We're Living Our Lives On The Internet, And We Can't Be Free If It Isn't.

from the the-open-internet-is-more-important-than-ever dept

Last year, as a consequence of the COVID-19 pandemic, the “offline” world suddenly became a lot more online. All around the world, people have struggled to adapt. Worst off are those who can’t take internet access for granted. The Federal Communications Commission will spend many resources on the domestic side of this challenge, further investing in internet connectivity reach, quality, and affordability. But the international side, known as “internet freedom,” is a harder question.

Internet freedom may generate fewer headlines than a decade ago, when it was a signature issue of then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. But internet freedom is just as necessary now as it was then. For example, in China, crucial information about the spread of COVID-19 was often unavailable, and citizens resorted to using technical workarounds to upload and view videos about the pandemic on government-blocked YouTube. And in Iran, those who follow the Baháʼí faith are denied access to education, and depend on internet freedom technologies to give themselves the most basic opportunities. There are many more such examples in internet repressive countries around the world.

Fortunately, bipartisan support for internet freedom in Congress has kept funding levels robust over the past four years, and consistent leadership from within the Department of State and other funders has kept this work strong. But as with so many other areas of policy, the Trump administration not only did not add value, but actively made things worse by engaging in a harmful turf war. Partisan leadership at the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM) disrupted the funding and operations of its independent grantee Open Technology Fund (OTF) when OTF chose to pursue good policy over bad politics, an approach that - to give one example - led the organization to support early development of the now-popular Signal secure messaging service.

The first internet freedom action by the Biden administration should be to reverse course and install leadership at USAGM that can work constructively with OTF, the State Department, and other funders to support scalable open source technology and community internet freedom solutions. Congress did its part through the defense funding bill passed on New Year’s Day (in the first-ever override of a veto by Trump), allocating substantial resources and setting the tone for open source to be at the heart of internet freedom efforts. And President Biden has cleared the way by firing Michael Pack, head of USAGM, on inauguration day. Now it’s President Biden’s move again, to make a better appointment at USAGM than his predecessor did.

Internet freedom is a human rights issue, but it isn’t just a human rights issue. As 2020 demonstrated so clearly, the internet is connective tissue for massive parts of our economy and our society. Thus, China’s Great Firewall does far more than just repress free expression: it also implements an economic protectionist agenda, and is a powerful tool for fostering nationalist support at home. To counter these challenges, the Biden administration should adopt a positive agenda of supporting the global free flow of data and information, to prove in practice the superiority of digital globalization over repression and protectionism. That means growing the internet freedom agenda further, well above and beyond the State Department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor where it was incubated, to embrace the economic and political divisions at State as well as the Department of Commerce.

Perhaps more than any other federal agency, the State Department is in need of a hard reboot. Under Trump, the United States reverted to being a unilateral bully, bringing back the “Team America: World Police” spirit of the George W. Bush administration, forcing out centuries of institutional knowledge and expertise. Unsurprisingly, that strategy has failed. China in particular possesses many advantages on the global stage, and will be in an even better position in many respects after 2020. The United States faces a drastically weakened foreign policy position, and cannot turn any tides alone. In the context of internet freedom, the American agenda should include expanding efforts with the Freedom Online Coalition and other diplomatic avenues where we can work arm-in-arm with other countries who, frankly, possess more goodwill on the global stage than the U.S. does right now.

Finally, leadership starts at home. For at least the past decade, the U.S. approach to digital government surveillance has been outright hostile, highlighted by frequent battles in an ill-conceived war on encryption. President Biden has an opportunity to show strong support for privacy and security by shaping the interagency and National Security Council to better balance law enforcement with civil rights and internet freedom champions. The newly created role of a White House coordinator for democracy and human rights is a good start. It’s past time the U.S. stops pursuing backdoors that would put everyday internet users at great risk.

Where the internet isn’t open, the people aren’t free. Although the challenges facing the Biden administration in putting the United States back together will be many and broad-ranging, restoring American leadership on internet freedom should be a top priority.

Adam Fisk is the founder and president of Brave New Software, a leading 501(c)(3) developer of internet freedom technologies including Lantern and a recipient of U.S. government internet freedom support. Chris Riley is a strategic advisor to Brave New Software and a former member of the internet freedom program team at the State Department.

