Technology Tools

Without a trustworthy computer, no aspect of our digital lives is secure. For those with a strong desire to keep themselves safe online, and willing to make some sacrifices in ease of use to do so, the free, open-source Tails operating system is a great option.

Civic, political, and governmental groups need to keep in touch with their people, and reaching audiences on their near-omnipresent phones has been proven to be one of the most effective ways to do so. Telerivet is one of the easiest ways for small organizations to have conversations, using a cloud-hosted contact database to send messages in various ways, including over the cellular connection of Android phones you control yourself.

VPNs are powerful tools to help avoid surveillance or censorship. Outline, by Jigsaw, a project of Google/Alphabet, is open source software to host your own VPN and share access with your community without risking that a service provider could violate your privacy. With some technical skill and a reasonable monthly cost, Outline is a powerful circumvention system for civic and political groups or rights organizers.

A simple website builder that doesn't require the ability to write code.

Critical Mention is a media monitoring and media contact monitoring tool. Users have access to television, radio, print media, podcasts, online news, and social media. While the tool is in English, it draws from news sources in over 90 languages. Dashboards tracking media can be tailored to the user, and Critical Mention maintains good customer support with trainings, a help desk, and a willingness to work with clients to integrate new sources. The tool is cloud-based and works especially well with traditional media sources. 

Canva is a graphic design tool that enables users to drag-and-drop feature and layouts to easily design beautiful visual content and infographics.

The #think10 safety planning tool provides women in politics guidance on how to enhance their personal security by combining scores from a self-assessment questionnaire and the country score from NDI’s new Women’s Political Participation Risk Index. The WPPRI calculates the risk to politically active women in 172 countries. In using the tool, women in politics can develop a safety plan relevant to their personal and professional profile, and in their political context. Each country’s ranking in the WPPRI is built from three indicators: the level of women’s political participation at the national level; the state of democracy in each country; and the likelihood of violence that women in that country face. NDI has based these indicators on data gained from the Inter-Parliamentary Union, the Economist Intelligence Unit, and Georgetown University’s Institute of Women Peace and Security.

Airtable is a spreadsheet platform with database functionalities that allows users to create visualizations, processes, and integrations for custom applications.

A service from Google that provides discussion groups for people sharing common interests through email distribution lists. Google Groups are not designed for secure communication.

An anti-malware software for Microsoft Windows, macOS, Android, and iOS. Bitdefender offers a free version that provides strong basic anti-virus capabilities for Windows, macOS, and Android devices. Paid versions of Bitdefender offer extra features and are also available for iPhones.