Jon Camfield

Thinking about tomorrow’s threats against human rights and Internet Freedom. Frustrated Optimist, gardener, salsa dancer, cook, husband, dad, embarrassed Texan. Opinions here are my own. he/they.

Jon Camfield is a technologist dedicated to advancing human rights through technology with over two decades of experience spanning the public, startup, non-profit, and social enterprise sectors. Jon currently works on Threat Ideation at Meta, leveraging threat intel to lead adversarial design work predicting and preparing for sophisticated attacks.

Previously, Jon was Internews’ Director of Global Technology Strategy, building and sustaining a diverse and global team with over $30M in funding to advance digital safety for media and human rights defenders. This work included digital safety training, the SAFETAG organizational security risk assessment framework, censorship circumvention, and tool development. This work focused on being responsible, open, sustainable, and transparent. This meant building programs closely with in-country partners, risk assessments, building internal organizational operational security policies and practices, building only open source tools, writing content under open licenses, and most importantly, supporting the capacity of – and learning from – local actors.

Prior to Internews he led technology strategy for Ashoka’s Changemakers open competition platform, consulted for a wide range on NGOs, and served in the Peace Corps with the Ministry of Education in Jamaica. Jon has an MA in International Science and Technology Policy from the Elliot School at GWU and a bachelor’s’ degree from the University of Texas’ prestigious Plan II Honors program.

The longer story

I have over two decades of experience in using technology for social change that spans the public, private, non-profit, and social enterprise sectors. I am a co-author of the SAFETAG organizational security risk assessment framework.

I currently do threat ideation work at Meta. Threat ideation is an adversarial design process which leverages threat intel to predict and prepare for sophisticated attacks both against new products, platforms, and civic events. This has included launch support for Threads, as well as metaverse, GenAI work, as well as leading threat modeling on the 2024 election megacycle. In addition, I engage with civil society around our open adversarial threat information sharing work, and advise on cybersecurity policy areas such as end-to-end encryption.

At Internews, I was the Director of Global Technology Strategy at Internews, where I led our work on innovative, systems-level interventions that respond to digital threats to human rights. Under my leadership, we built and sustained multiple programs, including:

  • BASICS, which guided and directly supported small open source security projects in building their developer community, it’s diversity, and overall project health and sustainability.
  • MONITOR, a program that advanced community threat information sharing and builds the skill-sets of in-country activists to detect and, through coordination with Internews and the private sector, take down advanced malicious infrastructure;
  • SAFETAG, an open source, capacity-focused organizational security assessment framework and global network of experts
  • USABLE, which connected open source security tools with human-centered design concepts with digital security communities to lead a sea-change in how open source tool developers interact with human rights and media activists and digital security trainers;
  • A multi-year, cross-grant effort providing over $10M to censorship circumvention technology development, combined with creating a neutral space for the disparate developers of anti-censorship technology to build standards and community;

In parallel with these program outputs, I ensured that our work was sustainable, transparent, and in the open - supporting open source tools, building content under Creative Commons licenses, and supporting the capacity of and learning from local actors. To enable this work, I helped to sustain and manage a diverse global team and led proposals winning over $30M in funding.

Prior to Internews, I was the technology strategist at Ashoka, where I co-led platform development for the Changemakers open competition platform for sourcing and accelerating social innovations, where I also bridged project goals and community needs with long term strategic needs to manage the development of the platform.

Before that, I directed the technology program at YSA and has consulted for NGOs on technology, knowledge management, and business process issues in Nicaragua and Venezuela as well as many in the United States, supporting non-profits to adopt open source technologies as part of their sustainability model.

From 2002 to 2004, I served in the Peace Corps, where I worked with the Jamaican Ministry of Education on open source and educational technology and training projects. These projects included training over 3,000 teachers in basic technology and Internet skills, as well as refactoring an early “LiveCD” Linux to distribute interactive educational tools and an offline version of the Ministry’s website for rural schools. While in the Peace Corps, I also independently created support systems for fellow volunteers and their organizations. Two projects which continued after my term was over were a resource CD and a volunteer SMS intranet. The resource CD was a self-contained training and software repository for school labs and NGOs across the island that provided free and open source alternatives and walked users through basic digital hygiene needs to recover infected systems. The volunteer intranet was a hybrid website and SMS group messaging platform enabling rapid dissemination of information among the volunteers and Peace Corps staff via email and SMS lists.

I first worked with digital security tools in the late 90s as a core team member of eCertain, a startup that was an early mover in building secure messaging that balanced end-to-end security with HIPPA compliance and data recovery. I co-authored multiple provisional patents on encryption and accidentally helped found and run the first few DefCon CoffeeWars.

I have a Master’s degree in International Science and Technology Policy from GWU’s Center for International Science and Technology Policy at the Elliott School, where I focused on the applications of IT in international and/or community/educational development. My undergrad is from the University of Texas’ Plan II Honors Program, with minors in Spanish, Philosophy, and Science, Technology and Society (STS). I wrote my undergraduate thesis on the linguistic properties of IRC chat groups.

I have published writing available at FastCoDesign/FastCompany and am a former editor of OLPC News.com, which tracks the One Laptop per Child project, which got me quoted in Linux.com and slashdotted (?).