Freedom Box Foundation

Programs: The freedombox foundation (the "foundation") educates the public about the importance of creating, preserving and protecting personal privacy, security, anonymity, and free speech on the internet. The foundation does so primarily by educating the public on the impact of technology on personal privacy and evaluating existing communications technology for its impacts on personal privacy. The foundation focuses on creating a collection of privacy training materials using freely available software tools that demonstrate to the general public that preserving personal privacy while communicating using the internet and mobile devices is not only possible but easy to do. Through these activities, the foundation encourages the general public to exercise its privacy rights, and to demand products and services that respect privacy rights and democratic values. Specifically, during the 2016 fiscal year, the foundation: was assisted in its mission by the donation by thoughtworks of 3 software developers dedicated to improving and stabilizing the software collection which helped the foundation increase not only the amount of privacy respecting software included in the collection but also its reliability and ease of use;raised the frequency from one to two calls a month of the regular open phone calls for volunteers interested in contributing to the creation of training materials using the freely available software tools of the collection and as a result of the open conference calls the foundation has increased the number of volunteers actively working on creating the collection and preparing teaching materials;built a website using its own domain for the purpose of creating an easy-to-find gateway to provide the general public: details for connecting to the bi-monthly conference calls, notes and minutes of those calls, a faq and manual on how to install and use the collection of software, and an official page from which the public can safely and without cost download the collection of privacy respecting software;participated in presentations and talks to members of the free and open software community to educate and inform them of the existence, purpose and importance of the privacy respecting software known as freedombox in order to build support for and spread awareness of the project;participated in strategy discussions on the public freedombox mailing list for the purpose of increasing the number of low cost computer devices supported by the software collection to ensure access for low income and impoverished individuals;successfully deployed a number of freedomboxes along with a mesh network in a village in india and produced a video of same to demonstrate through practical application the feasibility of the foundation's primary mission of creating, preserving and protecting personal privacy, security, anonymity and free speech on the internet.