CDT Storms Brussels –– Talking Tech at RightsCon 2017
Host Brian Wesolowski took Tech Talk on the road to Brussels for RightsCon, which is an incredible annual gatherings on the future of the global internet.<br><br>Our full line up:<br>*Marietje Schaake, Member of European Parliament, Netherlands: http://bit.ly/2oc7FyQ<br>*Wafa Ben-Hassine, regional lead, Access Now: http://bit.ly/2o5bZ2F<br>*Javier Pallero, regional lead, Access Now: http://bit.ly/2oDAu8x<br>*Joe McNamee, Executive Director, EDRi: http://bit.ly/2o5831W<br>*Maria Paz Canales, Executive Director, Derechos Digitales: http://bit.ly/2nZF6mm<br>*Amos Toh, office of UN Rapporteur on freedom of expression and opinion: https://twitter.com/AmosToh<br>*Daniel Bateyko, Thomas J. Watson Fellow: http://bit.ly/2o5hQoJ<br>*Laura Blanco, European Affairs Associate, CDT: http://bit.ly/lblancocdt<br><br>More on RightsCon: https://www.rightscon.org/<br><br>More info on our host, Brian: bit.ly/cdtbrian<br><br>Attribution: sounds used from Psykophobia, Taira Komori, BenKoning, Zabuhailo, bloomypetal, guitarguy1985, bmusic92, and offthesky of freesound.org.
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Transcript
Welcome to tech talk. Bye.
C. T. Tea.
Welcome to CDT's tech talk where we dish on tech and Internet policy while also explaining what these policies mean to our daily lives. I'm Brian Wasilowski and it's time to talk tech. We took Tech Talk on the road to Brussels for RightsCon, which is an incredible annual gathering on the future of the global Internet. While there, we had a chance to meet and talk to digital rights advocates, civil society leaders, government officials, technologists, and all around visionary people. In this episode, we bring these perspectives to you. First, you'll hear from Marita Shaka, a member of the European Parliament from The Netherlands. She outlines the key tech policy issues she is working on and shares her thoughts on where the EU can take a leadership role. She's definitely one of the most tech informed politicians I have ever met. Then we welcome Wafa Ben Hasien and Javier Polero, two of the regional leads for AccessNow, the organization that hosts Rightscom. Wafa shares her perspectives on digital rights in The Middle East and North Africa or MENA, and Javier addresses his work in Latin America. And finally, we have some quick hits for you. Starting with the executive director of EDRI, Joe McNamee, the executive director of Direchos Digitalis, Maria Paz Canales, Amos To from the office of the UN repertoire on the freedom of expression and opinion, Daniel Bataico, a Thomas j Watson fellow who is traveling the world to research global digital rights, and finally, our very own Laura Blanco from CDTs Europe office based in Brussels. And finally, I'd like to give a special thanks to the folks at AccessNow for having us as their guests at RightsCon and letting us bring the podcast to their wonderful event. We are thrilled to welcome miss Marita Shockey, a member of the European Parliament from The Netherlands to Tech Talk. Miss Shockey has been a true champion of digital freedoms and has worked to advance civil liberties in the digital age through her work on the parliament's International Trade Commission and Foreign Affairs Committee, as well as her capacity as vice president of the parliament's US delegation. That is a mouthful. She's one of the leaders on advancing Europe's digital market and copyright reforms and is an ardent supporter of the open Internet. So needless to say, all of us at CDT are big fans of yours. Welcome to Tech Talk. Thank you so much. It's great to have you. So tell us a bit, what are the main policy issues in the tech and Internet space that you're working on right now?
Well, we're coming up on the midterm review of the digital single market regulation, and it's a whole cluster of different chapters that are supposed to harmonize the online single market in Europe. So anything from copy copyright reform to e privacy, to consumer protection. So that's a big chunk. But I'm personally also very involved with the question of export controls for very sensitive, sophisticated, ready made systems that can be used for surveillance, exfiltration of information of human rights defenders or journalists in, countries where there is no rule of law or where there is a dictatorial or authoritarian regime. And that's a hotly contested topic, but I still believe that we have to do something against human rights being violated with the help of EU made technology.
Is there a role to you? You highlight the important point. This brings up all the encryption type issues. Where do you stand on encryption? Is it a a government thing that needs to Where do you stand on encryption? Is it a government thing that needs to be protected? Do the tech companies need to be involved?
