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.”
Tech Gets Enlisted In The War Against Human Trafficking
By SHEILA RILEY, FOR INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY Posted 12/03/2010 04:38 PM ET
The fight against human trafficking is using a few new weapons: texting, iPhone apps and smarter passports.
An estimated 12.3 million adults and children around the world are trafficked — compelled in a variety of ways to work against their will — the U.S. State Department says.
“It’s basically modern-day slavery,” said Mark Latonero, research director for the University of Southern California’s Annenberg Center. “It’s a pernicious and widespread global problem.”
(Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher lent their celebrity clout to a November news conference at United Nations headquarters concerning the launch of the U.N. Trust Fund for Victims of Human Trafficking. AP)
The term “trafficking” covers a wide area.
“It’s not just forced prostitution, it’s also forced labor — people working in slaverylike conditions on farms, fishing boats, in nail salons, whatever,” Latonero said.
He’s working on a project to make it easier to get help for trafficking victims via cell phone.
The Technology and Trafficking in Persons Research Initiative will allow concerned citizens, potential trafficking victims and possibly victims themselves to text information to a hotline. The project is led by the Annenberg Center.
Texts will be sorted by a computer and sent to appropriate agencies that could help, Latonero says.
The initiative focuses on the Mekong region in Southeast Asia: Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos, southern China and Burma.
“This part of the world is a major source, transit and destination region for men, women and children forced into labor and prostitution,” Latonero said.
Cell Phones Aplenty
The program could be in place by mid-2011 in Thailand, with government funding and philanthropic grants expected to cover the $500,000-plus launch costs.
Though residents of the region are extremely poor — which makes them vulnerable to trafficking — most have cell phones, Latonero says.
“That,” he said, “is our opportunity.”
Phones are used on another front in the fight against trafficking. An iPhone application for consumers concerned about whether forced or child labor was used to create their purchase became available last month.
The app, Free2Work, is a joint project of Not For Sale, a San Francisco anti-slavery nonprofit, and the International Labor Rights Forum, a nonprofit advocacy organization for workers. Juniper Networks (JNPR) funded the development of the application, which is free.
With the app, shoppers can access information about the labor practices of some 60 companies, including Nike (NKE), Hasbro (HAS), Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) and Apple (AAPL). It rates the companies’ labor practices. Not For Sale compiles information from company Web sites and public databases to create its corporate ratings.
“It’s when people are shopping that they really need that information,” said Dave Batsone, president of Not For Sale.
(See original Investor’s Business Daily Article here).
“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.”"
From mobile active’s Melissa Ulbricht:
“Since the devastating earthquake in Haiti in January, thousands of internally displaced persons are living in camps, where it is often not easy to report incidences of violence. An ongoing project from Survivors Connect uses mobile phones to support camp managers and community leaders to protect women and encourage people to report incidences. The project, called Ayiti SMS SOS — Ayiti comes from the Creole word for Haiti — allows individuals to submit reports via SMS.
Survivors Connect is an organization that works to enhance anti-trafficking movements around the world through the use of new media and connective technology. Survivors Connect partners with grassroots organizations to incorporate new technology to help improve on-the-ground efforts toward protection, prosecution, and prevention.”
http://mobileactive.org/case-studies/sms-sos-reporting-gender-based-violence
Fascinating conference put on by Oxfam Australia on integrated early warning systems and technologies to anticipate mass atrocities and human catastrophes. Lots of overlap here with, for example, the work InSTEDD is doing with early infectious disease detection.
I noticed two speakers, who will be familiar to those in the ICT for human rights & humanitarian action field: Patrick Meier, of Crisis Mappers and Ushahidi and Amb. Daniel Stauffacher of ICT4Peace Foundation.
I am attracted to conferences such as these with an action orientated agenda – Oxfam AUS’s 2009 conference on the subject produced this outcome document.
“The program brings together both technology and early-warning specialists, and members of the international development and humanitarian communities concerned with the protection of vulnerable populations and the prevention of mass atrocity crimes. These will include specialists from the UN and regional organisations, non-government organisations, scholars, government representatives and affected communities. Read more about our conference speakers. The conference falls within the context of the international community’s Responsibility to Protect, which is the new international norm developed to protect vulnerable populations from genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and ethnic cleansing.”
