Technologists play a huge role in building alternative tools and resources when our right to privacy and security are undermined by governments and major corporations. This direct resistance ensures that even in the face of powerful adversaries, communities can find some safety and autonomy through community-built tools.

One of the most renowned names in this work is the Calyx Institute, a New York based 501(c)3 nonprofit founded by Nicholas Merrill, after a successful and influential constitutional challenge to the National Security Letter (NSL) statute in the USA Patriot Act. Today Calyx’s mission is to defend digital privacy, advance connectivity, and strive for a future where everyone has access to the resources and tools they need to remain securely connected. Their work is made possible thanks to the generous donations of their over 12,000 grassroots members.

More recently, Calyx joined EFF’s network of grassroots organizations across the US, the Electronic Frontier Alliance (EFA). Members of the alliance are not-for-profit local organizations dedicated to EFA’s five guiding principles: privacy, free expression, access to knowledge, creativity, and security. Calyx has since been an exceptional ally, lifting up and collaborating with fellow members.

If you’re inspired by Calyx to start making a difference in your community, you can get started with our organizer toolkits. Once you’re ready, we hope you consider applying to join the alliance.

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We corresponded with Calyx over email to discuss the group's ambitious work, and what the future holds for Calyx. Here are excerpts from our conversation:

Thanks for chatting with us, to get started could you tell us a bit about Calyx’s current work?

Calyx focuses on three areas: (1) developing a privacy-respecting software ecosystem, (2) bridging the digital divide with affordable internet access, and (3) sustaining our community through grants, and research, and educational initiatives.

We build and maintain a digital ecosystem of free and open-source software (FOSS) centering on CalyxOS, an Android operating system that encrypts communications, combats invasive metadata collection, and protects users from geolocation tracking. The Calyx Internet Membership Program offers mobile hotspots so people have a way to stay connected despite limited resources or a lack of viable alternatives. Finally, Calyx actively engages with diverse stakeholder groups to build a shared understanding of privacy and expand digital-security literacy and provide grants to directly support aligned organizations. By partnering with our peers, funders, and service providers, we hope to drive collective action toward a privacy-and-rights-respecting future of technology.

Calyx projects work with a wide range of technologies. What are some barriers Calyx runs into in this work?

Our biggest challenge is one shared by many tech communities, particularly FOSS advocates: it is difficult to balance privacy and security with usability in tool development. On the one hand, the current data-mining business model of the tech sector makes it extremely hard to provide FOSS solutions to proprietary tech while keeping the tool intuitive and easy to use. On the other, there is a general lack of momentum for funding and growing an alternative digital ecosystem.

As a result, many digital rights enthusiasts are left with scarce resources and a narrow space within which to work on technical solutions. We need more people to work together and collectively advocate for a privacy-respecting tech ecosystem that cares about all communities and does not marginalize anyone.

Take CalyxOS, for example. Before it became a tangible project, our founder Nick spent years thinking about an alternative mobile operating system that put privacy first. Back in 2012, Nick spoke to Moxie Marlinspike, the creator of the Signal messaging app, about his idea. Moxie shared several valid concerns that almost led Nick to stop working on it. Fortunately, these warnings, which came from Moxie’s experience and success with Signal, made Nick even more determined, and he recruited an expert global team to help realize his idea.

What do you see as the role of technologists in defending civil liberties with local communities?

Technologists are enablers—they build tools and technical infrastructures, fundamental parts of the digital ecosystem within which people exercise their rights and enjoy their lives. A healthy digital ecosystem consists of technologies that liberate people. It is an arena where people willingly and actively connect and share their expertise, confident in the shared protocols that protect everyone’s rights and dignity. That is why Calyx builds and advocates for people-centered, privacy-focused FOSS tools.

How has Calyx supported folks in NYC? What have you learned from it?

It’s a real privilege to be part of the NYC tech community, which has such a wealth of technologists, policy experts, human rights watchdogs, and grassroots activists. In recent years, we joined efforts led by multiple networks and organizations to mobilize against unjustifiable mass surveillance and other digital threats faced by millions of people of color, immigrants, and other underrepresented groups.

