Headed to RightsCon 2016?  Lots of folks from the Berkman Center are. We're leading discussions on topics ranging from online hate speech, to protecting users rights, to mapping the landscape for online content removal requests, to transparency reporting.  Check out this list of sessions for a look at some of the things we're working on.

Wednesday, March 30th

Hardly a Laughing Matter: Could Sexist Humor Amount to Dangerous Speech?
2:30pm, with Asad Baig, Furhan Hussain, Chinmayi Arun, Susan Benesch, Mallory Knodel, Japleen Pasricha, Mariana Valente
We wish to explore the link between sexist humor online and the concept of "dangerous speech", as expounded by Susan Benesch, particularly in different contexts around the world. The moderator will start off by having a conversation regarding the emergence of online sexist humor in Pakistan - from restaurant owners defending overtly sexist marketing strategies online and Pakistani Men's Rights Activists calling themselves "meninists" and berating women unapologetically, to a widespread display of homophobia (and misogyny) by Pakistani celebrities after the same-sex marriage verdict. (more)

Breaking Barriers: New Frontiers of Connectivity and Access
2:30pm, with Jonathan Blandford, Stephane Coillet-Matillon, Anders Finn, Gary Fowlie, Malavika Jayaram, Sam Klein, Adele Vrana
The panel will provide the opportunity to present different positions on the existing barriers to access information (i.e. affordability, lack of telecommunications infrastructure and awareness), and discuss the different strategies that are being implemented to solve these, and the pros and cons of such. Specifically, the panel will present and discuss zero-rating platforms, offline solutions, innovative broadcasting solutions, and other new forms of connectivity. (more)
 

Thursday March 31st

Online Hate Speech: Identification and Strategies
9:00am, with Chinmayi Arun, Susan Benesch, Rob Faris, Judith Lichtenberg, Jillian C. York
This session will bring together people who are concerned about different facets of hate speech (which we see as including gendered hate speech). The object is to get a diversity of stakeholders to speak candidly with each other about online hate speech. The discussion will focus on contentious issues like, anonymity, privacy, and jurisdictional concerns that come up in the context of legal intervention. (more)

Remedying Wrongs – Ensuring, Enabling and Empowering Access to Remedy in the ICT Sector
9:00am, with Vivek Krishnamurthy, Maryant Fernández, Sarah McGrath, Dominic Renfry
Businesses have a responsibility to respect human rights. This means that business should avoid infringing on human rights, prevent and mitigate adverse human rights impacts, and remediate adverse human rights impacts that do occur. This latter issue – remedying wrongs where they occur – has been largely neglected in the business and human rights discourse. This workshop will address this gap by highlighting the range of potential remedial mechanisms at play in the ICT sector, with a focus on state-based non-judicial mechanisms and company-level operational grievance mechanisms. This interactive workshop will be facilitated by the International Corporate Accountability Roundtable (ICAR). Lead discussants who are experts in the business and human rights concepts of access to remedy will share their insights, experiences and reflect on practical examples. (more)

Opening the Black Box: Understanding How Companies Enforce their Rules
12:00pm, with Chinmayi Arun, Allon Bar, Gabrielle Guillemin, Rebecca MacKinnon, Peter Micek, Cynthia Wong, Jillian C. York
Who can we trust with our digital rights? The 2015 Ranking Digital Rights Corporate Accountability Index found that no major tech company provides overall data about the enforcement of their terms of service. At a time where online expression is increasingly regulated by contract, this means that content is removed or user behaviour penalised ‘under the radar’: although we know that companies take down or filter content, or suspend user accounts, we only have anecdotal evidence about the frequency of such measures and the type of content/behavior affected. On various occasions this has brought to light inconsistent company practice on how terms are enforced, highlighting the need to have clear company disclosure on this. (more)

Regulating Privacy Sector Intrusion Technologies & Services
12:00pm, with Ron Deibert, William Marczak, Sarah McKune, Adam Molnar, Erik Zouave
Computer Network Exploitation (CNE) capabilities are rapidly proliferating as a central component of national security and policing operations across the world. Powers to use CNE are often characterised by vague or non-existent codifications in law. This panel discusses new approaches to regulate private sector services in CNE. In light of recent disclosures and research, we know more about the corporate proliferation of malware and intrusive technologies than ever before. Most research and advocacy on the issue attempts to clarify and expose corporate activities, or has focused on restricting corporate exports through international regulatory mechanisms such as the Wassenaar Arrangement. (more)

