Opensource contributor Bassel Khartabil detained in Syria. Needs help Bassel Bassel Khartabil - an open source software contributor to projects such as Creative Commons & Mozilla has been unjustly detained for nearly four months without trial or any legal charges being brought against him. Read more & sign the support letter: http://freebassel.org/ ps: Help get this on the frontpage of HackerNews |
I don't think signature campaigns will do any good since not even pressure from the US and Turkey has slowed down the bloodshed so do we really think they will care about a bunch of virtual signatures collected online?
There's a few more viable options that should be considered:
1) Leverage someone who has influence with the Syrian government to take up the cause. Given Bassel has been an open source contributor, maybe look at which tech companies are still contracted by the Syrian government and try to get them to lend a voice of support. Make sure to play up the positive PR that releasing Bassel will have on improving Syria's image.
2) Stop collecting signatures and start collecting money to work the back channels. Let's be honest here, corruption is rife (high corruption index on Transparency International study) and the situation pretty chaotic, if you really want to free Bassel, consider a pragmatic approach.
In fact, it would have been better if you had linked to https://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/33119 which vouches for http://freebassel.org/
Creative Commons supports efforts to obtain the release of Bassel Safadi, a valuable contributor to and leader in the technology community. Bassel’s expertise and focus across all aspects of his work has been in support of the development of publicly available, free, open source computer software code and technology. He pursues this not only through his valuable volunteer efforts in support of Creative Commons, but in all of his work in the technology field. Through his efforts, the quality and availability of freely available and open technology is improved and technology is advanced.
The question is - how is having a custom website any different ? From an end user (me) point of view, I trust Avaaz as a platform to reasonably not mess with my data.
>>detained for nearly four months without trial or any legal charges being brought against him.
How can you hold somebody under detention without charges on him? This is like saying, he is innocent so far but yet needs to remain in Jail.
Picking up some one throwing them in Jail, without saying for what mistake of theirs. And hoping them to stay like that indefinitely is just pure oppression.
Actually, I think you bear the burden of proof here by asking to get this to the front page. Asking for evidence and reasoning is hardly trolling.
As for your question there is as far as we know little news coming from Syria and rejon who is commenting here as well is on the case to get more info.
Personally I hope getting signatures will send a signal to other entities (perhaps more powerful) that helping out with this cause might be beneficial for them. Just because so many people, strangers and friends a like care. Signatures might be useful to fuel other channels like calbear81 is suggesting.
The worst thing in my opinion would be just forgetting people like Bassel and many others in countries with oppressive regimes.
Let's assume for a moment that one campaign to free someone in such situation would be successful. One person. From hundreds/thousands in one country. Probably tens of thousands throughout all oppresive countries. What would be the result? I'll tell you: the interwebs would proclaim it's own great success, that's a small leap but a giant step, blah blah. And happily in their chairs keep clicking, feeling like a hero while per every petition there is a thousand people keep being locked up and tortured and/or killed... Instead of exploring new ideas to act and engaging in more 'on the ground' action to help opressed people (probably the least but something practical you can do from home is keeping Tor running[1]), the web keeps signing up petitions. Taking part in such slacker campaigns is IMO a lose-lose situation, sorry.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GwMr8Xl7JMQ&feature=relm...
btw Tor worked with Avaaz on collecting donations for communication devices, yet: 1) it was a Tor initiative. 2) https://secure.avaaz.org/en/egypt_blackout/ "$25,197 raised so far. Help us get to $100,000". From the frontpage "14,921,795 members worldwide" with a minimum ammount of $15 it gives only about 1700 members who wanted to pay anything (and I can only guess that this number is much lower and there were bigger donations from single entities).
Personally I've decided it's better to strive towards helping out with both new methods like your suggested Tor nodes and 'old methods' like petitions, than doing nothing at all. Only the latter will definitely preserve a status-quo and change nothing. Not for 1 person nor a thousand.