Digital rights for change: Reclaiming infrastructures, repairing the future.

The 9^th edition of Privacy Camp (26 January 2021) explores the relations between digitalisation, digital rights and infrastructures.

2020 has highlighted the importance of digital infrastructures. Many facets of our personal and social life rely on these infrastructures – from public health to education, from labour to services, from politics to intimate relations. Although this is not completely new, society has realised that there is a need to design and maintain digital infrastructures to prioritise the public interest – resituating the interests of private actors that so often dominate practice and discourse on the topic.

In this context, digital rights are more important than ever. Privacy and data protection are important tools to question, limit and counter massive data collection and intrusive surveillance technologies. Their impact goes well beyond individual interests. While some promote a ‘data altruism’ that would consist in inviting data subjects to consent to more and more data processing operations, it might be that the real altruism and caring for the other is actually calling for a better use of digital rights. It certainly demands thinking about how these individual rights can serve the interests of the public.

Ever-expanding desires for digitalisation – now also connected to promises of post-Covid-19 recovery – are shaped jointly by government data collection priorities and the objectives of ‘big tech’ companies. Reclaiming infrastructures, and embracing digital rights as a tool for change and justice are, in this light, critical for repairing a dire, and inevitably shared, future.

Public spaces and the environment are privileged territories for investigating the intersections between digitalisation, digital rights and infrastructures. The public space, offline and online, is as such a basic democratic infrastructure. The roll-out of surveillance measures such as automated speech moderation on social media or facial recognition technologies in our streets question whether European local authorities, police forces and private companies mandate the public space under a public interest agenda. The environmental impact is furthermore a crucial dimension of all things digital. The IT sector, broadly defined, accounts for more than 2% of global emissions, which is in the same range as aviation. The negative impact of digitalisation is reflected in the effects of big data collection and storage on energy consumption; in poor repairability of devices linked to unnecessary emissions and e-waste; or in vast carbon emissions resulted from training Artificial Intelligence models.

Moving the conversation towards a solution-oriented vision, questions remain around how digital rights can best contribute to reclaiming infrastructures, and how reclaimed infrastructures sustain democratic practices, for a fair, people-centered, digital future in the EU.

In this vein, we invite panel proposals revolving round the following themes:

1. The transformative power of digital rights
2. The social dimensions of digital infrastructures
3. The preservation of public voice in the public space
4. The environmental impact of digitalisation

Concrete examples of topics include (non-exhaustively):

• Examples of using existing rights under EU law to advance a fair society
• Actions and negotiations to reclaim digital infrastructures for the public interest
• Biometric mass surveillance and resistance methods for the public square
• Digital infrastructures of oppression | Digital infrastructures of resistance
• Reclaim the means of deliberation and public debate

Submission guidelines:

• Indicate a clear objective for your session, i.e. what would be a good outcome for you?
• Include a list of maximum 4 speakers that could participate in your panel. Ensure you cover academia, civil society and decision – makers’ perspectives. Let us know which speaker(s) has/have already confirmed participation, at least in principle.
• Make it as interactive as possible and encourage audience participation.
• Support diversity of voices among panelists and strive for multiple perspectives.
• Note that the average panel length is 50 minutes.
• Send your proposal (a panel description of max. 400 words and a tentative list of speakers) to privacycamp(at)edri.org by 6 December 2020.

Deadline for panel proposal submissions: 6 December 2020

After the deadline, we will review your submissions and will notify you about the outcome of the selection procedure before 10 December. Please note that we might suggest merging panel proposals if they are similar or complement each other.

#PrivacyCamp21 Call for Panels (.PDF)

About Privacy Camp

Privacy Camp is jointly organised by European Digital Rights (EDRi), Research Group on Law, Science, Technology & Society (LSTS) at Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB), the Institute for European Studies at Université Saint-Louis – Bruxelles (IEE at USL-B), and Privacy Salon.

In 2021, Privacy Camp’s Content Committee are: Andreea Belu (EDRi), Gloria González Fuster (LSTS, VUB) and Rocco Bellanova (IEE, USL-B)

Privacy Camp 2021 will take place on 26 January 2021 online.
Participation is free and registrations will open in early December 2020.

