Spyware
Accountability
Initiative

Growing a global field of civil society organizations who are advancing threat research, advocacy, and accountability to address the use and trade of spyware.

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About The Fund

The Ford Foundation’s Dignity and Justice Fund, fiscally sponsored by the New Venture Fund (NVF), launched the Spyware Accountability Initiative (SAI) with a founding contribution by Apple and additional support from Open Society Foundations, Okta for Good, and Craig Newmark Philanthropies. Grantees of the Dignity and Justice Fund's Spyware Accountability Initiative were recommended to the board of NVF by the Fund’s advisory board, which consists of members of the Ford Foundation leadership team. An independent, global technical advisory committee advised on the Fund's grantmaking strategy. Over the next five years, SAI will support a growing community of researchers and advocacy organizations investigating, exposing, and bringing accountability to the global mercenary spyware trade. READ MORE →

Advisory Council

— Daniel Bedoya Arroyo, digital security service platform analyst at
Access Now

— Ron Deibert, professor of political science, and director of the
Citizen Lab at the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy,
University of Toronto

— Paola Mosso, co-deputy director of The Engine Room

— Rasha Abdul Rahim, director of Amnesty Tech at Amnesty
International

— Ivan Krstić, head of Apple Security Engineering and Architecture

In recent years state and non-state actors have used spyware to track and intimidate human rights defenders, political dissidents, and environmental activists, leading to hundreds of acts of physical violence and psychological harm. There is not a single company or piece of malicious software behind these attacks, but a burgeoning and lucrative industry whose footprint extends to virtually every region of the world, and notably the Global South. Half of SAI’s grants support organizations in the Global South.

“Addressing the global spyware industry cannot be the work of any one company or funder or government; it requires an approach as interconnected as our world is today… The Spyware Accountability Initiative is a major step towards confronting and neutralizing the threat mercenary spyware poses to human rights defenders, journalists, and dissidents around the globe.”

— Lori McGlinchey, director of Ford Foundation’s Technology and Society program