May, 24 2023, 11:05am EDT

New Letter Says Slack Puts Abortion Seekers in Danger and Fails to Address Online Harassment
Civil rights and abortion groups demand the communications platform offer end-to-end encryption and a blocking/reporting feature to secure messages and address harassment
Today, a coalition of 93 groups sent a letter to Slack calling on the company to protect its users by offering end-to-end encryption for messages, and to add blocking and reporting features to help protect users from harassment. The signers include abortion rights, digital rights, racial justice, and other civil society groups, as well as privacy-focused businesses.
The letter, hosted at MakeSlackSafe.com, points to attacks on abortions and bodily autonomy in the US as a specific threat under which people’s personal messages are being targeted by law enforcement. While Slack says that it only provides user data to law enforcement when it is legally required to do so, in states where abortion is being criminalized, law enforcement can and will use subpoenas to force Slack to hand over the internal messages of abortion funds, abortion providers, and reproductive rights organizations, as well as private individuals who use Slack to message friends, family and coworkers.
The letter also highlights broader attacks on human rights, stating that “in the US and around the world, governments are using data and digital communications to target human rights defenders and people exposing human rights violations, including political nonprofits, activist networks, journalists.” Signers argue that end-to-end encryption is a key feature for ensuring user messages cannot be accessed by Slack, hackers, snooping bosses, or law enforcement.
In addition to offering end-to-end encryption to secure messages, the groups call on Slack to offer tools to stop harassment on the platform, specifically blocking and reporting features, which they note are available on the vast majority of communications tools. With online harassment of workers on the rise (especially since the shift to remote work in response to the COVID-19 pandemic), Slack’s refusal to add a tool to allow people to block other users or report content is unacceptable.
“Slack is falling short in terms of the most basic guardrails for platform safety and privacy, which could have seismic implications for users. End-to-end encryption keeps people safe, and safety must be a built-in feature on all of our platforms. By not addressing this security flaw, Slack is aiding the criminalization of abortions and other expressions of bodily autonomy. As a leader in the online messaging space, Slack has to do more than just run nice PR campaigns claiming to support reproductive rights, they must ensure user safety is inherent in their tech.” Caitlin Seeley George, Campaigns and Managing Director at Fight for the Future.
“Slack has become one of the most popular communications tools of our era. And with that popularity comes responsibility — responsibility that Slack is currently neglecting. Slack must protect its users and catch up with many of its peers by offering common sense safety features, like the option for end-to-end encryption.” Reem Suleiman, U.S. Advocacy Lead at Mozilla
“For years, Slack has said it doesn’t need a block button because it is just a workplace tool and that would cut down on meaningful conversations. I have been advocating for one basic feature, blocking, since 2019, to make Slack safer. Slack isn’t just a workplace tool, it’s used by all different kinds of people, communities, and it’s also used in workplaces. It’s important to emphasize one thing here: harassment happens everywhere. It happens between families, friends, across strangers, and it also happens in the workplace. Blocking is a necessary tool to help mitigate harassment; it’s something users need to create their own safety, especially in the workplace, but in any community. Better security and privacy, privacy tools make people safer. Now is the time to press for what I call: seatbelts of online safety, which are necessary tooling and product features every product, software or infrastructure should have. End to end encryption, blocking, muting, and reporting are those necessary features; we need to think of them as the kinds of safety requirements that airbags and seatbelts provide for cars. We need to shift our thoughts away from thinking of these solely as additional features, but as necessary and required functionality to create and maintain a healthier web. The time is now to remake our web to include this functionality and every product. It’s time for Slack to really commit to safety and user health; these features make that happen.” Caroline Sinders, founder, principal researcher, Convocation Research + Design
“A key component of collective action is communication. We all deserve to know our communications are safe. Workers, consumers, friends, and activists need end-to-end encrypted communications platforms with safety features like blocking, muting, and reporting. I’m hopeful that Slack will take this responsibility seriously and offer these important safety features for users.” Charlotte Slaiman, Competition Policy Director at Public Knowledge
“We are in strong support of mainstreaming encryption and urge messaging platforms to adopt encryption as a way to safeguard people’s human rights. Encryption is not just a matter of privacy, it is a fundamental tool to enhance trust in digital communications. For an organization that yields as much power as Slack does through their popularity and reach, there is a responsibility to keep their users and community safe. We call on Slack to prioritize the adoption of encryption to ensure that messaging apps remain a powerful tool for empowerment, freedom, and the protection of human rights online.” Isabela Fernandes, Executive Director, the Tor Project.