Crystal Ballroom, Phnom Penh Hotel, 53 Monivong Boulevard, Phnom Penh, Cambodia, 3-4 November, 2010
http://www.oxfam.org.au/act/events/early-warning-for-protection/
This conference takes place Oct 14-15, 2010, in Yorba Linda, Orange County, California. Interesting mix of speaker – mostly faith based anti-trafficking groups, law enforcement, and NGOs. And Jack Dorsey, founder/creator of Twitter will also speak on “Organizing 2.0: Putting a face on social media: Can social media be a tool for change, or is it simply used for connecting with constituents and raising funds? Social innovators will discuss how today’s movement can embrace new media and become more effective.”
Of course, there are many other dimensions of social media with regard to human trafficking…not least of which is facilitating the business.
http://www.notforsalecampaign.org/events/global-forum-on-human-trafficking/
Amnesty continues its Human Rights monitoring using Satellite technology as they observe the Kyrgyzstan crisis…from space. Satellite images document about 1,650 shells of burnt houses and (hauntingly) identified over a hundred SOS signs painted on city streets (click on image to below for a closer look). 
Quoted from the report:
“Satellite images released and analyzed by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and Amnesty International’s Science for Human Rights Program show the dramatic impact of the recent violent events on the city of Osh in southern Kyrgyzstan. The new findings were released shortly after a top U.N. official warned the Security Council that ethnic tensions in Kyrgyzstan continue, along with fears that there could be another wave of violence in the strategic Central Asian state.
To document the violence and help clarify the extent of the devastation, we conducted a damage assessment – based on satellite images – of the city of Osh, Kyrgyzstan and surrounding neighborhoods. The analysis serves to corroborate the reports of widespread arson and to quantify the scale of destruction. The images confirm that while most of the city remains largely intact, where present, the damage is severe. Large swaths of buildings in the city appear to have been destroyed, a pattern which is repeated in the northern and eastern suburbs. Additionally, on numerous occasions the letters “SOS” appear on roadways and athletic fields throughout the city. In fact, the total count of “SOS” messages within this study area is 116.” Read the announcement here: http://blog.amnestyusa.org/asia/satellite-images-reveal-massive-destruction-in-kyrgyzstan/
I joined my colleagues from the Center on Communication Leadership & Policy at the USC Annenberg School on June 3, 2010 in D.C. to convene a meeting with the US Department of State to address the very question above.
There are pressing needs for NGOs, law enforcement, Governments, victims, and the general public dealing with Trafficking in Persons, also known as TIP, Human trafficking, and modern day slavery. Victims are usually isolated and even if rescued are socially cut off and unable to find the services they need most. NGOs for human trafficking often are not in regular communication with each other or, for example, HIV/AIDS NGOs. Law enforcement are often unable to access data and information about victims and perpetrators in country or across borders (and are sometimes complicit in trafficking activities). And the public are often unaware of the signs of human slavery that exist in their everyday lives. ICTs, particular mobile technologies and the Internet, help connect, locate, and share information about and among individuals and communities. Leveraging the assets of emerging ICTs to combat human trafficking is a pressing concern. The dilemma, of course, is that traffickers and slavers themselves use the very same technologies. Jeremy Curtin, Sr. Fellow at the Center wrote up the following re-posted from here: http://communicationleadership.usc.edu/blog/state_department_and_congressional_policymakers.html
CCLP & State Department launch exploration of ways to use Technology to combat Human Trafficking
By Jeremy Curtin | June 11, 2010
State Department and Congressional policymakers, along with nongovernmental organization and technology industry leaders convened in Washington, D.C. Thursday, June 3, 2010 to explore new ways communication technology might be used in global efforts to combat human trafficking.
The meeting held at the USC Washington, D.C. Center was organized by USC Annenberg’s Center on Communication Leadership & Policy in partnership with assistance from the U.S. Department of State. Geoffrey Cowan, CCLP director and USC University Professor, co-chaired the gathering with Alec Ross, Secretary of State Clinton’s senior adviser for innovation.
Ross opened the meeting with remarks about 21st Century Statecraft, a concept introduced by Secretary Clinton that acknowledges the complexities of globalization and the proliferation of new technologies.
