March 24, Asia Meetup

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Date: Wednesday, March 24th

Time: Delhi 13:30 (UTC+5:30) / Taipei-Kuala Lumpur 16:00 (UTC+8) / Tokyo 17:00 (UTC+9) / NYC 4am (EST)

Who: Facilitated by Don, Lulu, Kaia, Nica

Where: The Meetjitsi link will be shared in the following rooms on the IFF Mattermost one or two hours before the start of the meeting: Southeast Asia, Central Asia and East Asia.

• Don't have an account to the IFF Mattermost? you can request one following the directions here.

Agenda: TBA

Notes

Topic: In conversation with Digital Reach

An introduction to Digital Reach

• Founded in 2019
• Three issues: FoE, right to privacy, digital security
• Approach: monitoring and research, advocacy, community building

Current and past work

• Launched a project on Digital Contact Tracing, explored six countries in SEAsia looking into the development of the apps and how has threatened the right to privacy: TH, MY, SG, PH
• Launched an annual report in Feb on digital rights in SEAsia, hope to do it on an annual basis. Aim to be a foundation on the overall situation then use it as an advocacy tool
• Misinformation workshop
• Possible report that Myanmar will implement a China-style firewall and circumvention
• Upcoming plan: hope to issue briefing for circulation
• Expanding OONI measurements in Cambodia, challenge of small digital rights community in Cambodia

Challenges and opportunities

• Cambodia: capacity. Discussions to combine resources and expertise for collective collaboration.
• Community in SEAsia hasn't adapted well with emerging technology, knowledge gap
• Local civil society working on digital rights programs need more resources incl digital security
• Challenge in engaging with ASEAN and AICHR mechanisms
• Digital safety: give specific scenario, workshop it, non-tech discussions are important
• Opportunities for collaboration: intention to expand the organisation and generate more activities, prioritise working with local communities

Community Updates

• Looking at overall needs of frontline activists, community groups
• Gap of understanding between needs and resources
• Bottom up approach
• Cut down public wifi networks, mobile data almost cut completely across the country, stable landline complete, Thai sim cards targetted by network telcos
• Need for more capacity and trainers than resources
• Report on researching security and privacy on TikTok released: key findings that there isn't overt security or privacy issues with TikTok. Bad news: still collects tonnes of data and personal use patterns.