Digital Rights Primer

Digital Rights Community & Field Primer

The digital rights primer covers the field and global community of people working at the intersection of rights and technology.

This primer is based on our experience and point-of-view of having worked as community conveners in the digital rights space for more than 12+ years.

It is designed for people new to the digital rights field, as well as adjacent practitioners—journalists, activists, technologists, funders, and policymakers—who want a grounded understanding of the community of practice working to addressing digital rights issues.

For a better understanding of digital rights as a rights concept, we strongly recommend the What are Digital Rights primer.

✊🏽 First, A Quick Introduction to Digital Rights

Technology is political

Digital rights matter because they determine who gets to participate safely in society — and who is silenced.

Digital technologies shape nearly every part of our lives — from how we communicate and work, to how governments deliver services and corporations handle our data. With these opportunities come risks and threats such as surveillance, censorship, and disinformation. As technologies evolve, so does the list of problems negatively impacting societies.

Digital rights are the extension of human rights into the online and technological sphere. They ensure that the freedoms we hold offline — freedom of expression, privacy, assembly, and access to information — are also protected in the digital age.

Marginalized communities experience the most acute attacks against their digital rights.

🫶 A Fight to Protect the Most Vulnerable and Marginalized

The fight for digital rights affects everyone, but it weighs heavily on the most vulnerable communities around the globe. This is because technology is not neutral. The design of platforms, algorithms, and data systems reflects existing power structures, and those without power often pay the highest price.

This includes marginalized and vulnerable groups such as women, LGBTQI+ people, ethnic, religious and racial minorities, individuals with disabilities, and children, as well as those standing up to power, such as journalists and civil society actors. These groups are disproportionately surveilled, censored, and targeted online.

protect your communities

Additional Resources on Digital Rights Issues

What are Digital Rights a more robust explanation of the issues.

What are Targeted Attacks how and why bad faith actors target civil society.

What is Digital Literacy and Why It Matters, an intro of the basis.

How to Get Involved And Learn More About Digital Rights

TCU's Digital Rights Newsletter delivers a weekly curated roundup of essential digital rights news, funding and job opportunities, community updates, upcoming events, and learning resources. This includes updates on TCU's workshops, monthly digital rights town hall meetups, and more!

The Emerging Community of Practice: The Digital Rights Community

The Digital Rights Community is a global community of practice of diverse practitioners working at the intersection of technology and rights.

The Digital Rights Community is a global community of practice that works at the intersection of rights and technology and work collaboratively on issues such as:

● Holistic digital security and protection of civil society;

● Counteracting online censorship and surveillance;

● Community-focused approaches to issues like AI, disinformation, internet policy and governance, climate and tech, among others.

The field brings together representatives of diverse backgrounds, professions, and experiences from around the world.

This includes profiles such as movement leaders, technologists, security experts, civil society organization employees, journalists, researchers, policymakers, and policy advocates, and many others. (We have a longer list of profiles further down in the article).

The digital rights community is global and interdisciplinary because digital rights challenges are transnational and complex in scope, and require transnational solutions.

Ss digital rights issues grow, so does the need to attract new talent to the community of practice. However, in recent years, historic funding cuts to the field, increased regional instability, and rising exhaustion related to years of difficult work in low resourced environments, where often people's own safety is at risk, has lead to a historic brain drain. This poses a significant risk to the future of human rights and social justice worldwide, given the steep learning curve required to enter the field, and the combination of skills needed to be effective.

Vulnerable and Targeted Communities Are the Leading Experts on Digital Rights Threats

canaries in the coal mine

The digital rights community includes a high proportion of people from historically marginalized and vulnerable groups, precisely because these communities experience the most acute and persistent attacks on their digital rights. Their lived experience on the frontlines of surveillance, censorship, harassment, and repression makes them uniquely qualified subject-matter experts on understanding the tactics and methods used by adversaries.

In many ways, they act as early indicators of future threats for all of society worldwide - Tools and tactics are often tested on these communities first before being scaled to the wider public. Moreover, adversaries and authoritarian regimes routinely share and refine these tactics across borders, meaning that methods used against one marginalized group today in one country often become the blueprint for targeting broader populations tomorrow in other countries.

