Client

Open Privacy was approached by an advocacy and support organization located in Vancouver, Canada's Downtown Eastside neighbourhood shortly after the Coronavirus pandemic began to cause lockdowns on the west coast. The organization was in the process of creating a mutual aid fund to help members who were affected financially, and sought our advice on technical platforms to use for collecting member's applications to the fund.

The organization itself is a peer-driven registered charity with approximately ten staff members, plus a varying-sized group of volunteers, with a physical location that offers drop-in services and community space for members. They do not have any staff dedicated to IT support and use Google cloud services for most of their computing needs. They do, however, have a pre-existing charitable donations platform set up, and this was used to manage incoming donations to the fund.

The organization's members belong to marginalized communities and have a heightened need for privacy and security of their personal information, due to the risk posed to them by society. In addition to social risks, some members face legal concerns when traveling internationally into other jurisdictions where, for instance, evidence of having previously been involved in sex work is punishable by law or extralegal measures. Thus, having all submitted data remain in Canada was also desirable. It was also pointed out that many members are distrustful of large tech companies to adequately protect their privacy.