2026-06-14 –, Volksbühne (Saal 4)
Around the world, eyewitnesses, journalists, and human rights defenders risk device seizure, arrest, and forced data deletion, which prevents them from preserving and sharing evidence of injustice. If it does survive, this media lives on platforms built for attention and monetization, not archival preservation or community control, relying on a single point of failure vulnerable to censorship, link rot, or shutdowns.
This lightning talk introduces OpenArchive’s research and implementation of a novel p2p decentralized storage backend to help mitigate these threats based on over a decade of insights working with some of the world’s most at-risk communities. This work is guided by the Human Rights Centered Design (HRCD) methodology - co-created by OpenArchive’s founder and executive director, Natalie Cadranel. The HRCD methodology, grounded in real-world contexts, is a collaborative framework using iterative research, threat modeling, and co-design with affected communities to build usable, secure tools.
We will be highlighting the tested benefits and drawbacks of implementing decentralized storage in OpenArchive’s flagship app Save to enhance the protection, provenance, and preservation of eyewitness evidentiary media needed to exact accountability and justice.
Rose Regina is the Digital Security Manager at OpenArchive.
For over a decade, she has trained lawyers, open source developers, journalists and human rights defenders in best practices and skill-building to protect their work and the digital tools they depend on. She has a dedicated history with secure FOSS, having worked for the Software Freedom Law Center, Mozilla, and Tactical Tech.
Based in Berlin, she consults on security, threat modeling and strategic analysis.