Filed Under: internet freedom, open internet, otf

Biden Fires Steve Bannon Protege, Who Tried To Turn Voice Of America Into A New Breitbart

from the and-he-whines-about-partisanship-on-the-way-out dept

Last summer we covered how Trump had hired Michael Pack, a protégé of Steve Bannon, to run US Agency for Global Media. USAGM is the organization that runs Voice of America, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Free Asia, and Middle East Broadcasting. It also runs the Open Technology Fund (which itself spun out of Radio Free Europe, and helped to fund a variety of important technologies for enabling free speech among dissidents and activists). It was clear from the beginning that Pack's plan was to (a) recraft the media organizations to be propaganda machines and (b) shift OTF's funding to some organizations with security/encryption techniques that were not widely trusted. Pack fired a bunch of people in a move that a court later rejected, noting that Pack did not have the authority to do so.

He also began a witch hunt at Voice of America, seeking to investigate journalists for "anti-Trump bias" and get rid of them. A reporter who asked a perfectly reasonable question to Mike Pompeo was reassigned.

As we pointed out, this kind of meddling, beyond likely breaking the law, was also doing tremendous damage to the credibility of these organizations, and certainly to the important technical work that OTF funds.

So it was good to see that one of Biden's first moves upon getting into office was to demand Pack's resignation and also to shuffle the leadership at Voice of America.

In an act of true projection, on the way out the door Pack whined about how being fired was a partisan act and would harm credibility. This is all bullshit. From day one, Pack was a partisan hack who tried to turn Voice of America into a pro-Trump media organization.

Whether or not people like or appreciate the work that USAGM and its various organizations do, there is no doubt that Pack's efforts harmed those organizations' credibility. Good riddance.

Filed Under: joe biden, michael pack, otf, partisanship, propaganda, steve bannon, usagm, voice of america
Companies: otf, usagm, voice of america

Court Says Trump Appointee Had No Authority To Fire Open Technology Fund Board; Says They Remain In Place

from the good-news dept

Back in July, we wrote about how Trump had appointed a Steve Bannon mentee, Michael Pack, to head the US Agency for Global Media (USAGM), the organization that oversees a bunch of independent media organizations, including the Voice of America, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Free Asia, and Middle East Broadcasting. The plan was to turn them into a state-sponsored Breitbart. That process has begun, including the recent attempt to investigate Voice of America journalists for impure thoughts about Dear Leader.

But, perhaps much more troubling to us was the desire to completely revamp the Open Technology Fund. OTF is connected to USAGM mostly for legacy reasons. It was originally spun up as a project by Radio Free Asia to help fund open source anti-censorship tools for activists around the world. The work it does and funds is incredibly important to free speech around the globe -- and for unclear reasons, Pack, Bannon and friends had wanted to completely change that, taking funding away from open source projects, and dumping it into some extremely dubious closed source projects.

Soon after Pack joined USAGM he told the head of OTF she was fired, and then fired the entire OTF Board as well when they protested, and said he was appointing a brand new board and CEO. This resulted in lawsuits and even Republican Senators asking what the fuck Pack thought he was doing.

In true Trumpian fashion, Pack simply ignored Congress, and even ignored a subpoena from House Representatives to answer questions about what he's done with USAGM. As if to poke a stick in the eye of Congress, at the very moment he was supposed to be appearing before Congress in response to a subpoena, Pack instead was opening up an RFP asking for new vendors to take over the role of OTF in building censorship circumvention tools.

A few days later, a bunch of top USAGM employees, including its Chief Strategy Officer, Chief Financial Officer, General Counsel, Executive Director, Deputy Director for Operations, and Director of Management services filed a whistleblower complaint with the State Department, after they were all put on administrative leave for raising concerns about how Pack was creating real harm in destroying the ability for the various USAGM organizations to do their job. For example, one of the whistleblowers was specifically concerned about the OTF defunding, and how it would harm protesters in Hong Kong:

n. Mr. Powers raised urgent concerns regarding the impact that Mr. Pack’s spending freeze was having on USAGM’s ability to support internet freedom tools in Hong Kong amidst the ongoing Chinese crackdown and takeover of local governing authorities. Mr. Powers specifically pointed out that the spending freeze was placing USAGM’s journalists at grave risk, and that the funds needed to be released to ensure that both USAGM’s journalists and its audience were safe from surveillance and persecution. Mr. Pack’s failure to support the internet freedom tools created a specific physical danger to USAGM journalists.

