Visit their site: opasylum.wordpress.com/
HeadQuarters: 117 22nd Ave NE Birmingham, AL 35215
Our aim is to utilize already established frameworks for managing distributed resources, via Grid Computing, to 1. prevent corruption of valuable data for remote users who are in especially dire need of reliable information (when their access is usually most vulnerable); 2. encourage and enable continual extension of grid access with an eye towards hard-wiring into the periphery of the Web as a general purpose auxiliary, should native access be compromised.
Operation Asylum started as a brainstorming session among a half-dozen or so people in a "Tinychat" room, in discussion without much confident direction. The question being ganged-up-on: "How do we help an unknown (relatively small) number of Libyan nationals studying abroad, who faced imminent (I thought) deportation and ensuing persecution and/or forced conscription into the Libyan regular army."
A chance reference (only describable as stark serendipity, really) to Joanne Michele, women's/human rights activist, likely Jedi, served to calm immediate panic about looming, imminent deportation, and allowed for thought and planning of long term solutions that might keep these expeditionary scholars where they -belong--which is in our colleges and universities, learning, being a part of discovery, adapting our knowledge systems and their appended ethos to a better fit of our deeply social proclivities.