Well, it's important that government doesn't break encryption.
That's good. Full stop. I love that. That's perfect. So let's dig a little bit deeper into some of the things you're working on. And I love that you always bring the human rights angle to your work, which is fantastic. Copyrights and, and human, human rights. How do those go together and what are you working
on in that space? So we're actually in the middle of an update of, copyright regulation in Europe, and it's always a very difficult topic because we're trying to do many things at once. On the one hand, we need in Europe a harmonized copyright regime. And this sounds very logical to any American because you have one space of regulations when it comes to copyright, not so much in Europe, we still have 28 different systems. So imagine you're a a startup, you have this fantastic streaming service and you want to bring your content from Sweden to Spain, then you have to buy rights in Spain. And so the buying and understanding of these very different mechanisms takes too much time and it prevents startups from mechanisms takes too much time and it prevents startups from scaling. And on top of that, the current regulation doesn't foresee in digital licenses in the way that we need today. So we're, we're working on that, but of course, there's all these, let's say incumbents like you have in Hollywood, you know, the, the music and the movie industry who are very keen to use this update, to have more rights protection, more enforcement of copyright, and the publishers are now asking for an exclusive protection of publishing rights. So on top of copyrights for authors and journalists, they want a right for the publishers. And that is something that I think is taking the direction, that we don't want to go. We don't need more forcements, stronger protections, but rather harmonization and modernization towards the digital space, but also with more exceptions in the public interest. I think there's a whole copyright industry now with so many middlemen and, intermediaries that are really hindering very basic public interest issues, like access to information, access to culture, access for scientists, access for people in in education. So, I think we need to really not lose sight of the public interest of access to information in the broadest sense of the word. And I'm very keen to make sure that the update of this copyright regulation takes that into
account as well. That's great. And another issue on the public interest, cybersecurity researchers. So not exactly copyright in The US. There's copyright elements to it. But you mentioned export controls and all that. How are those related? And what are you working on to protect and advance cybersecurity research?
So one of the key questions that I always get when we talk about preventing the export of certain technologies, sometimes they're referred to as hacking tools, is cybersecurity researchers who say, look, I'm a researcher, and I do penetration testing, so hacking or attempts at hacking, to make systems safer. So I have a good reason, legitimate purpose of doing this. Don't target me with your regulation, and I'm with them. I agree. I think we need cybersecurity researchers, penetration testers to be able to do their work in the public interest, to make systems safer, so to add to to cybersecurity, but also to gain knowledge and understanding about what the risks and vulnerabilities might be. And so the update of the export controls regulation does not target researchers at all. In fact, it's much more about economic transactions. So oftentimes these are multimillion euro or dollar contracts with systems that are designed, marketed, and sold to, for example, intelligence, services or, police and law enforcement agencies in dictatorial regimes. And so, I don't know how security researchers would be in the same basket as these buyers of systems, and we just have to clarify and make sure that these security researchers are reassured that our export controls regulation does not target them and will not, you know, coincidentally
or or, collaterally target them either. That's wonderful. So we're gonna pivot a little bit to now. Internet platforms, I mean, they are getting a lot of pressure, you know, in Europe, in The US and other places to take more control of the content on their sites. So whether it's extremist content, copyrighted work, and there's different approaches to how you manage this content. What do you think is the best approach for Internet platforms in dealing with undesirable or questionable content?
