Virtual ‘Private’ Networks no Longer Private as PTA Requires Registration
June 19, 2020Comments on the Consultation & Objections to the Rules
July 1, 2020In a world where online freedoms are increasingly under threat from all sides, organisations who work on supporting a free and safe internet are more important than ever. This is why Digital Rights Foundation (DRF) is extremely worried by developments by the US government that might undermine the work Open Tech Fund (OTF) does.
Serious concerns over the future of OTF were raised last week when the new head of the United States Agency for Global Media (USAGM), was planning to push money and funding towards closed-source tools. OTF is an independent non-profit grantee of the USAGM and has been supporting organisations, journalists, human rights defenders and users by funding innovative and open-source projects which uphold internet freedoms across the word. This move prompted Libby Liu, the inaugural OTF CEO, to step down from her position citing concerns of interference from the new head of the USAGM in “the current FY2020 OTF funding stream and redirect some of our resources to a few closed-source circumvention tools.”
OTF was one of the first supporters of DRF’s cyber harassment helpline, which has provided assistance to over 4000 individuals across Pakistan and continues to support journalists, activists, HRDs, women, children and vulnerable groups during the Covid-19 pandemic. The planned move by the USAGM threatens this support and similar work that OTF does with organisations globally. In the last eight years, OTF’s projects have “enabled more than 2 billion people in over 60 countries to safely access the internet.”
As beneficiaries, both direct and indirectly from the tools that OTF supports, we urge the US Congress to take concrete and immediate steps to ensure that OTF continues to support open-source and digital rights projects all over the world. We echo the demands made by the ‘Save Internet Freedom Tech’ coalition including that “all US-Government internet freedom funds to be awarded via an open, fair, competitive, and evidence-based decision process.”
The internet has enabled us to innovate, connect and thrive, particularly during the Covid-19 pandemic. We believe that internet freedom is the bedrock of what makes all these things possible on the internet, and organisations such as OTF which support the work of internet freedom are central to this foundation.
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/935k5p/open-technology-fund-ceo-resigns https://staging-m.digitalrightsfoundation.pk/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Covid-19.pdf. https://saveinternetfreedom.tech/
