This year RightsCon is taking place in Tunis, and CDT will have a large presence at the conference. RightsCon, which is organized by our friends at Access Now, is the can’t-miss event for the digital rights community, attracting top-level advocates, human rights experts, government officials, and leaders from the tech industry. The conference takes place next week from June 11-14. Take a look at all of the official events we’re a part of, detailed below. We hope to see you there!
RightsCon Sessions
Wednesday, June 12
2:15pm – 3:30pm: Government Hacking: Corporate Assistance or Resistance? with Greg Nojeim (CDT), Kaja Ciglic (Microsoft), Francisco Vera, (Privacy International), Amie Stepanovich (Access Now), Alissa Starzak (Cloudflare)
3:45pm – 5:00pm: Keeping students safe and free: creating a shared statement of concerns around social media surveillance in educationwith Elizabeth Laird (CDT), Natasha Duarte (CDT), Rachel Levinson-Waldman (Brennan Center)
Thursday, June 13
9:00-10:15am: Law Enforcement and the Internet of Things with Mana Azarmi (CDT), Jennifer Lynch (EFF), Ilia Siatitsa (Privacy International), Daniel Drewer (Europol)
10:30-11:45am: One Cross-Border Treaty to Rule them All: The Budapest Convention Protocolwith Greg Nojeim (CDT), Markko Künnapu (Ministry of Justice), Etienne Maury (CNIL), Lani Cossette (Microsoft Brussels), Jan Penfrat (EDRI), Dennys Antonialli (InternetLab), Katitza Rodriguez (EFF)
12-1pm: The Use of Social Media Information in Immigration Adjudicationswith Mana Azarmi (CDT)
1:00-2:00pm: Data Laundering and Inference Peddling with Greg Nojeim (CDT)
3:45-5:00pm: Demystifying the Definitions, Demands and Data of “Direct Access” with Greg Nojeim (CDT), Jason Pielemeier (GNI), Laura Okkonen (Vodafone), Moira Oliver (BT), Théo Jaekel (Ericsson)
Friday June 14
10:30am – 11:45am: The Ghost in the Machine: Remedy for algorithmic discrimination with Emma Llansó (CDT), Amy Lehr (CSIS), Brittan Heller (ADL), Vivek Krishnamurthy (Foley Hoag LLP)
1-2pm: Agent Provocateur: The threat of government agents impersonating journalistswith Mana Azarmi (CDT), Linda Moon (RCFP), Jack I. Lerner (UCI Law)
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.
As concern about risks and harms related to AI systems continue to grow, a growing chorus of policymakers, industry leaders, and advocates have called for independent AI assessments. This explainer provides an overview of recent proposals for third-party assessment in the United States, including state and federal legislation, executive actions, and industry proposals.
Having third parties assess AI systems might seem like common sense, but crafting effective policies toward this goal can be devilishly tricky. A poorly-constructed ecosystem for third-party assessment could easily fail to consider the most consequential mechanisms of risk, neglect the AI harms that most impact people, or do more to protect AI companies than people.
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.