Mapping the Landscape for Online Removal Requests: A Research Workshop w/ the Berkman Center's Lumen Project
2:30pm, with Adam Holland, Chris Bavitz, Wendy Seltzer, Matt Zagaja
Lumen is a research project located at Harvard University’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society devoted to collecting and analyzing requests to remove material from online. Our goals are to educate the public, to facilitate research about the different kinds of complaints and requests for removal--both legitimate and questionable--that are being sent to Internet publishers and service providers, and to provide as much transparency as possible about the “ecology” of such notices, in terms of who is sending them and why, and to what effect. (more)

Multistakeholder Approaches to Fostering Global Connectivity
5:15pm, with Rob Faris, Hibah Hussain, Karen Rose, Matthew Shears
At the end of 2015, the WSIS+10 Review emphasized the need for cross-sector solutions to foster global connectivity and sustainable information societies. Even as more and more people come online around the world, there are 4.5B people who aren’t connected at all. It has become clear that meeting this challenge requires partnerships between and across various sectors of society, including industry, government, civil society, academia, and the technical community. This panel will bring together key stakeholders from various sectors to identify multistakeholder strategies for fostering global connectivity. Special attention will be paid to how improved data on the state of global Internet access and connectivity can help bridge global digital divides as well as incorporate better data and evidence into Internet policy making. (more)
 

Friday, April 1

Protecting User Rights Online: Practical Issues Facing Early-Stage Technology Companies
9:00am, with Sarah Altschuller, Vivek Krishnamurthy
The goal of this panel is to present the final version of a guide to help early-stage companies navigate the maze of laws governing online service with an eye to helping these companies protect the right to privacy, freedom of expression, data security and intellectual property. The hope is to foster discussion on issues that have arisen over the past few years, including government takedown request of content in light of terrorist recruitment online, and other similar issues facing online companies today. Come join a disucssion on how the landscape has changed since 2014, and what companies need to do to address these issue. (more)

Fireside Chat: Ron Deibert, Edward Snowden, Amie Stepanovich
9:00am, with Ron Deibert, Edward Snowden, Amie Stepanovich
We are witnessing a global arms race on surveillance. Intelligence arms of governments are developing or buying technologies capable of tracking internet traffic, intercepting sensitive communications, and hacking into personal devices. In some countries this is done in line with statutory frameworks, which are often applied using secret interpretations, whereas other governments take advantage of the lack of framework to abuse personal rights and liberties at will. For users at risk, preserving privacy requires constant diligence, and in some cases it is quite frequently a matter of life and death. Join Edward Snowden, a member of the Board of Directors at the Freedom of the Press Foundation, and Ron Deibert, Director of the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto's Munk School of Global Affairs, in a fireside chat, moderated by Access Now’s Amie Stepanovich. The conversation will consider the formal and informal government surveillance powers and authorities, including the need for transparency and the opportunities for reform. (more)

The Transparency Reporting Toolkit: A Guide and Template for Best Practices in Reporting
12:00pm, with Kevin Bankston, Liz Woolery, Ryan Budish
New America’s Open Technology Institute and the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University have spent the past year collecting and analyzing transparency reports released by over 40 of the largest U.S. Internet and telecommunications companies. The number of companies publishing “transparency reports” about their handling of government requests for user data skyrocketed as the Internet industry scrambled to rebuild lost trust in the wake of the Snowden revelations. But that explosion of reports led to a fragmentation of practices: there are no clear standards or best practices for startups and smaller companies looking to get into the game, and the data from companies that are currently reporting are a mess of apples and oranges, using different standards and definitions, and are therefore hard to compare or combine in a sensible way. (more)

Cross Border Data Requests
4:00pm, with Alex Abdo, Jennifer Daskal, Jim Dempsey, Neema Guilani, Nate Jones, Vivek Krishnamurthy, David Lieber, Drew Mitnick, Margaret Nagle, Greg Nojeim, K.S. Park, Matt Perault, Peter Swire, Lee Tien, Andrew Woods
The existing legal framework for nations to make cross-border requests for data is fundamentally broken. Under current US law, foreign law enforcement officials seeking the content of stored electronic communications (e.g., emails) held by US-based Internet service providers (“providers”) must make a government-to-government request for the data (generally employing the Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty (MLAT) process), even if the data is sought solely for the investigation of local crime. This is a notoriously slow process – taking an average of ten months. Foreign governments are understandably frustrated by this state of affairs and are responding in a number of undesirable ways, including increased reliance on data localization requirements, mandatory de-encryption regimes (i.e. mandatory backdoors), and reliance on other less transparent and less accountable means of accessing data. (more)