This Week In Cyberspace

Natalia Krapiva is the tech-legal Counsel with Access Now. Prior to that she worked as a prosecutor at Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office. She's been fighting NSO Group to try to limit the sale and use of spyware for many years and  last December set a precedent with a win against this Israeli cyber-intelligence firm in the California court.We talk to her about this and the state of digital forensics. As she says "it's a game of cat and mouse."

Roger Dingledine is an American computer scientist known for having co-founded the Tor Project and he still works there as a project Leader, Director, and Research Director.The Tor Project develops and maintains The Tor Browser system, also known as The Onion Router, a free, open source and sophisticated privacy tool that provides anonymity for web surfing and communication. Hear about this and their latest development 'Snowflake'.

David Kaye is a clinical professor of law at the University of California, where he teaches international human rights law and international humanitarian law. David works at the intersection of technology, freedom of speech and democratic deliberation. He was also the UN Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression up until 2020. He shares his insights into the state of the United States and the implications of the "mindless pillage" on the rest of the world.

Aymen Zaghdoudi is Access Now’s Middle East and North African Senior Policy Counsel.  He is also an assistant Professor at the Institute of Press and Information Sciences in Tunisia where he teaches Press law, Media regulation, and Constitutional law. He shares stories of dissent from his experience on the ground in Tunisia.

One of the featured thought leaders at the opening ceremony of RightsCon 2025 was Htaike Htaike Aung. She’s the Executive Director at Myanmar Internet Communication Technologies for Development Organization  or MIDO, and she spoke with us about some of the challenges faced by citizens in a country that has endured four years of a military coup and 83 internet shutdowns.

We have set up in the Media Room at RightsCon 2025 Taipei and are getting ready for an amazing few days of interviews with some of the best brains in the biz. These are people working at the forefront of human rights in the digital age.Stay tuned to meet some amazing activists over the coming days.

10 days to go until lift off and land down in Taiwan for RightsCon Taipei 2025. We are trialling our tech and our FACES!Check the program list out and let us know who you want us to interview: https://www.rightscon.org/program/#list

This Week In Cyberspace we take a look at how the release of China’s new Artificial Intelligence model DeepSeek has knocked the socks off Silicon Valley’s techbros. It’s just as powerful as ChatGPT, made for a tenth of the cost and its release knocked a cool trillion off US tech stocks. How will this new battle for supremacy in the AI space play out?

As Trump cracks down on illegal immigration, reports have emerged that the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement and its Citizen and Immigration Services have dished out $7.8 billion on immigration technologies since 2020. That's a lot of money on what the World Economic Forum reports is not the problem. So what's the deal?

 We kick off This Week In Cyberspace 2025 with a look at the inauguration of Donald Trump and how his American tech bros are falling over themselves to be part of the new world order/disorder. It's a laugh a minute as we get our heads around what just happened with over 100 Executive Orders signed, Trumpian memecoins launched, all against the backdrop of 170 million US Tik Tok users being kicked on and off the platform as the biggest deals in history are being negotiated.

Right now in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, delegates are gathered from all over the world for the 20th United Nations’ Internet Governance Forum. The aim of the five day event is to inspire “a global commitment to responsible digital governance and [foster] a future where digital technologies serve the entire global community equitably and sustainably” But with people currently serving up to 45 years in prison in the host country for expressing dissent online, some civil society groups have decided to boycott the Forum altogether. Is this the line in the sand for big tech and humanity?

On the 76th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights  we explore how human rights intersect with digital rights. Our rights, our Future. Right Now. That's the clarion call around the globe on this day for us all to embrace and trust the full power of human rights as the path to the world we want to live in - a more peaceful, equal and sustainable world.

There are over 100 conflicts happening right now all over planet Earth, wars that most of us would  like to see an end to. But the battlefields of today are a very different to the ones of last century; the white flag coming out of the trenches is no longer enough to stop bullets.Wars are being controlled by satellites and fibre optic cables. In March this year a supposedly ‘invincible’ US Abram tank worth a cool $10 mill was destroyed in mere minutes by an unmanned Russian drone that cost its owner $500. When warlords have digital capability, a digital ceasefire is called for.

Putin is locked in for a 5th term, largely through the control of information on the internet, while Elon Musk’s quest for world domination also continues apace with the release of the raw computer code behind his new xAI Chatbot. On top of all that, the Chinese owned company behind TikTok is being forced to sell up in the US, and over in the EU, the AI Act has come into law essentially enabling developers to go for broke.  It's been a busy week in cyberspace!

5 days ago, a strict new anti-LGBTQ+ bill called the Human Sexual rights and Ghanaian Family Values Bill was introduced, which threatens to incite a witch hunt against lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, and intersex people fighting for their rights to express themselves and have privacy in Ghana, both online and off. It's part of a disturbing worldwide trend to vilify and control 'the other', and while it might appease the largely conservative Christian majority, it also threatens $5.8 million in foreign investments in the country. Right now, it's all in the hands of President Nana Akufo-Addo.

How can we tell if fake news is real when, despite the facts, some people swear by it? And how do we judge the veracity of a artificially generated videos when we see them on Facebook? Two First Amendment cases started in the US Supreme Court yesterday concerning social media laws in Texas and Florida. The State's claim the platforms are exercising “freewheeling censorship”, while they say they just want to stop conservatives posting lies like they did about the last US Federal election being stolen. Meanwhile the new text to video AI model SORA is causing waves with its ability to create visuals that can replicate one minute of fiction that looks uncannily like the real thing. Both of these developments have the potential to transform the internet in ways we can't even imagine. But will it be good for humanity?

The ex KGB lieutenant colonel has a Presidential election in just under a month, and aside from silencing dissenters, he’s making sure that any information Russian citizens might find on the internet is singing his praises. With the seriously suspicious death of opposition leader Alexi Navalny four days ago and the arrest of around 400 people who came out to mourn him, Putin is going for gold as a digital dictator.

Not since 1985 when the Apple board got rid of Steve Jobs has there been such an upheaval in the tech sector as there was last Friday when Sam Altman, the 38 year old CEO of Open AI (the not-for-profit that runs CHATGPT), was fired . It was a board coup that also saw the company’s president and three senior researchers resign. Investors were ropeable, especially the CEO of Microsoft who tried to mediate his return to the company. When that failed, Microsoft made Altman an offer he couldn’t refuse. Is this best tech soap opera to date?

Welcome to series 2 of This Week In Cyberspace where we look at human rights in the digital age through the lens of Artificial Intelligence. For as long as the Internet has been operative, alternative gender expression online has been a thing. But with the use of AI by corporations and governments to collect personal data, and often weaponise it against citizens, this space is no longer as safe as it once was. Uganda has just enacted the world’s harshest anti-LGBTQ+ laws using discriminatory data sets to identify gender, emotion, and now sexual orientation. These binary codes are discriminatory in nature. So how can they be tackled?

In the final episode of Season 1 we take a closer look at Artificial Intelligence, specifically Generative Large Language Multi-Modal Models (or GLLMMMs). These Golem Class AIs have the experts spooked and yet the five giant tech companies are already rolling them out to the public with no safeguards for society. And as we know, an unregulated tech space adversely creates a toxic online environment. So how to we avert even more severe unintended consequences than doom scrolling, fake news and the breakdown of democracy?