For that, Pack effectively fired him.

However, there is finally at least a glimmer of good news in all of this. A few days ago, the court hearing the case about whether or not Pack could fire the entire OTF Board and its CEO and replace it with his cronies ruled that no, he absolutely cannot do that. Indeed, it's right in OTF's bylaws that only the Board itself can fire executives or replace Board Members:

Neither OTF’s bylaws nor the International Broadcasting Act (“IBA”), as incorporated by reference in the bylaws, provides the USAGM CEO with the removal and replacement authority Pack claims.

OTF’s bylaws presume that the Board of Directors is responsible for both election and removal of directors. The bylaws state, “Individuals shall be elected by the Board of Directors for three-year terms upon majority vote of the Board of Directors, or as may be authorized by 22 U.S.C. 6203 et seq….He or she shall hold office until the expiration of his or her term and until his or her successor is elected and qualified, or his or her earlier resignation or removal or as may be authorized by 22 U.S.C. 6203 et seq.”

OTF bylaws also grant authority to the Board of Directors to fill vacant positions on the Board: “Any vacancy occurring on the Board of Directors due to removal or resignation may be filled by a majority vote of the remaining Directors. The Director so elected shall hold office for the remainder of his or her predecessor’s term or until his or her successor is elected and qualified or until his or her earlier resignation or removal.”

And then the court notes that the Board of Directors did not agree to fire themselves and did not agree to appoint the new board:

The Board of Directors did not hold a vote to elect any of the new directors that Pack attempted to appoint...

Section 6.12 of OTF’s bylaws contains the only clear mechanism for removal of directors: “Any Director may be removed from office for cause by the vote of two-thirds (2/3) of those Directors present at a meeting of the Board of Directors at which a quorum is present, provided that all Directors, including the Director to be removed are provided no less than ten (10) days’ notice of such meeting.”...

The Board of Directors did not hold a vote to remove any of the directors that Pack attempted to remove.

No other provisions within OTF’s bylaws modify this removal authority.

The court further notes just how incredibly damaging Pack's weird attempted coup of OTF has been:

Pack’s purported removal and replacement of the OTF’s original Board of Directors has left OTF without clear leadership. This confusion has made OTF incapable of authorizing decisions on behalf of the nonprofit corporation that allow it to carry out its functions, including an inability to authorize funding for partner organizations or provide support for potential partner organizations.

The actions of Pack and USAGM have undermined trust in OTF as an organization. The nature of the projects funded by OTF means that partner organizations and individuals, who are often citizens of repressive regimes, could be subjected to harsh repercussions – even having their lives endangered – if their personal information is jeopardized. However, OTF has been able to work with these partners to promote internet freedom because it has earned their trust that it will ensure the safety of their identities and their work. This trust in OTF will continue to erode, though, the longer that there is uncertainty about the legitimacy of the leadership of the organization. Without the trust of its partners, OTF cannot fulfill its mission of promoting internet freedom efforts.

Because of the conflict created by these actions, OTF has been denied business for foreign currency payment services, resulting in increased transaction fees and additional financial burden to the organization.

These actions have caused serious delays in OTF’s ability to hire necessary staff, including delaying the hiring for six open positions crucial to the management and monitoring of OTF’s applications and projects.... The sudden upheaval in leadership also leaves the organization at risk of losing expert staff, including researchers, technologists, and regional experts. Losing such staff could compromise OTF’s ability to carry out its mission.

End result? Court says Pack has to take his fake board and go home. The original board and CEO are the rightful ones in charge of OTF:

Accordingly, pursuant to the plain language of the OTF’s bylaws, the Court concludes that Plaintiff has demonstrated prima facie entitlement to summary judgment insofar as Plaintiff has demonstrated that the original Board is the only valid board.

