As among the managers of the Digital Dissident Devroom, I invitation you to be part of a conversation we cannot oversee to ignore.
Around the world, group are being silenced, monitored, and denied admission to information. Free application can assistance alter that, but lone if we build it together. We need tools group can rely and authority to communicate safely, disclose the truth, and oppose censorship.
This devroom brings together developers, researchers, activists, and everyone committed to digital freedom. We desire genuine solutions, honest lessons, and collaboration throughout projects, not merchandise pitches.
If you accept innovation should assist people, not authority them, associate us. Bring your ideas, experience, and questions. Let’s build the tools that assistance keep liberty alive.
Our concentration complements another devrooms, including Decentralized Internet and Privacy, which explores the broader decentralized ecosystem. While they concentration on technologies, we concentration on the group under danger and the complete sequence of tools that can defend them.
How to use to conversation at the dev room?
- Go to FOSDEM’s authoritative CFP portal from here and login or register.
- Click on “Submit a proposal”
- Then inhabit in the form and choose “Digital Dissident” as a track.
- Done!
- Please note that by doing this you additionally obtain the FOSDEM Code of Conduct.
Define: Digital Dissident Developer Room
Privacy and anonymity tools all have a residence at FOSDEM: the network, security, decentralised and messaging rooms, and assorted main-track and lightning talks. Someone living under an authoritarian administration (Russia, Iran, China, Belarus, Myanmar and others) never uses a sole tool, though. Their day-to-day safety depends on a chain of tools that has to clasp up end to end:
- reaching the network at all (censorship circumvention),
- communicating without leaking metadata,
- collecting, verifying and storing evidence safely,
- publishing or leaking it without exposing the author,
- doing all this on devices and infrastructure that are themselves a risk.
The weakest nexus decides the outcome. Talks concerning one tool rarely shield how it fits alongside the others, anywhere the seams are, or what breaks at the hand-offs (for example, a circumvention transport that is fingerprinted, or a messenger whose shove notifications tie your character to a Google or Apple account). Nobody currently owns that cross-project view.
What this devroom does. It brings developers of circumvention, anonymity, messaging, publishing and whistleblowing tools into one room. It is deliberately not concerning any sole project. Each meeting is judged on how fine it advances the toolchain: interoperability, shared danger models, shared nonaccomplishment data, and shared engineering practice.
Why now. Censorship in Russia, Iran and China has grown much additional sophisticated. It now includes national allow-lists and whitelist-only net shutdowns, TLS and QUIC fingerprinting, profound packet inspection alongside energetic probing, throttling of particular protocols, mobile net shutdowns, app-store elimination of circumvention tools, and mandatory state-run messengers and “sovereign internet” routing. Anti-censorship developers have responded alongside pluggable transports, domain fronting alternatives, mixnets, decentralised and email-based messaging, and new obfuscation protocols. Progress is accelerated but fragmented. At FOSDEM 2026 the applicable talks were scattered: Vitaly Repin’s “The Russian Censorship Circumvention, Tom’s Traps, and Jerry’s VPN: A 5-Year Journey” (Saturday, H.1302, Network track) drew a ample audience, during NymVPN and Delta Chat’s multi-relay messaging (both Sunday, Decentralized Internet and Privacy devroom) and another connected talks ran in another rooms. A sole devroom lets that spectators and those speakers encounter in one place.
Relationship to the existing “Decentralized Internet and Privacy” devroom. That area covers decentralised innovation broadly (P2P protocols, browsers, code collaboration, key infrastructure), and censorship or anonymity is lone a part of it. Digital Dissident is different: the organising regulation is a user under threat and the end-to-end sequence that protects them, not a innovation class. We desire to activity with, not against, that room, and volition coordinate schedules so the two don’t overlap, and volition item overflow speakers to whichever area fits.
Themes (details in the CfP below):
- Censorship circumvention and transport: obfuscation, fingerprint resistance, active-probing defence, extend distribution, resilience to protocol whitelisting and complete shutdowns.
- Metadata-resistant communication: mixnets, bulb routing, decentralised and federated messengers, store-and-forward and offline-first (mesh, sneakernet, Bluetooth/Wi-Fi Direct).
- Secure reporting and publishing: whistleblowing platforms, origin protection, document sanitisation, provenance and authenticity, censorship-resistant hosting.
- Devices and operational security: hardened mobile and desktop systems, amnesic systems, capture and border-crossing scenarios, forensic resistance.
- Usability and danger modelling for at-risk users: onboarding under duress, harmless defaults, training, measuring what really plant in the field.
- Measurement and adversary analysis: how censors detect and block, open data on blocking events, reproducible censorship research.
- Digital sovereignty from Big Tech (secondary theme): reducing dependence on centralised platforms, app stores, shove infrastructure, haze and character providers, the two for individuals and for civil-society organisations.
Structure. A mix of formats to keep a complete area busy throughout the entire session:
- 20 to 30 infinitesimal specialized talks
- A decision open conversation on interoperability gaps and shared next steps
Programme quality. Organisers volition assessment all submissions on specialized deserve and fit to the toolchain framing, and volition aim for a balance of projects, regions and speakers (established projects, new projects, researchers, group from affected communities). Every conversation should contain an definitive danger example and an honest document of limitations.
Projects and communities we average to invite (no commitments yet): Nym (mixnet), Delta Chat / chatmail, SimpleX, the Fediverse (ActivityPub implementations and case operators), Nostr, Psiphon and another circumvention and VPN providers, affirmative Tor-ecosystem, Reticulum and mesh-networking projects, whistleblowing and secure-submission platforms, and censorship-measurement researchers. Several of these projects presented at FOSDEM 2026.
Code of Conduct. We volition prosecute the FOSDEM Code of Conduct. In addition, talks that depict circumvention or anonymity should evade operational particulars that would endanger particular users in the field.
Important Dates
- Sat, 24 October 2026: Call for Participation opens
- Mon, 30 November 2026, 23:59 UTC: Call for Participation ends
- Wed, 2 December 2026: Speakers notified
- Fri, 4 December 2026: Deadline for speakers to confirm
- Mon, 7 December 2026: Schedule published
- The twenty-sixth type of FOSDEM volition obtain location on Saturday 30th and Sunday 31st January 2027 at the customary location, ULB Campus Solbosch in Brussels.