We’re particularly proud of the support we provided to another EFA member, Surveillance Technology Oversight Project, on the Ban the Scan campaign to ban facial recognition in NYC, and CryptoHarlem to sustain their work bringing digital privacy and cybersecurity education to communities in Harlem and beyond. Most recently, we funded Sunset Spark—a small nonprofit offering free education in science and technology in the heart of Brooklyn—to develop a multipurpose curriculum focused on privacy, internet infrastructure, and the roles of the public and private sectors in our digital world.

These experiences deeply inspired us to shape a funding philosophy that centers the needs of organizations and groups with limited resources, helps local communities break barriers and build capacity, and grows reciprocal relationships between each member of the community.

You mentioned a grantmaking program, which is a really unique project for an EFA member. Could you tell us a bit about your theory of change for the program?

Since 2020, the Calyx Institute has been funding the development of digital privacy and security tools, research on mass surveillance systems, and training efforts to equip people with the knowledge and tools they need to protect their right to privacy and connectivity. In 2022, Calyx launched the Fusion Center Research Fund to aid investigations into law enforcement harvesting of personal data through intelligence-sharing centers. This effort, with nearly $200,000 disbursed to grantees, helped reveal the deleterious impact of surveillance technology on privacy and freedom of expression.

These efforts have led to the Sepal Fund, Calyx’s pilot program to offer small groups unrestricted and holistic grants. This program will provide five organizations, collectives, or projects a yearly grant of up to $50,000 for a total of three years. In addition, we will provide our grantees opportunities for professional development, as well as other resources. Through this program, we hope to sustain and elevate research, tool development, and education that will support digital privacy and defend internet freedom.

Could you tell us a bit about how people can get involved?

All our projects are, at their core, community projects, and we welcome insights and involvement from anyone to whom our work is relevant. CalyxOS offers a variety of ways to connect, including a CalyxOS Matrix room and GitLab repository where users and programmers interact in real time to troubleshoot and discuss improvements. Part of making CalyxOS accessible is ensuring that it’s as widely available as possible, so anyone who would like to be part of that translation and localization effort should visit our weblate site.

What does the future look like for Calyx?

We are hoping that the future holds big things for us, like CalyxOS builds on more affordable and globally available mobile devices so that people in different locations with varied resources can equally enjoy the right to privacy. We are also looking forward to updating our visual communication—we have been “substance over style” for so long that it will be exciting to see how a refreshed look will help us reach new audiences.

Finally, what’s your “moonshot”? What’s the ideal future Calyx wants to build?

The Calyx dream is accessible digital privacy, security, and connectivity for all, regardless of budget or tech background, centering communities that are most in need.

We want a future where everyone has access to the resources and tools they need to remain securely connected. To get there, we’ll need to work on building a lot of capacity, both technological and informational. Great tools can only fulfill their purpose if people know why and how to use them. Creating those tools and spreading the word about them requires collaboration, and we are proud to be working toward that goal alongside all the organizations that make up the EFA.

Our thanks to the Calyx Institute for their continued efforts to build private and secure tools for targeted groups, in New York City and across the globe. You can find and support other Electronic Frontier Alliance affiliated groups near you by visiting eff.org/fight.

Aaron Swartz was a digital rights champion who believed deeply in keeping the internet open. His life was cut short in 2013, after federal prosecutors charged him under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) for systematically downloading academic journal articles from the online database JSTOR. Facing the prospect of a long and unjust sentence, Aaron died by suicide at the age of 26. EFF was proud to call Aaron a friend and ally.

