TACTICAL TECHNOLOGY COLLECTIVE
ANNUAL REPORT 2017
Tactical Tech is a Berlin-based organisation working
at the intersection of technology, human rights andcivil liberties.
Our mission is to address how data and digital technologies impact humanrights, social justice, power structures and accountability. We do this by looking
critically at the challenges and opportunities these new technologies bring inorder to raise awareness, find practical solutions and build capacity.
What follows are highlights of how we realised our goals and mission in 2017. It
was a great year in terms of reaching a broader audience, starting a public
discussion about how digital technologies influence our right to privacy andlaying the groundwork for broader public engagements for the year to come.
Within the context of our digital security work we continued developing
mitigation strategies and skills aimed at a broad audience and also engaged in
specialised security trainings supporting women HRDs and human rights focusedinvestigators. As always, our partner organisations have played a crucial role inadapting our materials and sharing them with their specific contexts, and ofcourse collaborating with us closely on delivering projects and events.

THE YEAR IN NUMBERS

Face-to-Face
We engaged withnearly 35,000 people
across 55 events, 25talks and 34
workshops &trainings

In Hand
We printed anddistributed 12,000
toolkits, guides andresources

Eyes
We reached over
1,710,000 people
through our online
resources, on social
media, and through ourmonthly newsletter

POLITICS OF DATAEXPOSING AND SHAPING
ISSUESDEFENDING ESSENTIALFREEDOMS

Through our Glass Room
exhibition and public educationintervention, which looked at theinterplay of tech and humanrights, we found a way to getpeople talking about online
privacy, digital security andbrought significant media
coverage to those topics.

We experimented with new
methods of digital investigationand convened and led aninternational gathering of leading
investigators working to uncoverabuses of power and corruption
through digital tools.

We’ve put our training
methodology into practice byfocusing our efforts on long-term
effects rather than quick fixes. An
external evaluation confirmed theimpact of this work with women
human rights defenders.

POLITICS OF DATA
Aimed at a public audience who are concerned about the data traces they leave behind.

THE GLASS ROOMThe Glass Room is a unique public intervention thatremixes art with technology and politics to engage
people with the importance of online privacy. We
teamed up with Mozilla to open a pop-up exhibition ona London high-street, designed to look like a familiar
tech store. Close to 19,000 people visited The Glass
Room, many of whom may never have considered how
their data is collected, or who the companies behind
their screens are. The long queues outside the door onthe closing weekend showed that privacy concerns of
the general public are genuine and we were happy to
be in a position to help them to more thoroughly
discover and ask questions about their online lives. An A busy weekend at The Glass Room London on a day which saw close
to 1500 visitors coming to find out about their online life. The busiest
external evaluation of the project found that visitors
day had over 2000 visitors. Photo: David Mirzeoff
expressed an increased awareness of data and privacy
issues after attending the exhibition.
“At least someone cares about my privacy concerns
and is taking the effort to explain it to me. It’s soWe also developed a smaller, portable version of theimportant that people know about this stuff.”
exhibition in 2017 and trialled at different events“I feel as if my mind has been opened!"throughout Europe including tech festivals in
Quotes from visitors to The Glass Room
Copenhagen, Prague and Kosovo; at Kista library in
Stockholm; and in the UK at two major galleries, theTate and the Victoria and Albert Museum.

DATA DETOX KITThis is an eight day self-learning guide that teaches you
how to reduce data traces. With the kit we've found aformat that works really well and the response from thepublic, the media and our partners indicates that there
is huge public demand for toolkits such as this . The kit
was also translated into Burmese, Czech and Swedishand journalists have helped spread the word by writing
about their own experience of the data detox:

A web app prototype of the Data Detox Kit was designed and built
in 2017 and was launched in November, receiving over 100,000visitors in the first three months.

“...instead of making and breaking that same New
Year’s pledge once again, I decided to try out anotherway of clearing up my headspace: I was going to do adigital detox.” Vogue“I feel somewhat purged of my sins!" New Scientist

ME AND MY SHADOW
The Me and My Shadow project teaches people about the data
traces they leave behind. In 2017, we extended and further
developed or curricula for digital privacy trainers on topics such as'How Mobiles Work' and 'Choosing Chat Apps'. These materials
were also translated and made available in Spanish. This curricula
can be picked up and used by anyone who is interested in the topic
and we trained people across Asia, Latin America and Europe on
how to deliver their own workshops on online privacy.

Together with the Barcelona City Council,
we developed a Privacy and Political
Participation Curriculum which can now
serve as a basis for other local councils
wanting to protect the personal data of
their citizens.

EXPOSING AND SHAPING ISSUES
Aimed at people who want to practice transparency and accountability with digital tools.

DATA INVESTIGATION CAMPTools, techniques, know-how and critical perspectivesare essential components of digital investigations. Inorder to share knowledge and inspire innovative
approaches, we brought together leading internationalartists, technologists, citizen investigators anddevelopers to our Data Investigation Camp.
Alongside our partners at Share Lab, we invited thisdiverse group to the site of an old monastery in theBalkans. Here, five days of structured tracks dealt withthe tricky ‘how’ and ‘why’ questions of investigation, themethods used, and how to realise these methods withtangible outcomes.
The learning of new skills, and the sharing of existingones resulted in unique partnerships. For example, anartist and an activist paired up to find creative ways touse facial recognition software to automatically classify
online videos showing scenes of armed conflict.
“Overcoming the fear of technology, demystifying
the complexity of methods and building acommunity to exchange knowledge is an importantvalue that empowers researchers, activists, as well
as developers and data analysts.” Camp participant
A sketch of the surrounding area where the Data
Investigation Camp was held. Created by one of our campparticipants for Tactical Tech.

