RIGHTSCON DAY THREE: DATA DEFENDERS, DIGITAL DICTATORS, AND DIGITAL IDS.
Today’s RightsCon Costa Rica sessions tackled some of the most pressing tech and human rights issues, including data protection regulations across Africa, how to respond to digital authoritarianism, and risks and best practices for digital ID programs.
Quote of the day:
“The fabric of our society is at stake and we are creating laughable solutions because we are not talking to the people who have done the work […] We will not be able to create solutions that will actually work until we are all in the room.” — Anika Collier Navaroli, Twitter Whistleblower (In Conversation with Anika Collier Navaroli and Melissa Chan)
Tips for tomorrow:
- Queerness and criminalization in the digital age: how digital authoritarianism facilitates the prison pipeline in Africa: in many countries in Africa the codification of anti-queerness can be traced back to the establishment of colonial rule. Since then, these repressive laws have been broadly interpreted by law enforcement to harass, intimidate, and incarcerate LGBTQ+ people in the region.
- Big model, big problems? Responsibly releasing generative AI: generative AI can be impressive when it works, but very harmful when it doesn’t, generating racist, misogynistic, misinforming, and other harmful content that has been shown to particularly affect historically marginalized people.
RightsCon launches:
- Association for Progressive Communications (APC): A framework for developing gender-responsive cybersecurity policy (Thursday, 8 June)
- OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR): Launch of new episode of ODIHR’s Starlight Stadium game for human rights defenders (Thursday, 8 June)
- Center for Democracy and Technology: At RightsCon, Messaging App CEOs Commit to Protecting End-to-End Encryption (E2EE)
Video highlights:
A reminder to check out the media kit, or contact them with your press queries via Signal (+506 8626 5250)!
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