Today, November 8, would have been his 38th birthday.  On November 9, the organizers of Aaron Swartz Day are celebrating his life with a guest-packed podcast featuring those carrying on the work around issues close to his heart. Hosts Lisa Rein and Andre Vinicus Leal Sobral will speak to: 

• Ryan Shapiro, co-founder of the national security  transparency non-profit Property of the People
• Nathan Dyer of SecureDrop, Newsroom Support Engineer for the Freedom of the Press Foundation.
• Tracey Jaquith, Founding Coder and TV Architect at the Internet Archive
• Tracy Rosenberg, co-founder of the Aaron Swartz Day Police Surveillance Project and Oakland Privacy
• Brewster Kahle founder of the Internet Archive
• Ryan Sternlicht, VR developer, educator, researcher, advisor, and maker
• Grant Smith Ellis, Chairperson of the Board, MassCann and Legal Intern at the Parabola Center
• Michael “Mek” Karpeles, Open Library, Internet Archive

The podcast will start at 2 p.m. PT/10 p.m. UTC. Please read the official page of the Aaron Swartz Day and International Hackathon for full details.

If you're a programmer or developer engaged in cutting-edge exploration of technology, please check out EFF's Coders' Rights Project.

Recently I got the chance to speak with longtime Electronic Frontier Alliance member Surveillance Technology Oversight Project (S.T.O.P.). They’ve got a new Advocacy Manager, Kat Phan, and exciting projects are coming down the pike! Kat took some time to share with EFF how things are looking for STOP, their many successes, education & advocacy work, and how people from across the country can plug-in and support.

Can you share how S.T.O.P. came to be, got started, and its mission?   

S.T.O.P. as an organization grew from the belief that emerging surveillance technologies pose an unprecedented threat to public safety and the promise of a free society. Our executive director, Albert Fox Cahn, started S.T.O.P. in 2019 to address the long-ignored threat of state and local government surveillance. While federal advocates spent years at loggerheads over the federal surveillance powers, the growth of local police surveillance, particularly the NYPD, often went unchecked. S.T.O.P. started with an understanding that digital surveillance has played a key role in the historic criminalization of BIPOC, Muslim, and immigrant communities.  Building an intersectional coalition, we began to educate New Yorkers on the disparate and discriminatory impact police surveillance has on Muslim Americans, immigrants, the LGBTQ+ community, Indigenous peoples, communities of color, and disabled people. These local collaborations, which enable us to share resources for anti-surveillance work and advocate for legislation with the support of impacted community members, form the backbone of our mission – which is to systematically dismantle the local surveillance apparatus here in New York City, as well as to build a model for dismantling local surveillance across the United States.  

What have been some of the issues you've concentrated on and could you walk us through a timeline of some of your early successes to more recent?  

Unveiling the NYPD’s sprawling surveillance systems has been a huge chunk of our work thus far. The department is notoriously opaque about the surveillance technologies at their disposal, obscuring how they disproportionately surveil Black, Latinx, and Muslim New Yorkers. One of S.T.O.P.’s earliest successes was the passage of the Public Oversight of Surveillance Technology (POST) Act, which ordered the department to disclose information about their use of surveillance to the public. The POST Act allowed S.T.O.P. and Legal Aid Society to uncover nearly $3 billion in formerly hidden NYPD surveillance contracts. However, the NYPD regularly violates the POST Act, systematically and unlawfully refusing to comply with requests for information related to its use of surveillance technology.  

Our impact litigation extends beyond revealing records to the public. We have also successfully represented survivors of surveillance abuse, suing government agencies and their vendors to end surveillance practices. In 2020, we took the NYPD to court, forcing the department to end its Islamophobic “hijab ban” policy, which required arrestees to remove head coverings for mugshots and fueled the NYPD’s facial recognition database.   

Establishing privacy protections around health and location data has been another major focus of our work. The year following S.T.O.P.’s launch, the Covid-19 pandemic hit. We quickly responded to New York City’s proposed contact tracing system, working to ensure that data collected to “flatten the curve” was not put to other uses or shared with law enforcement agencies or other third parties. In anticipation of the Dobbs decision in 2022, we conducted similar rapid response work, publishing Pregnancy Panopticon: Abortion Surveillance After Roe, a widely-viewed white-paper report warning pregnant people and reproductive advocates of the risks posed by digital surveillance.  

