Welcoming 11 New Partners in the Quest for Internet Health

Meet the newest host organizations for Ford-Mozilla fellows in the open web

[Note: For the latest information about Mozilla Fellowships, visit https://foundation.mozilla.org/fellowships/]

Update: our host organizations wanted to share what it would look like to be a part of their team as a Fellow! You can read the 411 below:

Code for Science & Society
Creative Commons
Tor Project
Artigo 19
Witness
Wikimedia
Derechos Digitales

Civil society can have an outsized impact on the health of the internet — nonprofits and institutions conduct groundbreaking research, build tools that thwart digital harassment, and protect marginalized communities online.

Today, we’re excited to announce 11 groups doing important work like this, and joining our network as the newest host organizations for the Ford-Mozilla fellows focused on open web activism. These 11 civil society partners are playing a pivotal role in keeping the internet open and inclusive.

Each of these organizations will host a Ford-Mozilla Fellow from September 2018 through June 2019. Fellows are technologists and activists who champion issues like online privacy, net neutrality, digital inclusion, and cybersecurity.

Past Fellows have worked with their host organizations to research biased algorithms, build secure whistleblowing tools, and map digital threats to civil society.

Below, meet our 2018 host organizations. And bookmark Mozilla’s Fellowship website — on Wednesday, March 21, we’re opening our call for 2018 Mozilla Fellows.

Consumer Reports | @ConsumerReports | Washington, DC

Consumer Reports is an independent, nonprofit member organization that works side by side with consumers for truth, transparency, and fairness in the marketplace. We use our rigorous research, consumer insights, journalism, and policy expertise to inform purchase decisions, improve the products and services that businesses deliver, and drive regulatory and fair competitive practices. We succeed in our mission every time your family gets a little bit safer, your finances get more secure, new technologies get more trustworthy, and the future gets that much brighter. Together we are creating a fairer, safer, and healthier world.

The Tor Project | @torproject | Global

The Tor Project is a US 501(c)(3) non-profit organization advancing human rights and freedoms by creating and deploying free and open source anonymity and privacy technologies, supporting their unrestricted availability and use, and furthering their scientific and popular understanding. Check out this video to see how Tor helps you stay secure and private online.

Witness | @witnessorg | Brooklyn, NY

WITNESS helps anyone, anywhere use video and technology to protect and defend human rights.

Our dynamic, cross-disciplinary team is based in five regions around the world. We collaborate with and provide training to activists, lawyers, and others around the safe, ethical, and effective use of video and related technologies for human rights. Based on our close collaborations with our partners, we develop guidance that can be shared and adapted by activists in a variety of contexts and locations — and we connect those activists with their counterparts around the world, building networks that facilitate exchange of resources, strategies, and skills. Our tech+advocacy program complements this work with policy advocacy, tech tool development, and advocacy to major online platforms and tech companies for tools and policies that help, instead of hinder, human rights defenders. In particular, we focus on bringing tech companies perspectives on their products that they would otherwise be unlikely to hear. We believe that when used right, video and technologies related to video can create positive change in the world.

Creative Commons |@creativecommons | Global

Empowering the world to share through 6 simple licenses + a global community of advocates for open.

Creative Commons helps you legally share your knowledge and creativity to build a more equitable, accessible, and innovative world. We unlock the full potential of the internet to drive a new era of development, growth and productivity.

With a network of staff, board, and affiliates around the world, Creative Commons provides free, easy-to-use copyright licenses to make a simple and standardized way to give the public permission to share and use your creative work–on conditions of your choice.

Code for Science & Society | @codeforsociety ; @dat_project | Portland, Oregon

We empower communities to work together and build innovative technology for the public good.

At Code for Science & Society, we work across research, government, journalism, and new media to create innovative technology for the public good. Centralized, private services limit information access, creativity, and free expression. Across industries, people are working to reimagine systems that allow ideas and data to flow freely, but these groups work in isolation.

