by Tim Maughan
If Manaan’s name sounds familiar, it’s because it’s been associated with controversy for years. The academic researcher turned activist has evaded being sent to prison on two occasions, when his name was allegedly tied to high-level hacks and email leaks at Apple and Uber. He’s been accused of being amongst the highest ranks of hacktivist groups such as Anonymous, Dronegod$, and BaeSec—which he strongly denies—and flirted with legal issues again a few years ago when he posted a series of tutorials online that explained how to create DIY tools for hacking and spoofing common smart-city monitoring systems. With the PRSC, though, he may have created his most controversial and rebellious project yet—an entire neighbourhood that rejects the digital status quo of surveillance, the internet, and big data.
“Everywhere you go, even in your own home, you’re not only being watched by cameras, but you’re generating data,” Manaan tells me. “We’ve reached a point, in cities like Bristol, where we’re in a state of total surveillance. Where every square inch of the built environment has been mapped, is being watched. And I don’t mean just by cameras, the city is also covered in sensors—from LIDAR through to embedded microphones and pressure pads under the pavements that can measure how many people have walked past.
“And all that’s before we start to even include what we do online, how big data companies like Google or Facebook track us across the internet, from site to site and service to service. Everything we do creates data that these companies monitor and collect, and use to track us and to try to predict what we do.”
This is nothing new, I suggest.
“No, of course not, it’s been this way for at least two decades. But in the last few years those two areas of surveillance—online and off—have merged in ways we couldn’t even have imagined ten years ago.” He points at my spex. “We’re all carrying—wearing, even—hugely powerful devices that create and gather data simultaneously about our physical and digital activities. It’s increasingly hard to separate the two. What we’re trying to do here is to create a space where people can escape from all that.”
I ask him whether he isn’t painting a rather dystopian picture—it’s not as though all this monitoring and data collection is being done by one Big Brother–style organization. And isn’t most of it done for our benefit and convenience, to improve the quality of our lives?
He laughs. “Well, that’s a moot point. Do you know who is tracking you online, when you are looking at your timelines, shopping, walking down the street? I mean, you can guess—it might be Google or Twitter or Amazon or whoever—but do you know what they do with that data? Who they sell it to? Who they let have access? What it’s used for? Also, we’ve known for over ten years now—since Snowden—that many of these companies are actually sharing that data with governments, and that organizations like GCHQ and the NSA have ways of compiling and mining it to create scarily comprehensive ways of watching every aspect of our lives.
“As for the convenience thing—well, that’s a matter of opinion. Sure, the city or the internet knowing what we’re doing, or predicting what we want, might make our everyday life seem easier, but at what cost? How much control are we actually giving up? How much are our lives and habits being shaped by these conveniences, by letting these networks and the algorithms that control them make decisions for us? Are they really convenient for us, or for the networks? Again it’s an issue of transparency—we can’t really see what is going on, so how can we know the decisions are being made for our benefit? How can we argue with them, question them? We’re constantly told that the internet is freeing and democratising, but all these decisions are being made from the top down—from big companies, big data, and big government. That’s what the Croft is about—showing that there’s an alternative.”
And that’s the other part of what the People’s Republic of Stokes Croft is about—it doesn’t just kill your access to the internet and other networks, it also provides you with an alternative. When I first crossed into the Croft’s supposedly designated area (more on this later), not only did all my internet, wifi, and cellular data die—but I also received a message asking me to install a special app. With some slight unease I agreed, and my spex went into what Manaan calls “big data hibernation mode”—all its other apps, as well as a large chunk of its OS, are frozen. “It’s necessary to do this because it’s not just apps and websites that constantly collect data, but your spex’s OS itself is constantly monitoring everything and reporting back when it can,” he explains. “Even cutting it off from the net isn’t enough to stop it—we had to find a way to stop it watching altogether, otherwise as soon as you leave here and reconnect it just reports back everything you did while you were here.”
With my spex under the control of Manaan’s app—called Flex—I was instantly connected to another network. The Flex network appears like normal wifi access at first, but it’s radically different: for a start it has no connections to the internet at all. “This is a MESH network, it’s completely decentralised. Instead of connecting to a router or a central server to access it, you connect directly to other Flex users over Bluetooth, and through them to everybody else on the network. It’s very localised—in order to connect you have to be within fifty or so meters of someone else that’s connected. But if you are then you can potentially reach everyone else in the network. So even though it’s hyperlocal there’s no limit to how many people can join, or how big the network can grow—this is networking on a community scale.”
For Manaan this kind of networking is a viable alternative to the corporate-dominated, top-down network model of the internet. As such it provides a lot of familiar services and applications—messaging, a Twitter-style social networking timeline, forums, wikis, voice, video and avatar-based calls, and file sharing. Again this is all decentralised. “There are no servers here, no data centres or cloud storage. The file-sharing system is pretty sophisticated but very easy to use—you can share pretty much anything, from web pages to streaming video and full VR environments, but it has to be stored locally on your spex or another device running Flex. We just set this up and let users do what they want with it. We’ve spontaneously ended up with dozens of photo-sharing groups, radio stations, and mixed-reality gaming campaigns. And it’s all come from within the community.”
