Digital Democracy

If you were to Google “Internet”, “freedom”, “security”, “privacy”,”blog” and pull together the people and organizations that make up the top hits of the search, you would have the Internet at Liberty Conference, hosted by Google on September 20-22 in Budapest. A venerable who’s who of people involved in the worldwide discussion surrounding Internet freedom, [...]

In Haiti, a second humanitarian crisis is unfolding: Haiti’s women are under siege from increasing insecurity, which has grown steadily since the earthquake devastated the country in January. Facing violence and rape, Haiti’s women operate within discriminatory legal structures which prevent them from accessing aid and taking an active role in their country’s redevelopment process. [...]

We just wrote about the power of the volunteers who have worked on Haiti. However volunteers are not only useful in times of crises. Digital Democracy’s core team is small, and we accomplish our work through partnerships and collaborations. Our volunteers and interns play a crucial role, and today we want to highlight the work [...]

The power of new technologies has made a lot of headlines recently, but behind these new tools is a deeper story – the power of the people who wield them. When it comes to open-source and particularly crowd-sourcing tools, those people are so often volunteers, and they are the true heroes of technological successes. For [...]

While in Northern Thailand, Mark and Emily meet with Digital Democracy’s partner The All Burma IT Students’ Union (ABITSU) to set up equipment and train ABITSU’s core staff, as well as members of other human rights groups working along the border, in the uses and features of Handheld Human Rights (HHR) for its initial launch. [...]

Emily and I had the pleasure of guest lecturing at Nathan Freitas’ Social Activism using Mobile Technology class at NYU’s ITP program. It was a wonderful opportunity that you can read more about below: The topic of our class was “Grassroots Development – Techniques & Strategies,” discussing Digital Democracy‘s experiences doing fieldwork.  Before introducing the [...]

D2′s co-founders Mark and Emily are representing Handheld Human Rights at N2Y4, NetSquared’s annual conference. It’s thrilling to be at a conference focused on supporting projects on the ground. This past weekend, D2 spent time with exiled monk leaders of Burma’s September 2007 Saffron Revolution. U Pyinya Zawta, U Gawsita and U Agga were all [...]