Civil Society Under Attack - Trends and Tactics

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Presented at FirstConferenceKualaLumpur 2018 by

Daniel Bedoya

Szeming Tan

From persistent and tailored attacks against independent media to clever impersonation mechanisms to discredit political activists, Access Now Digital Security Helpline has received over 3000 requests for assistance in the past 4 years. During this period, our 24/7 incident response team has worked directly with civil society organizations, journalists and activists from 126 countries to migitage security incidents and implement preventative measures to defend themselves online.Access Now was formed in 2009 in response to the Iranian elections, and the related crackdown on citizens digital rights. The primary focus of Access Now at that time was to provide a technology support help desk for the Iranian Green Movement. Shortly after, Access Now got involved in the digital rights policy and advocacy, but we have always maintained some form of a digital security help desk function. At the beginning of 2013 we embarked upon an ambitious expansion of that help desk, and began the process of building it into the professional 24/7 digital security Helpline that we have today. During this informative session, we would like to present an overview of trends we have seen across regions, explore how civil society organizations are attacked worldwide and present examples of creative and complex attacks conducted against civil society organizations and individuals across the globe.