Our other wins include helping outlaw K-12 facial recognition technology, drafting more than 20 bills, publishing more than 140 op-eds, drafting and releasing dozens of whitepapers, testifying before lawmakers in New York and nationally dozens of times, and more.  

S.T.O.P. is getting a lot of visibility online due to your work on Voyager Labs and the NYPD. Can you shed light on this work?   

Our organization found that in 2018, NYPD entered a nearly $9 million contract with Voyager Labs, an AI-based data surveillance firm which scrapes and monitors social media data. Voyager Labs claims its products can predict future crimes by using spyware, creating fake social media profiles, and making inaccurate predictions on suspects for criminal activity based on social media connections, location tracking, and other forms of data surveillance. For instance, Voyager Labs has claimed that its AI can assign prediction scores to social media users on “ties or affinity for Islamic fundamentalism or extremism” or “provide an automated indication of individuals who may pose a risk.”    

In response to this, S.T.O.P. has continued to fight NYPD’s exploitation of social media monitoring and digital “stop and frisk” practices. We are a leading advocate of the “Stop Online Police Fake Accounts and Keep Everyone Safe” (STOP FAKES) Act in New York State. This first-of-its-kind legislation would ban police from leveraging fake social media accounts to surveil New Yorkers. We have also introduced a bill in the City Council which would dissolve NYPD’s so-called “gang database” and prohibit the future use of surveillance practice predicated on association.  

Can you tell us about some of your other current projects?   

S.T.O.P. juggles a multitude of projects developing anti-surveillance resources for local advocates and directly impacted community members. For example, Guilt By Association, a white-paper report recently released by S.T.O.P. detailing how police databases use non-criminal criteria, such as neighborhoods, peer groups, and clothing, as a reason to surveil Black and Latinx youth, supports our work with the GANGS Coalition to dissolve the NYPD database and prohibit the future use of surveillance practices predicated on association. And our latest report, The Kids Won’t Be Alright: The Looming Threat of Child Surveillance Laws, will inform the curriculum for our youth-focused privacy trainings.   

What's next on the horizon for STOP?   

Our upcoming legislative work will heavily focus on passing a set of anti-surveillance and privacy laws at both the state and City Council level. At the state level, there is “Banning Big Brother: New York’s Surveillance Sanctuary State Blueprint”, a 10-bill package which includes first-in-the-nation bans on geofence warrants and fake police social media profiles. You can learn more about that campaign through its website: https://www.banbigbro.tech/.   

At the local level, S.T.O.P. just relaunched our Ban the Scan campaign to introduce a city-wide ban on government use of biometric surveillance and pass two bills in the Council that would prohibit landlords and places of public accommodations from using biometric surveillance, such as facial recognition technology. You can learn more about that campaign through its website, banthescan.org, when it launches on October 17th.   

Do opportunities exist for people to get involved? How can people contact and support your work?  

Because our team and work thrive when we are connected to community work and can work alongside other organizations or groups similarly invested in privacy protections, S.T.O.P. welcomes collaboration on public and digital events and campaigns. For those who would prefer to be involved in our campaigns in an individual capacity, S.T.O.P. welcomes support as a volunteer, junior board member, intern, or legal fellow. We know that lived experiences are the most informative when it comes to demanding change and encourage folks from all backgrounds to join the fight to abolish all systems of mass surveillance.  

What supports our work is not only direct participation as a staff member or volunteer, but donations and contributions to fuel our fight against mass surveillance (www.stopspying.org/donate). Additionally, community partnerships are key to our sustainment, and working with organizations near and far helps us share our resources and build a network of allies in our mission to end governmental abuse of surveillance technologies.

Recently I got the chance to speak with longtime Electronic Frontier Alliance member Cambridge Community Television (CCTV). Their membership is growing, they’ve got a new Associate Director of Community Relations, Maritza Grooms, and exciting projects are coming down the pike! Maritza took some time to share with EFF how things are looking for CCTV, their upcoming advocacy work, and how people from across the country, not just Massachusetts, can plug-in and support.

Can you share how CCTV Cambridge got started?

