What we do

Citizens, consumers, service providers, NGOs - multiple actors use data for their own honest purposes. Today balances of power favour state access over citizen’s rights. Power dynamics also favour monopolies’ exploitation of huge silos of data over the freedom of users and competitors.

We empower those who use data fairly and defend data rights before the courts. That is to say, all rights necessary to protect the legitimate use of data, be it personal or not.

Throughout our programs our drivers are data protection and cybersecurity, fostered by our core values.

Data Protection & Cybersecurity: Two Sides of the Same Coin

Defending data rights requires to refuse to have siloed expertise in data protection. A trustworthy Internet requires a holistic approach where data protection and cybersecurity go hand in hand. Indeed, our experience taught us that it is easy to spend time and energy on data flows, the content, yet if the actual transmission infrastructure, the container, is flawed and insecure, any form of protection of data is a chimaera.

Data Protection

Take Ownership of Your Data Rights

We want individuals and organisations to know and exercise their rights. We want their right to access a judge and a fair remedy to be effective. Individuals must easily be able to exercise their rights to self-determine what becomes of their personal data. Companies and public services cannot remain the by-stander of their ruin when they are victims of espionage, or that they experience the ripple effect of hacking tools bought on grey markets by states with tax payers’ money.

Build the Economy’s Equilibrium

We refuse data silos making us depend on the benevolence of small almighty cartels. This is no less than a feudal system, where a few dictates and manipulates our lives' digital frame. It is time for fair competition to adapt to the digital paradigm. The notions of payment and consumer needs must be adapted. European data protection law has now created real tools to reshape the playing field.

Contracts are still the core fabric of trust. Exploitive terms of service have caused enormous harm to our societies. We will drive the enforcement transparency and accountability. One should not feel belittled by the technicality of terms and conditions. Forced agreement will never be consent.

Demand Surveillance Safeguards

We accept that a certain degree of surveillance is necessary to protect a democratically chosen balance between rights. Nonetheless we refuse the current state of surveillance. It is so pervasive that it is costly for any new business model to not tap into surveillance capitalism and unsafe infrastructures. We believe direct state surveillance, or indirect via private organisations, must be regulated through inclusive democratic processes.

Cybersecurity

Hold States and Surveillance Service Providers Accountable

Countries race and spend millions to break into the few monopolistic tools available to the public. We challenge this before the courts and will constructively take part to the shaping of international law safeguards.

Embed Cybersecurity in the Economy

We want to bring the courts to understand cybersecurity stakes and enunciate realistic dos and don’ts for interoperability to flourish in a safe economy. We want to stimulate private actors to understand their technical hurdles and share good practice.

Take Free Software to the Next Level

Nowadays most powerful private actors have the best security for their data and their users. We strongly advocate for standardised free software (FLOSS) as a key to establish and keep affordable secure infrastructures that societies can rely on to get crucial services. Even the most fragile of societies.

Empower Towards Distributed Resilience

We refuse the current public policy advocacy for populations to wall themselves off each others to be secure. We believe this discourse is a shame to freedom. Moreover, it dubiously builds upon public lack of literacy and decision makers' fear of their own ignorance.

We want to empower individuals to understand the risks, while trusting and enjoying their control over technologies surrounding them.