Our Mission:
Supporting civil society organizations working to investigate, expose, and prevent spyware and help bring accountability to global trade in surveillance technologies.

There is a growing marketplace of private spyware firms developing and selling sophisticated surveillance technologies to governments around the world. This multi-billion dollar industry is not yet meaningfully constrained by international regulations and is helping to facilitate physical violence, reinforce authoritarianism, and support political repression. From Pegasus spyware targeting human rights activists to malware targeting the Ukrainian infrastructure, these attacks affect every area of our lives and underscore the magnitude of the risks we all face – and the need for a global field of civil society organizations advancing threat research, advocacy, and accountability.

The Ford Foundation’s Dignity and Justice Fund, fiscally sponsored by the New Venture Fund, has launched a new funding initiative for spyware accountability with a founding contribution from Apple and additional contributions from Open Society Foundations, Okta for Good, and Craig Newmark Philanthropies, and more donors are expected to join over the course of the initiative. The funding initiative will last for at least the next five years and will primarily support civil society organizations working to investigate, expose, and prevent spyware and help bring accountability to global trade in surveillance technologies.

We know this work has real-life consequences for civil society. In recent years state and non-state actors have used spyware to track and intimidate human rights defenders, political dissidents, and environmental activists in virtually every region of the world. And every day these threats broaden and deepen. And it’s not just one company or piece of software - commercial spyware is a lucrative and growing industry. This new funding initiative will support a range of strategies toward effective accountability for the trade and use of spyware.

This initiative will be making grants for work on spyware accountability, and this is our second open call for concept notes. We invite concept notes from civil society organizations, journalists, and others who are looking to build and sustain their capacity to engage on this critical issue.

Access Now (Global), Amnesty Tech (Global), Business & Human Rights Resource Centre (Global), Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (USA), The Citizen Lab (Canada), Data Privacy Brasil (Brazil), Digital Rights Foundation (Pakistan), Epicenter.works (Europe), Hiperderecho (Peru), International Justice Clinic at the University of California, Irvine School of Law (USA), Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University (USA), Lighthouse Reports (Netherlands), Media Defence (UK), Media Diversity Institute (Armenia), Red en Defensa de los Derechos Digitales (R3D) (Mexico), Red Line for Gulf (UK), SocialTIC (Mexico), Spaces For Change (Nigeria), Unwanted Witness (Uganda).