What the community, operations & fundraising team does here at IFF.
We’re always up to a lot, from campaigning against the latest digital rights violation (see: Digi Yatra, ECI seeking tenders to install CCTVs in polling booths, et al) to making memes. This year bet big on video and celebrated a truly post-COVID year with a bunch of events across India for our lovely community of digital nagriks.
Events, events & more events!
Privacy Supreme’24!
Every year, Privacy Supreme commemorates this landmark judgment, celebrating and critically appraising this watershed moment in Indian constitutional history and its relevance in the current context, especially as privacy faces extraordinary challenges on various fronts: informational, digital, bodily, and more.
We hosted this edition of Privacy Supreme on August 22 (Thursday) at the India International Centre, which brought an exciting line-up of speakers, who delved deep into contemporary themes surrounding personal data, privacy, and autonomy in day-to-day life, spanning across a keynote address by Dr S Muralidhar and an illustrious new format – The UnPanel, featuring Amber Sinha, Shefali Malhotra, Nikhil Dey, Mihir Samson, Smriti Parsheera and Dr Anand Teltumbde (who joined us remotely). Thank you to all the speakers who made the event as insightful as it was and the audience for showing up and making the event a resounding success and a special shout out to our media partner, The Wire. All designs for Privacy Supreme 2024 were created by the amazing Gaurang Oza (@spacemanstripes on Instagram)!
We cannot wait to see you folks again for Privacy Supreme 2025 :) Until then, you can access the recordings for all of this year’s sessions here.
Diving into Alternative Futures with Goethe-Institut.
In partnership with the Goethe-Institut, we discussed how digital infrastructures and AI shape relationships between citizens, the economy, and the state. How can power imbalances be addressed, and data sovereignty achieved in a digital age. We were joined by Uthara Ganesh, Dr. Shivangi Narayan and Shashank Mohan. The session was moderated by Disha Verma. Thank you to the 120+ people who attended the panel discussion and incited an insightful discussion on reclaiming our humanity in the age of rampant platformisation in both private and public spheres.
We were also proud to be a part of the panel discussion on ‘Seeing like a digital state, advocating like a citizen’ along with Rainer Rehak, Rahul Bhatia, Dr. Mansi Kedia, Aditi Agarwal, Muhammad Radwan, who joined us as panellists and Disha Verma, who was the moderator.
The Glass Room: Misinformation Edition – now in Kochi!
Continuing an exciting collaboration with Tactical Tech to localize and exhibit their digital literacy content for Indian audiences, we kick-started October with "The Glass Room: Misinformation Edition" in Kochi, in collaboration with Tactical Tech. Having been hosted in over 61 countries, it is designed to prompt reflection on how misinformation spreads in the digital age and impacts our culture, politics, and society. It was a seven-day exhibition from October 5th to 12th, exploring how false information spreads in the digital age. A special thank you to TinkerHub for lending their beautiful space for the exhibition.
In collaboration with The Community Library Project, we were also able to have three exhibits of The Glass Room: Community Edition across three library spaces across New Delhi for TCLP’s members strengthening their digital literacy and security campaign efforts.
Policy over peanuts (and pints): IFF’s Pub Quiz!
Part fundraising drive to support our mission and part fun hangout with our awesome community, we hosted the inaugural IFF Pub Quiz at the beautiful Underline Centre in Indiranagar, Bangalore. Thank you for the amazing turnout and for raising funds to support all the work our team was up to in 2024!
Holding Space(s).
Continuing our campaign to remind passengers to #DeboardDigiYatra, we hosted a Twitter Space with Jagriti Chandra who joined Disha Verma as they highlighted the innumerable problems with Facial Recognition Technology and invited audience members to share their own Dard-e-DigiYatra. We were also joined by Tapasya Tofuss, Kumar Sambhav, Divij Joshi and David Nolan for our Twitter space on ‘Blackbox Governance’ which was an interactive discussion on the use of algorithms for distribution of crucial welfare benefits to citizens in India as well as exclusion due to algorithmic bias.
We believe these online conversations are an important part of what we do here at IFF as they allow our community members across India (and even abroad!) to join us and share knowledge and resources.
All We Imagine as Impact.
In 2024, we continued some campaigns from previous years and began new ones as we yearned for digital rights.
Electioneering.
2024 was one for elections. With over 96 crore people going to the polling booths in India – the stakes for our democracy were high. We kept our eyes peeled over how emerging technology would shape (or distort) our electoral processes with IFF’s election watch: Free and Fair. The elections to the 18th Lok Sabha were certainly one that needed all eyes. In January, we released our Digital Rights Manifesto with a seven-point agenda that puts rights at the forefront, demanding that governance initiatives preserve and advance digital rights in the era of digitalisation. We presented these demands to all political parties (at regional and union level) and electoral candidates, urging them to adopt them in their party manifestos for the 2024 general and state elections. In our analysis of party manifestos we were pleased to note that some (including manifestos from the INC, DMK and the CPI(M)) had presented a good starting point toward addressing digital rights issues. We also engaged stakeholders like:
- Political parties & candidates through an open letter urging them to publicly declare that they would not create or circulate AI-generated synthetic media to mislead voters which garnered the support of more than 15 organisations and 200 individuals,
- The Election Commission of India with an open letter that we signed along with 11 civil society organizations flagging concerns about the use of digital technology in the electoral process citing an inadequate code of conduct,
- Platforms like Meta, X & YouTube with an assessment of how they have reported about their human rights impact in India
- And finally, voters like yourself! We unpacked harms to voter privacy, ranging from e-surveillance to targeted political campaigning.
