Trump administration is crippling international Internet freedom effort by withholding funds, officials say

The Trump administration is withholding $20 million in funding approved by Congress for a US Internet freedom organization, forcing the cutoff of tools used by tens of millions of people worldwide to access the Internet and uncensored news through the Voice of America, officials said. Laura Cunningham, the head of the Washington-based Open Technology Fund, said that it is being forced to halt 49 of the fund’s 60 Internet freedom projects. The move, according to the head of the fund, affects about 80 percent of the group’s work helping human rights and pro-democracy advocates, journalists, and others in 200 countries. Cunningham said the ongoing “arbitrary and unnecessary” withholding of grants earmarked by Congress has compromised the fund’s work countering digital surveillance, supporting technologies used by 2 billion people a day. She also said it “jeopardized the lives of millions of users who rely on our technologies worldwide,” including the agency’s own journalists and its audience overseas.