name a few.

The Technology Behind ICE

in general

January 28, 2019

What do databases, the cloud and a morally unjust immigration system have in common? It turns out: quite a lot. According to a recent report from mijente, “technology companies [are] playing an increasingly central role in facilitating the expansion and acceleration of arrests, detentions, and deportations.” In the course of researching Palantir, the relatively unknown software company with huge Department of Homeland Security contracts (founded by the famously right-wing Peter Thiel), mijente discovered that many roads lead back to a much more familiar company: Amazon.

Voices of Resistance: Using technology as a movement-building tool

in general

April 23, 2018

Progressive Technology Project Executive Director Alice Aguilar has been interviewed by Rebekah Barber on Facing South! Check out the full interview. From the Intro: This week the nation’s attention was focused on the nefarious ways technology is deployed, as Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg testified before Congress about how his company has violated the privacy of its customers and allowed the vast amount of data it collects from them to be used for ethically and legally questionable political propaganda efforts.

Facebook and Cambridge Analytica

in general

April 16, 2018

To many of us, the Cambridge Analytica Facebook scandal sounds like old news: we have known that Facebook is collecting a dangerously large amount of our personal information for years. However, there is something different with this scandal and it may change the way the US movement thinks about the corporate Internet and our strategies for change. Since the rise of centralized Internet services like Google and Facebook there have emerged two main arguments against them.

Movement Technology Statement

in general

February 27, 2018

Last Spring, the Progressive Technology Project’s executive director Alice Aguilar joined 50 other movement technologists at the Highlander Center to directly confront the intersection of technology and movement politics. In a historic gathering of movement technologists (about 90 percent people of color, 50 percent women), the challenges of corporate technology domination over our progressive movements was discussed. One result of the gathering was a thoughtfully written petition we are asking all movement technologists to sign.

Spectre and Meltdown: Capitalist values will haunt us for years to come

in powerbase

January 5, 2018

Two significant technical vulnerabilities have been discovered and were publicly announced on January 3. They are called Meltdown and Spectre. Unlike most technical vulnerabilities, which are caused by poorly written software, Meltdown and Spectre are caused by the way computer chips are designed. Therefore, they are much harder to fix. Using these vulnerabilities, an attacker with access to a computer or server (including remote access) can read information used by other programs on the computer or server.

Progressive Technology Project Drops iATS Payment Processor for Failing to Support Abortion Providers

in powerbase

October 5, 2017

By Alex Proimos from Sydney, Australia (Payment Processing) CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons Media Contacts: PTP Executive Director Alice Aguilar: info@progressivetech.org or 612-351-3479 California Latinas for Reproductive Justice: info@clrj.org or 213-270-5258 October 5, 2017 For Immediate Release The Progressive Technology Project today announced that it is no longer using the iATS payment processing service after discovering that the processor’s parent company rejects applicants who provide abortion counseling or services.

Surveillance Then & Now: How to Protect Ourselves

in general

December 12, 2016

By freiheitsfoo (Own work) CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons Resources from the webinar COINTELPRO destroyed movements, relationships, and activists’ lives. It destroyed the trust and hopefulness needed to build and sustain a movement. It destroyed the movement for justice in this country. But this time, we have ways of fending it off and protecting ourselves. More than 200 listeners joined our webinar and hundreds more signed up to access the resource documents and tips we shared when PTP and May First / People Link organized a December call to discuss surveillance and what to do about it.

We See You. We Stand With You. Black Lives Matter.

Beyond COVID 19 and Disaster Capitalism: Why We Need Sustainable, Secure Left Tech Infrastructure for Social Justice Movements

Amazon and Palantir feel the heat

The Technology Behind ICE

Voices of Resistance: Using technology as a movement-building tool

Facebook and Cambridge Analytica

Movement Technology Statement

Spectre and Meltdown: Capitalist values will haunt us for years to come

Progressive Technology Project Drops iATS Payment Processor for Failing to Support Abortion Providers

Surveillance Then & Now: How to Protect Ourselves

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