Who should be in charge of that? Well, let me begin by saying that some of these Internet platform companies are so powerful that they should appreciate the responsibility that they have in making sure that the public interest, like access to information, nondiscrimination, freedom of expression, are safeguarded. And I've been very disappointed, and I say this as someone who's generally very optimistic about the opportunities of technology and digitization, very disappointed by the, lack of leadership by some of these big Silicon Valley based tech companies and platforms. Because when I told them, are you concerned or ask them about what they were doing to make sure that, for example, Facebook was not abused to manipulate the elections or was not abused, for fake news type stories or junk news, whatever you wanna call it. They kind of pretended that I was coming from another planet, that I had sort of, you know, taken a wrong path and was seeing conspiracies. But frankly, they are underestimating the responsibility they have, and I think it is crucial that whatever measures are taken, whether it is a business model that they have or whether it is a push to regulate content, it is in line with the rule of law. So we should not even talk about undesired content. I know it is it is, you know, the freedom of these companies to say we don't like pictures of breastfeeding, so you don't get to see them. But think about the recent example, in The United States, YouTube and the, branding as sensitive, labeling as sensitive, any LGBTI content. I think that's inappropriate. I think it is very important that freedom of speech is central, and I don't see anything sensitive about talking about LGBTI rights or issues in the broader sense. Of course, it's different when there's violence depicted against LGBTIs or whether there's incitement to hatred, but we already have laws in place that can protect against abuses. And other than that, I think we have to be very careful with privatized norm setting, privatized law enforcement, privatized regulation of content, even if it is about radicalization, very undesired content that is, of course, there on the Internet. But we have to be very careful that the proper oversight, the proper judicial checks, the proper checks and balances are in place, that the rule of law is also applicable online. It's not a different universe. It's an integral part of our life as human beings, and I think the rule of law needs to be respected much more. And, because there's not always updated regulation yet, I would like to see much more responsible decision making and module or, yeah, changing of, of algorithms and business
cases by these companies. That's one of the things we do at CDT. We try to think about ethics and algorithms and the fact that they they are they are not two separate distinct things. You know, algorithm is not just a formula that does what it does. Humans create those. So that's a very important point. Well, you know, a lot of the companies treat algorithms as a trade secret. They sit on it, as if it's their biggest treasure.
And, you know, if you compare it to, for example, the recipe of Coca Cola, it's also trade secret, I think it is safe to say that any soft drink, any consumer product is heavily regulated to make sure that it's not poisonous, that there's not some kind of, ingredient there that could be harmful for the public health. And that's a concern if people drink, what, up to five cans of of this soda a day, which would be a lot. But imagine if if 90 or more than 90% of the population would drink only that soft drink. Then you have a problem and a concern of different scale. And I think we should look at the market power of these companies, like Google, for example, that in the search market is extremely dominant, and we have to look at what responsibility that brings. And as far as I learn from the Googles of this world, not a single human being even knows anymore what the whole algorithm is about. These algorithms have become so complex, layered, you know, diffuse that if the companies themselves don't have real oversight anymore about key questions of our time, that there is the proper oversight in the public interest of the impact of algorithms on our world. And And we're only beginning to address this issue. We have to be careful, of course, with hastily made, decisions. But again and I think that CDT is very right to focus on the ethical responsibility
Great. So last question for you. Obviously in The US, we have a very different political climate right now than we did just a few months ago. And a lot of the core issues that really support the open Internet are under threat. So things like net neutrality, we've even heard rumblings against encryption or turning over passwords at the border. Seems like we might have a bit of a void in global leadership on some of the most important open Internet issues. Do you think Europe is, and the EU specifically, is poised to take some of that leadership?
Well, I'm very worried about what we're seeing coming out of the White House specifically, sometimes tweeted, sometimes screened. But the office of president of the United States is not only very important for people in The US, but it it determines where The US stands globally. And I I'm very worried when attacks on the rule of law, attacks on the media, attacks on minorities are waged. And I think we we have to push back against that. Not because we don't care about America, in fact, transatlantic partnership is the most important partnership we have in Europe, and I deeply believe in it, I'm very committed to it. But it's always been a partnership on the basis of values and it should remain that way. Of course, this also has impact on the open Internet. I'm very disappointed about the notion of changing net neutrality rules, for example. And indeed, I think this moment should lead to a more proactive, ambitious Europe. We have shown in the form of net neutrality laws, in the form of general data protection regulation, in the form of other rules and regulations that we have developed here in Europe that we are norm setting here in Europe and that we can because we are pan national. We already look beyond the size of one country, and that's actually exactly how the Internet develops. It's bigger than one country. It's connecting people globally. And I think the EU therefore is in a in a good position. One, because of its appreciation for for human rights, universal human rights. Second, because of its transnational character and a market that actually involves multiple countries, multiple citizens in a single space,
to take a leadership role. And I I think it is now more important than ever that we do so to really step up where The US may step back. Fantastic. And that's why CDT has an office here in Brussels. It's such an important place and definitely leading the way. You are one of the most tech savvy politicians I've ever met. How did you first get involved in technology issues? Do you have a particular passion for this or how did it come about?