Despite Manaan’s claims of transparency, he’s surprisingly cagey about how the technology that keeps the Croft running actually works. “I can’t talk about it too much right now, because we’ve got security concerns of our own, but we have a set geographical boundary in the neighbourhood, and within that we use certain frequency-jamming technologies to block all conventional wifi and cellular signals. The Flex network actually runs across direct Bluetooth 4.0 connections between spex, so we don’t jam that frequency, obviously.”
Beyond this, Manaan doesn’t want to reveal much more about the nuts and bolts of how the Croft’s “digital boundary” works, not just because of his security fears, but also because of possible legal ramifications. “At first glance it probably uses the same jamming technologies employed by law enforcement agencies in the Middle East and some parts of the US,” Dr Erin Pletz of Bristol University tells me. “These are usually mounted on jeeps or riot vans, and are activated at scenes of civil unrest in order to stop protesters communicating with each other over social media, etc. While it’s thought the British police has trialled these systems, I don’t think any forces have them on active deployment. The legal status around using them is extremely fuzzy—there are no fixed laws as yet about how and when they can be used, or who can use them—especially private individuals.
“What interests me more is how the People’s Republic of Stokes Croft got hold of the technology in the first place,” Pletz continues. “Buying it would be hard and expensive, and probably more illegal than using it, as I believe it’s classified as a weapons system at present. It’s not unfeasible, though, that they may have built it themselves. It’s certainly possible to do so, with a mix of off-the-shelf and 3
D-printed components. The know-how is available online if you know where to look.”
Certainly a do-it-yourself attitude seems prevalent amongst the community in the Croft. “It’s really the essence of what we’re trying to do here,” Manaan tells me as he shows me around the neighbourhood, pointing out the several boutique 3D print and bespoke component shops. “We’re all about finding alternatives to top-down approaches to technology, so it’s unsurprising that we’ve attracted people that want to start businesses and workshops along these lines. People also come here because they know they’re not being watched—people who perhaps want to tinker with existing technologies without large companies or lawyers breathing down their necks. They value the freedom we offer.”
Another group that clearly values the freedom here are artists. Built on the reputation of the likes of Banksy and 3Cube, Bristol has long been considered Europe’s graffiti and street art mecca, and long before Manaan and his crew arrived, Stokes Croft was one of its hot spots. There is barely a patch of wall down the whole street that isn’t daubed in paint, with the whole fronts of some buildings transformed into massive murals. This is nothing new, Stokes Croft has looked like this for decades—but put on a pair of spex running Flex and the art comes alive in ways that seem to warp reality. Buildings strobe with colour while tentacles of paint slither out of the architecture to splatter unsuspecting passersby, herds of rainbow-coloured zebras run alongside passing traffic, and vast, ancient-looking trees explode through rooftops to dominate the skies. They’re the kind of augmented graffiti hacks you might have seen in cities all across the globe, but on an unprecedented scale. “What we do is basically impose zero limits on what artists can create and post,” explains the Dutch artist Anika Bernhardt, the Croft’s “uncurator.” “As long as they stick by a handful of community-agreed guidelines, artists can put art—both digital and paint—basically wherever they like. They’re free to post over or alter other people’s work, even; in fact, we actively encourage it. It’s very much a free-for-all. My job here is less being curator and more a logger or archivist—instead of deciding what art is shown here, I just make a record of it.”
I’m intrigued by the way she talks about encouraging artists to post over others’ work. Isn’t that hugely frustrating to the original artist? Isn’t it just a form of vandalism? “We don’t like to use that word here,” Bernhardt tells me. “We want to break that association that art is something that needs gatekeepers, that has to be restricted to galleries. Plus, we have ways of recording all the art, so that it’s instantly retrievable.” She demonstrates this to me, using a part of the Flex app that allows us to delve back in time. It’s a dizzying effect—almost as surreal as the street art itself—as she appears to rewind time, the faces of the buildings changing rapidly around me as murals and AR projections shift and change in reverse. “You can stop at any time, pause everything, and really focus on a work that grabs your attention. You can peel back the layers of the graffiti and find what was there before.”
Already an established installation and performance artist in Amsterdam and online, Bernhardt first came to Bristol to research the work of the city’s infamous AR street artist 3Cube, but fell in love with what was happening in the Croft, so decided to stay. She’s now been here nearly two years. “It was wonderful, what was happening here—just so exciting. It’s really playful, and I think that’s incredibly important. It’s important that we make cities playful. People think we’re Luddites here—that we’re anti-technology—but in fact it’s quite the opposite. We’re celebrating technology.
“The whole smart-city idea is so top-down, it’s nothing more than a suite of products sold to cities by large companies. It’s a one-size-fits-all model—it works on the idea that all cities are the same, that they have the same problems and situations. That’s just not true. Cities are different, just as the people that live in them are different. What we’re doing here is showing how technology in cities can belong to the people that live there, that they can come along and shape how it works and what it does. What better way to do that than through art?”
