OTF’s Work Is Vital for a Free and Open Internet – EFF

Keeping the internet open, free, and secure requires eternal vigilance and the constant cooperation of freedom defenders all over the web and the world. Over the past eight years, the Open Technology Fund (OTF) has fostered a global community and provided supportboth monetary and in-kindto more than four hundred projects that seek to combat censorship and repressive surveillance, enabling more than two billion people in over 60 countries to more safely access the open Internet and advocate for democracy.

OTF has earned trust over the years through its open source ethos, transparency, and a commitment to independence from its funder, the US Agency for Global Media (USAGM), which receives its funding through Congressional appropriations.

In the past week, USAGM has removed OTFs leadership and independent expert board, prompting a number of organizations and individuals to call into question OTFs ability to continue its work and maintain trust among the various communities it serves. USAGMs new leadership has been lobbied to redirect funding for OTFs open source projects to a new set of closed-source tools, leaving many well-established tools in the lurch.

Why OTF Matters

EFF has maintained a strong relationship with OTF since its inception. Several of our staff members serve or have served on its Advisory Council, and OTFs annual summits have provided crucial links between EFF and the international democracy tech community. OTFs support has been vital to the development of EFFs software projects and policy initiatives. Guidance and funding from OTF have been foundational to Certbot, helping the operators of tens of millions of websites use EFFs tool to generate and install Lets Encrypt certificates. The OTF-sponsored fellowship for Wafa Ben-Hassine produced impactful research and policy analysis about how Arab governments repress online speech.

OTFs funding is focused on tools to help individuals living under repressive governments. For example, OTF-funded circumvention technologies including Lantern and Wireguard are used by tens of millions of people around the world, including millions of daily users in China. OTF also incubated and assisted in the initial development of the Signal Protocol, the encryption back-end used by both Signal and WhatsApp. By sponsoring Lets Encrypts implementation of multi-perspective validation, OTF helped protect the 227 million sites using Lets Encrypt from BGP attacks, a favorite technique of nation-states that hijack websites for censorship and propaganda purposes.

While these tools are designed for users living under repressive governments, they are used by individuals and groups all over the world, and benefit movements as diverse as Hong Kongs Democracy movement, the movement for Black lives, and LGBTQ+ rights defenders.

OTF requires public, verifiable security audits for all of its open-source software grantees. These audits greatly reduce risk for the vulnerable people who use OTF-funded technology. Perhaps more importantly, they are a necessary step in creating trust between US-funded software and foreign activists in repressive regimes. Without that trust, it is difficult to ask people to risk their lives on OTFs work.

Help Us #SaveInternetFreedom

It is not just OTF that is under threat, but the entire ecosystem of open source, secure technologiesand the global community that builds those tools. We urge you to join EFF and more than 400 other organizations in signing the open letter, which asks members of Congress to:

EFF is proud to join the voices of hundreds of organizations and individuals across the globe calling on UGASM and OTFs board to recommit to the value of open source technology, robust security audits, and support for global Internet freedom. These core valueswhich have been a mainstay of OTF's philanthropyare vital to uplifting the voices of billions of technology users facing repression all over the world.

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OTF's Work Is Vital for a Free and Open Internet - EFF