Well, I'm curious, about new innovation. So I do like, to understand where change comes from, and I think technology is very important there. I studied new media at the University of Amsterdam, but I'm not an engineer. I don't know how to code, so I actually feel fairly, ill equipped to address some of these issues from a technical point of view, but to understand what the technological revolution means for society, for human rights, and for safeguarding the public interest. I'm trying to connect the dots, and it's a constant learning process. That's why it's so good to be at RightsCon here with so many activists, hackers, experts, academics, people from the private sector and from government to really come together and to do sort of three sixty view on a number of these issues. And so for me, it's it's really a constant learning process. And, you know, I'm happy that, through working with so many stakeholders, we can we can make a difference.
Wonderful. Marita Shaka from, a member of the European Parliament. Thank you so much for joining Tech Talk. You're welcome. It was a pleasure. I'm here with Wafa Ben Hassin, who leads the MENA region work for AccessNow, the great host of RightsCon. Welcome, Wafa. Hi. So tell me a bit. I mean, you're based in Tunis. What is the work that you're doing in the MENA region?
So I'm based in Tunis and I'm currently working on policy as well as advocacy, and I'm kind of doing a mix of both, for the whole MENA region. So, and that does not include Turkey, Azerbaijan, Iran, because I'm generally focusing on Arabic speaking countries. And so, so I'm more, on the policy level I'm working a lot on, some new legislation that's coming through in several Arab countries that deals with Internet of things. And these, these kinds of legislations include anything ranging from call for proposals to contracts, to call for the establishment of execution networks or access networks for these new products. But a lot of these documents don't have, like, major protections for consumers and their privacy and their data. So, that's one level I'm working on. I'm also working a lot on, digital identity management systems. And, what that really means in a nutshell is, identity cards, ident unique identifier numbers that are used in identity cards, ident unique identifier numbers that are used in, in consumer products. All of these different identifiers, that could eventually be linked to one another and be centralized either by the state or by a private corporation. And basically, we had, for example, in Tunisia, a new proposed law that was looking to create a new identity card that had a chip in it. And it had, one part of it is encrypted and the proposed law kind of says what it's about, but it doesn't really give, a clear picture of what an encrypted data could look like. Therefore, it could be very prone to abuse by law enforcement authorities, etcetera. So on the policy level, I'm kind of working on that. I'm also working on a lot of, outreach, a lot, a lot of advocacy types of projects, both in Tunisia and Lebanon. I'm working with several partners in Lebanon, and Jordan, and Palestine, and all over the region basically. And, we're also reaching out to more traditional human rights organizations, and especially in North Africa because those are our major Really, they're the major partners that we should be working with. The idea of digital rights as a concept is not very well understood in the region and there's a lot of education to be done. And the first people I'm reaching out to are these human rights organizations that are already well established and all it takes is just educating organizations that are already well established and all it takes is just educating them about what how you can translate your right to freedom of expression and how that works with new technologies. And so, working a lot on capacity building, outreach, etcetera, etcetera, on the in the region as well. So it's it's a lot going on and issues don't end. But it's definitely a very exciting time to be working in the region. How big of a team do you have to cover that entire region? Myself. So this is just a great reminder on how hard all these folks here that are working the advocacy work, you know, herself covering the entire region. You're doing great work. Thanks for sharing it. But in fairness, I did wanna say I do have an advocacy team that's all over the world and that's what makes access AccessNow so special, is that you're not always working alone. Yes, I'm policy and advocacy on my own in Tunisia, but I have a whole team supporting me all over the world. In Costa Rica, in New York, in Argentina, in Philippines, you know, in Brussels, and I have that power behind me. It's, it's a big it's a big support. And so, definitely not alone alone. You do great work. Thanks for joining. Yeah. Thank you so much for having me.
I'm here with Javier Pollero from AccessNow, our wonderful host for RightsCon, and he leads all of their work in Latin America. What are you doing here at RightsCon?
Well, I am helping the guys at AccessNow, putting together this conference. You know, it's a lot of work, 1,400, people here. Wow. So so it's a lot of work. And I'm also accompanying our Latin American partners, digital rights organizations that are here, exposing their panels and trying to push for the priorities for the region this year.
That's great. So you lead all the work in Latin America, which is a big region for two people to cover. What are the the main tech and Internet policy issues that you're focusing on there? What's hot there compared to other parts of the world?
