The Promise and Peril of Digital Security in the Age of Dictatorship

Rodríguez and his corporate received integer information training from Amate, different LGBTIQ+ statement that advocates nationally. Since May, Amate has trained 60 group connected issues including integer rights, consequence analysis, extortion, phishing, outing, surveillance, and revenge porn. It besides includes nan implementation of devices specified arsenic nan usage of VPN and encrypted messaging platforms, specified arsenic Signal and Proton.

“Something that activists were telling america [that] is very communal is that group return their Facebook photos and impersonate them connected societal networks, either to onslaught different collectives aliases to undermine individual aspects. So it's a very absorbing experience. People are not alert of nan vulnerability we person successful nan integer world,” says Fernando Paz, who is successful complaint of school these courses.

For Rodríguez, these devices are a measurement of confronting a state that, pinch authorities support, is becoming progressively convulsive towards those who correspond diversity.

“At nan university, we person had experiences of dislike reside successful classes. Professors person said that they stock Bukele's reasoning connected gender ideology and that this has to vanish because it poisons nan youth,” Rodríguez says.

One measurement nan authorities has utilized to hide unit against nan LGBTIQ+ organization is nan deficiency of accounting of dislike crimes committed successful El Salvador. In caller years, nan country’s Attorney General's Office, besides known arsenic FGR, has utilized nan categories “murder owed to societal intolerance” and “murder owed to family intolerance” to count homicides that it cannot property to what it calls “general crime” (mostly, according to nan government's narrative, perpetrated by gangs). There is nary clarity astir what falls into these categories, which are not official, are not defined, and are only utilized publicly—not wrong administrative reports. Between 2023 and 2024, nan FGR counted 182 of these cases.

Hit Record

In nan look of statistical obscurity, nan workout of documenting and archiving dislike crimes has been taken up by organizations. The Passionist Social Service, an anti-violence group, recovered that 154 LGBTIQ+ group have been detained during El Salvador's emergency regime, which began successful March 2022 and has been extended 39 times to date. Following this, Nicola Chávez and her squad saw nan request to grounds cases of unit against members of nan LGBTIQ+ population.

“We had ever intended to commencement an observatory, but pinch nan commencement of nan objection authorities everyone knows that constabulary unit and subject harassment person a disproportionate effect connected nan LGBT community. Obviously that hurts us, and I don't cognize who other they count connected to beryllium capable to denounce,” Chávez says.