Marginalized and vulnerable groups that are usually targeted include religious and ethnic minorities from the Global Majority, BIPOC from the Global North, and LGBTQ+ and women from around the world, particularly in places where it may be illegal to be themselves.

The Cultural Values and Challenges Inherited from Hacker and FLOSS Spaces

It is not uncommon to find technologists in the digital rights field who identify as white hat hackers, or ethically motivated to help.

The digital rights field has its origins in two separate but interconnected communities: open-source and free/libre open-source software (FLOSS) technologists, and hacker spaces. As both architects and builders of technology, they were the first to identify how digital systems could be exploited—by corporations, governments, and other powerful actors—to surveil, censor, discriminate against, or otherwise harm individuals and communities.

Their early warnings were shaped not by theory alone, but by hands-on experience designing, breaking, and stress-testing technologies in real-world conditions.

Hacker communities have long understood that privacy, security, and anonymity are not optional features, but essential safeguards in a digitally mediated world. As a result, it is not uncommon to find technologists in the digital rights field who identify as white hat hackers and/or hacktivists —individuals who use hacking or other digital tactics as a form of political or social activism.

It is important to note, however, that not all hackers or open-source technologists are concerned with digital rights or motivated by the public interest; like any community, these spaces encompass a wide range of profiles. For example, black hat hackers violate laws and ethical standards for nefarious purposes such as cybercrime or cyberwarfare.

Influencing How Technology is Shaped and the Culture is Made Security-Conscious

Tor is widely recognized as one of the most robust and interference-resistant public-interest tools for anonymity and privacy.

This lineage also helps explain why Internet Freedom was a concept embraced by the digital rights community - it was clear early on that an open, interoperable, and globally accessible network was essential to protecting freedom of expression, access to information, and the ability to organize and participate in public life.

Internet freedom emerged as a framework that connected technical design choices with human rights outcomes, emphasizing that the structure of the internet itself could either enable or constrain fundamental freedoms.

This same lineage explains why tools developed and/or championed by these communities—such as the Tor Project—have played a foundational role in shaping the digital rights ecosystem. Tor is not only widely recognized as one of the most robust and interference-resistant public-interest tools for anonymity and privacy; through its research and development, it has influenced an entire generation of privacy-preserving technologies, threat models, and security practices. Its design principles reflect values central to the digital rights movement: decentralization, resilience against censorship, and protection for users operating in hostile or high-risk conditions

The Cultural Values

Together, hackers and FLOSS technologists have helped define both the technical and some of the ethical foundations of digital rights work. Their contributions continue to inform how civil society responds to emerging threats—from mass surveillance and internet shutdowns to AI-enabled repression—ensuring that the field remains grounded in practical, user-centered, and rights-respecting approaches to technology. Values include:

Decentralized vs. Centralized Community Models

Just as distributed technologies are more resilient and secure, so are decentralized communities. By distributing leadership, trust, and knowledge across interconnected nodes, single points of failure are reduced. This allow communities to endure even when parts of the network are disrupted.

Transparency and Verifiability

Open-source tech is more secure because vulnerabilities can be identified and fixed by many, rather than hidden behind secrecy. These principles extend to communities: transparency builds shared understanding, while verifiability allows people to independently confirm information —strengthening trust through evidence, not blind faith

Freedom and Autonomy

Freedom in technology means preserving user agency—ensuring people can understand, choose, and adapt the tools they rely on, rather than being constrained by opaque or coercive systems that may conceal harmful functions. Technology should empower users, not lock them into closed systems they cannot inspect, control, or modify.

Privacy by Design

Privacy is a fundamental right and should be a core design principle of any technology. Tools should minimize invasive data collection and retention, limit unnecessary data retention, and supporting anonymity. For journalists and rights defenders, it allows for the ability to communicate, organize, and participate in public life safely and without fear of retaliation

Collaboration and Knowledge Sharing

Open collaboration, peer review, and shared learning are prioritized over competition or siloed expertise. Meaningful progress happens through collective effort, where knowledge is openly exchanged and diverse perspectives are actively included, strengthening both solutions and the communities that build them.