Well, as you said, there's a lot of issues, a lot of countries, and we are forced to just attack the most relevant issues, you know. And among them, we have surveillance, of course. Last year, we had the revelations from the hacking team hacks. I don't know if you remember about this Italian company that sells Oh, yeah. Spyware to governments. And they we discovered that Mexico is the country that has spent the most in the entire world in hacking team technologies to spy on their own citizens. And most of this spying, the majority of this spying is done illegally because it's not authorized by any laws or statutes, in the in the country. So surveillance is a big issue. There are no effective control mechanisms for, surveillance within the countries for domestic surveillance. So that that was one of one of the biggest concerns that that we have. And great groups like the r three d are working in Mexico to try to to battle that. And also other priorities that we have is the work on net neutrality. Latin America is one of the regions where the practice of zero rating certain apps is most widespread. So the idea is to try to, alert people, especially lawmakers about the dangers of such, natural neutrality violations, because this, this risks shaping the access to the internet in a very negative way in Latin America, which is a region that still has a lot to go in terms of access to the Internet.
Are there any countries in Latin America that you think are setting a a forward looking positive policy agenda, on tech and Internet issues?
You know, so far, sadly I can't say that we have like a beacon for digital rights in Latin America. That was the case of Brazil, though, in 2013 when they, passed a bill called the Marco Civil of the Internet, which is a civil framework civil rights framework for the Internet. They did this in the wake of the Snowden revelations, and this got guaranteed a certain set of rights for Brazilian citizens. But right now, with the change in government, as you know, Dilma Rousseff went off, was impeached, and then we have now a new president in Brazil. And the new administration is really, really against digital rights. They have been pushing very dangerous bills to try to reform the Marco Seville and ease the protections that the Marco Seville guarantees to the citizens. So it's a very worrying situation. And also there are a lot of Brazilian groups that are also here at RightsCon who are working to try to push against that. But but it's a very, very big and important move from the government to try to deregulate telecommunications and also try to diminish the the protections, privacy protections specifically in the Marcos
field. Yeah. Brazil definitely was a beacon for a while there and it's a shame. I mean, The US was a beacon for a while and now we're not doing so good either. So, just last question before I let you go. If someone was interested in, you know, getting engaged from Latin America in these different tech and Internet, issues, should they reach out obviously reach out to the folks at AccessNow. Are there other groups that you'd like to highlight that you think that they should consider reaching out to?
Well, there are several groups. I just mentioned the R3D, which is a group in Mexico. There's a lot of groups, the Fundacion Charisma in Colombia. In Brazil, we have a lot of people, the Internet Lab, the ITS, the CTS. I mean, there's a lot of groups. So just to make it easier, you can reach me, and I can put people in contact with, with other groups in different regions. My email address is Javier@accessnow.org,
and you can find me there. I hope a lot of people reach out. Thanks for joining Tech Talk. Yeah. Thank you for having me. I am joined now by Joe McNamee, the executive director of EDRI. Joe, tell us about what EDRI does and why everyone should be supporting the great work you do.
EDRI is basically two different things. It's an association of associations. So we've got 34, digital rights groups from, 22, I think, countries, spread around Europe and a few international groups. And we act as a hub of information and cooperation, for them. And we're also, a Brussels office, where we advocate on behalf of our members with the European institutions. So as far as the Brussels institutions are concerned, we are an NGO, ourselves. Right. And we work on privacy issues, freedom of communication, a lot of work on the role of intermediaries and intermediary liability, which is a huge issue in, in in Europe. And I hope people in the rest of the world, take note of just how bad some of the proposals are in Europe. Well, tell us a bit about those proposals. Why are they so bad? Well, we have a copyright proposal, which it's actually so bad that people don't believe that it could possibly be as bad as it is, and it's not getting traction in the public because people are going, no. Europe Europe wouldn't do that. Europe couldn't do that. They're proposing, primary liability for intermediaries. So if somebody uploads something to the Internet that is unauthorized, then the company itself would be committing the infringe infringement. They're proposing secondary liability for, the Internet companies. So if you upload something, they're liable for the fact that you uploaded it. They're proposing mandatory use of, content recognition technologies, upload filtering, and, arrangements between Internet companies and rights holders to to keep to filter and monitor what you what you do on the internet. And it's actually a real proposal and it's not a joke. That is way worse than I think I even anticipated. So, wow. Yes. There's a separate instrument called the audio visual media services directive, which is, something that CDT and and Bustles is also working on, which also proposes, liability for Internet companies. It does it it's legislating on, certain types of illegal content like hate speech and also legislation on non illegal content, which may be, depending on who's assessing it, harmful to children. So there they also propose removing liability protections for, for for, video hosting sites, which is bad. They they're not very clear on what the law is. And, the most recent thing in the European Parliament as well as the, compromise proposals, which aren't compromises, that have been proposed, they proposed a definition of user generated video, which doesn't require the video to be user generated, which gives you an idea of the the vast intellect that is being put into this nuclear disaster of of Internet policy.
