December 5 2024 GM
What is Happening in Digital Rights Around the World?
- Date: Thursday, December 5
- Time: 9am EST / 2pm UTC
- Facilitator: Mardiya
- Where: On TCU Mattermost "IF Square" Channel.
- Don't have an account to the TCU Mattermost? you can request one following the directions here.
Come to share emerging and existing digital rights conversations happening around the world and in your region at this Glitter Meetup! There is something new, specific or special that you would like to bring to the technology and human rights table? Join us and let's talk about it!
What is Glitter Meetup?
Glitter Meetup is the weekly town hall of the digital rights and Internet Freedom community at the IF Square on the TCU Mattermost, at 9am EDT / 2pm UTC. It is a text-based chat where digital rights defenders can share regional and project updates, expertise, ask questions, and connect with others from all over the world! Do you need an invite? Learn how to get one here.
Notes
Calyx is working on a big rebrand-- updating our website and aesthetic to something less "DIY 1997 Geocities". A little taste of the new aesthetic will be up on social media soon, with a whole new website soon to follow, including new educational resources.
We talked about accesibility and how to get people's attention and get them acclimated into thinking about digital privacy, then springboard them off into more deep-dive resources, as Calyx is working on that. Accessibility and inclusivity is often not the things open source projects (especially with small team) take into consideration when they make a MVP. And many might not even be aware. But it's related to awareness and solidarity mostly.
In the case of Calyx, doing an accessibility audit is going to be a big part of the upcoming relaunch/rebrand. There are fundings to do security/accessibility audits specific to open source projects. Projects at least have some team members who care about such things and push for it. And there are actually great folks in the accessibility community who would freely go and report issues they see in your tool.
We discuss about the "why would I have anything to hide?" big question and a participant shares: I always talk about it as a function of when and where you are in the world. It's not a crime right now in the US to be gay, but it was in some US states when I was growing up, and it still is in some places in the world. The same can be said of a lot of things, whether it's disagreeing with the majority governing party, finding resources on reproductive healthcare, etc.
Then, we talked about precedents on the use of the bittorrent protocol by government. UK government used to use it to publish financial data and here is one of the "unresolved mysteries" about the bittorrent protocol.