He posed questions as to what the role of new technologies should be in responding to global crisis, as well as the role of public-private partnerships. Using the recent disaster in Haiti as a launching-point, Ross asked how technology might be best utilized to connect governments to people, people to people, and people to governments. He explained that text-messaging projects were implemented immediately following the earthquake, raising millions of dollars for the relief effort and building public awareness about the disaster; however, these types of coordinated efforts have not yet been effectively undertaken to combat trafficking in persons (TIP). USC Annenberg’s role, he stated, would be to act as a “convener outside of government;” a safe and dynamic space to bring together people who can tackle TIP related issues in new, innovative ways.
Following Ross, Ambassador Luis CdeBaca, director of the U.S. Department of State’s Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons and Senior Advisor to the Secretary provided an detailed overview of the challenge.
Pointing out that human slavery is not a new problem, the Amb. CdeBaca identified three main issues that he hoped the meeting would address: demand, victim-care, and the ethical use of technology.
In regard to demand, Ambassador CdeBaca stated that [in both sex and labor trafficking] there is a need to “clean up the supply chain”; potentially using technology to “name and shame” those who perpetuate related crimes.. About victim-care, he reminded participants that vulnerability and victimization come in many forms: from economic and gender-based forms of discrimination, to mental illness and situations of domestic abuse. He noted the need to create jobs to provide to victims of human trafficking during their rehabilitation. Finally, in regard to technology and ethics, the Ambassador reminded the group that many new technologies are, in fact, created using exploitative labor and human slavery. We have an obligation, he said, to know how our technology is being made and to make sure it is created under ethical conditions.
Cowan moderated a focused and engaged discussion in which he asked participants to describe ground-level view of conditions in various countries as they pertained to trafficking in persons. The needs of victims, service providers, and policy makers were considered. Of particular interest were the types of social support services available to victims and the steps that many organizations have already taken to integrate new technologies into their efforts.
Amy O’Neill Richard, Senior Adviser in the State Department’s Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons (TIP) described a national trafficking hotline that has been implemented with support from Lexis Nexis, while Eric Beinhart of USAID described an effort led by Microsoft to educate the public and isolate predators through gathering and sharing case data about child exploitation and trafficking. Several participants spoke to the idea of empowering community members through implementing SMS texting and crowd-sourcing technology.
Participants also identified key problems and discussion topics related to trafficking in persons, and asked technology experts to respond to these issues as they were introduced.
Some of these problems/discussion topics included: the use of anti-phishing/spam to be used to address labor trafficking issues; tracking illegitimate websites and job offers through a “TripAdvisor” for jobs model; the systemization of border patrol and better training of law enforcement officers (particularly in the developing world); links between trafficking and disease; the use of Google mapping or satellite imagery to combat TIP; making information about human resources more readily available and accessible in an effort to prevent TIP; using technology to track transit routes; making SMS transactions more accessible; creating a unified system for capturing data on trafficking-related criminal cases country-to-country; accurately counting and representing victims; using photography as a tool to combat TIP; capturing and organizing data about perpetrators [across the sex trafficking exploitation chain] (traffickers, pimps and johns); unified legal oversight and prosecution across sovereign borders; and how technology can help service providers implement and share best practices.
Ross concluded the meeting by calling on the group to remain engaged and be opportunistic as ideas emerge. The State Department will consider the ideas presented and encourage further exploration. CCLP will continue to act as a convening agent to keep the group and other individuals connected in order to collaborate on these and other issues.
Led by Josh Nesbit, FrontlineSMS:Medic is a pioneer in SMS applications for the humanitarian/global health arena. FrontlineSMS, Ushahidi, and the Department of State (et al.) set up the “4636″ number within hours of the Haitian earthquake such that victims could text in their emergencies and concerns, which were distributed to NGO’s, Southern Command, and the Coast Guard (see ReliefWeb’s article).
“Whether sending medical records, mapping health services in real-time, or helping isolated communities stay connected, FrontlineSMS:Medic uses text messages to coordinate health workers around the globe. With 1.2 million patients in Malawi and Uganda, we’re showing that text messages and cheap mobile phones can extend the reach of health workers on the front-lines of global health.”
Frontline SMS is the larger open source project:
“A lack of communication can be a major barrier for grassroots non-governmental organisations (NGOs) working in developing countries. FrontlineSMS is the first text messaging system created exclusively with this problem in mind.
By leveraging basic tools already available to most NGOs — computers and mobile phones — FrontlineSMS enables instantaneous two-way communication on a large scale. It’s easy to implement, simple to operate, and best of all, the software is free. You just pay for the messages you send in the normal way.”