INVESTIGATING SECURELY

Screenshot from exposingtheinvisible.org. Other guides andresources included 'How to Investigate Sensitive Leaks', 'Decoding
Data', 'Social Media Investigation' and 'Smart Searching with Google
Dorking'.

It’s important that digital investigation methods aresafe and secure for the investigators. For this reason,
we’ve been using our in-house digital security
knowledge as a basis for new Exposing the Invisible
guides and resources. To give an example, the ‘Leakand Onion Soup’ guide was released to highlight thepolitical and technical opportunities and risks of using
Tor Browser and Tails (an anonymity-focused operatingsystem) to investigate sensitive leaks and sources
online.

TELLING STORIESThe Exposing the Invisible team put their methods into practice with an article about investigating on
Instagram. Findings included Vladmir Putin’s spokesperson spending beyond his means by wearing an 18-caratgold watch and honeymooning on one of the most expensive yachts on the world – these details are visible toanyone looking at his public account, you just need to know how to find them.

DEFENDING ESSENTIAL FREEDOMS
Aimed at people who want to use digital technologies freely and safely.

STRENGTHENING DIGITALSECURITY
Our digital security strategy, including how we train civilsociety organisations and which resources we invest in,has significantly changed in the last year. Following
research on effective training methodologies, we foundthat short interventions and quick fix techniques
weren't working in the long term. With this in mind, we
did trainings with more focused groups, over a longer
period of time, encouraging capacity building andcommunity strengthening so that those being trained
could also train their peers and create more relevant
resources for their communities.
So how does this work in practice? In 2017, we helped
women human rights defenders safeguard against hatespeech and online harassment by hosting two Genderand Tech Institutes, one in Asia and one in Latin
America. These events offered practical support andtraining in digital privacy and security to contextualise
how digital technologies impact gender rights. The
outcome is that the facilitators and particpants leave ina better position to defend themselves, make informed
choices, and are able to build capacity by passing on
advice to their local communities.
“I returned to my transformed home, having learnt a
lot of things, and having transformed myrelationship with technology: transformations that I
continue to weave into my life.”
Gender and Technology Institute participant

Maya Indira Ganesh spoke at the annual Das
ist Netzpolitik festival on behalf of Tactical
Tech about data and discrimination.

We published a summary of the risks and attacks pro-choice activists
face, how their activism is interwoven with personal networks ofsupport, and their struggle to balance visibility with anonymity online
and off. This was published in English and in Spanish.

SECURITY-IN-A-BOX
Security-in-a-box is Tactical Tech’s longest standing
project and continues to offer a broad range anddetailed content on digital security. Much of 2017 wasspent working behind the scenes to improve thewebsite infastructure so that the content could beused, updated and translated more easily.

GENDER AND TECH WIKI
The collectively written wiki platform provides women
net activists and human rights defenders withcommunity-driven resources. It’s been produced incollaboration with women from over 25 countries as aplace to post skills, tell stories and share events.

An interactive Activities Map on the Gender and Tech Wiki showing events, trainings andworkshops, past and present.

ORGANISATION OVERVIEW
What goes on behind the scenes

EXTERNAL PROJECTS
We initiated a new research project examining how data is influencing
elections and other democratic processes across the world. The timeliness of
this research lead to a number of collaborations, including with the Oxford
Internet Institute, the Who Targets Me project, and with a growing number ofinternational media outlets.
We developed an MA level academic course examining the interplay of tech,
design and ethics. University of Potsdam students enrolled in the course
examined at the political nature of design and how it can create, reinforce
and shift power dynamics. Building on this approach, we also began a newseries on this topic by publishing an essay on Weaponised Design.
Tactical Tech's co-founders were comissioned by the Heinrich Böll Foundation
to write an essay about technofixes – using data and technology to solve
social, environmental and political problems. Efficiency and Madness, waspublished as a small booklet and all copies have since been snapped up.

The Efficiency and Madness essay,
printed as a small booklet.

FINANCE

GOVERNING BOARD

We’re thrilled to welcome two new board members:
For 2017, we successfully secured €2.2 million in
Gillian Caldwell and Gus Hosein. Gillian is the Executive funding, including core funding from: the Sigrid
Rausing Trust, a private human rights foundation and
Director of Global Witness and brings a wealth ofthe Oak Foundation.
organisational, management and campaigning
expertise to the board. Gus is the Executive Director of
AUDIT AND EVALUATION
Privacy International and brings his knowledge oftechnology and data related issues and his experiencerunning a comparable sized organisation.
We conducted four financial audits, one organisational
and three project audits – all without findings. Two
Changes to the board: Andre Wilkens was made chair large-scale external evaluations were also carried outof the board. We said thank you and goodbye to Rahul and we were pleased to see that our work has a timely
relevancy and that our audiences, partners, and peersBhargava and Katarzyna Szmielewicz to whom we’rethink highly of our work.
extremely grateful for their invaluable contributions.

IN THE PRESS
Tactical Tech continued to be featured prominently inthe mainstream global media. The Glass Room, andthe Data Detox Kit, were the main catalysts for thiscollectively gaining over 80 items of press coverage
including features in Vogue, Channel 4 News, DesignWeek, Al Jazeera, and BBC Radio 4, among others. A
new collaboration began with KCRW Radio Berlin, theGerman arm of US based radio station NPR, to feature
Tactical Tech on their weekly radio show: ‘Tech
Thursdays’, a partnership that will continue into 2018.
The Glass Room was featured on Channel 4 News in the UK thenight before the opening, watched by 2 million viewers.