For inquiries, please contact Andreea Belu at andreea.belu(at)edri(dot)org.

Privacy Camp 2020: Technology and Activism

For the 8th edition, Privacy Camp takes “Technology and Activism” as its focus. Over the last decade, digital technologies have played a significant role in activism by mobilising social protests, fostering new forms of civil disobedience, or simply by facilitating the coordination of activist work in the analogue world. Some scholars assigned particular value to the networked nature of cyberspace, arguing that this structure enables people to communicate and take action outside of traditional hierarchical power structures. However, networked information systems also enhance the surveillance power of repressive regimes.

Going beyond cyber-optimist and cyber-pessimist arguments, Privacy Camp 2020 will seek to explore further dynamics in the activist-technology entanglements. Together with activists from diverse fields and scholars working at the intersection of technology and activism, Privacy Camp 2020 will cover a broad range of practices and issues including surveillance, censorship, civic participation in information policy making, social media and political dissent, online civil disobedience, data justice, data activism, commons and peer production, citizen science and more.

Participate!

For this edition, we call for (1) panel proposals and (2) critical making and DIY projects (see further below).

1. Call for Panels

We welcome panel proposals relating to the broad theme of “technology and activism”. We also welcome alternative types of sessions such as workshops or formats with more interaction between the participants than a traditional panel.

We are particularly interested in proposals on the following topics:
• social media and political dissent
• hacktivism and civil disobedience
• critical public sphere and hashtag publics (e.g. #MeToo, #BlackLivesMatter etc)
• data justice and data activism
• commons, peer production, and platform cooperativism
• citizen science

Submission guidelines:

• Indicate a clear objective for your session, i.e. what would be a good outcome for you?
• Include a list of speakers that could participate in your panel (and let us know which speaker has already confirmed, at least in principle, to participate).
• Make it as interactive as possible, think about how to include the audience and diverse actors. Note that the average panel length is 75 minutes.
• Send your proposal (a panel description of max 400 words and a tentative list of speakers) to privacycamp(at)edri.org by 10 November.

Deadline for panel proposal submissions: 10 November 2019 (hard deadline, no extension)

After the deadline, we will review your submissions and will notify you about the selection process before 20 November. Please note that we might suggest merging panel proposals if they are very similar.

2. Call for Makers: Critical Maker Faire at Privacy Camp 2020

We are pleased to invite makers, disruptors, tinkerers, crafters and DIY artists with the aim of bringing even more diverse communities into the conversation on technology and activism. Maker cultures attempt to democratise technology by focusing on production and consumption patterns and citizen engagement in technology design. We seek makers who create with the ethos of counterculture and activism – in distinction from those who align with innovation and entrepreneurship.

We will provide an exhibit space for makers working at the intersection of technology and activism. Makers will be able to engage participants and hold experiments. Possible maker projects may include, but are not limited to: DIY hardware, biohacking tools, wearables, bots, DIY air quality sensors, experiments with glitch and stitch.

If you are interested to submit your work for the Critical Maker Faire, please contact us at privacycamp(at)edri.org before 30 November 2019.

About Privacy Camp

Privacy Camp is jointly organised by European Digital Rights (EDRi), Research Group on Law, Science, Technology & Society at Vrije Universiteit Brussel (LSTS-VUB), the Institute for European Studies at Université Saint-Louis – Bruxelles (USL-B), and Privacy Salon.

Privacy Camp 2020 will take place on 21 January 2020 in Brussels, Belgium. Participation is free and registrations will open in early December.

For inquiries, please contact Andreea Belu at andreea.belu(at)edri(dot)org or Imge Ozcan at imge.ozcan(at)vub(dot)be.

We are pleased to announce that Privacy Camp will host once again the annual EDPS Civil Society Summit on 21 January 2020.

For a third year in a row, EDRi members and other important actors in civil society will meet the European Data Protection Supervisor for a discussion on the most ardent threats to our rights and freedoms online.

Registrations for the Summit will open in December. Please note the number of seats is limited and Civil Society Organisations are given priority.

Watch the EDPS Civil Society Summit at Privacy Camp 2019.

Watch the EDPS Civil Society Summit at Privacy Camp 2018