So thankfully you're here at RightsCon surrounded by a lot of people that would agree with you, probably have, you know, different approaches, but same goals. Are you more optimistic, optimistic that you can fight some of those back being surrounded by so many other advocates?
It's it's a really reassuring happy thing for I think we're all in little silos, all around the world feeling, alone in our in our geekiness and our wonkiness, in our passion for, openness and communication, and, coming to a a conference where there are other people. There are people we're a family. We believe in the same things. We're we're a movement. It's definitely, a great thing. It's also last weekend, we had our general assembly, which was our biggest average general assembly, and our membership grew by over 10%. So this is a very encouraging week, between our general assembly, which was the best ever, and rights gone in Brussels for the first time ever. In in face of all of the depressing hurricane of chaos, it's it's it's, happy. It's a happy week.
Well, keep up with the good work and keep the happiness going. And thanks for being part of Tech Talk. Thank you. I have an alumni of CDT with me, Maria Paz Canales, who is now the executive director of Direches Digitales based in Chile. And we are very, very proud of you. You are my favorite guest of the day because an alumni, this is great. So tell us a bit about your organization. You're a new executive director. What do they do? What's your agenda for for your tenure?
Great. Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure for me. Like, I have this opportunity to to talk with you. I admire everything that you do at Tivity and this talks, TikTok. It was one of the things that I had the opportunity to to be in touch when I was an intern there a couple of years ago. So I'm very proud of being here with you. And about your question, the Retos Digitales is an organization that already have, like, more than ten years of existence. We are based in Chile, and we start our work in Chile as more like policy, thing pang, and and then we move to be a really a full profit organization, that cares about all the issues related with digital rights. That is why we have our name, the translation in Spanish. And we work, still, heavily in the policy issues, but also we work a lot in advocacy focus. And we we, do this work not just only, for Chile, but increasingly in the five years for all Latin America. And we are trying to help to build more capacity in these topics in the places where so far there there's no organization that can bring, this kind of, more, like, technical discussion about these topics in in different, countries of the region. So about, our agenda, basically, we have, as I as I mentioned, several lines of work, related with policy and with advocacy, and we are increasingly, taking over more technical projects. So so we have, invest and we expect to continue investing to improve our technical capacities, either internally in the growing of our organization, but also making collaboration with people outside the organization that can bring that technical analysis that it's very necessary for for the topic that we do. And, in in during this year, I will say that we will have, like, a very, big focus in topics related with civilians, which which is a a huge topic in Latin America in general. We are conducting research about the the ways in which, the surveillance is, developed in in in different countries in Latin America. And particularly in Chile, we have, like, an study case that it's really interesting to share about the use of technology like drones for purposes of, public security, but, that imply an, huge amount of of risk, of being used for civilians and be very invasive with the the privacy rights of the people. And a lot of time, these kind of initiatives are presented in a way that it seemed not harmful for the people and and they receive a lot of popular support because people is not aware of of the of the risk about the manage of the data that is collected, the who can access this. And a lot of time, this is not even in in in the hands of the government, but also the private company that are, contracted for for managing this kind of technology. So that's a very interesting topic that it will be probably one of the main lines that we will be working this year among a lot of older. We are also very interested in in talking about gender issues, all the things that how to make a online space safe for minorities in general, but particularly for for for, gender, provocations, and kind of the relation that happened, in the online space. So we have a lot to do. There's a lot to do in in our region, and we are constantly working to enlarge our, course of action to bring more people in the discussion also. You're covering a lot of ground there.
So, of course, we're here at Rights Con. What what have you learned or have you met new partners that you can work with or partner with on different initiatives while being here?
Yeah. It's it's impressive how you can you can see when you met people in in places like this that, we have, like, pretty much the same topics in common. These issues that are, talking about are also issues in our, part of the world. And, we have found a lot of space for collaboration to interchange, experiences and, find a way to move forward, like, together in in building also, like, more international standards around the same topics. We just had, like, this, afternoon, a panel about biometric, and everyone was complaining about how this is properly handled all over the world. So there's a huge space for collaboration building common standards, between the organization that we,
get together here. That's great. That's great. Well, we are so proud of you. Everyone at CDT, keep up the great work, and, we will stay in touch and look forward to seeing the great things that you do.