Resisting Abuse of Power

Systems that centralize power and enable harm must be questioned, audited, and challenged. People should be free to communicate, organize, and share information —without surveillance, coercion, or interference.

Serving the Public Good

Technology should improve the human condition and serve the common good. In the digital rights context, this means building and sustaining tools, infrastructure, and support systems that enable journalists, human rights defenders, and communities to safely inform, organize, and serve their societies.

The Cultural Challenges

This lineage has introduced a number of structural and cultural challenges within the digital rights field, particularly related to equity. This is not surprising, given that open-source and hacker communities have historically exhibited lower levels of representation than the broader technology sector.

The good news is that these challenges have been increasingly recognized and actively addressed over the past decade, though the work remains ongoing. Within this context, Team CommUNITY’s efforts have played a critical role in supporting the growth of the field in more equitable and inclusive ways, while also helping to shift norms toward healthier, more sustainable community cultures. If you would like to learn more about this history and the work underway, we invite you to reach out to us at [email protected].

The Human Rights Field and Multilateral Government Entities

Digital Rights is now part of the human rights field, while still being an emerging field of practice.

The Growing List of Digital Rights Challenges

It is impossible to list the growing number of issues and challenges addressed by the digital rights community because as technology use grows in our societies, so do the problems associated with it. However, to-date, most problems can be categorized under the following buckets:

• Countering Online Censorship and Surveillance: Two challenges that continue to become more sophisticated as adversaries improve the tools and tactics they use repress and silence groups and journalists, and close civil society spaces. Notably, non-technical tactics are also used, such as online harassment and transnational repression. Most recently, we are also seeing an increase of sophisticated spyware used by authoritarian governments on the local, regional, and national level.
  
• Protection of Civil Society, Journalists, and Defenders: Especially relating to the cybersecurity issues and attacks they face. This includes designing both trustworthy open source privacy and security tools (Tor and Signal being the most known), as well as tactics.
  
• Community-focused approaches to issues like AI, disinformation, internet policy and governance, climate and tech; among others.
  
• Infrastructure Ownership & Design: This includes advocating for and advancing the creation of independent infrastructures, such as mesh networks, that are community owned and driven.
  
• Network Interference: This can include Internet shutdowns to computation or information propaganda, such as disinformation, done either by humans or artificial intelligence.
  
• Legal Persecution: In the last few years, we have seen an increase in laws that criminalize online behaviors, used to persecute people. For example, using encryption technology, or online expression.
  
• Governance: Attempts to sway international norms, and standards governing how the Internet functions and connects globally, for example, coordinated attacks on encryption, or advancing extreme national data sovereignty laws.

Samples of work conducted by Digital Rights Defenders:

• Creating technology solutions that allow users to circumvent online surveillance and censorship.
• Securing movements and journalists through holistic and digital security training.
• Advocacy, for example fighting draconian laws that penalize the use of encryption or tools like VPNs.
• Pushing for industry standards. For example, advocating in international government bodies overseeing the actual infrastructure of the Internet, pushing for systems to encourage the privacy and security of users.
• Researching and mapping emerging challenges, such as the impact of AI, disinformation, and smart cities.
• Creating collective action around issues like platform accountability, or issues like shadow banning.

However, as more and more issues arise at the intersection of human rights and technology, the list of work becomes longer for digital rights.

The Organizations/Projects

The list is long and diverse, but below we are including some categories and examples for your understanding:

• Community Building/Capacity Building/Member Network Projects: Like us (Team CommUNITY); GlobalVoices;
• Open source technology circumvention, encryption or safety/security tools. Examples: Tor Project, Signal, Wire, Circulo, Outline VPN, Globaleaks, HTTPS Everywhere, OpenGPG, GNU Privacy Guard, Privacy Badger, No Script, StartPage, Tails, Qubes, Tahoe-LAFS, Amnezia VPN, New Node

• Network, hardware and ISP providers. Examples: Calyx Institute, Greenhost .

• Security vendors. Examples: Cloudflare, Radical Security

• Traditional international human rights organizations. Examples: Article19, Internews, Frontline Defenders, Civil Rights Defenders

• Global rapid response or security networks. Examples: Rarenet, Civicert, Center for Digital Resilience, Access Now’s Digital Security Helpline .

