Open Technology Fund (OTF) welcomes 10 new Information Controls Fellowship Program (ICFP) fellows who will advance research, analysis, and tool development to counter digital authoritarianism.
Recognizing the scope and scale of autocratic information controls, this latest ICFP cohort includes fellows with backgrounds and expertise in computer science, social sciences, and information security. With the support of their host organizations, fellows will focus on understanding VPN interference and emerging circumvention mechanisms, including AI-assisted information controls; as well as examine and map surveillance technologies deployed in repressive information environments.
Read more about the latest ICFP projects:
Anonymous ICFP Fellow
Research Topic: Measuring Regional TLS Censorship in China
Host Organization: Anonymous
Duration: 12 months
Given the extensive previous research and literature on the Great Firewall, a mental model has emerged that censorship in China is largely centralized, both in terms of policy and execution. However, recent identification of a regional firewall in Henan Province is a noteworthy development in the progression of China’s censorship framework, hinting towards a more decentralized and localized censorship approach. This fellow will examine the growing trend of regional internet censorship mechanisms in China. By analyzing the operational dynamics of localized censors, the project seeks to draw conclusions about the broader implications for internet governance and censorship practices across the country. The findings will enhance understanding of evolving censorship frameworks and inform the development of effective strategies for censorship circumvention.
Afsah Anwar
Research Topic: The Impact of Compromised VPN Endpoints
Host Organization: Censored Planet, The University of Michigan
Duration: 12 months
VPNs are an essential prerequisite for billions of people around the world who want to access the free and open internet. However, if VPN endpoints are compromised, attackers can evade detection by hiding behind VPNs. Compromised endpoints can also negatively impact the user experience, which may deter further usage. For example, users might be added to industrial blacklists and/or subject to frequent CAPTCHA challenges.
Anwar will examine the impact of compromised endpoints on the user experience and evaluate the existing measures VPN service providers take to prevent malicious use of endpoints. He will also research best practices for addressing these challenges, with the goal of developing guidelines that can help organizations and users better protect their networks and data when using VPNs.
Anonymous ICFP Fellow
Research Topic: Exploring the Censorship Landscape of Generative AI Tools in Authoritarian Nation-States
Host Organization: Anonymous
Duration: 9 months
Public reporting has documented the extent to which authoritarian regimes are using generative AI to increase the scale, speed, and efficiency of online censorship. For example, the Russian government launched their own internet censorship and surveillance system called Oculus in February 2023. The new AI system automatically detects and blocks content the government considers “undesirable.” And many other countries are following suit: at least 22 other countries now mandate or incentivize digital platforms to deploy machine learning to remove disfavored political, social, and religious speech at a rate and magnitude that was previously impossible for human censors to achieve.
This fellow will investigate the use of generative AI technologies in China and Russia as vehicles for censorship. The project will identify ethical research access methods to these tools, exploring the extent of censorship with respect to adherence to country-specific laws, and will potentially also examine circumvention methods.
Reyhan Topal
Research Topic: Transnational Digital Repression
Host Organization: Uyghur Transitional Justice Database
Duration: 12 months
Topal will investigate China’s digital transnational repression, which targets the Uyghur diaspora. Her research will answer the following:
- How China cooperates with host states from a technical perspective to execute digital transnational repression; and
- How technology companies play a role in preventing or exacerbating the risk of digital transnational repression.
By studying this highly targeted group, the findings will help shed light on the techniques and tactics of transnational repression generally.
The project also seeks to mitigate against these digital threats to the Uyghur community by making practical recommendations for individuals, civil society organizations, and other stakeholders.
Anonymous ICFP Fellow
Research Topic: Myanmar Surveillance Research
Host Organization: Access Now
Duration: 6 months
Over the last four years of military rule in Myanmar, the State Administration Council junta has increasingly weaponized technology to surveil, control, and intimidate the civilian population. However, the precise technologies and systems facilitating such abusive practices remain undisclosed. This fellow will investigate the types of intercept technologies that are deployed by the Myanmar military to monitor mobile users in the country.
The research also seeks to answer the following questions:
- How do these intercept technologies work to monitor and suppress dissent? For example, is the military able to monitor the content of text messages and calls when these technologies are activated by the telecommunications company?
- Which companies/countries/organizations are supplying and/or funding the procurement of these intercept technologies?
