News 2019

If you're a member of the Calyx Institute or have donated to us this year, did you know that you could double the impact with a corporate gift match from your employer? Many companies will match employees’ existing donations dollar for dollar, or even double or triple the amount of your gift, at no cost to you! Click here to see if your employer has a gift matching program, and how you can participate.

Here at the Calyx Institute, everything we do to protect privacy online is made possible by your generous membership donations. Many corporate gift-matching programs let you submit a gift-matching request before the end of the year - so time is running out! Check to see if your employer offers gift-matching by clicking here , and you'll help support privacy and online security for journalists, human rights defenders, and regular internet users around the globe.

We have big plans for 2020, and we can only do it with your support! If you have any questions about corporate gift-matching, please email us at helpdesk@calyxinstitute.org

Join us at the Hackers Next Door Conference in NYC on December 14-15! On the 15th, Calyx Institute founder Nick Merrill will discuss cryptography, protecting confidential data, and confronting government surveillance in light of the NSA’s dragnet data collection program.

Check out the full schedule here: Hackers Next Door Schedule

Join us on Thursday, November 21 for Coffee and Circumvention's Holiday Social and Laptop Drive! If you have a laptop in your life that still works but you no longer use, bring it to The People's Forum at 320 W. 37th St. between 6-8 pm. Then join us at the Houndstooth Pub just around the corner at 520 8th Avenue for drinks and conversation with all your favorite folks working at the intersection of tech activism, digital rights, and freedom of the press. See you there!

More details here: https://tinyurl.com/cncholidaysocial.

We have a new hotspot model for Contributor Plus members! The Franklin R910 model has been discontinued by our supplier. Contributor Plus members will now receive the Inseego MiFi 8000.

The Inseego MiFi8000 has a number of exciting features, including some that members have been asking about for years. These features include

• Connect up to 15 Wi-Fi enabled devices (compared to a maximum of 10 for previous hotspots we've offered)
• Hardware maximum speeds of 1 Gbps (compared to 150 Mbps for previous hotspots we've offered).
• USB tethering!

For more information about the Inseego MiFi 8000, please see the equipment information page.

Please note that the MiFi 8000 does not have 3G fallback capabilities. If you are considering becoming a Calyx Institute member or changing your membership, please check the Sprint coverage map map for 4G coverage in your area. We remain unable to process refunds of any kind, an we do not have any control over Sprint's coverage or their map.

There will be no changes for members with the Franklin R910, and you will continue to be able to access Sprint's 3G and 4G networks with that device.

If you have a Franklin R910 that has been lost, stolen, or is no longer functioning and you would like a replacement, we have a limited number of R910s left in stock. Please contact helpdesk@calyxinstitute.org for more information on replacement R910s.

Join us 9/19/19 for a panel discussion about trends in surveillance and censorship! The panel will feature Matt Mitchell of CryptoHarlem, Sandy Ordonez of IFF, and the Calyx Institute's very own Executive Director Nick Merrill, among others.

Click here for more details!

The Calyx Institute team is at the DEF CON conference in Las Vegas! Please come visit us at the vendor booth. If you are not at DEF CON but have questions or concerns regarding your hotspot, it may take us an additional day or two to respond. If you have technical issues, as always please email our equipment provider Mobile Citizen at careteam@mobilecitizen.

Here at the Calyx Institute, we don’t believe in letting censors block internet traffic. We’re excited to announce that we’ve received a grant from Internews to help users keep their internet traffic safe by including Pluggable Transports technology into our free CalyxVPN. Help keep your internet traffic safe from censors! Donate to the Calyx Institute so we can keep upgrading the tools we make available for free to everyone on the internet.

As the most recent Freedom on the Net report shows, over half of internet users live in countries that censor political, social, or religious content. The Calyx Institute helps internet users avoid censorship with CalyxVPN, our free Virtual Private Network (VPN). We enable access to the free flow of information that helps journalists, human rights defenders, and internet users like you share information that makes the world a better place. Right now, censors can shut down any traffic that’s protected by a VPN by using deep packet inspection (DPI) to analyze internet traffic and identify it as VPN. Pluggable Transports hide your traffic routed through a VPN by making it look just like approved traffic, or like nothing at all.

Thanks to a grant from Internews, we’ll be working with the Bitmask developers at LEAP Encryption Access Project to introduce Pluggable Transports into our free VPN service. Soon, VPNs that use the Bitmask client, including CalyxVPN, will be equipped to hide your internet traffic with Pluggable Transports for an added layer of protection. You can read more about Pluggable Transports here.

We have a new hotspot model for members! The Franklin R850 model has been discontinued by our supplier. Instead, 'Contributor' level members will receive the Coolpad Surf hotspot. Current members are unaffected, and we have no plans to change the membership prices at this time. For more information about the Coolpad Surf hotspot, please see the equipment information page.

Join us live this Friday July 12th as Olivia Martin (@_olivemartini_) lays out her top tips for Media Encryption for Journalists and Activists! Livestream starts 2pm EST.
https://www.facebook.com/calyxinstitute/
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Instagram @calyxinsta

Want to learn more about the many layers of digital privacy and how to cultivate your system's security like a Victory Garden? Gus Andrews (@gusandrews) joins us to tackle all those topics and more this Thursday, June 20th at 3pm EST. Watch live on Facebook, Twitch and Instagram. See you there!