Welcome back to Talking Human Rights and welcome to Part One of “Talking Technology.” We’re discussing the ways that technology privacy and technology freedom intersect with the way humans think, communicate, and form relationships, as well as the rights we enjoy. We’re talking about our communications devices — our iPhones, our Facebook, our email accounts. We ask, “How much can we know about the way these devices behave?” We ask, “How much should we care, so long as we have nothing to hide?” (Answer: We should care a lot!)
Our guest is Daniel Kahn Gillmor (aka “dkg”), senior staff technologist at the Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project of the American Civil Liberties Union. Daniel spends his days investigating, documenting, and advising on the rights impacts of communications technology. His focus is on the construction of communications technology and the solutions we discuss here involve changes at the technological level that stand to have a profound impact on the rights of all humans.
In this Episode...
Heather Roberson Gaston
Talking Human Rights host and creator Heather Roberson Gaston is a writer, adviser, and educator in the field of human rights. She holds an undergraduate degree in Peace and Conflict Studies from the University of California at Berkeley; a Master’s in Human Rights from Columbia University; and a Certificate in the Advanced Study of Central and Eastern Europe from the Harriman Institute.
Heather co-authored Macedonia: What Does it Take to Stop a War? a graphic novel based on an early solo research trip to the Balkans as an undergraduate. She is now working on a narrative work exploring the many lives and deaths of the Israeli-Palestinian peace movement, for which she spent the better part of a year living and working in Israel and the West Bank.
Daniel Kahn Gillmor
Our guest Daniel Kahn Gillmor is the Senior Staff Technologist for the Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project of the American Civil Liberties Union where he focuses on the way technological infrastructure shapes society and impacts civil liberties.
Active for decades in the field of digital security and digital freedom, Daniel is also a developer of free software and a member of the Debian Project, an actively maintained foundational free operating system. He is also a participant in the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), a consortium of engineers devoted to developing best practices for the functioning of the Internet, where he focuses on developing and documenting Internet protocols that ensure safety and privacy of users.
Sibet Partee
Sibet Partee is Talking Human Rights’ fearless Assistant Producer and Editor. A graduate of University of Virginia where she studied English Literature and co-founded UVA’s podcast network, Sibet has worked on all aspects of the Talking Human Rights launch.
Based in New York City, Sibet also acts in various productions and is studying improv at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre. Sibet is credited as series assistant producer and editor, a catchall title that (Heather writes) doesn’t do justice to the full range of her talents in episode planning, social media advising, mic training, and other training and consulting that turns out to be necessary for Heather who has been out in the field interviewing people for 15 years, but has never done so on air. If you would like to see more of Sibet’s work and if you would like to hire Sibet for your podcasting needs, head on over to sibet.com