This year RightsCon is taking place in Toronto, 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 May 16—18.
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, May 16
10:30-11:45 am: #316, Content regulation in the digital age: Defining terms and examining content moderation at scale. With Emma Llanso (CDT), Charles Bradley (Global Partners Digital), Stephen Blythe, Bertrand de la Chapelle (Internet and Jurisdiction), Stephanie Elder (Community Garden, Automattic), Kevin Koehler (Community Garden, Automattic), Ainslie Koopmans, Sejal Parmar (OSCE), Richard Wingfield (Global Partners Digital).
12-12:25 pm: #451, Walking the Walk: Responsible Data Resources in the Shadow of the GDPR. With Joseph Jerome (CDT).
2:30-3:45 pm: #922, Protecting Our Own: Special Rights for Just US. With Greg Nojeim (CDT).
2:30-3:45 pm: #922, “IMSI Catchers”. With Mana Azarmi (CDT).
2:30-3:45 pm: #70, Extreme Vetting: Tools & Troubles. With Natasha Duarte (CDT), Faiza Patel (Brennan Center for Justice), Solan Barocas, Rachel Levinson-Waldman (Brennan Center for Justice), Summer Lopez, Christina Sinha (Advancing Justice-Asian Law Caucus)
4-5 pm: #606, Human Rights versus the Botnets. With Michelle Richardson (CDT), George Conard (Google), Leo Henrichsen, Alissa Starzak (Cloudflare), Dmitri Vitaliev (eQualitie).
Thursday, May 17
9:00-10:15 am: #125, The Global Digital Platform and the Nation State: Roles, Responsibilities, and Interactions to Optimize Human Rights in the Digital Space. With Emma Llanso (CDT), Eileen Donahoe (Stanford Global Digital Policy Incubator), Evelyn Mary Aswad (University of Oklahoma College of Law), Fen Osler Hampson, David Kaye (UN Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression), Daphne Keller (Stanford Law School Center for Internet and Society), Edward Santow (Australian Human Rights Commission).
12-1:15 pm: #478, Automated Filtering and the Future of Free Expression Online. With Emma Llanso (CDT), Natasha Duarte (CDT), Kirsten Gollatz, J.N. Penn, Duncan Pike.
12-1:15 pm: #441, Human Rights Requirements for Cross Border Data Demands. With Greg Nojeim (CDT), Maria Paz Canales (Derechos Digitales), Bernard Shen (Microsoft Corporation), Rauno Merissari (Human Rights Ambassador, Finland), Maryant Fernandez Perez (European Digital Rights), Lucy Purdon (Privacy International), David Lieber
Friday, May 18
9-10:15 am: #248, Reporting on the 2018 Global Internet & Jurisdiction Conference. With Greg Nojeim (CDT), María Paz Canales, Harlem Desir, Paul Fehlinger, Xianhong Hu, David Kaye (UN Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression), Alissa Starzak (Cloudflare).
10:30-11:45 am: #166, Do No Harm? The Influence and Impact of Automated Bias in mHealth Apps. With Michelle De Mooy (CDT), Santosh Kumar, Luke Stark.
10:30-11:45 am: #609, Policing the Internet, or Promoting Digital Rights: World Intermediary Liability Developments 2018. With Emma Llanso (CDT), Daphne Keller (Stanford Law School Center for Internet and Society), Luis Fernando Garcia, Michael Geist, Jan Gerlach (Wikimedia Foundation), Kyung Sin Park Gabrielle Guillemin, Tamir Israel, Cynthia Khoo (Lawyer / LL.M. Candidate, Tekhnos Law / University of Ottawa), Jeremy Malcolm, Alissa Starzak (Cloudflare).
4-5 pm: #519, Title III for Hacking? With Michelle Richardson (CDT), Nate Cardozo (EFF), Matt Cagle, Sarah St. Vincent.
On September 15, 2026, the Center for Democracy & Technology and Electronic Frontier Foundation filed an amicus brief along with the Wikimedia Foundation in Meta Platforms v. Bonta, challenging California’s SB 976.
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.
