Ready for RightsCon!

If you're in Toronto for RightsCon, don't miss these sessions featuring speakers from OTI and RDR! Check out the full RightsCon schedule here.

A Decade of Progress: Where Do We Go Next? | Wednesday, May 16
10:30 - 11:45 am
With Open Technology Institute Director Kevin Bankston and Ranking Digital Rights Director Rebecca MacKinnon

When it comes to internet freedom, getting a company to flip the right switch or deploy a new policy can help protect the rights of millions of people; getting an entire industry to adopt better practices can protect billions of people. However, those changes usually don’t come about without years of hard work from advocates both inside and outside of those companies. Join us as we survey the past decade of advancements in the business and human right space and the work it took to make them happen, and as we look for lessons on how we can gain even more ground over the next ten years. Staff from the groundbreaking Business & Human Rights Program that was founded a decade ago within Yahoo and is now a part of Oath, will discuss the ins and outs of protecting human rights from the inside, and how the dedicated team model has evolved. External advocates and researchers will survey what strategies and tactics have best moved the needle on key issues like transparency and security over the years, and what tools have developed to help gauge the sector’s overall performance when it comes to protecting users’ rights. And advocates from both the inside and the outside will reflect on how best to handle the challenges and opportunities for human rights in the ICT sector that lie ahead in the next decade.

The Surveillance Tool We Love to Carry: Cell Phone Searches and Privacy in the Evolving Legal Landscape | Wednesday, May 16 | 10:30 - 11:45 am
With Robyn Greene, OTI Policy Counsel and Government Affairs Lead

Cell phones are increasingly becoming ubiquitous tools for participating in contemporary societies around the globe. We use them to communicate by voice, and increasingly by text. They help us keep information at our fingertips, including intimate details about our relationships, activities, and transactions. They help us navigate our physical environment with mapping tools and GPS. And in the process, they create a treasure-trove of personal information about us and those we are connected to, while facilitating real-time and after the fact tracking and surveillance of our movements, online and off.

But while both the technology and social norms are developing rapidly, the laws that protect our privacy in relation to cell phones are not. Courts are increasingly struggling with cases that involve privacy not just in the personal information we store on the phones, but also the information about us that the phones collect and transmit by virtue of the way they are designed and the infrastructures they must interact with to function. In Canada, the Supreme Court recently ruled in the combined cases of R. v. Marakah and R. v. Jones, establishing some privacy rights in text messages once they are sent. In the US, Carpenter v. the United States is before the U.S. Supreme Court, looking at whether police should be able to obtain detailed tracking information, collected routinely by service providers, without a warrant. On both sides of the Canadian/US border, warrantless searches by border officers are being challenged on constitutional grounds.

Enforcing Net Neutrality with Evidenced-Based Policy Making
Wednesday, May 16 | 10:30 - 11:45 am
With Georgia Bullen, OTI's Director of Technology Projects and Eric Null, OTI Policy Counsel

The goal of this session is to provide an understanding of the current state of play in net neutrality in different countries and regions, discuss challenges that panelists have encountered, provide insight into the work of digital rights NGOs in making sure that the net neutrality provisions are enforced, talk about how the public can continue to be involved once net neutrality legislation is designed (e.g. submitting complaints to regulators, bringing cases, public advocacy). In this discussion, we hope to introduce more folks to tools that can be useful in their policy and advocacy work, e.g. internet measurement data like Measurement Lab, OONI and others. The discussion will cover how to think about working with measurement tools as part of advocacy and campaigns and overall be a conversation on strategic thinking with data in pursuit of evidence based policy making.

Tech Demo Block 1: Data Management and Visualization | Wednesday, May 16
2:30 - 3:45 pm
The Right Chat for RightsCon, with Ross Schulman, OTI Senior Policy Technologist

Centralized chat services that keep your data then charge you for it are so 2017. Meet Matrix! A federated, end-to-end encrypted communications service that can bridge into many of your favorite chat platforms.

Documenting ICT Companies' Impact on Civic Freedoms and Human Rights Defenders | Wednesday, May 16 | 4:00 - 5:00 pm
With RDR Director Rebecca MacKinnon

When internet, mobile, and telecommunications companies fail to put in place human rights-respecting commitments and policies, their practices may directly or indirectly result in the violation of users’ freedom of expression and privacy rights. These violations in turn intensify the global attack by governments and populist demagogues, and non-state actors, including companies, against human rights defenders and journalists. Highlighting this human impact of company policies and practices is crucial in making the case for why companies must institute—and policymakers should support—policies that foster and reinforce respect for internet users’ rights. Although stories of such violations sometimes make the news, until recently there were no systematic efforts to gather evidence in a way that helps all stakeholders better understand the scale and impact of the abuses and attacks.

This session will examine a) how the digital rights community can work together to improve the way that we document the impact of ICT company policies and practices on freedom of expression and privacy, and b) how improved documentation of cases of negative impact may help stakeholders work with companies and governments to improve grievance and remedy mechanisms for internet users, and specifically human rights defenders, whose rights have been violated.

