Tella is a mobile tool that protects civil society facing repressive surveillance.
Tella is a mobile tool that makes it easier and safer to document human rights violations and collect data in authoritarian contexts. It protects users facing repressive surveillance, including device searches/seizures, interception of sensitive communication, and attacks against servers. Tella allows users to seamlessly hide and encrypt sensitive material in a secure container on their mobile device, and securely send this material to the servers of the organization or partner they’re working with.
Previous engagements with OTF supported upgrades to Tella’s security, including improvements to on-device encryption and camouflage to better protect users against physical repressive surveillance. Prior OTF funding also supported improvements to the performance and maintainability of the tool on Android, and achieving feature parity between the latter and iOS with respect to security and privacy features.
The most recent engagement will increase the resilience of Tella to internet shutdowns; make it easier to self-host Tella Web; unify Tella Android and Tella Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) versions to maximize feature availability for F-Droid users (F-Droid is a catalog of FOSS apps for Android); and respond to at-risk users’ security and privacy needs, as well as their user experience.
