ICT for Humanity
Information & Communication Technology for Human Rights, Humanitarian action, and social change
The Silicon Valley Human Rights Conference (also known as rightscon.org) took place in San Francisco on October 25th-26th 2011, and brought together some of the world’s leading technology companies, academics and policymakers to discuss how the high-tech sector can better manage the human rights implications of new technologies.
During the Conference the participants crafted the Silicon Valley Standard, which sets out a series of best practices to guide the activities of technology companies. Read those guidelines here:
“One of the objectives of the Silicon Valley Human Rights Conference is the creation of a Silicon Valley Standard (SVS). This is a principled statement incorporating the issues discussed at the 2011 Silicon Valley Human Rights Conference. The document includes 15 principles based on the 15 workshop topics covered at the conference.
The document is designed to complement other existing frameworks and uses the international human rights framework as its foundation. These principles served as a useful basis for discussion during the panels and represent a standard, which we hope the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) sector will use after the conference.
1. Technology and Revolutions: Technology companies play an increasingly important role in enabling and supporting the end user’s capacity to exercise his or her rights to freedom of speech, access to information, and freedom of association. ICT companies should respect those rights in their operations and also encourage governments to protect human rights through appropriate policies, practices, legal protections, and judicial oversight.
2. On Human Rights: In both policy and practice, technology companies should apply human rights frameworks in developing best practices and standard operating procedures. This includes adhering to John Ruggie’s Protect, Respect, and Remedy framework outlined in the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights.
3. Frontline Lessons from Other Sectors: Technology companies should look to the innovative examples and incorporate important lessons from other sectors, such as the apparel and extractive industries. The experiences of these sectors can and should guide them as they develop their human rights policies. These must be reflected in their operating practices in a transparent and accountable manner.
4. On Internet Regulation: To ensure innovation and the protection of human rights, internet regulation should only take place where it facilitates the ongoing openness, quality, and integrity of the internet and/or where it enables or protects users’ ability to freely, fully, and safely participate in society. To achieve this end, it is critical that ICT corporations engage in multistakeholder dialogue.
5. Human Rights by Design: During the research, development, and design stages, technology companies should anticipate how and by whom their products and services will be used. Developing a human rights policy and engaging in due diligence at the earliest stages helps companies prevent crises, limit risk, and enable evidence-based assessment of company activities and reporting.
6. Encryption of Web Activity: Effective internet security is essential to ensuring freedom of speech, privacy, and the right to communicate. Technology companies must provide a basic level of security (e.g., HTTPS and its improvements) to their users by default and resist bans and curtailments of the use of encryption.
7. Getting Practical: Technology companies should implement human rights-respecting policies and practices in their day-to-day operations. These companies should utilize multi-stakeholder and cross-sector dialogues to review challenges faced within their markets with a view to improve their best practices.
8. Coding for Human Rights: Recognizing the human rights implications in code, engineers, developers, and programmers should ensure that technology is used in the exercise of fundamental freedoms, and not for the facilitation of human rights abuses. Technology companies should facilitate regular dialogue between engineers, executive leadership, and civil society to ensure that all parties are informed of the potential uses and abuses of their technologies.
9. Social Networking: Social networking platforms are both increasingly important to their users’ capacity to communicate and associate online and are most used when customers trust the service’s providers. When companies prioritize the rights of their customers, it is good for the long-term sustainability of their business, their brand, and their bottom line.
10. Intermediary Liability: In an era of computer-mediated communications, freedom of speech, association, and commerce increasingly depend on internet intermediaries (e.g., broadband service providers, web hosting companies). These intermediaries should not be required to determine the legality of, or held liable for, the content they host.
11. Legal Jurisdiction in a Borderless Virtual World: To foster the continued growth of an open and interconnected internet, technology companies should work alongside governments and civil society to ensure that users’ rights are protected to the fullest extent possible. Governmental mandates that infringe upon freedom of expression and other human rights should be interpreted so as to minimize the negative impacts of these rules and regulations.
12. Visual Media and Human Rights: Technology companies should pay special attention to the unique human rights challenges of visual media technologies and content — especially on issues such as privacy, anonymity, consent, and access.
13. Social Media in Times of Crisis: Technology companies should resist efforts to shut down services and block access to their products, especially during times of crisis when open communications are critical. Blanket government surveillance of corporate networks should be resisted. Moreover, the burden of proof for privacy-invasive requests should lie with law enforcement authorities, who should formally, through court processes based on probable cause and rule of law, request a warrant for each individual whose information they would like to access.
14. Privacy: Technology companies should incorporate adequate privacy protections for users by default. Furthermore, technology companies should resist over-board requests from governments to reveal users’ information, disclose no more information about their users than is legally required, and inform their users so that they can choose to legally respond to these requests. Furthermore, technology companies should be transparent about how user data is collected, processed, and protected — including disclosures of unauthorized access to user data.
