Alexandra Givens’ Remarks at the Freedom Online Coalition consultation on “Digital Inclusion: Human Rights in the Digital Age”
CDT CEO Alexandra Givens gave remarks on Friday, May 3, 2022 at a joint event organized by Global Affairs Canada and the Center for Democracy and Technology.
Her remarks were a part of the first Freedom Online Coalition (FOC) consultation on the Ottawa agenda, entitled “Digital Inclusion: Human Rights in the Digital Age.”
From those remarks:
“We view the Ottawa Agenda as a valuable opportunity to reaffirm the FOC’s commitment to a free, open, interoperable, secure and reliable internet, and to do so with renewed focus in light of ongoing threats to that vision. At a time of growing digital authoritarianism, increasing fragmentation of the internet, threats to online civic space, and the persistent inequalities of the digital divide, the FOC can play an essential role in articulating, and defending, a democratic and inclusive vision of the global internet.”
Coalition Urges Senate Not to Let Companies Waive Financial Regulations for AI
CDT joined AI Now Institute, American Civil Liberties Union, and several organizations dedicated to tech policy, consumer protection, and civil rights in a letter to Senate leadership and the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee opposing the “AI Innovation Labs” language in Sec. 10509 of the CLARITY Act.
Not All Guardrails Are Created Equal: Comparing Content Safety and Copyright Filtering
As courts and policymakers work through questions about chatbot liability, they should be wary of analogies that flatten meaningful technical differences. Copyright filtering and safety intervention share real challenges around ambiguity and evasion, but they diverge in what each control must assess, how each manifests over the course of a conversation, and how much can be verified from the outside.
CDT-led Coalition Calls for Transparency for White House AI Framework
CDT and Americans for Responsible Innovation led a broad, bipartisan coalition of over two dozen civil society groups in calling on the White House to release its Framework for review of frontier AI models.
CDT Amicus Brief Calls on Fourth Circuit to Rein In Geofence Warrants
Earlier this year the Supreme Court ruled in Chatrie v United States that the Fourth Amendment protected all cell phone location information, which CDT lauded as a landmark decision, but sent the case back down to the Fourth Circuit to assess the propriety of the geofence warrant at issue.