We were also pleased to launch DRAGG – Digital Rights Are Going Great: Elections Edition as we recorded and documented all instances of violations of your digital rights in this election season. With the help of researchers, journalists, academicians, civil society and other stakeholders, we were able to create an incredibly useful repository which was updated throughout the election period with media coverage of such violations. While the elections might be over, our watch isn’t. We’ll be working on bringing DRAGG back in the coming year!\
A massive victory came our way during the elections as a result of our unwavering commitment to preserving the integrity of our electoral process. Following our letter to the ECI where we raised concerns over NIC's tender for deploying drones and facial recognition technologies at polling stations in the 2024 elections, in a reply to our X/Twitter thread ECI directed NIC to withdraw the tender, noting risks to voter privacy. You can read more about this massive W here.
IFF is nothing without its incredible community, which we’d like to take a moment to thank for all of their hard work. The beautiful website (freeandfair.in) was built by our volunteers Phani & Anoop - thank you!
Like our mission and want to support us? Write to us about volunteering at [email protected] or become an IFF Member by donating today!
Dard-e-DigiYatra (Again…)
We continued our ongoing offensive against the many harms of the voluntary but mandatory in practice airport check in service which passengers were coerced or tricked into signing up for by the virtue of an aggressive roll out at Indian airports. We teamed up with Kruttika Susarla and Sanitary Panels to bring you an all-you-should-know leaflet to understand what is wrong with the service, an illustrative guide to avoiding it at airports along with a handy QR Code to a reply we received to our Right To Information request from the Ministry of Civil Aviation reiterating DigiYatra’s opt-in nature as well as a line up of merchandise including T-Shirts, Totes, Mugs & Stickers to flaunt while flying. Make a statement and an amazing airport fit – all without saying a word. Proceeds from the sale go to supporting IFF’s work!
Community & Digital Literacy.
Prioritizing community needs and making memes – IFF can have some memes, as a little treat.
Vertical video for the video vertical.
We’ve set out in the past to fully flesh out our video vertical and try we did! With so much to focus on and so little bandwidth (even the year ends on a Tuesday!), we bet big on collaborations with creators to produce high quality engaging video explainers on platforms like Instagram and YouTube to break down the latest in the fast-paced world of tech policy. Thank you to Anuj Nakade (asifiknowu on Instagram) for working with us on so many of these fun explainers!
Vertical video formats like Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts help us meet people where they spend the most time and break down the complex realities of the onslaught on our digital liberties.
We also created the IFF-ton sketch as Lady Whisteldown caught newly appointed Union Ministers up on some gossip swirling around the ‘Ton..
Word of the year: Brainrot.
From Jeremy Fragrance telling us about how the Tamil Nadu police is FRT-maxxing to DigiYatra buddies being extra Joe Goldberg at the airport, we’re just chill guys at the end of the day. We use memes and pop-culture references to bring attention to pressing issues, like Kylie Jenner and Timothee Chalamet telling us about Rajasthan Government’s incessant internet shutdowns.
Wanna be a part of our symphony? Join us in creating more informative memes for curious tech-policy beings and apply to be a Digital Literacy Intern here :) Applications are being accepted on a rolling basis.
Fit Check: Members and Merchandise
Our amazing community fuels all the work we do. As a fully donor-supported organization, we rely on your donations to give us the strength to fight another day. To gather more funds to enable us to do more, we’ve launched new merch this year for our Privacy Supreme and DigiYatra campaigns, so you can support our mission and flaunt it at the same! Join us as a member and receive cool stickers, totes, mugs, postcards and more.
Fundraising and Organisational Developments
Finance Update: Let’s talk Money
In 2024, our financial situation was still dire. The gap between our income and expenses widened, as we still suffer from the fallout of RBI’s new guidelines which have caused a massive drop in our funding as card payments stopped working, and donors were unable to support us on a recurring basis. To overcome these issues, we’ve hosted events, special fundraisers and membership drives (both online and offline).
How dire? In 2024 we raised Rs. 96,87,174 and our total expenses amounted to Rs. 1,23,37,875. With a gap of INR 26 Lakh between our income and expenditure, we increasingly eat into our organisational savings which puts us in a tough position as more enormous challenges mount against our digital liberties.
But, we are on it. We launched the 2024 edition of the Annual Membership Drive with a goal to hit 200 members – and we got close! Thank you to the 183 new members who joined us and received cute goodies to go along with their 80G tax exemption certificate and love from the IFF team.
Our membership base has increased from 179 Members in 2023 to 274 Members this year. We’re still a long way from our previous membership base of 471 Members in August 2021. Help us maintain long term financial stability so we can continue to fight for your digital liberties, in and out of the courts. If you're interested in setting up a fundraiser or contributing in any other way, feel free to reach out to us at [email protected].
Some Bittersweet Goodbyes
We expresses our heartfelt gratitude to Prateek Waghre, Ashlesh Biradar, Purvai Dwivedi, Disha Verma, Tejasi Panjiar and Radhika Roy as they transitioned out of their respective roles from IFF. We couldn’t have made it this far without their contributions and wish them all the best for their future. We’ll always be rooting for them <3
We welcomed back Apar Gupta in his role as Founder-Director to ensure continuity and are thrilled to see what 2025 has in store for us!