Digital Rights Weekly | September 22 to 28
Team CommUNITY
team at digitalrights.community
Fri Sep 26 02:57:10 CEST 2025
Hello Digital Rights Defenders!
Here is your weekly update on digital rights around the world for the
week of September 22 to 26. As a reminder, you can submit your news for
the newsletter here:
https://www.digitalrights.community/weekly-newsletter
What is in this issue:
Team CommUNITY
Community News
NEW Job Opportunities
Community Resources
Digital Rights in the Wider World
Events Calendar
Grants, Fellowships, & Awards
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### Team CommUNITY (TCU News) ###
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1. We Are Back!
The TCU staff are back to work! The weekly Digital Rights newsletter and
job board are resuming this week. Make sure to submit your news or
updates and we will help you promote them. Huge thanks to everyone that
attended the Global Gathering and made it a beautiful center of
community this year.
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### Community News ###
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1. Shining a Spotlight on Digital Rights Heroes: EFF Awards 2025
The annual EFF Awards honor digital rights heroes. This year’s awards
went to Just Futures Law, Erie Meyer, and the Software Freedom Law
Center, India. If you missed the celebration in person, you can still
watch it! The full event is posted on YouTube and the Internet Archive,
and a transcript of the live captions is also available.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/09/shining-spotlight-digital-rights-heroes-eff-awards-2025
2. Networks Over Organizations: An Infrastructural Revolution for
Digital Rights
The digital rights movement faces a funding crisis, autocratic tech, and
fragmentation. The antidote? Radically networking its resources and agenda.
https://www.openglobalrights.org/networks-over-organizations-an-infrastructural-revolution-for-digital-rights/
3. Launch of the RESIST Project: Building Societal Resilience to
Disinformation
To counter disinformation, the Council of Europe today launched the
Strengthening Societal Resilience to Disinformation in Europe (RESIST)
project, which will help member states prepare or strengthen national
strategies against disinformation across culture, education, media, and
democracy.
https://www.coe.int/en/web/freedom-expression/-/building-societal-resilience-to-disinformation-launch-of-the-resist-project
4. InDiCo-Global is Funding to promote European Digital/ICT
Through three open calls, this funding will enable the specialists to
promote the European Standardisation System (ESS) and European standards
in partner countries/regions for select ICT/digital technologies,
thereby creating opportunities for capacity building as well as
strengthening and promoting Europe’s position and vision in global
standardisation initiatives. Geographic focus: African Union, China,
Eastern Partnership, India, Latin America and Caribbean, Southeast Asia,
Western Balkans. Deadline: June 30, 2026
https://indico-global-grants.eu/indico-global-third-open-call
5. ACLS Digital Justice Grants
The American Council of Learned Societies has an open call for their
Digital Justice Seed and Development grants for projects at various
stages of development that diversify the digital domain,
advance justice and equity in digital scholarly
practice, and/or contribute to public understanding of racial and social
justice issues. Deadline: November 20, 2025
https://www.acls.org/programs/acls-digital-justice-grants
6. AI Reporting Grant Program
The Pulitzer Center seeks applications for their reporting initiative
focused on AI and surveillance technologies and their impact on
communities around the world. Topics can range from AI industry supply
chains, procurement processes for algorithmic and surveillance systems,
environmental impacts of AI, AI & disinformation networks, AI warfare,
AI regulation and governance, and transparency and governance are a
cross-cutting theme for all of their focus areas. Deadline: December 31,
2025
https://pulitzercenter.org/grants-fellowships/opportunities-journalists/ai-reporting-grants
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### NEW Job Opportunities ###
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You can access the following jobs by visiting our job board:
https://www.digitalrights.community/job-board
✎ Program Manager, DT Institute
+ Remote
✎ Digital Communications Pod Director, DigiDems
+ Remote
✎ Android Platform Software Developer, Calyx Institute
+ Remote
✎ Director of Advancement, Let’s Encrypt
+ Remote
✎ Endline Evaluation Regranting Projects, SMEX
+ Lebanon
✎ Project Officer for Digital Democracy Iniative
+ Jakarta, Bangkok
✎ Deputy Division Chief, Privacy and Responsible Technology, Mass Office
of Attorney General
+ Boston
✎ Strategic Partnership Development Lead, Boxtribute
+ Remote, EU working hours
✎ Communications Outreach and Engagement Lead, APC
+ Priority to those in Africa or Asia
✎ Project Manager, Open Knowledge Foundation
+ Remote
✎ Senior R Developer for Custom Data Quality Validation Tool, Open
Knowledge Foundation
+ Remote
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### Community Resources ###
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1. The Internet Coup Is Here. And the World Is Still Asleep
A quiet coup is taking place — not in parliaments or palaces, but in the
invisible infrastructure of the internet. What leaked documents and
recent investigations have revealed is the capture of the network that
once embodied openness and connection, now being repurposed,
commercialized, and exported as a tool of repression. The InterSecLab’s
Internet Coup report and Follow the Money’s exposé on how China is
exporting its censorship technologies read like dispatches from the
front lines of this takeover. They show how China’s system of digital
control, perfected at home through the Great Firewall, is being turned
into a global business.
https://www.techpolicy.press/the-internet-coup-is-here-and-the-world-is-still-asleep/
2. Anything but Safe: Using VPN can Bear Immense Risks
A new study reveals that virtual private network (VPN) connections
provide less safety than widely believed. The findings are alarming,
especially for users in authoritarian states. The list of shortcomings
are many, including opaque ownership structures.
https://www.dw.com/en/virtual-private-network-vpn-to-avoid-censorship-risky-freedom-of-speech-open-technology-fund-study/a-74061988
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### Digital Rights in the Wider World ###
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1. Massive Leak Shows How a Chinese Company Is Exporting the Great
Firewall to the World
A leak of more than 100,000 documents shows that Chinese company, Geedge
Networks, is selling its censorship and surveillance systems to at least
four other countries in Asia and Africa. The company counts the “father”
of China’s massive censorship infrastructure as one of its investors.