It then orders that the original board is the valid board, that the removals by Pack were not valid, and that his replacement board is also not valid. Hopefully this is the end of Pack's willful destruction of important American institutions that protect freedom of speech, but somehow I doubt it will be.

Filed Under: michael pack, otf, usagm, voa
Companies: open technology fund, otf, voa, voice of america

Court Tells Trumpian Head Of US Agency For Global Media That He Can't Fire People From The Open Tech Fund (At Least For Now)

from the keep-your-hands-off dept

So, this is interesting. Last month we wrote about how Trump had appointed Michael Pack (a protege of Steve Bannon) to head up the US Agency for Global Media, which controls the various independent US overseas broadcasting operations: Voice of America, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Free Asia and Middle East Broadcasting. USAGM also oversees the Open Technology Fund, which is basically a government agency funding a ton of really important open source tools for getting around internet censorship and surveillance. OTF may sound like a misfit compared to the broadcasting operations, but it was spun out of Radio Free Asia, so its connection to USAGM is sort of a legacy one.

The story making the rounds was that Pack wished to turn all of the broadcasting operations into a sort of state-sponsored Breitbart, basically destroying their reputations. His first order of business was to essentially fire the heads of all of those organizations. Meanwhile, the backstory on the OTF side is that a bunch of wealthy Republican donors are pushing for OTF money to go towards a pair of sketchy closed source VPN products that actual security experts say are highly questionable.

In response to this, OTF folks sued Pack and now the DC Circuit appeals court has issued an injunction telling Pack he can't fire folks at OTF and that those who were in their roles prior to Pack's moves to fire them should remain in their roles for now:

ORDERED that the motion for injunction pending appeal be granted. The government is hereby enjoined from taking any action to remove or replace any officers or directors of the Open Technology Fund (“OTF”) during the pendency of this expedited appeal. The officers and directors of OTF that were in those roles prior to the government’s actions on June 17, 2020, shall continue in their normal course throughout the pendency of this appeal.

As the court notes, OTF has shown a likelihood of success, and that it does not appear that Pack has the authority to remove OTF staff:

Initially, appellants have demonstrated a likelihood of success on the merits. At this juncture, it appears likely that the district court correctly concluded that 22 U.S.C. § 6209(d) does not grant the Chief Executive Officer of the United States Agency for Global Media, Michael Pack, with the authority to remove and replace members of OTF’s board. OTF is not a broadcaster, is not mentioned in § 6209(d), and is not sufficiently similar to the broadcast entities expressly listed in § 6209(d) to fit within the statutory text. As for the government’s argument that the bylaws authorize such intervention by Mr. Pack, they appear at this juncture only to reference the exercise of statutory authority, which does not seem to include control of OTF’s board or operations.

If you're wondering, 22 USC 6209(d) says that the "officers and directors" of the various broadcast sections "serve at the pleasure of and may be named by the Chief Executive Officer of the Board." But, here, the court is saying that since OTF is different, it's not covered by that section. Frankly, this does feel like a strained reading of the law. The law specifically says:

Officers and directors of RFE/RL Inc., Radio Free Asia, and the Middle East Broadcasting Networks or any organization that is established through the consolidation of such entities, or authorized under this chapter, shall serve at the pleasure of and may be named by the Chief Executive Officer of the Board.

Since OTF came out of Radio Free Asia, I can actually understand the argument in the other direction, that Pack has authority to remove officers and directors, even if I don't like it. Still, the court went the other way, and I'm happy with that result.

The court further notes that the injunction is necessary because of the irreparable harm that may result if Pack is actually allowed to insert his own people at OTF:

Appellants have also demonstrated irreparable harm because the government’s actions have jeopardized OTF’s relationships with its partner organizations, leading its partner organizations to fear for their safety.... Further, absent an injunction during the appellate process, OTF faces an increasing risk that its decision-making will be taken over by the government, that it will suffer reputational harm, and that it will lose the ability to effectively operate in light of the two dueling boards that presently exist.

So, I'm at least cautiously optimistic about this result, though I'm not sure I agree with the logic behind it. The ruling will be almost certainly be appealed, so it may go the other way eventually, but at least there's a temporary breather and OTF remains protected for now.

Filed Under: injunction, michael pack, otf, usagm
Companies: open technology fund, otf