Former OTF CEO Libby Liu. | Photo: Flickr / USC Public Diplomacy
One of the US government’s strongest forces for internet freedom is in danger, and supporters are calling on the public for help. The Open Technology Fund (OTF), a small US agency devoted to protecting digital speech across the world, has helped support nearly all of the most prominent encryption projects at various points — including Signal, Tails, Qubes, and the Tor Project. But after the abrupt firing of the fund’s entire leadership team, current recipients say their contractually promised funding is now at risk.
“Very concretely, this would mean that we wouldn’t be able to upgrade the app’s security architecture, putting our users at risk,” Raphael Mimoun, who operates the evidence-protection app Tella, told The Verge. “Without OTF…