Open Technology Fund, the US digital speech advocate that funded Signal, faces turmoil after the abrupt firing of entire leadership team and resignation of CEO
'There are so many countries and individuals who need this support right now,' says former OTF president
The VergeRussell Brandom
Context & Ripple Effects
The Open Technology Fund's abrupt purge of its entire leadership team and its CEO's resignation mark the opening move in a fight over who controls US internet-freedom money. The fund is best known as an early funder of Signal, so the shake-up lands on a grantee ecosystem built around open-source tools.
What follows in the related coverage shows the stakes: the Trump administration's appointee Michael Pack presides over a withholding of $20M in Congress-approved funds that forces OTF to halt 49 of 60 projects, while the EFF and 17 other groups take the board ouster to court and OTF itself later sues USAGM.
First-order effects
OTF's grantees — including open-source tools like Signal — immediately face funding uncertainty as the fund loses both its leadership and, within weeks, access to appropriated money.
USAGM CEO Michael Pack gains direct operational control over the fund, replacing the independent governance structure that had run it.
Second-order effects
Advocacy groups force a legal counterattack: the EFF and 17 organizations ask a US court to rule Pack's ouster of the president and board unlawful, and OTF ultimately sues USAGM over the withheld $20M.
Staff warn that diverting money from open-source to obscure closed-source tools — including software built by Falun Gong adherents — erodes the trust among dissidents worldwide that the fund's effectiveness depends on.
Third-order effects
If political appointees can redirect congressionally funded speech technology toward favored vendors, US-backed censorship circumvention becomes a patronage instrument rather than a technical program — until oversight (courts, Congress, administration change) reasserts control, as Pack's eventual resignation suggests it did.
The trend: US government funding for digital speech tools is becoming a contested political asset, with control battles between White House appointees, Congress, courts, and the civil-society grantees who spend it.
What Pack “has done is a great gift to China, Russia and repressive regimes across the world,” Kempner said. “There are not many gifts bigger than destroying one of the few mechanisms for people to send and receive information within closed press, closed information societies.” h…
Proud to be representing Open Technology Fund, its board members, and board members of Radio Free Europe, Radio Free Asia, and Middle East Broadcasting Networks in a legal challenge to attempts to fire their leadership & politicize their operations. https://www.nytimes.com/...
The @OpenTechFund is in turmoil after a Bannon ally was placed in charge of its parent agency. One contractee told me it was unclear “whether the internet freedom community would even survive” after this. https://www.theverge.com/...
@Techmeme @russellbrandom Fun fact: Steve Bannon's friends were specifically attacking the former OTF head in a podcast the day before her resignation. Nothing in what happened last week smells right. This looked like a planned scheme/cabal all the way. https://www.youtube.com/..…
Many of the most prominent encryption projects — including Signal, Tails, Qubes, and the Tor Project were supported by @OpenTechFund . Without their support, many such future projects will suffer #SaveInternetFreedom https://twitter.com/...
“A new Trump appointee has put internet freedom projects in crisis mode” Sound the alarm. If you depend on tools like Signal, Tor, PGP, and others FOSS security and privacy tools, you should be scared." #SaveInternetFreedom https://www.theverge.com/...
OTF has funded key privacy tech: Signal protocol, Lantern, Wireguard and LetsEncrypt are just a few These efforts are key in the battle for a free and open Internet. Technologists should be watching this. #saveinternetfreedom https://www.eff.org/... https://twitter.com/...