Catalan Separatists in Spain have Tooled up with a Decentralized App for Civil Disobedience
An Anonymous Coward writes:
Last Monday's blockade of Barcelona's airport by Catalonian indepedence protestors, which delayed over 100 flights, had a technological twist as the Guardian reports:
Tellingly, the airport occupation - with its echoes of the enduring protests in Hong Kong - was not called by the two biggest traditional pro-independence civil society groups, the Catalan National Assembly and i'mnium Cultural. It was the brainchild of a secretive new group called Tsunami Democritic that is using apps and social media to control and co-ordinate the protests.
TechCrunch has a more in-depth article about the Tsuami Democritic app and infrastructure. Users need to activate the app with QR codes-displayed at special events-to receive notifications of upcoming protests. The app seems to have taken a lot of inspiration from the Hong Kong protest movement, with a crowd-sourced map dynamically mapping road blocks and police presence in the area.
The group behind the app is described as a "technical elite" of unknown number or identity. Protests are organised (and canceled) by the app administrators with users signing up to attend. It's not clear who is behind, or financially backing the app; Catalonian tech expats, wealthy backers, or independence groups like CDR (Comitis de Defensa de la Repiblica) who have organised similar protests in the past.
This isn't the first technological solution for communicating out of sight of the Spanish state, perceived as increasingly authoritarian by some in the independence movement. Whatsapp was used during the 2017 referendum attempt, and Telegram's Messenger has seen a recent surge in Spanish downloads. On Friday, Spain's high court has ordered the Civil Guard to close down Tsunami Democratic's website and social media accounts. As TechCrunch notes:
"For Tsunami Democritic and Catalonia's independence movement generally this week's protests look to be just the start of a dug-in, tech-fuelled guerrilla campaign of civil disobedience"
The app is currently only available on Android. There is no iOS version as the "politics of the App Store is very restrictive".
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