Hans Thoolen on Human Rights Defenders and their awards

On 2 January 2025 Amnesty Tech – a global collective of advocates, hackers, researchers, and technologists – announced the launch of the third Digital Forensics Fellowship (DFF).

This innovative Fellowship is an opportunity for 5 – 7 human rights defenders (HRDs), journalists, and/or technologists working in civil society organisations around the world to train with Amnesty Tech’s Security Lab to build skills and knowledge on advanced digital threats and forensic investigation techniques. This is a part-time Fellowship that will last 3-4 months and will come with a stipend.

Fellowship start and end date: The Fellowship is expected to run from April – July 2025.

Application Deadline, 23 January 2025 
Location: dependent upon the suitable applicant’s location.

Remuneration: Successful applicants will be given a stipend of £500/month for their time.

Background

Across the world, hard-won rights are being weakened and denied every day. Increasingly, much of the repression faced by HRDs and journalists begins online. Since 2017, Amnesty Tech’s investigations have exposed vast and well-orchestrated digital attacks against activists and journalists in countries such as Morocco, Egypt, Azerbaijan, Qatar, Serbia, Mexico and Pakistan.

Advanced technical capacity is needed in all world regions to tackle the mercenary spyware crisis. By fostering a more decentralised, global, and diverse network of well-trained incident responders and investigators, we can jointly contribute to more timely and effective protection of HRDs and journalists against unlawful surveillance.

The spyware landscape changes rapidly, and creativity and persistence are needed to research and identify new trends, tools, and tactics used to target civil society. The curriculum for the third edition of the DFF will be tailored to the cohort and will be future facing to prepare Fellows to work on current and future spyware threats. [see also: https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/2024/05/16/two-young-human-rights-defenders-raphael-mimoun-and-nikole-yanez-on-tech-for-human-rights/]

Objectives and deliverables

Participants in the Digital Forensics Fellowship will be expected to:

• Attend an in-person, week-long convening where the majority of trainings will be conducted. This training will take place in June 2025, the exact location is set to be confirmed shortly.
• Dedicate approximately 10 – 12 hours per month to the Fellowship, outside of the convening, by participating in remote training sessions and through independent work outside of scheduled sessions to deepen understanding of training topics.
• Engage with the programme cohort and the Security Lab during the in-person and remote trainings, and in discussion groups on an ad-hoc basis.

Essential Requirements

• An understanding of the technical threats, digital attacks and challenges faced by journalists, HRDs, and civil society organisations in their local contexts.
• Demonstrated interest in conducting investigations to identify digital attacks against civil society, with the goal of building resilience among civil society actors in the face of surveillance after the Fellowship.
• Familiarity using command line tools and basic knowledge of scripting languages like Bash and Python to analyse data.
• An understanding of how internet infrastructure works, for example the role of IP addresses, TLS certificates, and DNS queries.
• Technical familiarity with GNU/Linux operating systems, as well as Android and iPhone systems.
• Engaging with the English language as the primary language throughout the Fellowship.
• Application instructions:

To apply, applicants will be required to submit the following via our recruitment system eArcu – please upload all relevant documents to the CV section of the application portal.

1. A copy of your most recent CV.
2. A cover letter explaining your motivation and interest in the Fellowship and outlining how you meet the essential requirements outlined in the job description.

Applications must be in PDF, Word, PowerPoint or Excel format.

Application Process:

Shortlisted applicants will be invited to complete a record video interview week commencing 10th February, answering a series of pre-set questions via video, which allows us to learn more about you and your suitability for the Fellowship. Successful applicants from this process will be invited to a Microsoft Teams interview with the panel week commencing 3rd March.

How to apply;

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Amnesty International