Skip to main content

Internet Freedom Festival 2017



Another successful Internet Freedom Festival (IFF) was held 6-10 March, 2017. The week-long "global unconference" festival takes place every year in Valencia, Spain. It is a great opportunity for those in the Internet Freedom community to meet up, share experiences, learn from one another, and discuss issues affecting the Internet today. Once again, Psiphon team members were in attendance at this year's IFF.

This year’s sessions focused on eight different themes: Community; Training & Best Practices; Internet Freedom: Present and Future; Tools & Technology; Policy & Advocacy; Regions & Groups; Communications & Design; and Journalism & Media. The IFF encourages collaboration, diversity, and inclusivity. The days were filled with engaging sessions, each of which presented an opportunity to meet colleagues from around the world and undertake the shared common goal of Internet Freedom.

Learn more about what participants have to say about the IFF through the Twitter hashtag #InternetIFF.
1st Vietnam Cyber Dialogue


A day before IFF kicked off, the first ever Vietnam Cyber Dialogue (VCD) took place. Inspired by ASL 19’s Iran Cyber Dialogue, the event was a lively gathering of community leaders, activists, policy makers, and technologists working towards improving access to information and greater freedom of expression in Vietnam. The event was organized by Article 19, Việt Tân, Aspiration, and Reporters Without Borders.
Ahead of the event, Việt Tân shared “10 Things to know about Vietnam and the internet,” with attendees. Vietnam has the largest number of internet users in Southeast Asia and a vibrant cyber community. There is certainly lots to discuss when it comes to Vietnam’s media landscape and online environment. The VCD provided safe space for collaboration and dialogue between the Vietnamese community, its diaspora, and technologist allies.
Hear what Việt Tân’s Loa and The 88 Project had to say about the Vietnam Cyber Dialogue in this YouTube video.

Upcoming events

If you’re interested in Internet Freedom check out these upcoming events:

Iran Cyber Dialogue 27-28 March, 2017

RightsCon Brussels 2017 29 – 31 March, 2017

Want to collaborate with Psiphon in 2017?

Contact us at info@psiphon.ca



Follow our Twitter and Facebook for more updates!

Popular posts from this blog

Why You Don't Need Google's Domain Fronting

Google’s removal of domain fronting emphasizes the need for solutions like Psiphon. Google has confirmed that they will block domain fronting across Google domains and App Engine. For many apps and publishers, this represents a step backwards in the fight for internet freedom. While Psiphon has never relied on this Google service, many app developers continued to depend on the practice as a convenient and straightforward means of circumventing state-level censorship, despite the long-running speculation that Google would close this loophole (eg. Will Scott’s blog post in 2017). While the announcement has been met with criticism from internet activists and service providers alike, Google has defended their decision, saying “ domain fronting has never been a supported feature ”. Domain fronting has been a popular means of censorship circumvention for several years, being embraced by popular apps like Signal, who publicly adopted the practice in 2016 . While using Google domain

Social Media and Internet Ban in Turkey

Following the detainment of 12 pro-Kurdish lawmakers from the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) in the early hours of November 4 th , Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, WhatsApp and Skype were blocked in Turkey . There were reports that Turk Telekom internet provider completely disabled access to the internet or throttled the connection to the point that it was impossible to connect. Despite lack of official decision about the restrictions, and BTK’s explanation that there was a technical problem throughout Turkey, Prime Minister Binali Yildirim made a statement later in the day and said “For security reasons, these kinds of measures can be taken time to time. These are temporary measures. Everything goes back to normal after the danger is eliminated.” Social media and internet bans ended the following evening in most of the country, but there were still some short-term connection problems during the weekend in some regions, and it was reported that some Turk Telekom users

Cybernews Interview, Psiphon: “the world is becoming more and more privacy-conscious”

Most of us are aware of the necessity of having strong VPN protection in place. But what are the inherent issues with standard VPN applications, and how can they be solved? While choosing the best VPN often comes down to its features, the problem with many of the modern VPN applications concerns easily recognizable traffic in certain Internet environments despite the implemented end-to-end encryption. But what can be done about it? To discuss this matter, we’ve reached out to Alexis Gantous, a member of the Business Development and Operations team at Psiphon Inc, a company that works on providing uncensored Internet access for Windows and mobile devices. How did the idea of creating Psiphon originate? Psiphon was founded out of a research project at the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab, founder and CEO Michael Hull saw the opportunity to take the original peer-to-peer system and further develop it to fill the needs of millions around the world who face restrictions to their access t