Heather Marsh is a philosopher, programmer and human rights activist. She is the author of Binding Chaos, a study of methods of mass collaboration and the founder of Getgee, a project to create a global data commons and trust network.
Internet and journalism
Marsh gives talks about mass collaboration, democracy, economy and other societal issues. She has spoken about Getgee and 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 Occupyart exhibition. She represented the Berlin Biennale hackathon at the World Free Media Forum in Rio in June 2012. As a journalist, Marsh has written many freelance articles and from 2010 to 2012 she was the sole editor and administrator for the WikiLeaks sponsored news site, WikiLeaks Central. As an activist, she has started human rights campaigns. As a philosopher, she has given many interviews to media and academics, written books and essays and given talks in many countries. In 2018 Marsh claimed the Defense Intelligence Agency director David Shedd demanded a whistleblower panel Marsh appeared on must not be uploaded to YouTube. Since 2015 Marsh has been working to initiate a global data commons project with Getgee, a universal database and trust network. Getgee seeks 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. and a continuation of years of writing about mass communication including open journalism and scientific and academic research. As both a journalist and a media critic, Marsh has often combined the two in articles such as The Guardian: Redacting, Censoring or Lying?,, Toronto Star Coverage of Omar Khadr since his trial week and Zimbabwe election, Reuters and the troll who accidentally won the Internet.
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 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. She has reported and campaigned extensively against human trafficking and violations committed by global resource corporations. Marsh is the national spokesperson for the Free Omar Khadr group in Canada, spending her time writing, speaking, advocating for Omar's release. Marsh wrote articles about Abdulelah Haider Shaye, a Yemeni journalist ordered imprisoned by Obama, a year and a half before any report appeared in the US. She brought global awareness to topics such as the Rohingya genocide in Burma and ritual killings in Gabon. 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. 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 and 'paedosadism' industries with a goal of independent inquiries to investigate and a change in public discourse around these crimes. 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. Marsh started Gaza Rebirth, "a new paradigm for recovery activism" to establish direct aid to Gaza in 2014 and "to start a dialogue about this cycle of destruction and 'rebuilding' where corporate empires are feeding off real human torment as a growth industry to enrich themselves." She has frequently called for the decentralization of NGOs which she considers part of the "systems of dissociation" which stand between people and prevent creation of healthy society.
Activism
Marsh has advocated for activist groups including the South Korean Hope Riders, the North African Day of Rages, the Chinese Jasmine revolution, the Spanish Indignados/Take the Square/15M movement and the Occupy movement. She wrote the first article referencing what became the US Occupy movement on the day it started, March 10, 2011, and covered many other day of rages within hours of their beginnings. Marsh has received frequent international support from Anonymous for her human rights campaigns since 2010 and she calls them "old friends". She has referenced them as a method of collaboration, not a movement or group, and says the method they use is stigmergy. She says Anonymous follows ideas and actions instead of personalities, a form of organization she recommends for mass movements.