We support projects, including the Dat Project, Stencila, and ScienceFair, who are creating innovative, open, and decentralized tools. We work with these groups to push existing boundaries while supporting inclusive models of community. We build foundational technology that allows data to flow across silos and institutions. By working across domains and building peer-to-peer tools, we empower communities to address society’s hardest problems.

Bits of Freedom | @bitsoffreedom | Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Bits of Freedom is an independent Dutch digital rights foundation, which focuses on privacy and communications freedom on the internet. Through policy work, campaigns, empowerment and litigation and with both technical and legal expertise they make sure that our democracy and the rule of law stay fit for the digital age.

Derechos Digitales | @derechosdigital | Oficina principal Stgo, Chile

The Digital Rights mission is the defense, promotion and development of human rights in the digital environment, through advocacy on public policies and private practices.

Derechos Digitales is an independent Latin American non-profit organization, founded in 2005 and whose main objective is the development, defense and promotion of human rights in the digital environment.

The work of the organization focuses on three fundamental axes:

• Freedom of expression.
• Privacy and personal data.
• Copyright and access to knowledge.

Astraea Foundation | @AstraeaUpdates | New York, NY

Founded in 1977, Astraea is the only philanthropic organization working exclusively to advance LGBTQI human rights on a global scale. We are a public fund rooted in LGBTQI communities: our founders were a group of lesbians and women of color whose feminist vision for social change found common ground across racial and class differences. Our mission is based on an enduring commitment to feminism, progressive social change and an end to all forms of exploitation and discrimination. Astraea’s multi-faceted leadership in philanthropy creates unparalleled resources for underfunded communities and helps move to the fore voices most directly affected by social and structural inequities.

Wikimedia Foundation | @Wikimedia ; @wikimediapolicy| Global

The Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. is a nonprofit charitable organization dedicated to encouraging the growth, development and distribution of free, multilingual, educational content, and to providing the full content of these wiki-based projects to the public free of charge. The Wikimedia Foundation operates some of the largest collaboratively edited reference projects in the world, including Wikipedia, a top-ten internet property.

Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. That’s our commitment.

Privacy International | @privacyint | London, UK

We shine a light on overreaching state and corporate surveillance, with a focus on the sophisticated technologies and weak laws that enable serious incursions into our privacy. We challenge governments’ powers by advocating and litigating for stronger protections. We lead research and investigations to shine a light on powers and capabilities, and to instigate and inform debate. We advocate for good practices and strong laws worldwide to protect people and their rights. We equip civil society organisations across the world to increase public awareness about privacy. We raise awareness about technologies and laws that place privacy at risk, to ensure that the public is informed and engaged.

Artigo 19 |@ARTIGO19 | América do Sul

An international NGO that since 1987 has been active in the defense and promotion of freedom of expression and access to information.

(ONG internacional que, desde 1987, atua na defesa e promoção da liberdade de expressão e do acesso à informação.)

The Article 19 is to promote and defend the rights to freedom of expression and access to information worldwide. For this, we seek to develop our work on different fronts, in different ways, always taking into account international human rights standards.

We help design and promote laws and policies that aim to hold not only the public power but all those who commit some kind of violation against the right to express themselves freely.

We monitor and pressure governments to adopt practices that have transparency and accountability as a rule, carrying out wide-ranging campaigns with society and constantly evaluating mechanisms for access to public information.

We provide support to victims of violations motivated by the exercise of the right to freedom of expression, discussing immediate protective actions, providing legal aid in selected cases and publicly denouncing the occurrence of abuses. In addition, we also work under the preventive bias, with the production of materials and the creation of workshops that promote safety measures for communicators and human rights defenders — always pressing public authorities to fulfill their obligations in these areas.

We also provide assistance and training in various contemporary issues related to freedom of expression and access to information, such as freedom of the press, crimes against honor, government transparency, public communication, media pluralism and the promotion of diversity.