Heather Marsh

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Heather Marsh
Heather Marsh, Cuba, 2016
Occupation	Author, programmer
Known for	Horizontal governance theory
Notable work	Binding Chaos series
Website	georgiebc.wordpress.com www.getgee.xyz

Heather Marsh is a philosopher, programmer and human rights activist. She is the author of the Binding Chaos series, a study of methods of mass collaboration^[1][2] and the founder of Getgee, a project to create a global data commons and trust network.

As a philosopher, she has given many interviews to media and academics, written books and essays and given talks in many countries. From 2010 to 2012, Marsh was the sole editor and administrator for the WikiLeaks sponsored news site, WikiLeaks Central.

Internet and journalism[]

Marsh gives talks about mass collaboration, democracy, economy, technology and collaboration. She has spoken about the need for a global data commons at various software conferences. She gave a keynote speech on approval economy at the Alternate G8 summit in 2013. She was invited to the 2012 Berlin Biennale as part of their Occupy art exhibition. She represented the Berlin Biennale hackathon at the World Free Media Forum in Rio in June 2012.^{[citation needed]}

Since 2015 she has been working to initiate a global data commons project with a universal database and trust network to allow global collaboration on research and information without control by a specific platform. This is a continuation of her earlier viral project called the Global Square.^{[3][4][5][6][7]} and a continuation of years of writing about mass communication including open journalism and scientific and academic research.^{[citation needed]}

She has covered investigations of leaked material and individual human rights cases as well as breaking news of global events. In one unpublished interview with Guantanamo defence attorney Dennis Edney, the two discuss blackmail attempts of witnesses by the FBI and the possibility that Omar Khadr's plea deal was signed without legal counsel. The interview was subsequently leaked to Cryptome.^[8] The interview discusses the delaying of publication until after Edney returns from Guantanamo; when he returned from Guantanamo he was fired from the case and forbidden to speak of it. As both a journalist and a media critic, she has often combined the two in articles such as The Guardian: "Redacting, Censoring or Lying?" (the topic of an interview between Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger and Julian Assange in the documentary Mediastan) and Toronto Star coverage of Omar Khadr since his trial week.^{[citation needed]}

Human rights[]

Marsh has advocated for both transparency for actions and organizations that affect the public and privacy for individuals. She is against control and ownership of knowledge by copyrights and patents but writes "Privacy and ownership of personal stories are closely related to human dignity" and credit (although not ownership) for ideas and intellectual labour is essential in an approval economy. She has been active in freedom of information, anti-poverty, justice related cases and all forms of 'human dignity' as well as advocating for individual rights ahead of all systems of governance. She has been associated with Guantanamo activism, primarily for Canadian POW Omar Khadr, and Anonymous activity, particularly human rights issues.^{[9][10][11][12]} She has reported and campaigned extensively against human trafficking and violations committed by global resource corporations.^[13]

She has written investigative reports and interviews on Canadian juvenile Omar Khadr, one of the youngest prisoners of Guantanamo Bay. She was the national spokesperson for the Free Omar Khadr group in Canada, writing, speaking, advocating for Omar's release.^[14]

She wrote the first English media articles about Abdulelah Haider Shaye, a Yemeni journalist ordered imprisoned by Obama, a year and a half before any report appeared in the US.^{[citation needed]} She brought global awareness to topics such as the Rohingya genocide in Burma^[15] and ritual killings in Gabon.^[16] She began a research project to map connections between the people behind resource corporations, militias, spies and prisons in response to a fracking protest in New Brunswick.^[17] This became opCanary which seeks to form alliances between local groups fighting the same multinational resource corporations. She started the OpDeathEaters campaign to inform the public of high level complicity in the human trafficking industry with a goal of independent inquiries to investigate and a change in public discourse around these crimes.^[18][19] Her opGabon and opDeatheaters campaigns were the subject of a book, Crime, Justice and Social Media by Australian criminologist Michael Salter which asked "How is social media changing contemporary understandings of crime and injustice, and what contribution can it make to justice-seeking?" and featured extensive interviews with her.^[20]

WikiLeaks, Anonymous, Occupy[]

In 2010 she became administrator, editor in chief and domain holder for the WikiLeaks sponsored news site WikiLeaks Central, "a global news site which was requested, announced, promoted, endorsed and hosted by WikiLeaks but run autonomously and separately" by Marsh. As editor/administrator of WL Central, she created a community for 70+ activists around the world to provide a new hard news organization, covering only "the news people require in order to govern themselves".^[21] She used WL Central to tie WikiLeaks releases to current events and advocate for social change under the slogan "News, analysis, action." The Action section contained protest calendars, petitions, and information for activists. The site published in 16 languages and protests were listed for over one hundred countries.

WL Central rapidly became a popular news site, breaking stories such as the secret CIA prisons in Poland^[22] and provided the most in depth coverage of many uprisings. Influential net critic Geert Lovink called WL Central the fourth website he visits every day: "WL Central turned into an alternative news aggregator and a kind of alternative CNN a.k.a. follow-up of Indymedia in the good old days of 2000-2001. it's gone down a bit but still can up with amazing stories from its own correspondents. WL Central shows what the Web is capable of doing beyond the 140 characters of Twitter and the informal chit-chat on Facebook."

She resigned as editor in chief, administrator and domain holder of WikiLeaks Central on March 8, 2012.^{[citation needed]}

She used the media attention on WikiLeaks from 2010 to 2012 to support human rights and transparency issues and activist movements around the world.^[23] Some of those groups were the South Korean , the North African Day of Rages, the Chinese Jasmine revolution, the Spanish Indignados/Take the Square/15M movement and the Occupy movement.^[24] She wrote the first article referencing what became the US Occupy movement on the day it started, March 10, 2011,^[25] and covered many other day of rages within hours of their beginnings. A Canadian activist, she created Take the Square Canada in association with the Spanish movement.

She has received frequent international support from Anonymous for her human rights campaigns since 2010.^[26][27]

References[]

External links[]

• GeorgieBC's Blog - personal website
• Wikileaks Central, the Wikileaks endorsed news site as it appeared under Heather Marsh. at the Wayback Machine (archived September 18, 2016)