[liberationtech] Martus phase-out

[Collin Sullivan]

[Cross-posting to a few lists, my apologies if you see this a couple times]

Dear LibTech,

As you know, Benetech first released Martus, our secure information platform, in 2003. Back then encryption wasn’t part of the public vernacular and no one expected to be able to post and protect their data in the cloud, whatever that was. A lot has changed, and we’re encouraged that additional solutions, both commercial and open source, exist today (canary:event?ts=548967605.00) where once there were few options for human rights defenders and others supporting vulnerable populations. In fact, we are finding that many of these alternatives may serve various use cases and threat models better than Martus can.

With all of this, we wanted to announce directly to this list that we have ceased development on the current Martus platform – please see this blog post (https://benetech.org/martus-sunsets-human-rights-data-collection/) for more information. We are continuing to serve our current users, and can provide advice or support with data migration to a new platform, on a case by case basis. Our objective is to remain as responsible and ethical as possible with this transition; change is never easy but we hope to make this process as smooth as we can.

We recognize that there are still many unanswered questions – what the future looks like for human rights documentation, for one – and we cannot responsibly answer them on our own. These issues involve and will affect a larger community of human rights defenders, social justice technologists, and funders working in this space.

As such we are hosting a series of conversations that identify, document, and address the needs, ethical concerns, and possible solutions for human rights documentation tools and services going forward. This will entail scheduled monthly calls with peer organizations, Martus users (current and former), funders, and other supporters over a period of six months, beginning in June.

If you’d like to participate in these upcoming calls, please let us know directly - we’d love your feedback and input. If your interest is in providing support or technical expertise, we’d be happy to hear from you (mailto:martus at benetech.org?subject=Martus%20sunset) as well.

Thank you for all of your continued help and encouragement over the years!

Sending very best wishes,
Collin

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Collin Sullivan
Human Rights Outreach Associate
Benetech Human Rights Program

Email: collin.s at benetech.org
GPG: 0x35F83A6678657D4D

Twitter: @MartusProject

https://www.benetech.org - Technology Serving Humanity
https://www.martus.org - Martus Human Rights Information Management System

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