Thank you.
I'm now joined by Amos To who works with David Kaye, the UN special repertoire on freedom of opinion and expression. Welcome, Amos. Tell us what it's like working with David, and what are the things you're working on. Well,
as legal advisor, I'm, you know, basically, working with him on research and advocacy projects that he conducts as part of his mandate for the United Nations. And my specific area of focus is digital rights and Internet freedom, particularly the role that the ICT sector plays in, respecting and promoting human rights, particularly freedom of of expression and privacy. So that's really kind of the substantive frame of what I do. And, you know, I kind of do many other things as well. Like, we also regularly communicate with governments about allegations of human rights violations. So that's something else that I work on and another piece of it. And, you know, going to RightsCon, like, that's a fantastic, kind of perk and doing things like that. Yeah.
So what are some of the issues, you know, you highlighted them, but some of the issues that, you're most concerned with right now when it comes to freedom of expression online from a global perspective, are there certain regions, certain topics? What are some of the the big issues right now? Right. I mean, so just to well, one of the favorite things I get to do in this role is really what I call it, like, investigative
policy research, to keep the mandate and keep David and our team, like, apprised of what's the next thing, what's the next big human rights concern, right. And so some of the most, interesting and salient issues that are underreported as well, to me appear to be, in the area of, like, the role of technical standard setting bodies like the IETF and, 3GPP and Etsy and and all these big standards bodies that are, developing ways in which the Internet is going to advance and how computers basically are going to communicate with each other in different ways as part of the Internet of Things, and nobody's really focusing on of the human rights issues that that sort of thing creates. I also think that, you know, the kind of intersection between traditional, like, conceptions of freedom of expression and privacy and and kind of more socioeconomic issues, like connecting the next billion people and how that enables a whole suite of economic and social cultural rights. Like like, that's kind of another big area that I think is emerging and that we need to pay more attention to.
That's great. So you've been at RightsCon now for a few days. What's some of the the things you've learned here or the interesting people that you've met?
It's well, I guess one of the well, there were two really interesting panels that kind of really highlights, I think, the the real benefit of being here. One is, it was a panel on, like, you know, storms, which is the Soviet style post Soviet surveillance systems, and the kind of not just the level of knowledge but the level of passion people have about, like, the technical details of SORM, it's just, you know, really mind boggling and very inspiring because, like, I have no right to complain about going to too many policy lunches if, like, people are just so, like, in the weeds on these things. And it's it's really inspiring to know that. Another thing was I'm going to kind of like a coding rights panel. You know, it get you get to see, like, you know, as a policy guy, you get to see a completely different perspective of how, people deal with these issues, but just from a completely different world. And that's what I like about these kind of forums. Yeah.
And for the listeners, you can't see this, but Amos is very animated and clearly passionate and excited about this. So we're so glad that you're working on these these issues in the UN, and thank you for joining Tech Talk. Thank you for having me. Thank you. I'm joined now by Daniel Pateko, who is also a CDT alum. He interned with us a few years ago on the communications teams, which is the best internship at CDT. And he has been traveling the world on a Watson Fellowship. So, Daniel, tell us what you're doing. What is this Watson Fellowship? And, of course, welcome to Tech Talk.
Thanks for having me, Brian. It's really good to see you after all these years. I look the same. Right? You look the same. Exactly the same. So I am on a Thomas j Watson Fellowship. It's a one year purposeful grant given to a liberal arts college graduates to pursue a course of study of their choosing. So I decided to study digital rights communities specifically looking at how people interpret their digital rights in different countries and then how do they mobilize around those issues. So it's taken me to a lot of different places. I've been traveling for eight months already and I have another four months to go.
So tell us about I mean, I'm sure your internship at CDT inspired you to do this. Yeah. Absolutely. I mean, that was that was the first
time that I really got involved in tech and democracy and how the two intersect. I remember going to all of these lectures put on by CDT. We had the weekly brown bag sessions, where someone of note would come in at lunch. That was a really wonderful experience and that has inspired me since. So, yeah, that's not just for show, Seriously.
Thanks. Perfect answer. So tell us about where you've been and some of the things that you've learned on these trips. You've gone to some really, like, interesting places and and have been at the forefront of places where probably digital rights are something that, you know, are under threat.