“Ranking Digital Rights’s standards call on companies to protect users’ private communications. While we believe that all chat communications should be encrypted, at the very least, users should have the option to turn on end-to-end encryption. While Slack has some protections in place, these do not extend to end-to-end encryption for messaging. Our 2022 Big Tech Scorecard found that most messaging services, ranging from iMessage to Whatsapp, Facebook Messenger, Skype, and Kakao Talk, did provide options for end-to-end encryption. QQ and WeChat, however, both from Chinese company Tencent, failed to do so. Had we ranked Slack, it would have failed, alongside Tencent’s services. We believe Slack can, and should, do much better.” Anna Lee Nabors, Ranking Digital Rights
“In a time when our personal freedoms and rights are under threat, it is crucial to hold Slack accountable. The lack of end-to-end encryption in Slack exposes our private messages to various entities, enabling potential harassment, union-busting, suppression of political activism, and even criminalization of essential choices like abortion. With the rise of repressive laws and increased surveillance, the privacy of our communications has become paramount, especially for marginalized communities. End-to-end encryption ensures the protection and empowerment of individuals, allowing us to navigate a post-Roe US with dignity and autonomy.” Perry Toone, Thexyz
“As a workplace tool that many employees can’t opt out of using, Slack users need control over their exposure to abusive and harassing messages. Because of its real-time delivery and the current inability of the platform’s users to block or mute other users, Slack can be a hothouse for bad behavior. It is in the interests of employers and the platform itself to empower users to control their interactions with illegal or distressing content and the ability to keep their personal conversations private. Mechanisms like muting, blocking, reporting content and encrypted direct messaging should be standard operating procedure on the social Internet,” Tracy Rosenberg, Oakland Privacy
“As an organization that uses Slack to run our campaigns and communicate as a team it is vitally important that the platform be safe and private so that we can do our work to prevent war and violence. Political and human rights activists in the United States and around the globe that use Slack face increasing risks to their freedom and safety because of the use of online surveillance, harassment, and repression, and we expect Slack to take measures to protect them and the important work that they do. We call on Slack to implement end to end encryption and measures to prevent harassment so that its customers can do their work to build more democratic and just communities.” Amy Frame, Director of Data and technology, Win Without War
“At Malloc, we firmly believe in safeguarding the privacy and security of communication for all individuals. That is why we are joining the call to make Slack safe. In an era where personal freedoms and marginalized communities are under threat, it is crucial that we advocate for end-to-end encryption in workplace messaging platforms like Slack. Protecting the privacy of direct messages is not only a matter of personal liberty but also vital to ensure the safety and well-being of employees, activists, and vulnerable communities. We stand united in demanding stronger privacy measures to safeguard confidential conversations and protect the fundamental rights of all individuals.” Maria Terzi, Co-Founder & CEO – Malloc Inc.
In addition to delivering this letter, Fight for the Future has placed sidewalk decals outside Slack’s offices in San Francisco and Denver, has a billboard in the Bay Area, and is running digital ads targeting Slack and calling for end-to-end encryption. The group is also running a broader campaign calling on all messaging platforms to Make DMs Safe by implementing end-to-end encryption by default.
Letter and full list of signers:
Dear Slack,
We are businesses, organizations, communities, and individuals who depend on tools like Slack to connect online. We are activists organizing for change; journalists who communicate with sources and about sensitive stories; nonprofits providing care and support for our communities; companies that need to streamline our processes and share ideas; students, creators, gamers, alumni, artists, athletes, and other communities that use the Internet to connect with people all over the world.
