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About Safety Net Project
May 14, 2008
Safety Net: the National Safe & Strategic Technology Project
The revolutionary tool of the Internet has helped victims and their children successfully flee violent batterers, stalkers and rapists. Survivors map roads to new lives on the web by reaching out to shelters and hotlines, researching restraining orders and address confidentiality programs, and finding housing and employment opportunities. But what millions don't realize is the dangerous and potentially lethal sides of this same technology in the hands of abusers.
Safety Net: the National Safe and Strategic Technology Project educates victims, their advocates and the general public on ways to use technology strategically to help find safety and escape domestic violence, sexual violence and stalking. Safety Net also trains law enforcement, social services and coordinated community response teams on how to identify and hold perpetrators accountable for misusing technology. Local, state and national policies are reflecting the success of the Safety Net Project's efforts, which include helping courts to keep survivors' addresses and photos off the Internet and increasing the security of databases that house vital and confidential information about victims.
The Safety Net Project works with communities and agencies to address how ongoing and emerging technology issues impact the safety and privacy rights of victims of domestic violence, sexual violence and stalking. NNEDV's Safety Net Project provides interactive training, materials and policy assistance in ways that both tech-savvy and non-techie audiences can understand. The Safety Net Project is building and nurturing a network of technology safety advocates so that services and systems can better support survivors. Accordingly, Safety Net works closely with many technologists and technology industry leaders to increase safety and privacy protections for victims.
Safety Net's generous funders - AOL, Mary Kay Ash Charitable Foundation, U.S. Department of Justice, Verizon Foundation, and The Wireless Foundation - have enabled NNEDV to:
- Train more than 24,800 advocates, police, prosecutors and others across the U.S. and internationally;
- Develop critically needed educational materials for victims and advocates;
- Lead and participate in regional, national and international advocacy and policy initiatives;
- Respond to numerous media requests around the issues of technology use and victim safety; and
- Develop important relationships with allied organizations and government agencies.
For more safety information, please read Safety Net's publications and Internet Safety tips.