Taskforce is a volunteer group working at the intersection of technology and politics.
We create campaigns to advocate for better technology policy.
We build open source tools to help make citizen advocacy more effective.
Campaigns we've launched:
The Day We Fight Back
thedaywefightback.org is the central hub website for an online protest against mass surveillance on February 11th, 2014
Contributors:
Sina Khanifar, Thomas Davis, Matthew Gerring, Eli, Beau Gunderson, Parker Higgins, Jonathan Cutrell, Jonathan Rudenberg, Marc Köhlbrugge, unconed, Sam Mularczyk
Stop Watching Us
Taskforce designed, developed and hosted the Stop Watching Us site for the Rally against Mass Surveillance.
Contributors:
Sina Khanifar, JP Schneider, Thomas Davis, Jeremy Dunck, Austin Riba, Ismail Jadun, Cole Gleason, BenDoernberg, Orta, Eli
Defund the NSA
Taskforce campaign site in collaboration with Demand Progress and Fight for the Future in support of the Amash amendment to Defund the NSA. Resulted in 10,000+ calls to Congress.
Contributors:
Thomas Davis, Sina Khanifar, Beau Gunderson, Cinque McFarlane-Blake, Jens Nockert, Ameen Soleimani, Eli, lazarus, jeanbc, Tyler Morgan
1984Day.com
Taskforce created the campaign site for Restore the Fourth 8/4 "1984 Day" rallies that happened in over a dozen cities around the country.
Contributors:
Thomas Davis, Sina Khanifar, Laurence Joseph Smith, Ismail Jadun, lazarus, Braunson Yager, szski, Cinque McFarlane-Blake
Fix the DMCA is a Taskforce campaign that aims to reform §1201 of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act to make repairing, unlocked, and modifying devices and content legal.
Contributors:
Sina Khanifar, Joe Kumph, Austin Riba, Dimitri Fischler, Sohail Khanifar.
The Debt Collective is a campaign supported by Taskforce members that aims to help us work together to renegotiate our payments or even demand the cancellation of illegitimate debts.
Contributors:
Tools we've built:
call-congress
Call-congress is a Taskforce tool that allows anyone to connect with their representatives in Congress via phone. Commercial tools cost thousands of dollars per month, ours is completely free and open source.
Contributors:
Beau Gunderson, Adam Greenhall, Sina Khanifar, Jeff Lyon, Thomas Davis
contact-congress
We're currently working on a project with Sunlight Labs to make emailing legislators simple and easy. At the moment we’re helping process every congressonal contact form into a unified YAML format.
Contributors:
Sina Khanifar, Thomas Davis, Paul Nickerson, Braunson Yager, Eli Sakov.
project-megaphone
Project Megaphone allows any website to add a responsive banner to their site to promote a cause, similar to the function of the Internet Defense League. It also allows messages to be geographically targeted to particular localities.
Contributors:
Thomas Davis, Sina Khanifar, Tyler Morgan, Braunson Yager, Jason O'Gray
social-buttons-server
Facebook, Twitter and Google Sharing buttons typically ping a third-party script before rendering, giving those sites information about each visitor.
Social-buttons-server is a node server that caches social count data and keeps user data private.
Contributors:
Thomas Davis, Beau Gunderson, Sina Khanifar, Cinque McFarlane-Blake, John Mertens, The Gitter Badger
thedaywefightback.js
Thedaywefightback.js is a JavaScript snippet that automatically activates at midnight of February 11th and adds a banner to your site for 26 hours in support of thedaywefightback.org.
Contributors:
Thomas Davis, Sina Khanifar, Sohail Khanifar, Beau Gunderson, Sam Mularczyk, Matt Thomas, Scott Zeid, Aditya Mukerjee, Danny O'Brien, Qiu Juntao, James Hamilton
node-geoip-web
node-geoip-web is a very fast IP geolocation server written in node. We use it to target banners to people in specific geographic areas without relying on a third-party service so that we can better control who sees IP and location data.
Contributors:
Our Sponsors
None of our work would be possible without our kind sponsors:
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Plato said that "the chief penalty [of good people who refuse to lead] is to be governed by someone worse."
If we, the people who make technology, don't act to defend it, who will?