Slack has put the security of our communities in danger by not taking steps to ensure user safety. Safety should be a built-in feature of all technology, so we are calling on you to protect your users by providing the option to enable end-to-end encryption for messages to protect our privacy, and to add blocking, muting and reporting features to help protect users from harassment.
In the US and around the world, governments are using data and digital communications to target human rights defenders and people exposing human rights violations, including political nonprofits, activist networks, journalists. For many of these groups and individuals, Slack is an absolutely vital communication tool, but it could also become the basis of government targeting, repression, censorship.
For years, law enforcement has monitored marginalized groups—including BIPOC, immigrants, social justice activists, and sex workers—through their online communications and through other forms of surveillance. Personal communications immediately became a target for criminalizing abortion seekers and providers after the reversal of Roe v Wade. Security experts and human rights organizations have sounded the alarm about this abuse and point to default end-to-end encrypted messaging as a first and best step companies can take to protect targeted communities. End-to-end encryption is crucial for protecting people from anti-human rights attacks on their bodily autonomy and personhood.
Despite critiques from journalists and privacy experts, Slack has not publicized any plans to offer end-to-end encryption. Instead you’re choosing to prioritize profit over users’ privacy and safety.
In addition to unencrypted Slack messages, the absence of functionality to address harassment over Slack puts users at risk. Whether for work, volunteering, or other social communities, many cannot opt out of using Slack. With workplace and online bullying and harassment on the rise, disproportionately impacting marginalized people who might not have other resources or feel comfortable reporting harassment to HR departments or other moderators, Slack must take responsibility to ensure everyone is equipped with resources to defend themselves.
The vast majority of communication tools give users the ability to mute, block, and report people. Adding these features is a simple, commonsense way to offer more protection from harassment on Slack.
Right now, Slack is falling short in terms of the most basic guardrails for platform safety and privacy. At this political moment, this can mean life or death for some people online. We call on Slack to go beyond statements and put into action its commitment to human rights by implementing basic safety and privacy design features immediately.
Signed,
Abortion Access Front
Access Now
Accountable Tech
Aspiration
Associação Portuguesa para a Promoção da Segurança da Informação
Bend the Arc: Jewish Action
Catholics for Choice
Center for Digital Resilience
Chayn
Climate Mobilization Project
ClimateAction.tech
Convocation Research + Design
Dangerous Speech Project
Den Frie Vilje ApS
Derechos Digitales
Digital Defense Fund
DNS Africa Media and Communications
Electronic Frontier Finland – Effi ry
Endora
Equity Forward
European Center for Not-for-Profit Law (ECNL)
Fight for the Future
Forward Together & Forward Together Action
Free Press
GLAAD
Glitch
Gotham City Drupal
I Need An A.com
If/When/How: Lawyering for Reproductive Justice
IFEX
Jane’s Due Process
JCA-NET(Japan)
Kairos
KRYSS Network
Lawyering Project
LAYLO
Majal.org
Malloc Inc
Media Alliance
MediaJustice
Medical Students for Choice
Mozilla
MPower Change
Myntex Inc.
National Abortion Federation
National Institute for Reproductive Health
National Network of Abortion Funds
New Eden welfare promotion foundation
New/Mode
NTEN
Oakland Privacy
Open Data Charter
OpenMedia
OPTF Ltd
Our Justice
Patient Forward
Pixels for Humans
Point of VIew
Privacy & Access Council of Canada
Privacy Rights Clearinghouse
ProboxVE
ProgressNow New Mexico
Public Knowledge
Quiet
Ranking Digital Rights
Reproaction
Reproductive Health Access Project
Rinascimento Green
RootsAction Education Fund
RosKomSvoboda
Salmonberry Tribal Associates
Seeding Sovereignty
Sex Workers Project @ The Urban Justice Center
SHERo Mississippi
State Innovation Exchange (SiX)
Superbloom Design (previously Simply Secure)
Surveillance Technology Oversight Project
The Tor Project
The Womxn Project
Thexyz
Ubunteam
UltraViolet
United We Dream
USOW
Utah Abortion Fund
VoteProChoice
We Testify
Win Without War
Women’s March
Woodhull Freedom Foundation
World Wide Web Foundation
X-Lab
Ymoz
Fight for the Future is a group of artists, engineers, activists, and technologists who have been behind the largest online protests in human history, channeling Internet outrage into political power to win public interest victories previously thought to be impossible. We fight for a future where technology liberates -- not oppresses -- us.