• Digital safety and holistic security training guides and curricula. Examples: SiaB, LevelUP, SAFETAG, Totem, Security Planner .

• Journalism organizations. Examples: Freedom of the Press Foundation, Committee to Protect Journalists, Distributed Denial of Secrets, PEN International .

• Regional or sub-group focused organizations and networks. Examples: SMEX, Pollicy, SocialTIC, Paradigm Initiative, CIPESA, Derechos Digitales, Conexo, EngageMedia, Open Culture Foundation, IT for Change, Equality Labs, Ubunteam, Safe Sisters, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Hackers on Planet Earth, Defcon, Chaos Computer Club, Venezuela Inteligente, Digital Society of Africa, Nois Radio, Fundacion Karisma .

• Diverse types of research groups including academic and non-academic. Examples: OONI, Citizen Lab, Fairwork, Oxford Internet Institute, Freedom House, OpenNet, Berkman Klein Center, IODA .

• Multilateral governmental entities and companies. Some of the following actors aren’t pro-digital rights, while others have been pioneers in setting important privacy and security standards. However, all have played an important part in discussions .
  • Multistakeholder and/or Multilateral Government Entities: Internet Governance Forum, United Nations International Telecommunications Union, Freedom Online Coalition, Internet Engineering Task Force, Global Network Initiative .
  • Companies: VPN providers like Tunnelbear, Mullvad. Social media platforms like Meta, X (formerly Twitter). Multifaceted companies like Apple, Google .

• Diverse funders. Examples: Numun Fund, Open Tech Fund, DRL State Department, Ford Foundation, Mozilla Foundation, Hivos

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The Profiles

Digital Rights Defenders come from all regions, disciplines, and backgrounds. They work on different aspects of digital rights, but ultimately are trying to protect and advocate for activists, journalists, and civil societies from attacks and risks. Here are some common profiles we see:

• Movement Leaders
• Journalists & Media Workers
• Community Organizers
• Security Professionals
• Digital Security Trainers
• Software Developers
• Tool Makers (UX, designers, etc.)
• System Administration and Network Experts
• Academic Researchers
• Community Researchers
• Policy Advocates
• Policymakers
• Technologists that come in different shapes, sizes, and skill sets. For example, one can be a technologist who focuses on analyzing the impact tech has on society.
• Diverse professionals working at different types of civil society organizations including grassroots organizations, and large international NGOs.

Want to Work In Digital Rights? Things You Should Know

For many of us working in digital rights, we are passionate about the work we do - the significant need there is for it, many times in our own personal communities, for the impact it has, which many times is global in scale, and the amount of creativity and intellectual capital needed to address emerging challenges, which are representative of the most urgent and next-generation issues affecting humankind. In addition, the number of unique and interesting individuals attracted to this work, who truly are some of the best system thinkers found on earth.

Check out our Digital Rights Job Board, which gets updated with opportunities on a weekly basis!

A Young, Emerging Community Experiencing Growing Pains

As digital rights is an emerging field, digital rights defenders have to navigate many of the growing pains associated with startups and common challenges found in the nonprofit sector. Things to keep in mind:

• Most digital rights organizations are small and less than 10 years in age.
  
• Funding is not stable, and most traditional funders are still scared of funding in what they consider a technology area, despite movements, journalists, and citizens experiencing more diverse attacks against their digital rights.
  
• There is no formalized career path, and many individuals achieve expertise in the field through a combination of self study, actively seeking opportunities, and sheer luck that employment roles open up that fit their profiles. Also, many individuals are “unicorns'' making it difficult to onboard new talent. For example, in many smaller organizations, which make up a large chunk of entities in the space, people wear multiple hats out of necessity. This means that organizational leaders sometimes face difficulties scaling up or hiring effectively.
  

This is one of the reasons community engagement projects like Team CommUNITY are so needed - they help onboard new talent and communities.

Sometimes there are pathways through program management roles (for example at medium to large nonprofits), or through more specialized expertise in specific sub-fields (for example, researchers at universities focusing on security).

