The Syrian Observatory For Human Rights

Murder, Censorship and Syria: Crypto and the Future of Uprisings

In August 2011, a hackerspace in Damascus, Syria, was stormed by armed guards.

Known as Aikilab, the guards stripped the place; televisions, computers and even couches were now gone. Once home to a thriving art and technology community, Aikilab hasn’t opened its doors since. And one of its co-founders, Bassel Khartabil, is now dead, having been arrested in 2012 and later tortured and executed by the Syrian regime under president and dictator, Bashar-Al-Assad.

It’s still unclear who, if anyone, ordered the raid of Aikilab and the arrest of Khartabil, but at that time during the Syrian uprising – the period of civilian protests that preceded the Syrian Civil War – nothing was clear cut.

Except for an idea articulated to Dr. Harry Halpin, a former World Wide Web Consortium employee, now working with Binance Labs-backed Nym Technologies, before Khartabil’s arrest: the same force that enabled an angry populace to coordinate against oppressors – the internet – could also be used to suppress people.

And while things have changed greatly in the handful of years since the uprisings – the area is now characterized by proxy wars and militant Islam – Halpin says Khartabil’s observation is still very true.

“Rojava faces the same situation seven years later … They are under surveillance. They are likely going to be under attack. People who participate in that social movement may be killed,” Halpin told CoinDesk, adding:

“We still do not have, as an open source community interested in decentralization and cryptography, we don’t have software that is adequate for these people.”

It’s a hope – finding intersections of hardware and software to empower the people – first experimented with by Khartabil that still commands many people’s attention today, especially as the last of the ISIS strongholds in Syria has been taken down and civilians are looking for ways to rebuild, at times with crypto and blockchain, in a more equitable and accountable system.

“I think that [Khartabil] was trying to bring stability and new social structure to the technology world that we’re moving into,” Jon Phillips, who was Khartabil’s best friend and colleague, said.

While Khartabil wasn’t “deep into crypto,” Phillips continued, he was an early investor of an open hardware design called the Milkymist, which was later repurposed into the first bitcoin ASIC by Canaan Creative.

And with that, Phillips said:

“He helped shape the DNA of the cryptocurrency industry. He was absolutely formative in that.”

View photos

 

Mozilla’s Mitchelle Baker speaking at Aikilab, Damascus, 2010

Technology’s duality

Khartabil’s story exemplifies the parallel use of technology for both liberation and repression – and it resonates with the work being done in Rojava on the technical academies.

Stepping back, it’s important to note the role that technology played in the Syrian uprising. Throughout the Arab Spring, social media proved a vital platform for voicing dissent and allowing people to organize protests and rebellions against oppressive regimes.

But what started as peaceful protests was brutally repressed.

As the revolution transformed into war, Phillips, who lived in Beijing at the time, urged Khartabil to leave Damascus, but Khartabil refused.

“A bomb went off where my mom lives. I need to find her. My dad has not had water in two weeks. I need to take him some,” Phillips recalled Khartabil saying.

The opinions expressed in this article reflect the opinion of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the Observatory.

 

Source: Murder, Censorship and Syria: Crypto and the Future of Uprisings