(508) 368-3026LATEST NEWS
'Yes, You Are,' Tlaib Tells Lawmaker Who Said Republicans Aren't 'Little Bitches' Doing Trump's Bidding
"This budget betrayal is the largest cut to Medicaid and food assistance in history to give billionaires a tax break," said the Michigan Democrat.
Jul 02, 2025
Progressive Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib on Wednesday clapped back at one of her Republican colleagues who suggested that the GOP effort to pass the so-called Big Beautiful Bill this week isn't in response to a directive from U.S. President Donald Trump, who has set a July 4 deadline.
“The president of the United States didn't give us an assignment. We're not a bunch of little bitches around here, OK? I'm a member of Congress. I represent almost 800,000 Wisconsinites," Rep. Derrick Van Orden (R-Wis.) told journalists near the back entrance to the House of Representatives chamber, according toPunchbowl News' Kenzie Nguyen.
Responding to Van Orden's claims on the social media platform X, Tlaib (D-Mich.) simply said, "Yes, he did, and yes, you are."
The Michigan Democrat also released a video explaining to constituents why she is voting "hell no" on the package, which would cut the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and strip an estimated 17 million Americans of their health insurance over the next decade while giving trillions of dollars in tax breaks to the ultrarich and corporations.
Tlaib wasn't the only House Democrat to notice the Republican's remarks. A fellow Wisconsinite, Congressman Mark Pocan, asked his followers on X, "Do you think Derrick Van Orden is right... that Congress is not a bunch of 'little bitches'?"
According toPolitico's Samuel Benson and Mike DeBonis, Van Orden's comment came in the context of confirming he would vote for the budget reconciliation package, despite some critiques. The congressman reportedly said: "So this bill will pass. Am I happy about everything? No, but there's a difference between compromise and capitulation. We're not capitulating. We're compromising."
His remarks to reporters, and the backlash, came as the House considered a version of the megabill passed by the Senate on Tuesday, with help from Vice President JD Vance. GOP leaders in the lower chamber are struggling to get it past a procedural hurdle due to opposition from Republican fiscal hawks—plus all Democrats, who oppose steep cuts to the social safety net.
To protest the Republican effort to send the bill to Trump's desk by Independence Day, House Democrats on Wednesday formed a procedural conga line offering an amendment that would block cuts to Medicaid and SNAP.
Multiple Democrats also took to the House floor to rail against the package, including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, who declared that "this bill is a deal with the devil. It explodes our national debt, it militarizes our entire economy, and it strips away healthcare and basic dignity of the American people. For what? To give Elon Musk a tax break and billionaires the greedy taking of our nation. We cannot stand for it, and we will not support it."
"You should be ashamed," Ocasio-Cortez told the chamber's Republicans.
As Common Dreamsreported earlier Wednesday, progressives outside of Congress are also working to block the bill. Advocacy organizations, including Indivisible, are urging Americans to call and email House Republicans and pressure them to oppose the package. The phone number for the House switchboard is 202-224-3121.
Keep ReadingShow Less
All Likud Ministers Urge Netanyahu to Annex Entire West Bank This Month
The 15 ministers said that Israel's "strategic partnership, backing, and support of the U.S. and President Donald Trump" make this a "propitious time" to formally steal most of Palestine.
Jul 02, 2025
All 15 Israeli government members representing Likud on Wednesday urged Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—who leads the right-wing party—to annex the entire West Bank of Palestine before the end of the Knesset's summer session on July 27, citing support from U.S. President Donald Trump.