Cambridge Community Television is a nonprofit community media organization that formed through the origination of cable television in Cambridge in 1988. CCTV’s mission has evolved over time from providing resources to residents, businesses, and organizations in Cambridge through telecommunication tools and services, to our current mission of nurturing a strong, equitable and diverse community by providing tools and training to foster free speech, civic engagement, and creative expression.

What have been some of the issues you've concentrated on and what were some of your early successes?

Digital equity, access to media training and resources, and giving people a platform to voice their thoughts, feelings, or ideas, have been the issues since the start of PEG (Public, Educational, and Government) Access Media. We implemented a Youth Media Program where teens get paid while developing the skills to become professional media artists that is still going strong today, and have a Foundational Technology program for elders and others who struggle with technology.

Can you shed light on your work through the pandemic and how it impacted the community?

Being fully remote was a challenge for everyone. We kept people informed through our programming, providing the Zoom room for local leaders to address Cambridge residents and businesses, and streaming live town halls and community conversations that provided information about the ongoing pandemic. We provided hotspots, laptops, and iPads for our young people in our Youth Media Program which ended up benefiting entire families who may not have had this technology at home. We continued to provide media training via Zoom as well as our Foundational Tech Lessons for our seniors to help them get situated online in the “new normal.”

Can you tell us about some of your current projects?

Right now, we’re working with community partners and the City of Cambridge to host two new Digital Navigators in 2024.The aim of these Digital Navigators is to assist in bridging the digital divide in Cambridge by assessing the needs of our community and acting as something like a technological social worker. We’re lucky in Cambridge that we have lots of tech—laptops, cameras, hotspots, etcetera—spread around many great local organizations such as CCTV, the Cambridge Public Library, and the Cambridge Senior Center. What we can do better is outreach, assessment and community connection. The navigators will be focused on wellbeing—how can we improve your access to tech in a way that would improve your life and your family’s well-being? We see people getting by with what they have; we want to see them thriving.

Other current projects include expanding access and education around our podcast studio. We’re also expanding our programming and outreach to people who speak languages other than English, like offering media production classes in Haitian-Creole. Finally, we’re working with funders to establish more paid opportunities for creators aged 18-24.

Are you looking to do more advocacy in the future?

We are a big advocate for digital equity in Cambridge and will continue to be a hub in that area. We are also a main collaborator in an advocacy group called CREATE Cambridge. This group of arts and culture organizations got together, and applied for and received ARPA (American Rescue Plan) funding to advocate for the arts in Cambridge. We will regrant directly to artists and creators, and CCTV will lead the effort to create awareness around the challenges artists and arts organizations are facing, such as high rents, lower ticket sales, etcetera. The arts are one of the things that make Cambridge cool so we want to make sure people know how to support and engage with it. Finally, we are always looking for ways to advocate for the community media sector. The revenue model for the sector has always been based on cable subscriptions—with the steep drop in subscription happening across the country, community media needs to find new ways to survive and thrive. We’re doing that work at CCTV and also advocating and educating for the whole sector and the communities who love our spaces and resources.

What are the technological challenges for CCTV Cambridge?

Our infrastructure is aging out. Our last capital campaign was about 12 years ago, so we’re working with cameras, lighting, and other studio technology that is starting to break down. Our playback system that brings programming to our cable channels needs updating, and that will cost multiple thousands of dollars. We’ve continued to invest in certain mobile technology like the equipment our members borrow, but the studios that are also available to our members are becoming outdated. We don’t own our building, so a challenge we face is whether to invest in new technology infrastructure, like lighting grids, studio cameras and other non-sexy systems. If so, where do we find the funding?

Do opportunities exist for people to get involved? How can people contact and support your work?

There are always opportunities for folks to get involved! We’re hiring Teaching Artists for our Youth Media Program which are two newly funded positions through the Shout Syndicate. You can become an intern or apprentice, depending on your skill and experience level. You can become a member with our pay-what-you-can fee structure. And of course, people can always support by making a donation at cctvcambridge.org/support. Follow us on social media @cctvcambridge!