Absolutely. So I've I've been to a long list of countries at this point. I started out in South Korea working with OpenNet, which is a group that of lawyers that work on these issues. I've been throughout East Asia speaking to NGOs, lawyers, academics, journalists, and even just locals about how they interpret their digital rights. It definitely varies by different country, but I think one of the most humanizing things of note is that everyone has a concept of privacy and has this concept of free speech. So we might have this parochial vision in in The US that elsewhere privacy isn't taken seriously. But it is you just have to be asking the right questions and understanding the cultural context.
Those are great insights. Well, how you have four more months left. What's next on your itinerary?
Well, next up on the itinerary is Russia. Fingers crossed for a visa. I think right now we're in, some pretty dire political straits in The US with that. So I think that'll work out and then, I'll be keep I'll keep traveling, keep talking to more individuals about how they interpret their Internet freedoms.
Well, good luck with all that. And we're so excited, that you are doing this work in digital rights and so pleased that CDT was a part of that and look forward to seeing what the future holds for you. Yeah. Thanks so much. I'm here with CDTs very own Laura Blanco, who recently joined the CDT team based in Brussels working on European affairs. And she's gonna tell us about what she is working on and the priorities of that office. Welcome, Laura.
Thank you, Brian. First of all, I just want to say that I'm so excited to be part of the CDT family and to join to join Jens Jeppesen here in Brussels in working to advance digital rights in the EU. It's definitely both a challenging and interesting time to work on digital issues. And as you know, this is the case not only here in Europe. But in Brussels, we are currently heavily engaged in the developments around intermediary liability in the context of the European Commission's digital single market strategy. And, this strategy is set to have the aim of establishing a fully European market in in digital goods and services. But what we actually see is that some of the legislative proposals on the table, if they pass as they currently stand, they're likely to have a strong impact on the way the Internet operates, affecting all players in the market, including including, Internet users and their freedom of expression. So, broadly speaking, there's a trend in the debate to impose, an obligation to monitor uploaded content on video sharing sites for potential, harmful or undesirable, content. This is seen in the review of the, audiovisual media services directive, but we also, see this trend in the copyright reform, debate, where the commission basically imposes a general monitoring obligation on intermediaries of any kind to employ technological measures to monitor and filter uploaded, content for potential copyright infringement. Well, these are very worrying provisions from the, freedom of expression point of view, since it basically means that even if you upload, perfectly legal content, it would still be filtered, and monitored unless people would be inclined to put things, up online, for example. And sometimes these technologies would not pick up the cases covered by copyright exceptions. So you could, also be in a situation where your content is, taken down for no valid reason. So it's really important to to upkeep the liability protections in place in the so called ecommerce directive, where a hosting provider acts to remove content once it has been notified of its illegality. So in both of these proposals, we are, working closely with other organizations, such as the Copyright for Creativity Alliance, which is a coalition of a broad range of stakeholders, which include associations representing Internet service providers, libraries, also artists, and so on. So it's very broad. We have a very coordinated and targeted approach in this alliance, which I think is crucial, in the current state of the debates. And we'll continue to work closely to make sure that these proposals, in fact, reflect the, commission stated objectives, for the digital single market.
So lots of important things you're doing there. We obviously have a great team here in Brussels. And if you want to know more about their work, follow them on Twitter at it's at at c d t e u. Is that right? Correct. Perfect. So RightsCon, you're here. This is your first first RightsCon. You have eight of your DC colleagues out here. What's your takeaways from RightsCon?
Well, I think there are so many different, issues, currently, which affect both, US and the EU. So for me, it's, mainly a learning experience. And, of course, I'm so excited to to meet, all my colleagues who are so smart, and I'm just,
happy to be here. Who's your favorite colleague? No. I'm just kidding. Don't answer that. Don't answer. Laura has been a wonderful host for us too. He's given us great tips. Thank you so much, and thank you for being on Tech Talk for the first time. Thank you, Brian. That's it for this episode of Tech Talk. The large CDT contingent at RightsCon had a blast, and we're already looking forward to the next one, which will take place in Toronto. Definitely consider going. And if you're in Washington, DC on April 20, you should also consider coming to CDT's annual dinner tech prom. We will be honoring teen Vogue with our Digital Visionary Award. If you're interested, visit cdt.org for more information, and we hope to see you there. I'm Brian Wasilowski. Thanks for listening.
