Free speech, privacy, and human autonomy are under assault. Under the cloak of countering “misinformation,” governments, NGOs, academics, and Big Tech now often collaborate to suppress information, ideas, and opinions expressed by everyday people. Meanwhile biometric ID systems are being built to control people’s movements and access, and digital currencies threaten citizen’s basic right to economic independence.

In a strange twist, many of those who defended our digital rights now lead this new authoritarianism. Recent revelations show many civil society leaders partner with government and Big Tech to promote top-down information controls - with some even seeking to break encrypted private messaging. During the Covid-19 crisis, rather than defending and protecting human rights from government abuse, many in the digital rights field cheered on and even collaborated to dismantle our rights and freedoms.

It is now the supposed liberals, as much as the conservatives, that most threaten digital civil liberties.

liber-net combats this new authoritarianism in order to reestablish free speech and civil liberties as the default standard for our networked age. Through journalism, research, media-making, events and network building, liber-net provides a platform to create alliances, shine a light on civil society corruption, and change the conversation.

The liber-net team comes from the digital rights field, which means we have a deep understanding of the problem and can connect to the many disaffected advocates who want change. We are willing to stick our necks out publicly, having collaborated on the Twitter Files and performed much of the research to expose the Censorship Industrial Complex.

Focus

We are connected and animated by the urgent rejection of digital authoritarianism. Our key areas of concern are:

• Expanding systems of online censorship, and the cultural activism that enables it
• The acceleration of surveillance regimes operating in and through information technology
• Emerging financial technologies such as digital currencies that are designed to deny, nudge or inhibit behaviors and limit legitimate personal autonomy
• Biometric IDs, which enable systems of digital gating and exclusion from society

Ultimately, we are dedicated to human autonomy, dignity, and pluralism. We support and seek to enable free speech, both offline and online and support technologies which facilitate both individual agency, collective endeavor, and the free exchange and circulation of ideas.

If you are interested in working with or supporting us, please reach out.

Leadership

Andrew Lowenthal (Director) is a leader, writer and researcher. He worked closely with Matt Taibbi on the Twitter Files, breaking stories on the Virality Project, the Atlantic Council, and Australia’s censorship regime, and was the lead researcher and project manager for the Censorship-Industrial Complex exposé.

He also worked with Twitter Files journalist Michael Shellenberger to coordinate the Westminster Declaration.

He is the co-founder and former Executive Director of EngageMedia, an Asia-Pacific digital rights and open technology non-profit. He is a former fellow of Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society, the Harvard Film Studies Center, and MIT’s Open Documentary Lab.

He writes on Substack at Network Affects and Racket.News, and tweets at @naffects.