Digital Rights Weekly | October 3 - 7
Team CommUNITY
team at digitalrights.community
Sat Oct 8 06:05:29 CEST 2022
Hello Digital Rights Defenders!
Here is your weekly update on digital rights around the world for the
weeks of October 3 - 7. As a reminder, you can submit your news for
the newsletter here:
https://www.digitalrights.community/weekly-newsletter
### Upcoming Virtual TCU Events ###
October 12 | Deconstructing Trauma
https://digitalrights.formstack.com/forms/chv2022_1
October 13 | Glitter Meetup: Standing with the Milk Tea Alliance:
Lessons in Allyship
https://internetfreedomfestival.org/wiki/index.php/October_13_2022_GM
October 13 | Trauma & Identity: a deep dive on intersectionality
https://digitalrights.formstack.com/forms/chv2022_2
October 18 | Healing in the In-Between: Exploring Migration and
Vicarious Trauma (Waiting List)
https://digitalrights.formstack.com/forms/chv2022_3
October 19 | Africa Monthly Meetup
https://internetfreedomfestival.org/wiki/index.php/October_19_2022,_Africa_Meetup
October 19 | Lingua Cafe
https://internetfreedomfestival.org/wiki/index.php/Lingua_Cafe
October 19 | LATAM Monthly Meetup
https://internetfreedomfestival.org/wiki/index.php/19_de_Octubre,_2022_LATAM
October 20 | Glitter Meetup: Digital rights in Bolivia and Datachiri
https://internetfreedomfestival.org/wiki/index.php/October_20_2022_GM
_________________________________________________
### Digital Rights in the Community ###
1. Open Call: Regional Report on Policies and Freedoms in the Use of
Encryption in Latin America
The initiative seeks to articulate different rapporteurs in strategic
countries in Latin America including activists, journalists,
organizations dedicated to the defense of human rights, as well as
academics and researchers who offer a contemporary overview on the
state of laws, public policies and judicial decisions about the
subject. Deadline for submitting proposals is the 12th of October. The
open call details can be found here:
https://ip.rec.br/blog/edital-de-chamada-para-contribuicoes-relatorio-regional-sobre-politicas-e-liberdades-no-uso-de-criptografia-na-america-latina-2022-23/
(in PT)
And here
https://ip.rec.br/blog/convocatoria-para-contribuciones-reporte-regional-sobre-politicas-y-libertades-en-el-uso-del-cifrado-en-america-latina-2022-23/
(in ES)
2. Destiny: New Secure File Transfer App Released
LeastAuthority has just released Destiny, a secure and open source
file transfer app that allows people to transfer files without needing
to reveal their identity to each other or the service provider.
Destiny was developed for and with Human Rights Organizations (HROs)
as a free Privacy Enhancing Technology (PET) alternative which does
not collect personal identifying information for file transfer.
https://leastauthority.com/community-matters/destiny/
3. RxT Hold Event on Accountability and Safety in Tech
Join Rights x Tech on Wednesday October 19th for a forum on addressing
violence and collective safety on technology platforms featuring
change agent and survivor champion, Alison Turkos. Alison is working
to hold both technology platforms and government agencies accountable
for safety and is suing both Lyft and the NYPD following her 2017
sexual assault by a Lyft driver. Rights x Tech is a space for leaders
across technology, movement, policy and philanthropy to explicitly
explore the intersections of technology and power.
Read and register here:
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/rxt-embedding-accountability-safety-in-technology-tickets-425419319637
4. Amnesty International Releases Report on Facebook Promoting
Violence in Rohingya
Amnesty International released a report on how Facebook owner Meta’s
dangerous algorithms and reckless pursuit of profit substantially
contributed to the atrocities perpetrated by the Myanmar military
against the Rohingya people in 2017. The Social Atrocity: Meta and the
Right to Remedy for the Rohingya details how Meta knew or should have
known that Facebook’s algorithmic systems were supercharging the
spread of harmful anti-Rohingya content in Myanmar, but the company
still failed to act.
Check out the full report here:
https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2022/09/myanmar-facebooks-systems-promoted-violence-against-rohingya-meta-owes-reparations-new-report/
_________________________________________________
### Digital Rights Resources ###
1. Digital Enquirer Kit - , a Free e-learning Guide that Empowers you
with Fact-Seeking Superpowers.
