Tech Warrior Camp at Standing Rock: Lessons for Keeping the Lights On and the Livefeeds Streaming

Presented at The Circle Of HOPE (2018), July 20, 2018, 10 a.m. (60 minutes).

In 2016 and early 2017, tens of thousands of people gathered in camps on land near and on the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in an attempt to stop the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline. At one point, the camps made up the third largest "city" in North Dakota, and yet there was no mains electricity, telephone service, or plumbing. Law enforcement and private security used continuous "low intensity warfare" tactics on this temporary community on the plains. The Tech Warrior Camp, led by Geeks Without Bounds, built and maintained a wireless ISP for the camp, as well as providing other technical support for communications and digital security. They did this despite 60 plus mph winds and -20F temperatures. In this talk, you can hear about some of the lessons gained from that experience, along with models for building community ISPs that are resilient to both human adversaries and natural events.

Presenters:

• Lisha Sterling
  **Lisha Sterling** (@lishevita) is the executive director of Geeks Without Bounds, a nonprofit organization which supports open-source humanitarian technology in low resource areas. She has worked on infrastructure projects in low resource countries, technology solutions for disaster response, and mobile phone-based information resources for people living in refugee camps. She spent six months at Standing Rock and then spent much of the following year helping lawyers and activists improve their digital security and diagnose potential attacks on their devices. She also advised technical volunteers at other water protector camps across the U.S.

Links:

• https://xii.hope.net/schedule.html#-tech-warrior-camp-at-standing-rock-lessons-for-keeping-the-lights-on-and-the-livefeeds-streaming-
• https://infocon.org/cons/2600/The Circle of HOPE (2018)/The Circle of HOPE (2018) Tech Warrior Camp at Standing Rock Lessons for Keeping the Lights On....mp4
• https://infocon.org/cons/2600/The Circle of HOPE (2018)/The Circle of HOPE (2018) Tech Warrior Camp at Standing Rock Lessons for Keeping the Lights On....eng.srt (subtitles)
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHbHXUO409c

Similar Presentations:

• H2K2 (2002) / Report From Ruckus
• BSidesLV 2017 / IMSI Catchers And The Happy Yellow Helicopter: Security Challenges At Standing Rock
• ToorCamp 2018 / Closing Remarks