Partnership to protect free expression online: Project Galileo

I am both proud and pleased to welcome the launch of Project Galileo by CloudFlare, for which the Centre for Policy Alternatives – the institutional anchor of this site – is a global launch partner. As noted in CloudFlare’s blog post announcing the launch of the new initiative,

Project Galileo’s goal is to protect free expression online. Sites can participate in Project Galileo if they meet the following criteria:

• They are engaged in news gathering, civil society, or political/artistic speech;
• They are subject to online attacks related to their news gathering, civil society, or political/artistic speech;
• They are not-for-profit organizations or small commercial entities; and
• They act in the public interest, broadly defined.

For sites that meet these criteria, CloudFlare will extend its full, enterprise-class DDoS attack protection at no cost.

This is big news for critical sites from civil society, NGOs, civic media and citizen journalism initiatives, whistleblowers and others who courageously publish information that risk pushback in the form of virulent DDoS attacks to censor and contain the spread of this content. If they fit with Project Galileo’s criteria, institutions and individuals with something important to say, or with information that they feel should be published and disseminated for public scrutiny can now avail themselves of the DDoS protection CloudFlare’s enterprise-class services offer.