As exciting a picture as Bernhardt paints, the People’s Republic of Stokes Croft has remained unsurprisingly controversial. While there’s been an attempt by Bristol City Council to maintain its liberal approach to art experiments such as this, it has butted its head against Manaan’s community a number of times, as have the local police. Most of this is over the disruption to surveillance in the neighborhood, and the worry that it’s creating a “crime blackspot.” Local media and some of the more conservative members of the council have focused on this, demanding that the network jammers be shut down. Although he wasn’t available to comment for this article, Chief Constable Chris Walker has previously voiced concerns about the area becoming “a physical manifestation of the dark web: an area that attracts the worst kind of criminals and preys on the most vulnerable. This is not what Bristol needs, and I personally will not let it happen.”
“The stories of drug dealers, child pornographers, and malware manufacturers around here are nonsense,” says Manaan. “It’s nothing more than media hype, lazy journalists and politicians looking for an easy, fear-mongering story. Look around, this is clearly a happy, vibrant, and safe place, that’s incredibly well integrated with the local community.”
In many ways however, it might actually be community integration that poses the biggest threat to the PRSC. Stokes Croft has always been a controversial street anyway—a vein of bohemian gentrification that runs through St Paul’s, an area that has traditionally been dominated by South Asian and West Indian families. It’s been a conflict for years, but the PRSC seems to be making the situation worse. From talking to just a handful of people at random, it was clear there were strong tensions in the neighbourhood.
“It’s a pain in the bloody backside,” I’m told by Jiten Patel, who has run a newsagent’s and off-licence on Stokes Croft for 25 years, right in the middle of the jammed zone. “I’ve had to replace all the bloody wireless gear in my shop, the tills, the stock-checking wands, the security cameras and alarms, everything. Either replace it with wired gear or find stuff that isn’t blocked. Rush and his lot helped me do that, sure, even gave me some bits and pieces, but still it cost me money. I can’t use the internet on my phone while I’m here, I have to use this ancient laptop that’s on a direct wired connection. It’s a pain. I mean they’re nice kids and that, and it brings in new customers because a lot of people come down here to have a look at the art, but it’s a pain largely. We’ve been here, my family and me, for over forty years, and nobody asked us first. They just went ahead and did it.
“I worry about the crime angle too,” Patel adds. “It’s not affected me personally yet, but you hear stories. I worry it’s not safe out there with no CCTV cameras. I can’t hail a cab from here either, I have to walk to the end of the street—both Uber and GoogleCabs pass through here but they can’t stop. Also it’s dirty, the streets. The road-cleaning robots can’t come down here anymore, because of the jamming. Now I have to go out and clean the street in front of my shop myself—I don’t mind as such, but my council tax is meant to be paying for those robots, you know? It’s bloody stupid.”
Another problem is that as tight as Manaan’s digital boundary might be, there’s some obvious seepage into neighbouring streets. “Half the time the wireless in my own house doesn’t work,” I’m told by Chantelle Andrews, who lives nearly half a mile outside the jamming zone. She works as a driver for a local on-demand delivery service, and she says it’s highly disruptive to her job. “I have to get up early in the morning, get in my van, and drive out of the neighbourhood to pick up my jobs for the day. It’s also the only way I can get phone calls and messages. If any work comes up that means picking up or dropping off in the Croft itself, I usually have to just turn it down. It’s affecting my daughter, too—she’s zero hours, working freelance retail, so none of the apps she uses to bid for jobs work at home. She has to walk for h
alf a mile just to get reception. I don’t think it’s fair, to be honest.”
Even some of the Croft’s newest residents, brought here by the freedom promised by the PRSC, have run into problems. Tara-Jane Allbright is a jewellery designer that moved into one of the communal art spaces last year. “I sell most of my work via Facebook and eBay, so I’ve had to do a lot of adapting. In some ways it’s great—I separate out my creative work here in the studio, where I’ve got no internet, from my admin and shipping work, which I do when I go home on my wired connection. But it means I can be slow to deal with customers’ inquiries, which has led to some problems.”
I put all this to Manaan—is there not a danger that the Croft is actually just becoming another form of gentrification, foisting itself upon unwilling surrounding communities? “I don’t think so,” he says. “We try and work very hard with local communities, and we’re always checking and monitoring exactly where the perimeter is, and finding ways to make it tighter and more accurate. This is an experiment, we freely admit that—it’s not perfect. It’s a work in progress. As such there’s always going to be conflicts, problems and issues that need to be smoothed out. But I’ve got faith that we can deal with things sensibly, and through consensus. It’s what this place is about, really—freedom, as well as bringing people together.
“It’s important to try and remember what we’re trying to do here,” he continues. “This is an experiment, a statement. People don’t realise how reliant we are on the internet now. If it disappeared tomorrow there’d be chaos. It’s not just that you wouldn’t be able to Facebook your mates or read the news—everything is connected to it now. The markets would stop trading. The economy would collapse. There’d probably be no electricity, no food in the shops. Vital equipment in hospitals would stop working. It’s not just your phone or your spex—cars, busses, trains—everything would grind to a halt. It’d feel like the end of the world. We’re just trying to show people how dependent we’ve all become on something that we don’t own, that isn’t controlled by us. We’re just trying to show people that there are alternatives, different ways of doing things.”