The Digital Enquirer Kit helps train people so they can counter
misinformation and foster digital media and information literacy. The
kit has a set of e-learnings that consists of interactive tasks, real
life examples, and advice on how to increase one’s digital security.
https://www.atingi.org/digitalenquirerkit/
2. Preparedness is Power: The Tech Worker Handbook
The Tech Worker Handbook is a collection of resources for tech workers
who are looking to make more informed decisions about whether to speak
out on issues that are in the public interest. Aiming to improve
working conditions, direct attention to consumer harms, or otherwise
address wrongdoing and abuse should not be a solo or poorly resourced
endeavor.
This project addresses the need for centralized and accessible
baseline resources for tech workers, because individuals should not
have to rely on whisper networks for justice. Rebalancing power
through the distribution of resources is sorely needed.
https://techworkerhandbook.org
3. Atingi Releases The Digital Enquirer Kit
Over the past one and a half years, Atingi cooperated with civil
society organizations from multiple regions to develop a modular set
of e-learnings, that consists of interactive tasks, real life examples
and advice on how to increase one´s own digital security. While it is
generally meant for everyone, it is specifically designed for
students, activists and human rights defenders in the global south. In
order to reach this designated target group, the contents of the
course are being localized by digital security experts from all over
the world and will be freely available in 11 languages. Addressing
topics such as freedom of information, online gender-based violence,
as well as online security of children, the Digital Enquirer Kit
ultimately aims to sensitize learners to digital rights issues and
empower them to strengthen the capacity of their communities.
You can take a first look at the e-learning kit here:
https://www.atingi.org/digitalenquirerkit/
4. Snowflake Makes It Easy For Anyone to Fight Censorship
Tor, the onion router, remains one of the most effective censorship
circumvention technologies. Millions of people use the Tor network
every day to access the internet without fear of surveillance and
censorship. Some countries block direct access to the Tor network. In
those countries people have to use what are known as “Tor Bridges” to
circumvent national firewalls. Tens of thousands of people use bridges
regularly to circumvent censorship and national or regional
restrictions.
Internet Service Providers (ISPs) in countries where Tor is banned are
constantly trying to find the IP addresses of bridges and block them
to prevent people from accessing Tor. Bridge connections can also be
identified (or “fingerprinted”) as connections to the Tor network by
an ISP using deep packet inspection. To deal with this, Tor has a
clever solution called “pluggable transports”, which disguises Tor
connections as ordinary traffic to a well-known web service such as
Google or Skype, and smuggles the Tor connection inside of the
seemingly innocuous traffic.
Users can now run a new pluggable transport called “Snowflake” in
their browser with just a couple of clicks and help people all over
the world access the unrestricted internet. Read more about how
Snowflake works and how you can use it:
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/10/snowflake-makes-it-easy-anyone-fight-censorship
_________________________________________________
### Digital Rights in the Wider World ###
1. Pegasus Abuses Identified in Mexico
R3D, with technical support from the Citizen Lab, published a report
determining that Mexican journalists and a human rights defender were
infected with Pegasus between 2019 and 2021. Victims include two
journalists that report on issues related to official corruption and a
prominent human rights defender. The infections occurred years after
the first revelations of Pegasus abuses in Mexico and occurred after
Mexico’s current President, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, assured the
public that the government no longer used the spyware and that there
would be no further abuses.
https://citizenlab.ca/2022/10/new-pegasus-spyware-abuses-identified-in-mexico/
The Mexican president denies his government spied on journalists with
Pegasus software and that the government does not spy on people.
https://www.axios.com/2022/10/04/mexico-pegasus-journalist-lopez-obrador
2. The Iran Uprisings Continue: The Challenge of Cracking Iran’s
Internet Blockade
Iranians have faced escalating internet restrictions for years and
have some workarounds in place as a result, like VPNs and other relay
services. As repressive governments have increasingly deployed
connectivity blackouts as a means to control citizens, the measure has
morphed from a dark horse tactic to a well-known strategy. But even
with increased awareness, there’s still no easy, affordable, and broad
way to restore digital access to people whose government is actively
blocking it.
https://edition.cnn.com/2022/10/04/world/iran-internet-blackout-intl-cmd
The repressive Iranian regime has also been rounding up technologists
that have been vocal on internet censorship.
https://twitter.com/maasalan/status/1577674881134575616
Some U.S. based companies like Signal have been trying to support
protests in Iran to counter this by asking users to host proxy servers
for people to use in Iran.
https://www.signal.org/blog/run-a-proxy/
3. AI Data Laundering: How Academic and Nonprofit Researchers Shield
Tech Companies from Accountability
Meta’s AI Research Team announced Make-A-Video, a “state-of-the-art AI
system that generates videos from text.” The massive image-text
caption datasets used to train Make-A-Video and other AI’s came from
Large-Scale Artificial Intelligence Open Network (LAION), a small
nonprofit organization registered in Germany.
