The Open Technology Fund community was well represented at the 2015 Circumvention Tech Festival (CTF), held in Valencia, Spain from March 1-6. The annual festival brings together some of the best and brightest organizations and individuals in the Internet Freedom community, offering a rare chance for collaboration between developers, activists, and funders alike.
OTF-funded ASL 19 hosted the Iran Cyber Dialogue (ICD), a two-day summit centered around “ICT development, human rights and diplomacy,” as they relate specifically to Iran. OTF’s Principal Director Dan Meredith served as a panelist on “Moving Forward: Building Effective Responses,” which focused on the role the global community plays in expanding Internet Freedom for all Internet users, including those in Iran.
“It’s not about just making more circumvention tools or amping up the power of those existing circumvention tools. That’s a part of it, but the other part of it is making sure that they’re really linked and driven by what’s happening in Iran so that they are culturally appropriate and they [Iranian people online] can identify with those technologies,” Meredith said.
Watch the full discussion here.
Griffin Boyce, who leads work on OTF-supported tools Cupcake Bridge and Satori, hosted two talks at CTF. “Shaping User Experience for LGBT Communities” focused on how “life’s experiences can affect users’ needs for privacy and security, as well as impact how they interact with service providers and software,” while “There’s an app for that” gave “an in-depth review of the best security software protocols, focusing on what information they do and do not protect, along with common pitfalls.”
OTF-supported Tor Project also featured prominently at CTF, serving as a CTF event partner and hosting several private and public-facing events, ranging from hackathons to trainer summits.
The Circumvention Tech Festival “gathers the community fighting censorship and surveillance for a week of conferences, workshops, hackathons, and social gatherings, featuring many of the Internet Freedom community’s flagship events.”
Click here for more information.