OTF staff worry about losing trust globally as the new CEO of their parent agency is pressed to divert funds from open-source to obscure, closed-source tech
The Open Technology Fund has been in free fall since the abrupt firing of its entire leadership team last month, which ended with its CEO resigning. This VICE report adds the internal dimension: OTF staff now say the damage they fear most is not budgetary but reputational — the fund's value rests on grantees and users worldwide trusting that US-backed censorship-circumvention tools are what they claim to be.
The pressure point is USAGM's new CEO, under whose stewardship the parent agency is being urged to move money out of auditable open-source projects and into obscure closed-source technology. For a fund whose flagship grants helped build Signal, shifting toward opaque code attacks the core property — inspectable software — that earned that trust in the first place.
First-order effects
OTF staff and grantees face immediate uncertainty over whether open-source projects will continue to be funded at all, while the fund's standing with dissidents and developers who rely on verifiable tools erodes as word spreads of the closed-source push.
Second-order effects
If money moves to opaque tools, users who cannot audit the code have less reason to adopt US-funded circumvention software, handing an argument to regimes that already dismiss such tools as spyware — and pushing the fund toward the legal clash with its own parent agency seen in the withheld $20M fight.
Third-order effects
If the pattern holds, the internet-freedom portfolio stops competing on openness and starts competing on political alignment, with Congressional appropriations and litigation becoming the structural checks on how the fund's mission is defined.
The trend: US-government-backed internet freedom funding is being pulled between open-source credibility and politically directed closed-source spending, with the fund's global trust as the collateral.
Prominent individuals spent years pushing a few internet freedom apps to receive tens of millions in USG funds without providing evidence that they will succeed; namely Michael Horowitz of Hudson Institute and Katrina Lantos of Lantos Foundation. https://www.vice.com/...
@dmcdev
Dan McDevitt on x
“The attacks on the @OpenTechFund are also an attack against us all, too...Losing our safety and security could mean losing our fights for freedom, human rights, and democracy.” - @purplerebel in this great @daithaigilbert piece on #saveinternetfreedom https://www.vice.com/...
@anneapplebaum
Anne Applebaum on x
Inside the plot to kill the Open Technology Fund. Or: how a group of American ideologues want to rob dissidents around the world of the tools they use to communicate https://www.vice.com/...
@daithaigilbert
David Gilbert on x
Within days of his appointment, Pack fired OTF's leaders & replaced its bipartisan board with one stacked with Trump loyalists. Now current/former OTF staffers say they are worried aobut losing the trust they have built with activists around the world https://www.vice.com/...
@daithaigilbert
David Gilbert on x
Pack is now being lobbied to fund closed-source technology like Ultrasurf and Freegate, which, as @doctorow (an advisory board member says) could be compromised by governments around the world https://www.vice.com/...
@daithaigilbert
David Gilbert on x
We uncovered that Ultrasurf recently went through a previously unreported security audit which was not made public. A source told us the reason was because Ultrasurf's developer wanted a “high severity bug” removed from the report. https://www.vice.com/...
@jilliancyork
@jilliancyork on x
Ultrasurf, the crappy VPN with an abusive developer and lobbyist (and which the @LantosFndn is obsessed with), threatened its security auditor with legal action for disclosing a vulnerability. https://www.vice.com/...