The ministers, along with Likud Knesset Speaker Amir Ohana, sent a letter to Netanyahu asserting that "this is the time to approve in government a decision to apply sovereignty" over Judea and Samaria, the biblical name for the West Bank, which includes East Jerusalem.
"Following the state of Israel's historic achievements in the face of Iran's Axis of Evil and its sympathizers, the task must be completed and the existential threat from within must be eliminated, to prevent another massacre in the heart of the country," the letter argues, referring to the recent 12-day war between Israel and Iran, in which the United States intervened by bombing Iranian nuclear sites.
"The strategic partnership, backing, and support of the U.S. and President Donald Trump have made it a propitious time to move forward with it now, and ensure Israel's security for generations," the ministers said. "The October 7 massacre proved that the doctrine of settlement blocs and the establishment of a Palestinian state in the remaining territory is an existential danger to Israel. It's time for sovereignty."
Asked during a Wednesday press briefing for reaction on the ministers' call to annex the West Bank, U.S. State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce replied, "I think that is specifically something that the White House would be able to answer for you, but I also know that our position regarding Israel... is that we stand with Israel and its decisions and how it views its own internal security."
Netanyahu is set to travel to Washington, D.C. next week to meet with Trump, despite an International Criminal Court warrant for the Israeli leader's arrest for alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes in Gaza including murder and forced starvation.
I asked State Dept spox Bruce about Israeli minister’s call to annex the occupied West Bank — she referred me to the WH, saying the US "stand with Israel and its decisions.”
I followed up asking if the two-state solution remains US policy, she said Trump is “realistic… Gaza is… pic.twitter.com/GdtN0tTDdy
— Rabia İclal Turan (@iclalturan) July 2, 2025
Palestinians and their defenders warned during the 2024 U.S. presidential election cycle that a victoriousTrump might lift the few guardrails the Biden administration had placed on Israel and unleash Netanyahu to seize all of Palestine. The goal of Israel's far right is expansion of Israeli territory to include what proponents call "Greater Israel," which is based on biblical boundaries that stretched from Africa to Turkey to Mesopotamia.
Netanyahu has repeatedly displayed maps showing the Middle East without Palestine, all of whose territory is shown as part of Israel. However, annexation had previously been most closely associated with far-right figures outside Likud like Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich of the Religious Zionist Party and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir of Jewish Power.
Following Trump's reelection last November, Smotrich said that "the year 2025 will be, with God's help, the year of sovereignty in Judea and Samaria."
"The only way to remove the threat of a Palestinian state from the agenda is to apply Israeli sovereignty over the settlements in Judea and Samaria," he continued. "I have no doubt that President Trump, who showed courage and determination in his decisions during his first term, will support the state of Israel in this move."
Smotrich praised Wednesday's letter, declaring he'll be ready to impose Israeli sovereignty over the West Bank as soon as Netanyahu "gives the order," according toThe Times of Israel.
Israeli Justice Minister Yariv Levin, one of the Likud members who signed the letter, said Wednesday: "I think that this period, beyond the current issues, is a time of historic opportunity that we must not miss. The time for sovereignty has come, the time to apply sovereignty. My position on this matter is firm, it is clear."
Israel occupied the West Bank, along with the Gaza Strip, Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, and the Golan Heights in Syria during the Six-Day War in 1967. Israel eventually withdrew from the Sinai but unilaterally annexed East Jerusalem in 1980 while keeping control of the rest of the West Bank and Golan Heights. Although Israel dismantled settlements and withdrew troops from Gaza in 2005, it is still considered an occupier under international law and its conduct during the current invasion, bombardment, and siege of the coastal enclave is the subject of an International Court of Justice (ICJ) genocide case.
