Key facts
In 2024, our organization trained more than 830 journalists, activists, and members of civil society through projects funded by foundations, grants, and donations, which enable us to offer free training and commercial services. This is the largest number of people ever trained by our organization in a single year.
We have succeeded in operating in the most closed and hostile countries for journalists and activists, notably in Tunisia, Senegal, the Philippines, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Togo, Russia, and Ukraine. We have also been able to launch two major projects in two countries where journalists are particularly at risk: Congo Kinshasa and Afghanistan.
Types of people trained by Nothing2Hide in 2024 in France and internationally
The year 2024 also saw the fruition of our efforts to broaden the audience that the association can reach by integrating a new theme into our training programs: media and information literacy. In 2024, more than 60 people benefited from MIE training provided by Nothing2Hide. However, digital security remains the theme on which the association focuses most.
In addition to the association’s traditional training activities, Nothing2Hide formalized a new activity in 2024: security audits for organizations. But what is an audit? It is a kind of comprehensive assessment of the measures to be taken by an organization, as well as a discussion of the solutions we propose for them to implement. An audit is not an emergency response (even though these are often necessary), but rather the beginning of a support process.
Emergency digital assistance
The increase in the number of people trained by Nothing2Hide can be explained by the fact that in 2024, we reactivated our emergency digital assistance project thanks to the support of two foundations, Un Monde par Tous and Open Technology Fund. In total, 250 journalist-activists and activists were able to benefit free of charge from Nothing2Hide’s expertise as part of these programs.
In France
When Nothing2Hide was created eight years ago, we never imagined we would have to seek funding to meet the demand for digital security training in France, “the country of human rights.” Yet that is what we have seen: over the past two years, we have seen an explosion in the number of requests from journalists, activists, and associations. Thanks to the support of Un Monde par Tous, we have been able to respond to these requests and provide assistance to eight independent organizations and media outlets, including security audits, smartphone analyses, training, and the provision of secure connections (VPNs).
Internationally
Thanks to the Open Technology Fund and its Rapid Response Fund program, which targets exclusively authoritarian countries, we have been able to support four organizations and 70 journalists, activists, and campaigners in Tunisia, Senegal, the Philippines, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Togo, Russia, and Ukraine, whether for security audits, personalized support, or emergency responses such as smartphone analysis or replacement of compromised equipment.
Fighting censorship
Thanks to the support of the Open Technology Fund, we were able to relaunch PiGuard, a project that aims to equip around 30 independent media outlets and civil society organizations around the world with tools to circumvent censorship (VPN++) that fly under the radar. We plan to distribute around 100 VPN boxes between 2024 and 2025 with the help of our local partners. In 2024, the project was rolled out in Turkey, Benin, Togo, the DRC, and Congo Brazzaville.
Beyond these deployments, Nothing2Hide worked to improve our in-house censorship circumvention tool, PiGuard, which is now available as a mobile, standalone device that runs on battery power and a 4G modem. Technical developments in 2024 also made PiGuard easier to use with the addition of a graphical user interface. All developments related to the project are carried out under a free license and the code is available online on our online repository.
Media support in Congo Kinshasa
On the occasion of local elections in the DRC, Nothing2Hide deployed an ambitious program to train 50 journalists in the DRC. At the end of 2023 and beginning of 2024, we organized a training of trainers with five journalists so that they could each organize a digital security training session for 10 journalists. As a result, in 2024, 50 journalists were able to benefit from digital security training in Bukavu, Goma, Kinshasa, Lubumbashi, and Kananga.
Digital security training in Afghanistan
Between February and March 2024, we launched an ambitious media support program in Afghanistan. With the help of two partner organizations, we organized five digital security training sessions, conducted remotely and in Farsi by our digital security experts. Fifty-four journalists were trained in data protection in the cities of Kabul, Herat, and Balkh, the majority of whom were women (33).
Beyond the impact of the training sessions themselves and the digital security skills acquired by the participants, these training sessions have a highly symbolic significance. To our knowledge, they are the first to have been officially authorized in the country. In doing so, they have opened up opportunities to work with women on these issues in Afghanistan.
Following these training sessions, in collaboration with our partner Radio For Peace International, we broadcast an audio version of these training sessions on shortwave, FM radio in Afghanistan, and major podcast platforms in order to continue working towards the empowerment of those who continue to inform us in Afghanistan.