Why does this matter? Outsourcing the heavy lifting of data collection
and model training to non-commercial entities allows corporations to
avoid accountability and potential legal liability.
https://waxy.org/2022/09/ai-data-laundering-how-academic-and-nonprofit-researchers-shield-tech-companies-from-accountability
4. Superintendents Market Surveillance Cameras
A superintendent for a small New Jersey school district sent dozens of
sales pitches and coordinated closely with Verkada sales reps to hawk
smart security cameras.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/93anj7/when-school-superintendents-market-surveillance-cameras
5. San Francisco Pilots Program Allowing Police to Live Monitor
Private Security Cameras
San Francisco pilots program allowing police to live monitor private
security cameras
San Francisco city leaders approved a 15-month pilot allowing police
to monitor live footage from surveillance cameras owned by consenting
businesses and civilians without a warrant. The decision by the San
Francisco board of supervisors was a major loss for a broad coalition
of civil liberties groups that had argued the move would give police
unprecedented surveillance powers. It also seemingly marked a
departure from the progressive stance on surveillance the city’s
leadership had previously maintained.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/oct/04/san-francisco-police-video-surveillance
6. White House Unveils A Bill of Rights
The Biden administration unveiled an AI Bill of Rights, which outlines
five protections of living in the AI age. Last month, the
administration announced core principles for tech accountability and
reform, such as stopping discriminatory algorithmic decision-making,
promoting competition in the technology sector, and providing federal
protections for privacy. Critics say the plan lacks teeth and the US
needs even tougher regulation around AI.
https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/10/04/1060600/white-house-ai-bill-of-rights/
_________________________________________________
### Grants, Fellowships, & Awards ###
The following opportunities are open to individual digital rights
defenders and to organizations. If you would like us to include a
grant, fellowship or award in this newsletter, please email details to
team at digitalrights.community
https://internetfreedomfestival.org/wiki/index.php/Fundraising_Opportunities
Reporte Regional sobre Políticas y Libertades en el Uso del Cifrado en
América Latina 2022-23
Deadline: October 12, 2022
https://ip.rec.br/blog/convocatoria-para-contribuciones-reporte-regional-sobre-politicas-y-libertades-en-el-uso-del-cifrado-en-america-latina-2022-23/
Racism and Technology Center
Deadline: October 31, 2022
https://racismandtechnology.center/2022/09/03/do-you-want-to-work-on-anti-racism-and-technology/
Safety Net Fund
Deadline: Ongoing
https://wphfund.org/whrds-safety-net/
Internet Freedom Fund
Open Technology Fund
Deadline: Rolling Basis
https://www.opentech.fund/funds/internet-freedom-fund/
Rapid Response Fund
Open Tech Fund
Deadline: Rolling Basis
https://www.opentech.fund/funds/rapid-response-fund/
Rapid Response Fund
Derechos Digitales
Deadline: Rolling Basis
https://www.derechosdigitales.org/sobre-el-fondo-de-respuesta-rapida/
Urgent Action Fund for Women's Human Rights
Deadline: Rolling Basis
https://urgentactionfund.org/
Open Briefing’s Responsive Assistance
Deadline: Rolling Basis
https://www.openbriefing.org/support/referral/
Open Tech Fund | Secure Usability and Accessibility Lab
Deadline: Rolling
https://www.opentech.fund/labs/sua-lab/
_________________________________________________
### Global Events Calendar ###
TecnoRizoma
August 17 - October 22
Online
https://tinyurl.com/TecnoRizomaCentroamerica
Digital Health Week
October, 10 - 16
https://digitalhealthweek.co/
Community Health Village
October 12 - November 3
https://internetfreedomfestival.org/wiki/index.php/Community_Health_Village_2022
The Conference for Truth and Trust Online 2022
October, 12
Boston, MA, USA
http://truthandtrustonline.com/ticketfeewaiver
Glitter Meetup: Standing with the Milk Tea Alliance: Lessons in Allyship
October 13
9am EDT / 1pm UTC
Online
https://internetfreedomfestival.org/wiki/index.php/October_13_2022_GM
The Conference for Truth and Trust Online 2022
October, 13 - 14
Online
http://truthandtrustonline.com/
Africa Monthly Meetup
October, 19
9am EDT / 1pm UTC
Online
https://internetfreedomfestival.org/wiki/index.php/October_19_2022,_Africa_Meetup
Lingua Cafe
October, 19
10am EDT / 2pm UTC
Online
https://internetfreedomfestival.org/wiki/index.php/Lingua_Cafe
LATAM Monthly Meetup
October, 19
6:30pm EDT / 10:30pm UTC
Online
https://internetfreedomfestival.org/wiki/index.php?title=19_de_Octubre,_2022_LATAM
TWC Teach-In
October 19 - 21
Online
https://twcteachin.org/
Glitter Meetup: Digital Rights in Bolivia and Datachiri
October 20
9am EDT / 1pm UTC
Online
https://internetfreedomfestival.org/wiki/index.php/October_20_2022_GM
RIPE 85
October 24 - October 28
Hybrid: Belgrade & Online
https://ripe85.ripe.net/
MENA Monthly Meetup
October 26
6pm CAT / 4pm UTC
https://internetfreedomfestival.org/wiki/index.php/October_26_2022,_MENA_Meetup
Digital Discourses: Science/Fiction
October 27 - 28
2pm - 8pm UTC+7
Online
http://goethe.de/digitaldiscourses
Check out a list of our virtual events here:
https://internetfreedomfestival.org/wiki/index.php/Calendar_of_Events
_________________________________________________
### NEW Job Opportunities ###
Below is a short list of jobs we have been sent in the last week.