By providing a comprehensive, evidence-based analysis of the specific interception technologies and tools enabling the military junta’s repressive practices, the project can shed light on effective circumvention strategies for people in Myanmar.
Tomiwa Ilori
Research Topic: Understanding the use of digital security tools by human rights defenders in sub-Saharan Africa
Host Organization: HURIDOCS
Duration: 12 months
Journalists and human rights defenders face repressive climates in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Kenya, Senegal, and Zimbabwe—all ranked “not free” or only “partly free” in Freedom House’s Freedom in the World 2024 Report. These actors are subject to arbitrary arrests, harassment, and violence. Ilori’s fellowship project will investigate how these at-risk groups use digital security tools; what are their safety needs; and how digital security tool developers can use this information to build and improve their tools. The project will contribute to the development of more targeted and effective digital safety tools through sustainable feedback loops.
Yung Au
Research Topic: Mapping Supply Chains of Information Control & Surveillance Technologies
Host Organization: School of Geography, University of Oxford
Duration: 12 months
Malicious actors are leveraging the open web as a data source for information control and surveillance technologies. In many repressive regimes, the use of these technologies results in the monitoring, targeting, and attacking of human rights defenders and frontline activists. Yung’s research examines the supply chain of surveillance and policing technologies—from the origins to the implementation of such systems. Her project charts out different ways to map and visualize the surveillance/information control supply chain in collaboration with partner organizations situated at different parts of this process. Shedding light on these supply chains can help democracies disrupt them and curb the proliferation of surveillance technology.
Manuel Rubio
Research Topic: Mapping actors and capabilities of the Surveillance Technologies Deployed in the Latin American Southern Cone
Host Organization: Social TIC
Duration: 12 months
Rubio will research the digital threat landscape for social movements in the Southern Cone region of South America. With a focus on the current use of surveillance technology often used by authorities to monitor demonstrations, the goal is to document digital information collection systems in order to identify emerging regional patterns. This will include insights into the actors involved, the equipment and technology employed, and the potential applications of the collected information. Bringing transparency to the threat landscape will help civil society organizations and human rights defenders devise digital security strategies to protect their human rights online.
Karan Saini
Research Topic: Examining the scale of DNS-based web censorship in India
Host Organization: The Internet Governance Project (IGP), Georgia Institute of Technology
Duration: 12 months
The Government of India’s approach to website blocking and blocking orders has been, to date, fairly opaque. In the past, partial blocking lists have been obtained by researchers and journalists through leaks and whistleblowers. Efforts to obtain the block list of BSNL, a state-owned ISP, using India’s Right to Information Law have been unsuccessful. Aside from BSNL, most ISPs in India are private sector companies and India’s Information Technology Rules, 2009, compel ISPs to maintain confidentiality of blocking orders. According to a report on website blocking in India by SFLC India, a total of 55,607 blocking orders were issued by the Government between 2015 to 2022. While the total number of websites ordered to be blocked for this period is known, the actual websites themselves remain shrouded in secrecy.
Saini’s project will examine the scale of DNS-based web censorship in India. By collecting large-scale DNS measurements, both direct and remote, across Indian ISPs, this project will provide a degree of transparency about the scale and nature of DNS censorship in India. It will also produce an open source tool that researchers can use to detect DNS-based web censorship at an internet-scale.
Anonymous ICFP Fellow
Research Topic: Analyzing how China uses AI for censorship and surveillance
Host Organization: Anonymous
Duration: 18 months
This fellow will work on a project analyzing how China uses AI to monitor online speech and enforce censorship. The project will identify common patterns in censored content to understand how AI-driven censorship systems operate. The findings will support broader efforts for researchers, journalists, and developers, to study and counter digital censorship in context of the PRC’s quickly evolving information control approach.
About the program: OTF’s Information Controls Fellowship Program (ICFP) supports examination into how governments in countries, regions, or areas of OTF’s core focus are restricting the free flow of information, impeding access to the open internet, and implementing censorship mechanisms, thereby threatening the ability of global citizens to exercise basic human rights and democracy. The program supports fellows to work within host organizations that are established centers of expertise by offering competitively paid fellowships for three, six, nine, or twelve months in duration.
You can learn more about previous fellows’ outputs over the last decade – for 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021 – including ongoing research from the 2022 and 2023 classes.