Next week, the Civil Liberties [LIBE] Committee of the European Parliament is set to vote on the proposed “Regulation on preventing the dissemination of terrorist content online” that WITNESS and other civil society organizations have been strongly opposing for months. Despite the pushback on the text of this proposal in multiple civil society letters, from two other Committees of the Parliament, from the United Nations, and from the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights and European Data Protection Supervisor, the LIBE Committee’s report on the regulation is weak, to say the least. Unlike the other Committee reports from the Internal Market [IMCO] Committee  and the Culture and Education [CULT] Committee, the LIBE report doesn’t address some of the most fundamental issues with this proposal. It doesn’t address the overly broad definitions of terrorist content and leaves in place one hour removals. Bottom line, it doesn’t address the fundamental problems with this proposal.

Fortunately, our friends at La Quadrature have created a website that makes it easy for you to reach out to the Members of Parliament that will be voting on this report. As the website notes:

On 21 March 2019 the European Parliament’s “Civil Liberties” committee (LIBE, 60 European Members of Parliament (MEP)) will cast the first vote on this text. As the European Election will happen right afterwards, it is likely to be our last opportunity to obtain the rejection of this text.

Their website has clear talking points and tips for calling MEPs. Check it out and call today! This isn’t the final vote, but it is important, and we’ll keep you updated.

Content moderation is a major focus area of our Tech Advocacy program. The policies often adversely affect human rights content as our Program Manager for Tech Advocacy, Dia Kayyali has written about.

On Tuesday, February 5, 2019, Dia will speak at the “Content Moderation & Removal at Scale” conference being held at European Parliament in Brussels. The conference will explore how Internet companies develop and implement internal rules and policies in the area of content moderation. What are the challenges they currently face to moderate or remove illegal and controversial content, including hate speech, terrorist content, disinformation, and copyright infringing material? And how could or should future European regulations affect these practices?

Dia will be sharing a response to the panel “Illegal content: terrorist content and hate speech.” Dia recently spearheaded an effort by WITNESS to bring together 26 human rights defenders, journalists, archivists, digital rights organizations, and alternative media to tell members of the European Parliament that a proposed regulation to erase extremist content online will erase human rights too. Read the open letter here.

The conference is open to the public. If you are in Brussels, you can register here.  It will be recorded and live-streamed and you can follow the conversation on social media with  #COMOatScale.

Photo credit: © European Union 2014 – European Parliament (Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs Creative Commons license). 

However, ahead of this year’s formal declaration of his commitments, The Guardian asked technology experts, policymakers, and activists two questions:

• What do you predict Mark Zuckerberg’s 2019 personal challenge will be?
• What do you think Mark Zuckerberg’s 2019 personal challenge should be?

WITNESS’ Tech Advocacy Program Manager, Dia Kayyali, was one of the experts asked to predict and advise. Here’s what they had to say:

Will be: Some other, similarly broad, challenge that relates to making Facebook a force for good in the world.

Should be: Take personal responsibility for turning Facebook around as a company. That means publicly committing to creating an ethical and principled company that respects civil society, and ensuring that at every level Facebook makes decisions based on human rights instead of market forces. It means personally committing to a Facebook that doesn’t accidentally make decisions that aid violent regimes, white supremacists and other bad actors. Above all, it means simply being honest about Facebook’s largely detrimental role in global society. That would be the biggest challenge of all.

Shortly after The Guardian ran this piece, Zuckerberg shared his 2019 personal challenge. Following another terrible year for Facebook, Zuckerberg pledged “….to host a series of public discussions about the future of technology in society — the opportunities, the challenges, the hopes, and the anxieties.”

Unfortunately, Dia’s prediction was pretty spot on.

Dia leads WITNESS’ Tech Advocacy program which engages technology companies and supports digital policies that help human rights advocates safely, effectively, and ethically use technology for good. The program includes direct, sustained advocacy to those in leadership positions at companies to ensure that anyone, anywhere can use the power of technology to protect and defend human rights.

Here’s a line up of where we’ll be:

Friday, June 16, 11:00am – 12:30pm

“Facebook warfare: sharing stories, staying safe”
This lunchtime meetup will provide space for participants to learn from real-world, publicly known cases, such as:

• The doxing, surveillance of, and threats against anti-fascist activists in the United States;
• The recent case of a trans comic book artist who was forced to relocate and cancel a book launch in Canada following doxing and threats.
• The 2016 case of a Brazilian Army officer who infiltrated a group of activists on Tinder and Facebook; and

The 2015 case of a fake Facebook page used to endanger Maré Vive, a group of community activists standing up to police and military violence in the Maré community of Rio.

In this informal session, Dia Kayyali will talk about how doxing and threats to physical safety, as well as other forms of harassment and surveillance, are being leveraged by the “alt-right” and the government. We’ll use this background, which will include case studies from the US and Brazil, to brainstorm community security practices, both digital and physical. Participants will leave with a knowledge of these tactics and ways to make their own community safer.

State Hall: Room 1215
Hands-on Session

• Track Securing Our Spaces
• Audience Intermediate
• Hashtag #CommunitySecurity
• View Track Info Securing Our Spaces

Friday, June 16, 4:00 – 5:30pm

“Video for Revolution”
The whole WITNESS team at AMC, including Pali, Jackie, and Dia, will be adding to the conference’s hands-on offerings with this panel. This session will help participants create videos for advocacy and evidence. We’ll be providing exercises and materials, so come ready to participate and learn!

From the Arab Spring to Ferguson, video has amplified voices and exposed human rights abuses. This session will explore how we utilize video for revolution. We’ll facilitate a discussion on how activists around the world are using video now, and provide practical tips on the right to record, filming the police and protests, basic digital and physical security, and media preservation. Participants will walk away knowing how to safely, ethically and effectively use video for evidence and advocacy.

State Hall: Room 118
Hands-on Session

• Track General
• Audience Everyone
• Hashtag #VideoForChange

Sunday, June 18, 1:00 – 2:30pm

Dia will also be participating in “Collaborative Security.” This panel, organized by digital security trainer Sarah Aoun, is an iteration of a similar session that happened at the Internet Freedom Festival in Valencia, Spain. This panel brought together digital security trainers with experience working outside the US and Europe but often dealing with security resources created from those perspectives. At AMC, we’ll be talking about similar issues of “security colonialism,” including the failure of digital security to integrate physical security issues.

Security education should ideally be a collaboration between people with technical knowledge and those with lived experiences. This isn’t often the case. The reality is that cis, male, white trainers continue to train folks who couldn’t be more different from them. We will learn how to re-center security trainings around communities, empower movements, and adopt a participatory approach to digital safety.

State Hall: Room 125
Strategy Session

• Track Securing Our Spaces
• Audience Intermediate
• Hashtag #CollabSecurity
• View Track Info Securing Our Spaces