Sustainably Managing Risks and Threats to Independent Research on Technology and Society

How can the ecosystem of public-interest technology research manage the risks that threaten to destroy our credibility and prevent us from serving the public interest?

When community scientists, journalists, NGOs, and academics make discoveries that serve the common good, our work is sometimes inconvenient to companies and governments. The more this research matters, the more we have seen it come under attack by people who say it’s unethical.

In recent years, researchers have been threatened by companies,  taken to court, and prevented from accessing data by actors that are uninterested in independent scrutiny. Powerful organizations sometimes appeal to the public’s fears of privacy and ethical violations. While some of these appeals are more credible than others, they have prompted restrictions on independent research.

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