Since 1967, Israel has steadily seized more and more Palestinian land in the West Bank while building and expanding Jewish-only settlements there. Settlement population has increased exponentially from around 1,500 colonists in 1970 to roughly 140,000 at the time of the Oslo Accords in 1993—under which Israel agreed to halt new settlement activity—to around 770,000 today. Settlers often attack Palestinians and their property, including in deadly pogroms, in order to terrorize them into leaving so their land can be stolen. In recent weeks, Israeli settlers have attacked Israel Defense Forces soldiers they view as standing in their way and Palestinians alike in the West Bank.
From 1978 until new guidelines were announced by then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo during the first Trump administration, the U.S. State Department also considered Israel's settlements to be "inconsistent with international law."
In July 2024, the ICJ found Israel's occupation of Palestine to be an illegal form of apartheid that must be ended as soon as possible. The tribunal also said that Israeli settler colonization of the West Bank amounts to annexation, also a crime under international law. Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention states that an "occupying power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies."
As the world's attention is focused on Gaza, Israeli soldiers and settlers have killed upward of 950 Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem since October 2023, including at least 200 children, while wounding thousands more, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
Keep ReadingShow Less
'We Will Organize Those People,' Anti-Poverty Crusader William Barber Says of Millions Set to Lose Medicaid
"They will not kill us and our communities without a fight."
Jul 02, 2025
Armed with 51 caskets and a new federal analysis, faith leaders and people who would be directly impacted by U.S. President Donald Trump's so-called Big Beautiful Bill got arrested protesting in Washington, D.C. this week and pledged to organize the millions of Americans set to lose their health insurance under the package.
Citing Capitol Police, The Hill reported Monday that "a total of 38 protestors were arrested, including 24 detained at the intersection of First and East Capitol streets northeast and another 14 arrested in the Capitol Rotunda. Those taken into custody were charged with crowding, obstructing, and incommoding."
The "Moral Monday" action was organized because of the "dangerous and deadly cuts" in the budget reconciliation package, which U.S. Senate Republicans—with help from Vice President JD Vance—sent to the House of Representatives Tuesday and which the lower chamber took up for consideration Wednesday.
According to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO), the megabill would result in an estimated 17 million Americans becoming uninsured over the next decade: 11.8 million due to the Medicaid cuts, 4.2 million people due to expiring Affordable Care Act tax credits, and another 1 million due to other policies.
"This is policy violence. This is policy murder," Bishop William Barber said at Monday's action, which began outside the U.S. Supreme Court followed by a march to the Capitol. "That's why we brought these caskets today—because in the first year of this bill, as it is, the estimates are that 51,000 people will die."
"If you know that, and still pass it, that's not a mistake," added Barber, noting that Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.)—one of three Republican senators who ultimately opposed the bill—had said before the vote that his party was making a mistake on healthcare.
Moral Mondays originated in Tillis' state a dozen years ago, to protest North Carolina Republicans' state-level policymaking, led by Barber, who is not only a bishop but also president of the organization Repairers of the Breach and co-chair of the Poor People's Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival.
This past Monday, Barber vowed that if federal lawmakers kick millions of Americans off their healthcare with this megabill, "we will organize those people," according to Sarah Anderson of the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS).
In partnership with IPS and the Economic Policy Institute, Repairers of the Breach on Monday published The High Moral Stakes of Budget Reconciliation fact sheet, which examines the version of the budget bill previously passed by the House. The document highlights cuts to health coverage, funding for rural hospitals, and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).
The fact sheet also points out that while slashing programs for the poor, the bill would give tax breaks to wealthy individuals and corporations, plus billions of dollars to the Pentagon and Trump's mass deportation effort.
"Instead of inflicting policy violence on the most vulnerable, Congress should harness America's abundant wealth to create a moral economy that works for all of us," the publication asserts. "By fairly taxing the wealthy and big corporations, reducing our bloated military budget, and demilitarizing immigration policy, we could free up more than enough public funds to ensure we can all survive and thrive."
"As our country approaches its 250th anniversary," it concludes, "we have no excuse for not investing our national resources in ways that reflect our Constitutional values: to establish justice, domestic tranquility, real security, and the general welfare for all."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular