RightsCon 2019
Session: Getting a Handle on Facial Recognition Tech
Role:
Speaker and co-organizer together with Access Now and the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights.
Description
Facial recognition technology has become one of the most visible and pervasive technologies, increasingly used by private companies and governments alike. With each headline, awareness of the risks linked to its usage is rising, and increasingly more stakeholders are calling for regulation or the development of principles to guide the development and deployment of facial recognition technology in public spaces.
Attention has been further driven to this issue when San Francisco banned the use of facial recognition technology by law enforcement agencies, shortly after followed by Amazon shareholders who proposed to ban sales of facial recognition technology (Rekognition) to governments. The latter vote failed, but the numbers of those who supported the ban were significant.
Session: Political Ads on Social Networks: Tearing the curtains of opacity
Role:
Moderator and co-organizer.
Description
At the beginning of the session, each member of the organizations will present (in 10 minutes) the advances in their research on political advertising in social networks according to points of contact to facilitate the subsequent exchange: 1) Analysis methodology implemented. 2) Obstacles in the investigation of electoral advertising in social networks. 3) Cooperation with the public and private sector: if it happened and how it happened. In the following part of the session, the moderator will summarize the state of affairs and invite the attendees to share questions and proposals to continue moving forward in the research and transparency of political advertising on social networks. We would also like to have the participation of the platforms where these practices take place. We´ll try to manage those invitations successfully before the session, but we still can not confirm them. We expect participants to adopt a proactive mindset towards sharing their own experiences and points of view in this field.
Session: Putting Users First! The responsibility of tech SMEs in the Global South to respect human rights
Role: Speaker.
Description
This session aims to address the challenge that many tech SMEs face in implementing the UN Guiding Principles due to a lack of capacity and resources comparable to larger companies. This challenge is particularly acute in the global south, where an absence of National Action Plans on Business and Human Rights, and up-to-date legal and regulatory frameworks, have meant issues left unconsidered. By bringing together representatives of large tech companies, tech SMEs, human rights defenders, and others, we will debate, discuss and share the good practices of others, and find ways of transferring the broad principles in the UN Guiding Principles into practical steps that tech SMEs can take to respect their users’ human rights.
Session: You’re Not Just a Pretty Face: Biometric surveillance has moved beyond face recognition – how do we stop it?
Role: Speaker.
Description
Every day we hear about new developments in face recognition in China, the US, and other countries - face recognition accuracy has improved exponentially; cameras are being deployed in more and more places; and face recognition is used for more and more services. However, by focusing solely on face recognition, activists, NGOs and lawyers are missing the forest for the trees. Face recognition is now just one of the many technologies incorporated into vast surveillance systems and used to track people. Other technologies in these systems - like object recognition, license plate and text recognition, voice recognition, and gait recognition - combined with cheap cloud storage and machine learning are allowing for tracking on a never-before-seen scale. This session will provide a space to discuss these topics. It will bring in experts to explain how technologies are working and how they are being deployed around the world. It will also encourage interactivity by asking all participants to share stories and contribute ideas for change.