Senka is an Information Controls Fellow hosted by the Critical Infrastructure Lab. Senka holds a PhD in telecommunications engineering and has been working on affordable connectivity solutions in the Global South for over a decade.
Her fellowship aims to examine digital security aspects and resilience of last-mile connectivity solutions, such as community networks. The digital security aspect often gets overlooked in these networks, as the priorities are usually affordability and inclusion. However, this does not mean that the served communities – often marginalized and vulnerable – do not need to secure their communications infrastructure for more privacy, and improve resilience against potential surveillance and censorship. In cases where it is not suitable to assume that users will be proactive in installing privacy protection and circumvention tools on their end-user devices (due to lack of skills, device availability, localization issues, etc.), digital safety and security can be improved – and access to censored content can be provided – by implementing adequate tools at the infrastructure side.
This project intends to inform the technical community, including network designers, tool developers, and standard setting bodies, about ways to make community networks more resilient to threats such as privacy intrusion and surveillance.