Trading Up: What Net Neutrality Means for Small Businesses and Trade
Thursday, May 17 | 9:00 - 10:15 am
With Eric Null, OTI Policy Counsel

Net neutrality is a hot button topic in the global internet freedom and access space. Proponents of net neutrality argue that it is vital for promoting innovation and economic growth. A less commonly discussed aspect of the net neutrality debate, however, is how net neutrality protections, or a lack thereof, impact small and minority-owned businesses such as e-commerce companies. This session aims to provide audience members with the opportunity to learn about net neutrality through a human-centered and international trade lens, two perspectives not conventionally discussed, especially in tandem. Each panelist will speak about how their respective nations or regions have engaged with the net neutrality debate and what ramifications these decisions have had for small businesses, trade, and social and economic growth.

Digital Access: Bridging the Divide or Bringing Exclusion? | Thursday, May 17
10:30 - 11:45 am
With RDR Director Rebecca MacKinnon

The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Human Development Report 2016 indicates that although average human development, improved significantly across all regions over the last fifteen years, one in three people worldwide still continue to live in low levels of human development. Systemic discrimination against women, indigenous peoples and ethnic minorities, among other groups, are the barriers which are leaving them behind. The ITU Report on ICT Facts and Figures 2016 indicates that the global Internet user gender gap has grown from 11% in 2013 to 12.2% in 2016 and developing nations such as Africa (23%) have a larger access gap than developed nations such as Americas (2%). They had further estimated that by the end of 2016, only one in seven people is expected to be online from Least Developing Nations (LDCs), of which, only 31% of them would be women. Such digital divides arising out of economic, gender disparities, discrimination and inequalities, especially of people living in the developing and least developed countries, have severely impacted the digital divide. The session will focus on the digital divide having focus on gender, access to rural communities, places with low connectivity and accessibility for PWDs. The Session is focusing on digital access & exclusion." The session will delve into broad parameters of digital exclusion such as gender, poverty, disability, geographical barrier, education, age, and restriction by the state and non-state actors. This session will be aiming to discuss how enforcing digital access leads to exclusion by in large, and will identify stronger focus on those excluded and on actions to dismantle these barriers is urgently needed to ensure that everyone gets equal access online.

A Canadian Position on AI and Human Rights: Towards Policies that Promote and Protect Human Rights | Friday, May 18 | 10:30 - 11:45
With RDR Director Rebecca MacKinnon

Canada is a global leader in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and in human rights. As such, it is developing a foreign policy strategy that articulates how AI is impacting human rights, and identifying considerations that should be taken into account in AI-mediated contexts in order to protect, respect and promote human rights.

While AI technologies can accelerate progress and sustainable development, they can also exacerbate existing human rights challenges and foster new types of violations. Affected rights include equality, privacy and freedom of expression. Promoting rights-respecting AI development requires multidisciplinary collaboration. In the spirit of “policy-making out loud”, the Digital Inclusion Lab at Global Affairs Canada invites RightsCon participants to provide input based on the various conversations taking place at RightsCon on AI, and apply the learning directly into a policy discussion in order to create a policy position for Canada that can bring leadership into this rapidly evolving and complex space.

Tactics for Advancing Digital Rights in Developing Economies and Challenging Political Contexts: An RDR Perspective | Friday, May 18 | 12:00 - 1:15 pm
With Laura Reed, RDR Senior Research Analyst and Coordinator

Digital rights advocacy is more challenging in some countries than others: authorities may not abide by established human rights principles, and developing economies may lack resources to ensure the implementation of good human rights respecting policies. The Ranking Digital Rights project examines privacy and freedom of expression rights from the perspective of corporate transparency and accountability, generating data and analysis about the policies of private companies. In these contexts, the private sector—especially multinational companies—can sometimes be more responsive to stakeholder engagement and public pressure than governments.

This session will bring together panelists who are working to adapt the RDR methodology to local contexts. Their works cover countries including China, Russia, and regions of Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East.

Community Infrastructure for Activists: Security and Shutdown Circumvention
Friday, May 18 | 2:30 - 3:45 pm
With Ross Schulman, OTI Senior Policy Technologist

The radio spectrum can do a lot more than just link mobile phones to towers. We will discuss how community developed infrastructure, including digital radio, mesh networking, and independent mobile phone networks can help advocates and activists communicate and stay safe in places where telecommunications infrastructure doesn't exist or is being purposefully blocked by government. Hear stories from people on the ground building their own networks and the challenges they face.

Sci-Fi as Strategy: Imagining and Planning for the Future Using Speculative Fiction | Friday, May 18 | 4:00-5:00 pm
With OTI Director Kevin Bankston

Science fiction has long been an inspiration for many in the internet freedom field. But it can also be a tool for thinking about the future of our work, just as more and more companies, think tanks, and government offices are working with science fiction writers to imagine and plan for a range of possible futures. In conversation with an internet rights advocate who has applied science fiction in his own work, a small panel of professional science fiction writers and futurists will discuss how sci-fi is increasingly being used—in corporate boardrooms, tech research labs, policy think tanks and even the halls of government—as a tool for innovation, strategic foresight, and generating positive future visions, and will workshop approaches for how you can use it in your own work. We’ll look at where such “sci-fi prototyping” has and hasn’t been useful, talk about the unique uses of dystopian vs. utopian fiction, consider some of the basic techniques for engaging in such “science fiction thinking,” and give the audience the tools they need to better imagine a range of scenarios for the future of the internet—and better imagine how they can impact those futures in the here and now. We’ll also examine how science fiction can be a tool for giving voice to—and imagining better futures for—underrepresented communities, looking at the example of “afro-futurism.”