Save Internet Freedom: Support the Open Technology Fund

Global internet freedom is more important than ever before, but the current administration in the United States is threatening to dismantle the Open Technology Fund - the most effective tool Congress has in the fight to safeguard the internet as a secure democratic space. Such action risks ceding the internet to increasingly repressive authoritarian regimes and must be stopped. Sign this letter today and tell Congress: Don't turn your back on the Open Technology Fund! Take action now to ensure people around the world are still able to speak, think, and worship freely online.

Letter to Congress

Dear Members of Congress,

The internet is a vital information lifeline for over 3 billion people worldwide, but for many, this lifeline is being severed. From Xinjiang to Hong Kong and from Caracas to Tehran, repressive regimes are deploying a new generation of advanced censorship and surveillance technology, designed to stifle dissent, track religious and ethnic minorities, and manipulate content online.

As the fight for free expression escalates, the US is in danger of losing the most effective program that Congress has at its disposal for defending internet freedom, the Open Technology Fund (OTF).

We write as a coalition of more than individuals and organizations to urge Congress to voice its support for the Open Technology Fund. It is imperative that Congress ensure that the new leadership of the United States Agency for Global Media (USAGM) does not dismantle OTF, and, against the intent of Congress, rescind US government support for its essential work.

OTF is an independent non-profit grantee of the United States Agency for Global Media (USAGM). Over the past eight years, OTF, and the projects it supports, have enabled more than 2 billion people in over 60 countries to safely access the internet free from censorship and repressive surveillance. Through OTF-funded projects millions of people in Mainland China leap over the Great Firewall, Cubans access independent news reporting and communicate securely without an internet connection on the island, thousands of activists avoid repressive surveillance in Iran and circumvent internet shutdowns in Turkey, and journalists stay safe online in Russia.

Despite OTF’s important work, there are serious concerns that the new leadership within the USAGM will seek to dismantle OTF and re-allocate all of its US government funding to support a narrow set of anti-censorship tools without a transparent and open review process. Moreover, these technologies are closed-source, limiting the number of people around the world who are able to access them and making the tools less secure, thus jeopardizing the safety of users and the global public's trust in US-supported internet freedom technologies. Such an approach also fails to recognize the numerous threats to internet freedom and the much larger set of actions that are required to help those being targeted by repressive governments.

Around the world, intrepid journalists and dedicated activists are taking great personal risks to further freedom and democracy. OTF's open, fair, competitive, and evidence-based award process ensures that those brave individuals have the best tools and technologies available to protect themselves. OTF funds open-source technologies and has funded over 100, independent, third-party security audits of internet freedom technologies to ensure only those with the highest security standards are supported with US-government funds.

Authoritarian regimes have made it clear that they are willing to do whatever it takes to control the internet. It is crucial that the US safeguards the internet as a democratic space for free expression. We urge Congress to respond to these escalating attacks on freedom of speech by protecting the internet through its continued and strong bipartisan support for OTF.

Specifically, we ask Members of Congress to:

• Require USAGM to honor existing FY2019 and FY2020 spending plans to support the Open Technology Fund;
• Require all US-Government internet freedom funds to be awarded via an open, fair, competitive, and evidence-based decision process;
• Require all internet freedom technologies supported with US-Government funds to remain fully open-source in perpetuity;
• Require regular security audits for all internet freedom technologies supported with US-Government funds; and
• Pass the Open Technology Fund Authorization Act.

Today, millions rely on technology incubated by OTF to break free of the Great Firewall. We urge Congress to sustain its support for this vital institution so that the United States can continue to enable those living in internet-repressive environments to speak, think, associate, and worship freely online.

Sincerely,

The undersigned

• Bill Marczak

  Citizen Lab

• Keri Lloyd

  Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs

• John Sarapata

  Google

• Miguel De icaza

  Microsoft

• Alexey Rusakov

  Red Hat

• Rebecca MacKinnon

• Harlo Holmes

  Freedom of the Press Foundation

• Marina Fedorova

  UCI

• Lex Gill

  Citizen Lab

• Mallory Knodel

  Center for Democracy & Technology

• Javier Garza

  Freelance journalist

• Wojtek Bogusz

  Front Line Defenders

• Psi Vesely

  UC Berkeley, cLabs

• Nicholas Doiron

  Tufts University

• Todd Davies

  Stanford University

• Daniel Mahoney

  Internet Systems Consortium

• Dr Clara Brekke

  Durham University

• Arzu Geybulla

  Azerbaijan Internet Watch

• Michael Dessen

  Professor, University of California, Irvine

• Nedal Alsalman

  Bahrain rights

• Ken Montenegro

  National Lawyers Guild

• Wendy Seltzer

• Catherine Liu

  UC Irvine

• Katherine Maher

  Wikimedia Foundation, CEO

• David Weinberger

• Mishi Choudhary

  Software Freedom Law Center

• Kevin Wed

  DigitalOcean

• Ron Deibert

  Citizen Lab

• Michael J. Oghia

  Global Forum for Media Development (GFMD)

• Mario Hoffmann

  HTW Berlin

• Salil Vadhan

  Harvard University

• Zachary Weinberg

  UMass-Amherst

• Myra Abdallah

  Arab Foundation for Freedoms and Equality

• Pierce Stanley

  Council on Foreign Relations

• Maksym Lunochkin

  Digital Security Lab Ukraine

• Chad Sansing

  Mozilla Foundation

• Tessa Menatian

  Media Democracy Fund

• Mila Salahuddin

  My future

• Iryna Chulivska

  Digital Security Lab Ukraine

• Abdallah Alsalmi

  BBC

• Bryan Nunez

• Mehrad Sheida

• Rebecca MacKinnon

• Luke Stark

  Microsoft Research

• Josh Levy

  Center for Digital Resilience

• Emma Prest

  OCCRP

• Judith Olson

  University of California Irvine

• Raquel Renno

  ARTICLE 19

• Ben Cheng

  Internet Society Hong Kong

• Max Hunter

  Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF)

• Arthit Suriyawongkul

  Thai Netizen Network

• Lauren Bridges

  Annenberg School for Communication

• Al Smith

  The Tor Project

• Mike Linksvayer

  GitHub

• Niels ten Oever

  DATACTIVE Research Group at University of Amsterdam

• Jillian York

  Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF)

• Xavier Canal Masjuan

  Red Hat

• Ivan Sigal

  Global Voices

• Meghan McDermott

  CUNY Law

• Ben Scott

  Reset

• Lotus R

  Citizen Lab

• Nicole Leaver

  Tufts University

• Pia Mancini

  Open Collective

• Emmanuele Somma

  Partito Pirata in Italia (President of the Permanent Congress)

• Claire Vergerio

  Princeton University

• Harley Balzer

  Professor Emeritus, Georgetown University

• Wendy Hanamura

  Internet Archive

• Lucy Bernholz

• Antonela Debiasi

  The Tor Project

• Francesca Musiani

  National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS)

• Yen-Tung Lin

  UC Berkeley

• Michael Meehan

  Former BBG Governor

• Shariya Algama

  Justus-Liebig-Universität Gießen

• Barbie Zelizer

  Center for Media at Risk at the University of Pennsylvania

• Valerie Frissen

  SIDN fund/Leiden university

• Baobao Zhang

  Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society

• Britt Paris

  Rutgers University

• SC Leung

  ISOC Hong Kong

• Alexandre Franke

  GNOME

• Vivian Zuniga

  Internet Freedom Festival Advisory Board

• Susan Landau

  Tufts University

• Luis Villa

  Co-founder, Tidelift; board member emeritus, Open Source Initiative

• Lokman Tsui

  The Chinese University of Hong Kong

• Ivan Sigal

  Global Voices

• Me Me Thein

  Myanmar People Alliance (Shan State)

• Clinton Gibson

  University of California Davis

• Kendra Albert

  Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society

• Lulu Keng

  Open Culture Foundation

• Mohamad Najem

  SMEX

• Jana Wichmann

  Board member Open Knowledge Foundation Germany

• Daniel Kahn Gillmor

• Chris Lawrence

  Grant for the Web

• Eileen Donahoe

  Stanford Global Digital Policy Incubator

• Sofia Arroyo

  EDGE Funders Alliance

• Felicia Anthonio

  Access Now

• Ming-Syuan Ho

  Taiwan Association for Human Rights

• Nathalie Marechal

  Ranking Digital Rights

• Joshua Shepperd

  University of Colorado at Boulder

• Peter Micek

  Access Now

• Dan Gillmor

  Arizona State University

• Irene Poetranto

  The Citizen Lab, University of Toronto

• Allison McDonald

  University of Michigan

• Javier Cavanilles

  IFF

• Qiang Xiao

  School of Information, UC Berkeley

• Bo-Xiang You

  National Taiwan University

• Mohammad Ghaffarian

  United for Iran

• Julia Kloiber

  Superrr

• Nehalenniæ OUDIN

  Sorbonne Université, LIP6

• Danny O'Brien

• Rachael Jolley

  Index on Censorship

• Stephanie Taylor

  Progressive Change Institute

• Ming-Syuan Ho

  Taiwan Association for Human Rights

• Paola Ricaurte

  Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society

• Masashi Nishihata

• Li-Lun Wang

  Google

• Jonathan Penn

  University of Cambridge

• Lobsang Gyatso Sither

  Tibet Action Institute

• Craig Aaron

  Free Press Action

• Mutale Nkonde

  Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society

• John Hering

  Lookout & The Hering Foundation

• Marcus Michaelsen

  Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium

• Maame Akua Marfo

  Young Feminist Fund (FRIDA), Young Feminist Collective (Ghana)

• Dongfang Han

  China Labour Bulletin

• Juan Rivera Palomino

  Universidad de San Marcos-Lima-Peru

• Linghao Zhang

  ETH Zurich

• Bernard Tyers

  OTF Advisory Council

• Caroline Sinders

  Harvard Kennedy School

• Diep Dao

  SaveNET - Internet Freedom for Vietnam

• Christopher Coleman

  University of Denver

• Marianne Díaz Hernandez

  Derechos Digitales

• Alexa Koenig

  Human Rights Center, UC Berkeley School of Law

• Cole Gleason

  Carnegie Mellon University

• Andrea Lampros

  UC Berkeley Human Rights Center

• Emma Hornick

  University of Iowa

• Mykola Kostynyan

  FreeNet Ukraine Coalition

• Paul Dourish

  University of California, Irvine

• Jessica Fjeld

  Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society

• Julia Reda

  Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society

• Sarah Morris

  Open Technology Institute

• Miller Michelle

  Coworker

• Amar Ashar

  Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society

• Emma Humphries

  Mozilla

• Laura Moy

  Georgetown University Law Center

• Belen Febres

  Simon Fraser University

• Riana Pfefferkorn

  Stanford Center for Internet and Society

• and 1026 Anonymous signatories.

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