In August, we traveled to Brazil to learn how to improve Tails for the many people fighting for social change there. We trained 34 people on Tails: activists, journalists, feminists, and human rights defenders.

We also met Gabriela, a feminist hacker who has been training low-income women from the Bahia region on using Tails.

Gabriela introduced these women to Tails by mixing up local culture and privacy technology and presenting Tails as a patuá, a type of Brazilian protection amulet that hides the USB stick in jewelry.

These women didn't have computers of their own and used the computers at work or in university or the computers of their husbands and boyfriends. Tails is useful for them to work on reproductive rights but also to protect their personal data from intrusive boyfriends.

Women working on reproductive rights understand very easily the importance of privacy tools like Tails because a single mistake can compromise an entire organization and get them in trouble with the police.

Some of them had their home raided by the police after being denounced for their work on abortion. All the information about their patients was not in their phones, but in their Tails amulet, and the police couldn't find any evidence about their work.

Read our full interview with Gabriela.

As the access to safe abortion continues to be problematic in too many countries around the world, we are very interested in getting in touch with more reproductive rights activists who are already using Tails or want to learn how to use it.

Get in touch with us.

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