[Noisebridge-discuss] missing IBM model M keyboard from my shelf

[Danny O'Brien]

On Sat, Sep 17, 2011 at 6:57 PM, Jonathan Lassoff <jof at thejof.com> wrote:

> On Sat, Sep 17, 2011 at 4:56 PM, Rubin Abdi <rubin at starset.net> wrote:
>
>> Jonathan Lassoff wrote, On 2011-09-17 15:41:
>> > I'm not for excluding everyone by default, but I think we should meet
>> with
>> > and get to know total strangers before just granting them total and free
>> > access by default.
>>
>> Folks asking for lock down should maybe work towards making sure every
>> single person being let into the space is welcomed, this will solve most
>> of the problems brought up in this thread.
>>
>
> In an ideal world, this could work. But, I think it falls down in practice.
>

Well, I think these things are equally impractical: locking down the place
either requires some sort of 24/7 do-acratic police force, or a consensus
agreement and a lot of pre-planning, neither of which I see anyone stepping
forward to manage anytime soon. Even if you managed to persuade everyone
that this was the way to go, I can't work out any good way of stopping
people just letting people in. And of course the thieves COULD BE INSIDE THE
HACKERSPACE WITH YOU

But anyway, these options are certainly *possible*.

I think more doable in the short-term are a couple of
tech-solutions-to-social-problem possibilities: I like Jake's RFID system
for those who want to take advantage of it (apart from anything else, it's a
project for the LED screen). I would like to help out with that.

I also, honestly, think that there are some creative, privacy-protective
ways of monitoring behaviour that we can come up with. The "oh someone will
just tear down cameras" meme might be true, but it seems to be something
people say rather than actively test, and there's certainly no consensus ban
on the use of such tools. I don't mind messing around with some sinister
orwellian models, and maybe coming up with some good ways to evolve such
tools in the place that is protective of general privacy (or alternatively
encourage people to come up with more and more ingenious ways to circumvent
the surveillance). I would like to help out with those too.

Both of these solutions fall under the socialengineering group's
enthusiasms, so if somebody wants to start on them, they should join that
list and come to those meetings to talk enthusiastically about it:
https://www.noisebridge.net/mailman/listinfo/socialengineering

I also think, though, that it's really hard to work out what's working and
what's not, without a baseline. I don't think anyone's making up that
they've lost stuff in the space, but I would have no idea where to start in
determining whether it's getting worse, or how we would know if we've fixed
the problem.

I put everything that everybody mentioned here into the table at
https://www.noisebridge.net/wiki/MissingStuff
If you have extra info on that stuff, like dates or places, please put it in
there too.

If you've lost stuff that you think might have been deliberately
"disappeared", I strongly encourage you to add it to that list. Like the
electricity bill, it behooves us to actually measure the problem we're
trying to solve, to see whether we're actually solving it.

I realize that this might seem incredibly anal and a bit heartless of me,
but if stuff is going missing, it's not evaporating of its own accord. The
way things like this get solved is investigation and elimination of
possibilities, not making up a rule that says "no more thieves allowed after
10PM" or exhortations for everyone to be more excelli-vigilant or something.


I also realise that this probably seems very plodding and not instantly
fixing the problem. But actually being plodding and slowly getting somewhere
is something we need to do, rather than run around suggesting things, and
then not following through because they take more than 10 minutes to pull
of.

d.



>
> The downside (totally my opinion), is that it requires the *constant*
> vigilance, at all hours of the day. It places the burden of security and
> screening strangers on a minority of people that feel engaged and and
> outgoing enough to want to greet people and observe their behavior to
> determine if they're a problem or not.
>
> I don't think this is fair for the volunteers that take this on. What if
> they want to work uninterrupted for a while?
> I feel like I should be greeting people while I'm a the space, but I'd much
> rather not have to worry about who's coming and going.
>
> I feel like we've been going down this road for a while, and it's not
> working (things are missing, belligerent strangers are wandering in and
> harassing people, etc.)
>
> --j
>
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