15. Mobile and Telcos: Telecommunications companies must protect their users’ fundamental human rights, including support for the protection of human rights in their operating licenses, and ensure that the free flow of communication is not curtailed or interfered with, even in times of crisis.”
“Mobile Voices wins UN information technology award
Mobile Voices/Voces Móviles, the microblogging project designed in collaboration with USC Annenberg and the Institute of Popular Education of Southern California, or IDEPSCA, has won a United Nations-sponsored World Summit Award for innovative mobile applications.
“Today, we fulfilled where we said that Mobile Voices is a window to the universe where the voices of those who for centuries have been excluded can be heard,” read a statement prepared by the IDEPSCA Popular Communication team, the group of day laborers and household workers who developed the Mobile Voices system.
Mobile Voices is an open-source platform that lets mobile phone users post text, photo and video content to a publicly available website. Day laborers and household workers across Los Angeles, as well as members of the Los Angeles Community Action Network (LACAN), have used the interface to report news, distribute information and share stories about their work, lives, and their points of view.
The awards are given by the United Nations in recognition of online and mobile content that promotes global digital access and inclusion in the communication revolution, especially in developing countries and underserved communities. More than 420 products from nearly 100 countries were considered for awards.
Mobile Voices is one of five winners in the “m-Inclusion & Empowerment” category, targeted to those apps that “support integration within the global information society.” Other winners in the category included a German application providing resources for handicapped people and an SMS-integrated program linking remote communities in Guatemala.
The winning project teams will receive their awards in December at the World Summit Award Mobile Winners’ Gala, Conference and Expo in Abu Dhabi. In addition to an awards ceremony, the three-day conference brings together global leaders in mobile application development for networking and knowledge exchange.
Bar said the award was “a great honor for everyone who has worked hard to make VozMob a success — IDEPSCA and LACAN workers, community organizers, Annenberg students and open-source programmers.”"
I recently saw the global music artist Peter Gabriel perform with an orchestra at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles (apparently the largest natural outdoor amphitheater in the U.S.). During an interlude, he spoke of a solar power plant in Portugal – perhaps like the one pictured below in Spain– which focuses thousands of mirrors to reflect concentrated sunlight towards the top of a tower to generate intense thermal energy (the process is called Concentrating Solar Power).
Using this image as a metaphor, he invited the thousands of fans in the audience to imagine if all of their cell phones and cameras were pointed towards a human rights issue/abuse. Imagine if millions of others were doing the same and those pictures and videos were connected across the globe via mobile devices and the Internet. Imagine how much this would change the world.
Gabriel was describing Witness, an organization he co-founded, which “uses video to open the eyes of the world to human rights violations.” According to its website, Witness is “an international human rights organization that provides training and support to local groups to use video in their human rights advocacy campaigns. Beyond providing video cameras and editing equipment, WITNESS is committed to facilitating exposure for our partners’ issues on a global scale. We help broker relationships with international media outlets, government officials, policymakers, activists, and the general public so that once a video is made, it can be used as a tool to advocate for change.”
Another project of Witness is the Hub. Described as a global platform for human rights and media and action, the Hub is “a participatory media site dedicated to human rights media. Anyone with a valid email address can be part of the community – you can upload footage, or simply watch what’s on the site. You can create groups and mobilize action around human rights abuses. The Hub provides people with the tools and the platform to use their video footage, photographs or audio recordings to campaign against human rights abuses.”
Throughout the concert in Hollywood, projectors displayed the image “Stand up for Human Rights, text WITNESS to 69866,” which allows people to sign up for an email lists by texting the short code. Peter Gabriel’s Witness project is a masterful combination of much of what this blog is about – he brings together global music (combining many cross-cultural melodies and rhythms to connects millions through a universal medium of expression), global celebrity (at an unprecedented historical peak due to global media), legacy media (video), and emerging technology (text/SMS/participatory media/digital networks)…all for Human Rights awareness and action.
Gabriel’s vision is powerful – empowering millions of individuals through information and communication technologies (ICTs) to advocate for global social change and human rights. Yet, as much as one might want to believe, we must put this in context as a techno-utopian vision of the future and compare it to historical and contemporary realities. This is not to say this vision cannot be realized. Judging from the talent on Witness’s board and staff they are in able hands to move forward. And communication technology is intimately connected to social change. Yet, whether or not this vision will come to pass depends on realities measured by awareness and impact. I would encourage those interested in supporting Gabriel’s vision to also employ empirical research to document, research and evaluate the impact of Witness and the Hub. The lessons learned (both successes and failures) are essential to understanding the extent of ICT effectiveness for human rights.