Researchers found that it has been operating a sophisticated system that
allows users to monitor online information, block certain websites and
VPN tools, and spy on specific individuals.
https://www.wired.com/story/geedge-networks-mass-censorship-leak/
2. Paradigm Initiative Raises Concerns about the safety of Nigerian
Citizen’s Data Online
Paradigm Initiative (PIN), has raised fresh concerns about the
surreptitious sale of personal data in Nigeria.In a media briefing held
in Abuja, Nigeria, the organisation called for seriousness from the
government in handling the matter, saying there has been a consistent
data leak online for three years now, where data is available for sale
cheaply.
https://paradigmhq.org/press-release-paradigm-initiative-raises-concerns-about-the-safety-of-nigerian-citizens-data-online/
3. Taliban Bans Fiber-Optic Internet in Several Afghan Provinces to Curb
‘Immorality’
The Taliban’s supreme leader has ordered the shutdown of fiber-optic
internet across five northern Afghan provinces, a move critics say will
deepen the country’s isolation, damage its economy and further curtail
women’s access to education.
https://therecord.media/taliban-bans-fiber-optic-internet
4. Outcry After Maldives Passes Controversial Media Bill
A prominent union of journalists has pledged to defy a new bill passed
in the Maldives that critics say will muzzle the media and free speech.
The main opposition party has called for protests and a global press
freedom group urged Muizzu to veto the legislation.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/9/17/war-on-free-speech-outcry-after-maldives-passes-controversial-media-bill
5. Internet, Phone Lines Cut off Across Gaza as Israeli Ground
Operations Expected to Escalate
Israeli tanks were seen in two Gaza City areas that are gateways to the
city centre, while internet and phone lines were cut off across the Gaza
Strip, a sign that ground operations were likely to escalate imminently.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/gaza-telecoms-blackout-israeli-army-1.7636933
6. ICE Just Spent Millions On Surveillance Tech Banned By Facebook
In 2021, Meta banned a surveillance company called Cobwebs from
gathering intelligence across all its platforms. Its security staff had
discovered Cobwebs, founded by former members of Israel’s elite cyber
intel agencies, was using hundreds of accounts to snoop on Facebook and
WhatsApp users, many of them activists, opposition politicians and
government officials in Hong Kong and Mexico. Since then, ICE has spent
over $5 million on the company’s tools, with one $2 million purchase
made this month for Cobwebs’ AI-powered social media surveillance tech
Tangles.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2025/09/18/ice-spends-millions-on-social-media-spy-tech-banned-by-meta-facebook/6.
7. Silicon Valley Enabled Brutal Mass Detention and Surveillance in
China, Internal Documents Show
Over the past quarter century, American tech companies to a large degree
designed and built China’s surveillance state, playing a far greater
role in enabling human rights abuses than previously known, an
Associated Press investigation found. They sold billions of dollars of
technology to the Chinese police, government and surveillance companies,
despite repeated warnings from the U.S. Congress and in the media that
such tools were being used to quash dissent, persecute religious sects
and target minorities.
https://apnews.com/article/chinese-surveillance-silicon-valley-uyghurs-tech-xinjiang-8e000601dadb6aea230f18170ed54e88
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### Events Calendar ###
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Online Course: Threat Sharing and Digital Forensics from a Feminist and
Human Rights Perspective
Digital Defenders Partnership
September - December, 2025
https://www.digitaldefenders.org/online-course-threat-sharing-and-digital-forensics-from-a-feminist-and-human-rights-perspective/
Hold Before You Send It
Digihub Africa 2025
October 8 - 9, 2025
Johannesburg, South Africa
https://www.digihubafrica.org/events/
SEEDIG Youth School 2025
October 10 - 11, 2025
Athens, Greece
https://seedig.net/youth-school/
Reproducible Builds Summit
October 28-30
Vienna, Austria
https://reproducible-builds.org/events/vienna2025/
Bread&Net
SMEX
October 29 - 31
Beirut, Lebanon
https://breadandnet.org/
Mozilla Festival 2025
November 7 - 9, 2025
In Barcelona, Spain
https://www.mozillafestival.org/en/
RightCon 2026
May 5-8
Lusaka, Zambia
https://www.rightscon.org/
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### Grants, Fellowships, & Awards ###
__________________________________________
The following opportunities are open to individual digital rights
defenders and to organizations. If you would like us to include a grant,
fellowship or award in this newsletter, please email details to
team at digitalrights.community
WSA Young Innovators Award 2025
Deadline: October 31, 2025
https://wsa-global.org/wsa_categories/wsa-young-innovators/
ACLS Digital Justice Grants
November 20, 2025
https://www.acls.org/programs/acls-digital-justice-grants
AI Reporting Grant Program
December 31, 2025
https://pulitzercenter.org/grants-fellowships/opportunities-journalists/ai-reporting-grants
InDiCo-Global.
Deadline June 30, 2026
https://indico-global-grants.eu/indico-global-third-open-call
Are you looking for grants, fellowships and funds open on a rolling
basis? We curate a long list of opportunities on our wiki:
https://wiki.digitalrights.community/index.php?title=Fundraising_Opportunities
__________________________________________
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in touch at team at digitalrights.community. We are always looking for
like-minded organizations and people.
(((Hugs & light)))
--
Team CommUNITY at ARTICLE 19
www.digitalrights.community
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