In 2025, severe funding cuts have impacted a large majority of organizations in the space across the globe. Until this funding crisis is resolved, we suspected most opportunities will fall within the technical realm (developer, sys admin, etc) or development realm (fundraising, partnership development etc).

History: How Did Digital Rights Start?

Digital Rights evolved alongside the growth of technology and the Internet. The massification of the Internet began in the 90’s. While this brought incredible improvements, it also marked the rise of online surveillance, censorship, and the privatization of digital resources. Around this time, people started to recognize the importance of protecting various rights and freedoms in the digital realm, similar to those in the physical world.

For the most part, in the early days, most people that instigated this movement were part of technology groups, particularly open source technology communities, which were also core to movements like Internet Freedom and Free Culture. This is because they were also the first to see the rise of cyber threats, data breaches, and privacy violations that showcased the need for protecting personal information online.

Not surprisingly, many of the earliest people addressing digital rights challenges, were technologists that were part of communities such as the 2600 hacker group, which published a popular magazine that covered digital rights issues, or adjacent issues such as freedom of information and expression and speech. They also played a key role in promoting security awareness among the public, and emphasized the importance of understanding security vulnerabilities to protect against potential threats.

Since then, many technologists, directly or indirectly associated with these groups, have played a leading role in creating “circumvention tools,” which are technology tools that circumvent surveillance and censorship.

The 2000's and Now

By the early 2000’s we also began to see the involvement of more social justice oriented groups, as more communities throughout the world began to experience oppression online. Notably, in 2001, the Association of Progressive Communications (APC) published the Internet Rights charter, which served as an Internet Bill of Rights, which served as a catalyst to introduce human rights groups into the discussion. APC was well situated for this, given that it was considered a pioneer in the use of information and communication technology (ICT) for civil society.

Despite these efforts, however, digital rights continued and the impact of technology on societies continued to be enigmatic for the general public and non-technologists. In addition, precisely because of its origin story, the digital rights field itself also began inheriting many of the internal challenges found in the technology field: lack of diversity and equity, a high barrier to entry, and few safe and secure spaces for minority groups.

In the early 2010s, we began to see the digital rights field begin to grow and professionalize as new and significant government money was being injected into Internet Freedom, mostly coming from the US. A large percentage of this money was directed to funding open source technology tools, which means the code was open for all to see and licensed under a copyleft license. The motivation behind this was to promote the free flow and access to information online, which the US government saw as the foundation of stronger democratic societies as they felt it helped citizens hold their government accountable, generate new ideas, and encourage creativity and entrepreneurship.

However, the availability of this new US backed funding was also in reaction to the rise in online surveillance and censorship across the world, which has only worsened throughout the years. This is because authoritarian actors have continued to increase their investment into weaponizing technology to be a tool of oppression.

Alternatively, around this same time, we also begin to see more and more authoritarian adversaries begin to “discover” digital. Either because of the powerful mobilization capacity it provides their citizens (Arab Spring) or because they begin to invest in tactics and strategies that allow them to weaponize the Internet and digital communications. However, some authoritarian regimes were early adopters. China, for example, began to develop their Great Firewall in the late 1990s, which represented extensive censorship and internet control measures.

By 2012, the digital rights community began work to grow and diverse the community for two main reasons:

• Ensuring diverse representation were part of strategic conversations influencing the shape and priorities of Internet Freedom, digital rights, and technology standards. Most circumvention tools and strategies being created by technologists in the “North” were not working for at-risk users in the “South”.
• More and more groups around the world were starting to directly experience digital rights issues, mostly related to surveillance and censorship. This meant more talent was needed to meet demand.

Since then, the digital rights community has grown to have networks in virtually every region and (sometimes) country in the world. This also reflects the growing number of bad actors that are using digital to oppress and attack a significant growing list of movements, civil society organizations, journalists and citizens. In addition, the evolution of tactics and strategies they are using.

In 2023, for example, common problems, on top of historical surveillance and censorship, include Internet shutdowns, online harassment, disinformation, and biometrics, among others. Much of this evolution is because adversaries have begun to share knowledge, repressive legislative templates, tactics, and resources amongst themselves.

Please contact us at [email protected] if you have any feedback about our Digital Rights Primer.