Want to see more jobs? OR Have a job opening you want us to promote?
Check out the Team CommUNITY Job Board:
https://www.digitalrights.community/job-board
✎ Digital Security Specialist (NGOs) | FCI
+ Cambodia
http://fcinternational.us/posts
✎ Licensing and Compliance Manager | Free Software Foundation
+ Boston, MA, USA
https://www.fsf.org/resources/jobs/fsf-job-opportunity-licensing-and-compliance-manager
✎ Junior Finance and Administration Officer | European Digital Rights (EDRi)
+ Brussels, Belgium
https://edri.org/take-action/careers/edri-is-looking-for-a-junior-finance-and-administration-officer-permanent-position-brussels/
✎ Student Events Support | European Digital Rights (EDRi)
+ Brussels, Belgium
https://edri.org/take-action/careers/edri-is-looking-for-a-student-events-support-fall-2022-to-spring-2023/
✎ Senior Membership and Community Officer | European Digital Rights (EDRi)
+ Brussels, Belgium
https://edri.org/take-action/careers/edri-is-looking-for-a-senior-membership-and-community-officer-permanent-position-brussels/
✎ Staff Attorney, Technology and Civil Liberties | ACLU of Northern California
+ Fresno, Sacramento, or San Francisco, CA, USA
https://grnh.se/25b915aa2us
✎ Collaborations Coordinator | Code for All
+ Remote
https://bit.ly/3C6mkzV
✎ Multiple Positions | Center for Victims of Torture
+ Remote
https://cvt.simplicant.com/
✎ Legal Investigator | Korea Future
+ The Hague, The Netherlands
https://www.idealist.org/en/nonprofit-job/5b9d2ff212ce4896b93ec5bae402abc4-legal-investigator-north-korea-and-sanctions-location-the-hague-korea-future-the-hague
✎ Sponsored Projects Program Manager | Code for Science and Society
+ Remote
https://codeforscience.org/jobs/sponsored-projects-program-manager-code-for-science-and-society/
✎ Community Manager- CivilSphere, MR-PMU | Internews Network
+ Remote
https://phf.tbe.taleo.net/phf04/ats/careers/v2/viewRequisition?org=INTERNEWS&cws=38&rid=1889
✎ User Experience Designer- CivilSphere, MPMU | Internews Network
+ Remote
https://phf.tbe.taleo.net/phf04/ats/careers/v2/viewRequisition?org=INTERNEWS&cws=38&rid=1888
✎ Experienced Python Developer | The Organized Crime and Corruption
Reporting Project (OCCRP)
+ Remote (+/- 4GMT)
https://www.occrp.org/en/occrp-jobs/experienced-python-developer
If you feel like sending some digital glitter our way, or need further
assistance, feel free to reply to this message.
_________________________________________________
### Know someone that wants to subscribe to our newsletter? ###
They can sign up here:
https://www.digitalrights.community/weekly-newsletter
### Want to partner with us?###
If you have any questions or want to learn more about partnerships,
get in touch at team at digitalrights.community. We are always looking
for like-minded organizations and people.
(((Hugs & light)))
--
Team CommUNITY at ARTICLE 19
www.digitalrights.community
Organizers of the Internet Freedom Festival
PGP: 2E1D CC33 A362 0BD6 236E 540A F60A 89AD 6FF9 7A2F
You can now submit your news for the Digital Rights weekly directly.
To post your job opportunities, submit your opportunities to our Job Board.
More information about the Festival
mailing list