News, updates, and announcements

The politics of language marginalisation and its impact on language communities in Latin America, Africa and Asia

This is the fourth post of a four-part series on Rising Voices’ Digital Security + Language research study that explored the intersection of digital security and linguistic rights in collaboration with 18 researchers, from 18 different language communities in Africa, Asia and Latin America. The previous post explored how women leaders, elders, and other custodians of language are practicing language activism through a politics of care. This final post considers the politics of language marginalisation in how it impacts Indigenous language communities in Latin America, Africa and Asia, and the needs and potential paths to prioritize linguistic diversity in the broader digital rights and digital security agendas.

A New App Asks: Would You Click on a Phishing Email?

Shira, a new digital security app, provides a streamlined user experience with real-world phishing examples to help activists, human rights defenders, and journalists develop the skills to detect and defeat these attacks. Built in consultation with community leaders from the Global South, the app seeks to fill a gap by providing a localized and accessible training tool.

Language activism through a politics of care

This blog post is the third of a four-part series on Rising Voices’ Digital Security & Language research study that explored the intersection of digital security and linguistic rights in collaboration with 18 researchers, from 18 different language communities in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. This post shares how women leaders, social justice activists, and Elders are custodians of language and details their experiences and perceptions of safety online in Latin America and Africa.

Creative strategies among language activists in Africa and Asia to counter digital safety threats and the risks to language survival

This blog post is the second of a four-part series on Rising Voices’ Digital Security + Language research study that explored the intersection of digital security and linguistic rights in collaboration with 18 researchers, from 18 different language communities in Africa, Asia and Latin America. The project points to the power of participatory research in surfacing the complexity of linguistic rights-related questions in the digital safety and security field, as each researcher approached the topic from a unique starting point in relation to their own experiences and understandings. In the previous post, we introduced you to the project and highlighted the strengths of community-led research as a strategy for sustainable and responsive impact. In this post, we dive into how language activists across communities in Africa and Asia are countering digital safety threats and risks to their languages’ survival.

Participatory research as strategy towards sustainable and responsive impact

This blog post is the first of a four-part series on Rising Voices’ Digital Security + Language research study that explored the intersection of digital security and linguistic rights in collaboration with 18 researchers, from 18 different language communities in Africa, Asia and Latin America.

OTF’s FY2021 Annual Report

OTF’s FY2021 Annual Report highlights the inventive projects, inspired research fellows, and incredible initiatives that work to advance internet freedom around the globe.

Tella Transforms Activist Reporting from the Field

With support from OTF’s Internet Freedom Fund, Tella debuts an easy-to-use web server empowering human rights activists to backup their files and securely submit them to host organizations.

Request for Proposal: Information Security Services

The Open Technology Fund (OTF) is soliciting proposals from Information Security professionals and agencies to provide services to OTF’s Red Team Lab.

Bottlenecked No More

With support from OTF’s Internet Freedom Fund, the OpenVPN community unites to unlock faster VPN connection speeds and performance through the finalization of a data channel offload.

Making Censorship Reports Accessible for All

With support from OTF’s Learning Lab, Ura Design increases web accessibility for reports from GreatFire’s IFF-funded AppleCensorship project.

Developing New VPN Experiments to Better Inform Circumvention Tactics

The following blog post was written by ICFP fellow Ain Ghazal as a summary of their work on Censorship Resistance Systems in global VPN infrastructure.

How can we improve the VPN ecosystem?

OTF Debrief on our VPN Convening

An Interdisciplinary Exploration of Internet Shutdowns

The following blog post was written by Michael Collyer, OTF Senior Fellow for the Information Controls Fellowship Program (ICFP), as a summary of their research on internet shutdowns and the creation of an interactive internet shutdown dashboard.

The decentralised infrastructure of online censorship in Asia

The following blog post was written by ICFP fellow Gurshabad Grover as a summary of their work and research on online censorship in Asia.

OTF’s Ramy Raoof awarded 2023 Burke Award from USAGM

OTF is thrilled to celebrate Ramy Raoof and his work supporting sustainable FOSS ecosystems, and congratulate him as a recipient of this year’s David Burke Distinguished Journalism Award from USAGM.

Shutdown Getdown Debrief - Technology and Design

Our final "Shutdown Getdown" blog post on technology and design is written by Superbloom (previously known as Simply Secure) and Okthanks

Shutdown Getodown Debrief – Mitigating and Preparing for Internet Shutdowns

2023 OTF Summit Recap

OTF held its eighth summit on January 24 - 26, 2023 - the first in-person summit since the COVID-19 pandemic.

Shutdown Getdown Debrief – Network Measurement & Research

OTF Debrief – Introducing the Shutdown Getdown