RightsCon Toronto 2018

Access My Info: Running a personal data access campaign (The Citizen Lab, University of Toronto)

Speakers: Andrew Hilts

Access My Info (AMI) is an easy-to-use web application that empowers citizens to make requests for their personal information. An initial prototype of the application was released in 2014 in Canada. It was used by thousands of Canadians to request access to their data held by telecommunications companies. An improved version was launched in 2016 in both Canada and Hong Kong. Several other custom implementations of AMI are underway in other regions.

In this session, we start with a high level overview of Access My Info, and then do a deep dive into how to set up and run an Access My Info campaign in a new jurisdiction. The session will draw on lessons learned in deploying AMI in other countries. The presentation will walk through end-to-end the steps to take to prepare, develop, launch, support, and analyze an AMI campaign.

Topics covered will include reviewing data protection laws, technical requirements for the web application, localizing the web application, developing request letter templates, and responding to user needs. It will also provide an opportunity for participants interested in running their own AMI campaign to ask questions and network with the AMI core team.

OpenArchive, A Participatory Demo: Amplifying Narrative Agency and Preserving At-Risk Mobile Media (OpenArchive)

Speakers: Natalie Cadranel

This demo will give an overview of OpenArchive's current functionality and future goals.

The primary goals of this session are: i) to share information about the current and future features of the mobile application and larger ecosystem for preserving and accessing marginalized media, ii) to gain feedback from participants about how they currently and how they would like to manage their mobile media, and iii) to foster collaboration and strategic partnerships with those interested in deploying OpenArchive in their communities.

People armed with mobile devices are becoming history’s first responders, amassing rich, contextualized, and crucial records of today’s breaking news. However, most of these recordings are made by at-risk and marginalized groups and presently reside in “walled gardens” like social media platforms. The proprietary nature of these platforms can chill free speech and make them subject to corporate and government censorship, privacy breaches, and data loss. While social media is an acceptable distribution platform, it does not provide sufficient privacy protections or archival preservation of this vital media. We believe digital freedom is a human right and are working to ensure inclusivity, privacy, ethical design, egalitarian governance, and human rights are woven into the fabric of the technologies that serve their communities. This demo will share a technology built for and with those interested in preserving and authenticating their media so that it will be accessible and maintain its provenance in the future.

Translation Project: A translation suite for humanitarian organizations (Meedan; Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society)

Speakers: An Xiao Mina 

"Over the past two decades, the global population of forcibly displaced people has grown substantially from 33.9 million in 1997 to 65.6 million in 2016, and it remains at a record high." - UNHCR Global Trends Report, 2017

As the global population of forcibly displaced people reaches record levels, the language barrier between refugees and those seeking to help them remains among the first challenges in serving their immediate relief needs. The Translation Project seeks to prototype and develop open-source technology and a community of translators to address this pressing need in a way that is scalable and sustainable.

The Translation Project builds on Bridge, Meedan’s tool for collaborative translation of digital media, and Translation Cards, a tool enabling field workers and refugees to communicate more effectively. The app received an award for innovation from the United Nations. We’ll talk about use cases in the field, in refugee sites in southern Serbia and Greece, and talk about our plans for the Translation Project, a searchable database of vetted translations tailor made for humanitarian workers. We’ll also talk about how Bridge is used at RightsCon to translate and engage social media for RightsCon’s global community.

CASEDATA - A Collaborative, Intersectional Database of Global South Digital Rights Legislation & Case Law (SMEX)

Speakers: Jessica Dheere

During this talk, I will present current challenges in locating law and caselaw affecting digital rights, particularly in the so-dubbed Global South, and present a high-level overview of elements of a collaborative strategy-in-development for meeting those challenges, including a working definition of digital rights, a legal research methodology, and an evolving data model. Specifically, we will introduce attendees to the tentatively named DiRiGO database of digital rights law and caselaw that contains more than 500 documents related to digital rights in Arab League countries. Attendees will also learn about an emerging community of practice at the intersection of ICT law and legal informatics and be encouraged to join and contribute their feedback and expertise.