Cybersecurity Workers Need to Learn From Those They’re Trying to Protect

To shield the privacy of marginalized communities, civil society must understand what they’re going through

Credit: Colin/Wikimedia Commons

Co-authored by Albert Fox Cahn

Nearly two years ago, Eva Galperin, director of cybersecurity at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, tweeted, “If you are a woman who has been sexually abused by a hacker who threatened to compromise your devices, contact me and I will make sure they are properly examined.” Despite Galperin’s vast expertise, she didn’t expect what happened next: a mailbox that was flooded with requests for help from survivors of domestic abuse that continues to this day. A determined Galperin responded by launching a multi-pronged campaign against stalkerware.

Abusers install stalkerware in order to surveil, harass, and control intimate partners without their knowledge, tracking every conversation and movement. Galperin is pushing for change in the antivirus industry at companies like Apple, and is calling for officials to use “their prosecutorial powers to indict executives of stalkerware-selling companies on hacking charges,” Wired reported. The Russian security firm Kaspersky is working so hard to combat the problem that Galperin praises it for “raising the bar for the entire…