The VPN-zine project started on December 2019. The first issue Tunnel UP / Tunnel Down was created for organizing a workshop in the 36th Chaos Communication Congress. Copies were distributed to the participants and we went along reading through it together to understand how VPN works. After the workshop, people took them home on a donation basis. 

Few months passed and Digital Defenders Partnership made a call for projects, code or manuals, related to secure networks and communications for the increased stress on digital platforms due to Covid19 pandemic. The VPN zine project was awarded with 3200€ in total, from which 600€ went into translating 3 of the zines in Chinese, and 200€ in printing costs. I started working on the 3 more issues mid July 2020, and all writing and translations concluded early December. I worked mostly full time on this project for 5 months along with building the CUCU shop and the psaroskalazines site, where the VPN zines are available for download. In the meantime the neutrinet association in Belgium translated the first issue in French as well.

If you find the project of interest, and would like to translate it for your collective, hacklab, or group, we will give access to the gitlab repository hosted by the systerserver that contains the text, images and the design templates. If you would like to show your support, you can do so by tipping us a coffee, ordering physical copies or the other print paraphernalia which was inspired by the zines. Get in contact by email for translation collaborations or orders or both :) We will be happy to hear from you.