Media and digital literacy (EMI)
In 2024, we launched our MIE project, Tous acteurs et actrices de l’information (All Information Actors), in three regions: Ile-de-France, Nouvelle-Aquitaine, and Centre Val de Loire. We have forged numerous partnerships with associations and organizations specializing in media and information literacy.
This year, we developed a specific workshop called citizen investigation workshop, during which we raise participants’ awareness of how to use the internet and how to search for and verify information. These workshops are conducted in partnership with investigative media outlets and offer collaborative work between journalists and the general public.
The participants in these workshops are young people aged 12 to 25. Digital technology is at the heart of their daily lives, but they do not necessarily understand or question it. The aim of these workshops is to open up new perspectives on information, where to find it, and how to verify it, which will then enable them to question their usual sources, particularly social media. Developing their digital skills means strengthening their critical thinking skills with regard to information.
For these workshops, we are committed to working with vulnerable audiences and populations that are prone to misinformation and mistrust of so-called traditional media. That is why we run these workshops with associations, young workers’ hostels, open educational centers, and on the margins of high schools.
Factoscope
In 2024, Nothing2Hide strengthened its partnership with Factoscope, a French-language portal that provides everyone with resources for fact-checking and media and information literacy (MIL). This project is supported by the public school of journalism in Tours.
We list and update around 100 digital investigation tools in Factoscope’s OSINT toolkit, which we use in our training courses and media and information literacy workshops. We also publish educational sheets detailing our workshop formats to make them as reproducible as possible so that others can use them. 24 “ready-to-use” workshop sheets are now available online under a Creative Commons license and are therefore freely accessible and reusable (go ahead, help yourself!).
Finally, we participated in the jury for Factoscope’s Francophone Fact-Checking Journalism Award. This award recognizes French-language media outlets for their fact-checking work in four categories: verification of political statements, debunking rumors, recontextualization of audiovisual content, and refutation of fake news affecting women in particular.
Events in 2024
Nothing2Hide participated in conferences, workshops, and events in France and internationally on freedom of information and privacy protection. Here is our 2024 retrospective.
- Les Assises du Journalisme on March 25 and 26: Assises du Journalisme: we spoke at Les Assises du Journalisme in Tours to present the Factoscope project, a media literacy and fact-checking project.
- The Privacy Café on March 14: We relaunched our Privacy Cafés: a café, people, and the desire to share ideas on topics related to personal data, digital security, and any other topics that interest you. The theme of the March 14 café was Smartphones and Pocket Spyware.
- The Tashkent Regional Forum, May 6-10: We were in Uzbekistan at the invitation of CFI to lead a workshop on digital security for journalists from Central Asia as part of the Tashkent Regional Forum for journalists from Central Asia organized by CFI.
- Civicert in Berlin, May 20-24: We participated in an event in Berlin organized by Civicert, a collective of associations and NGOs working on digital security for civil society.
- The Couthures-sur-Garonne International Journalism Festival, July 12-13: We participated alongside Sylvain Clament, president of Radio for Peace International, in the round table discussion: What security for journalists?
- Masterclass “The safety of journalists in reporting,” October 8 in Bordeaux: We participated with the League of Human Rights in this masterclass organized by the Bordeaux-Nouvelle-Aquitaine Press Club in front of about 50 students from the Bordeaux School of Journalism (EFJ).
Miscellaneous
We didn’t know where to put all this, so we created a “Miscellaneous” category:
Between the two rounds of legislative elections in France, we published a digital security guide for civil society: Basic advice for crisis situations (legislative).
This commitment to freedom of information has earned us death threats from shady individuals on the far right. These threats have only confirmed our determination to take a stand against the far right, both globally and now in France, an ideology that we believe poses the greatest threat to democracy in the short term.
Threats received by Nothing2Hide, which is on the list of “candidates for a bullet in the back of the head”
A word about the association
Nothing2Hide is an association specializing in digital technology and information. We use technology to protect and disseminate information. Since its creation, our association has trained more than 4,000 citizens, journalists, and activists.
The association aims to encourage, develop, and promote:
- a good understanding and mastery of digital technology
- access to online information and the fight against all forms of censorship
- training in data, source, and communications security
- digital literacy