Anti-Surveillance Tool: Underground Event Promotion
Description
This project stems from the Oakland Ghost Ship Fire tragedy of 2016 and the subsequent exploitation of the spike in public and government scrutiny of artist collectives by online right-wing hate groups to have these communities suppressed (https://thump.vice.com/en_ca/article/d7jwdj/4chan-trolls-diy-spaces-oakland-fire). My anti-surveillance tool aims to allow people to post and spread of events to people in their community while veiling the information in an innocuous multistage puzzle image. This protects the community members from the prying eyes of both people who would see them persecuted and the social platforms the communities events are organized on.
Design Process
We started with a though exercise at the beginning of this project to outline while an anti-surveillance tool matters, who our tool is designed for, and then finally what the substance of that message is. The underground music and artist community in NYC became an influential part of my life since moving to the city, and to paraphrase the sentiment of artist Yuri Sizuki, the underground scene is a part of society that has always existed as a form of protest against the accepted societal paradigms. Protecting these communities is important for giving people a space to rebel and for freedom of creative expression, and so creating a tool to help these communities organize under the radar of antagonistic groups becomes important as well. This meant the final message should be the date and location of an event and nothing more, and by deciminating this information through social media, it could still reach a large group of people without requiring them to like or rsvp or give an email address.
After figuring out who I want to talk to and what information I want to convey, I began exploring all of the different techniques I have worked with thus far in p5js and design elements I wanted to include in the sketch. Early on I knew I wanted to make a hidden button puzzle using blend modes to discover the button, as well as creating as creating a riddle that would have to solved by typing in the answer. I landed on creating a kind of puzzle using conditional logic to progress through different phases so that I could incorporate multiple puzzle ideas.
As I began actually coding the sketch, I discovered that I couldn't change the color of buttons like I originally thought, so instead opted to make the sketch in grey scale. This limited which blend modes would work for the puzzle and I realized that I needed to combine the grid and blend mode puzzles into one that was kind of an optical illusion. This meant I also had to change the passphrase riddles and so these were combined into one as well. However, I didn't want to come down to only two puzzles, so the final message reveal also became a bit of a puzzle as well in the form of a coded message. Originally I also wanted to have the sketch reset after a timer, but instead decided to have it "self-destruct" and clear the sketch after the timer runs out.
As an added bonus to test if this system for underground gatherings would work, the first message relayed is an actual time and place in NYC where I will be hanging out to see if anyone else from my program will show up. I plan to use this a few more times during the semester with other friend groups to see if they can figure it out and join me as well!
Reflection
Creating the logic for checking the user entered passphrase has proved to be the most difficult part due to the way p5js handles inputs, but was able to get everything working by creating a separate button users had to click instead of pressing "Enter". It also took me a while to get the fade out timer working correctly at the end, as I needed to create a new time variable when that phase of the puzzle was reached instead of just running off of the total runtime of the sketch. Originally I also didn't have the more minimal visual design in mind, but as the grid/button puzzle evolved, I desided that I liked it and wanted to keep it.
I know that the only to really keep information safe online is through encryption, so this wouldn’t really be that safe, but I do think as a concept this is something that is worth exploring to allow people to take back some agency and protection when organizing events online. I think this kind of tool is something that could be helpful both to people looking to organize parties or gatherings under the radar, but also for spreading information about where to meet or rally for protests without opening themselves up to counter protesting or police surveillance. However, I also recognize this technique could be employed by extremist or hate groups as well to make it harder to determine where they were organizing protests or rallies too.