Blog

As hundreds of technologists, businesses, governments, and human rights defenders assemble in San Francisco for the RightsCon technology and human rights conference, our CEO, Jim Fruchterman, and VP of Human Rights, Enrique Piracés, have co-authored a Huffington Post op-ed on human rights and the duty to protect sensitive data. They argue that the “Do No Harm” principle requires social justice advocates to use encryption and other strong security practices.

We kicked off 2014 in Benetech Labs by convening our inaugural Labs brainstorm meeting. It was a delight to bring together a great group of leaders from the technology, philanthropy, social innovation and education sectors—for a deep-dive on two of our pipeline projects. The first is a clean water project, in collaboration with Avina, a Latin American foundation that advances sustainable development in the region. The second Labs pipeline project that we examined was 3D print-on-demand for students.

As news broke on Monday that Google Chairman Eric Schmidt will donate $1 million to help solve global issues through technology, an article penned by TechCrunch journalist Gregory Ferenstein cited Benetech among select companies that are already using technology to empower individuals and address challenges like oppressive censorship.

Amnesty International’s Christoph Koettl discusses the unique opportunities and pitfalls presented by the decentralized, real-time exposure of human rights violations on YouTube. On PBS’ MediaShift blog, Koettl cites Benetech’s Mobile Martus app among the top human rights tools that collect relevant data and securely store that information.

From supporting human rights groups to advancing math accessibility, our staff is busy this month! Our VP of Engineering Gerardo Capiel spoke on a panel discussing accessibility standards at the EDUPUB2 Workshop on Digital Publishing for Education. Our Human Rights team will be heading at the end of the month to the Lesbians Who Tech Summit in San Francisco.