Brandon Smith

Brandon James Smith (alias: "Theatre X") is a computer hacker, technician, musician, artist, and writer. He founded and built the CorningWiki and COPSA projects and eventually the Corning Evolution Movement and is a tech volunteer at the Southeast Steuben County Library.

Life
Brandon James Smith was born on July 26th, 1990 in Corning, New York. His mother, Kathleen A. Dolley, was a deli clerk at Food Mart and his father, John C. Smith Jr., was a carpenter. When he was two years old, his uncle, Joesph Dolley of Savona, New York, whom he had a small bond with, died due to a brain anyeursm. Smith grew up in the City of Corning, eventually moving into his grandfather's trailer in the Town of Corning at the age of four after his grandfather had died. His mother and father separated when he was six years old. Brandon and his mother moved to his grandparents' home in Savona, New York where they lived during the summer of 1997. They moved back to the City of Corning when the summer ended and Smith lived with his mother there until the age of fifteen.

When he was nine, Smith's father died due to necrosis on the brain caused by multiple severe head injuries. Because of this event, it caused an emotional change in Smith which ultimately resulted in him being placed in Special Education classes for the emotionally disturbed. This went on until he had dropped out of school at age eighteen. In April of 2011, he earned a GED.

At age 15, Smith moved to Tioga County NY and attended school at Candor High School, Spencer-Van Etten High School, Endicott Learning Center in Endicott, New York, and TST BOCES in Ithaca, New York.

In 2012, he was invited to live with his friend and collegue Horace H. Bradley back in Corning in September of 2012 of which he accepted. Since then, he has collaborated on projects with Kirk Huttleston and Darin Robins and attends computer networking courses at Corning Community College.

Introduction to Free Software, GNU, Linux, and Open Source
Smith was subjected to having to use an old computer that ran the Windows ME operating system in late 2007 and grew frustrated with it's malfunctions and undesired operations. During that time period, Smith spoke of his frustration with Internet Explorer to the network administrator at Candor High School who then recommended that he try Mozilla Firefox. Smith fell in love with the browser's capabilities and stability and he has used it since.

In early 2008, one of Smith's newly made friends in Owego, NY introduced him to Damn Small Linux and GNU Emacs and gave him some instructions on how to run Damn Small Linux on a flash-drive from within Windows ME. Following that, Smith's CISCO class instructor at Candor High School and the network administrator of the same institution let him use a live-CD of Fedora 8. Smith fell in love with the operating system for practical reasons such as it's lack of malware. Smith later found out about Ubuntu, installed it on a computer that was handed-down to him and was sold on the system. In 2009 Smith purchased a Toshiba laptop and within 24 hours of owning it had removed Windows Vista and started using Ubuntu regularly.

In mid 2009, Smith was given a copy of the film Revolution OS. Having watched Richard Stallman's parts on the film, Smith admired Stallman's drive and initiative but was apathetic to the philosophy behind Free Software.

From late 2009 to early 2010, Smith was trying to teach himself the C programming language using Yellow Dog Linux on the Sony Playstation 3 video-game system out of an interest of manipulating the system's Cell processor. In April of 2010, Sony Computer Entertainment America issued a firmware upgrade for the Playstation 3 that would remove the OtherOS feature from it's operating system that allowed users like Smith to run a foreign operating system on the game console. If the user did not upgrade to this firmware, the system would prevent the user from accessing the Playstation Network and eventually disallow the playing of newly released games. Smith felt trapped and caved in to upgrading the firmware due to having spent an entire summer working to purchase a Playstation 3 and not wanting to lose most of the promised functionality. Feeling enraged, Smith focused on other projects until George Hotz released the system's cryptography keys to the public. Smith eventually discovered a Playstation 3 custom firmware called "Rebug" and installed it on to his console. This event lead to the beginning of Smith's advocacy of Free Software.

Activism
Smith has engaged in multiple events. He started the backlash against Corning Community College's decision to close it's child care facility by starting a Facebook page and online petition. He has also been active in the process of starting a community resource center in Corning, NY with Darin Robbins.

Projects
Smith has worked on a variety of different projects ranging from computers and electronics to music and the arts. He has worked on, designed and built, or contributed in a small way to the following projects:


 * Bleachbit
 * HTTPS Everywhere
 * diaspora*
 * Mozilla Firefox
 * LibreOffice
 * GISAH
 * NSA Smacker
 * Wikipedia
 * VLC
 * OpenStreetMap
 * YFI

Bleachbit
According to the Bleachbit Github, Theatre X is one of the top contributors for CleanerML and Bleachbit itself. Smith first started hacking on Bleachbit after finding a bug with the cleaner for the Seamonkey web browser and fixed and submitted the code to the project.

Nova Componere
Nova Componere (Latin for "New Way to Compose") was a project that tried to promote the idea of creative freedom and collaboration between artists. Smith started this project from his frustrations of finding people to compose music with in his local area and failures of starting bands previously. Smith used the project to stengthen his HTML and CSS programming skills and was often criticized for his website development work, but praised for his work on the Fropen Public Works License.

Smith ended the project in January of 2014 due to frustrations and exhaustion. Since then he has considered restarting the project under a different name.

Titan
See Main Article: Titan

The COPSA Project
Smith was concerned and anxious over the various NSA surveillance tools that were publicly exposed by Edward Snowden as well as cyber criminals easily stealing his and other's personal information on the Internet as he has helped people recover from and prevent on-line identity theft in the past. On September 7th, 2014, Smith started COPSA (Corning On-line Privacy and Security Augmention). COPSA's first and main goal was to write rulesets for the websites that represented local businesses and interests for the web browser add-on HTTPS Everywhere by the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Having done rulesets for the software in the past, Smith wrote the majority of the rulesets for the software in it's Github repository. The project is one of the Quests for the Technological Arm of the Corning Evolution Movement.

After writing the rules, Smith forwarded all of them via email to the official HTTPS Everywhere mailing list for collecting rulesets made by volunteers. Some of the rulesets were for Wegmans, Corning Credit Union, Corning Community College, and Corning Community College's Bookstore.

CorningWiki
With increased frustration of finding information for services, goods, and more within the Corning, NY area on-line, and fearing for his own personal on-line privacy, Smith founded and built CorningWiki in September of 2014. CorningWiki is an on-line, editable encyclopedia for the Corning, NY area and runs MediaWiki which is the same software that powers Wikipedia. The idea behind the project was to create a single, community-built place that houses most, ideally all, of the information in the area and to have it freely and conveniently available to all who seek it.

Smith watched a Corning video entry for the "Best of the Road" competition for the "Most Fun Small Town in America" title and noticed a large focus on Corning's Gaffer District and the Corning Museum of Glass and not on other businesses and recreational activities in the city. He felt that this was unfair, regardless if this focus was deliberate or not, and that the businesses and recreational areas outside of the district should have had equal attention. This frustration was backed up by a year of Smith struggling to start his own computer repair business due attention given on the Gaffer District and having felt empathy towards those who experienced the same frustration.

Smith also felt that he could design a better way for businesses, groups, activists, and other various entities in the area to get equal recognition and challenged himself to prove it. He also strongly believed that the Corning area community has a dormant pool of good-will within and felt that CorningWiki could unlock it and evolve the community as a whole.

Influences
Smith has cited that he considers Richard Stallman, Jacque Fresco, Frank Zappa, Aaron Swartz, Eben Moglen, Ilya Zhitomirskiy, Edward Snowden, Barrett Brown, and Goku as some of his life influences.

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