https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Technology_Fund
The Open Technology Fund (OTF) is an American non-profit corporation[7] with the aim to support global Internet freedom technologies. Its mission is to "support open technologies and communities that increase free expression, circumvent censorship, and obstruct repressive surveillance as a way to promote human rights and open societies."[1] As of November 2019, the Open Technology Fund became an independent grantee corporation of the U.S. Agency for Global Media.[7] Until then, it had operated as a Radio Free Asia program.[7]
The Open Technology Fund was created in 2012 as a pilot program within Radio Free Asia.[2][7] Under U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the State Department adopted a policy of supporting global internet freedom initiatives.[8] At this time, RFA began looking into technologies that helped their audiences avoid censorship and surveillance.[8] Journalist Eli Lake argued that Clinton's policy was "heavily influenced by the Internet activism that helped organize the green revolution in Iran in 2009 and other revolutions in the Arab world in 2010 and 2011".[8]
In September 2014, the OTF worked with Google and Dropbox to create an organization called Simply Secure to help improve the usability of privacy tools.[9]
In March 2017, the OTF's future was reported as under question due to the Trump administration's unclear positions on Internet freedom issues.[10] Since then, the OTF has continued to receive Congressional funding under the Trump administration.
In November 2019, OTF announced that they became an independent non-profit corporation.
https://www.opentech.fund/news/new-independent-otf/
Mon, 2019-11-25 13:59
The Open Technology Fund is proud to announce that we have become an independent non-profit corporation and the first-ever USAGM grantee dedicated to protecting human rights by combating online censorship and advancing Internet freedom worldwide. This evolution is the culmination of seven years of hard work and is a credit to the zeal, impact, and tireless dedication of the global Internet freedom community.
OTF was initially created in 2012 as a pilot program at Radio Free Asia, an affiliate of USAGM. Over the last seven years, the OTF program has supported pioneering research, development, and implementation of cutting-edge Internet freedom technologies to respond to evolving censorship threats around the world. Today, over two billion people globally use OTF-supported technology daily, and more than two-thirds of all mobile users have OTF-incubated technology on their device.
This next phase in OTF’s development comes at a critical time. Around the world, authoritarian regimes are increasing their efforts to censor, restrict and surveil the Internet. Leading censors like China and Russia are not only becoming far more sophisticated in the means through which they control the online lives of their own citizens, they are increasingly exporting their censorship and surveillance tactics to like-minded regimes abroad. Once the sole purview of a few highly motivated and well-resourced authoritarian states, repressive censorship and surveillance have become a global phenomenon.
https://www.opentech.fund/news/february-2020-monthly-report/
Projects Mentioned
Securing Domain Validation
MassBrowser
Suspicious Email Submitter
Onions on Apples
OONI: Open Observatory of Network Interference
Ouinet
Tahoe-LAFS
5G and Human Rights