This Week In Cyberspace

Maryam Abdulhadi Al-Khawaja is a Bahraini-Danish human rights activist. It seems to run in the family because She is also the daughter of Bahraini human rights activist Abdulhadi al-Khawaja and former co-director of the Gulf Center for Human Rights. She is currently the Special Advisor on Advocacy with the GCHR, and works as a consultant with NGOs.

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'.

Gbenga Sesa is the Executive Director of Paradigm Initiative, a non-profit organisation that works to connect under-served young Africans with digital opportunities and ensures the protection of their online rights. Having grown his career from local volunteering to the global stage, where he is currently shaping and influencing tech policies, his drive to effect positive change, empower young Africans, and ensure none is denied the opportunity to use a computer has propelled him into various leadership roles in the tech sphere.

Marwa Fatafta leads Access Now's policy and advocacy work on digital rights in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. Her work spans a number of issues at the nexus of human rights and technology including content governance and platform accountability, online censorship, digital surveillance, and transnational repression.

Costanza Sciubba Caniglia is an expert in information integrity and leads Wikimedia Foundation's anti-disinformation strategy.  Wikipedia relies on 250,000 volunteers worldwide who edit anonymously. Truth Keepers in the face of powerful forces.

Chihhao Yu is a software engineer and information designer, and co-director of the Taiwan Information Environment Research Center (IORG) based here in Taipei, where he works to safeguard election integrity and build democratic resilience in Taiwan. He is also a contributor to g0v (“gov-zero”), Taiwan's civic hacking community, and an organiser of Facing the Ocean, a West Pacific civic hacking network.

Charles Mok is a Research Scholar at the Global Digital Policy Incubator of the Cyber Policy Center at Stanford University, a member of the Board of Trustees of the Internet Society, and a board member of the International Centre for Trade Transparency and Monitoring. 

Lobsang Gyatso Sither is theDirector of Technology at the Tibet Action Institute working in exile as a highly experienced digital security trainer. He talks to us about some of the issues within his home country and how the Tibetan Government in exile is hoping for the best but preparing for the worst under Chinese occupation.

Aws Al-Saadi is an advisory board member of International Fact-Checking Network and the Founder and President of Tech4Peace. He talks to TWICS about the rise of fake news and how to counter it.

 Hadi Al Khatib is an archivist and activist who's been collecting, verifying, and investigating citizen-generated data as evidence of human rights violations since 2011. His project, The Syrian Archive, exposes and draws attention to human rights violations committed by all sides of the Syrian conflict, and ensures that journalists and lawyers are able to use the verified data for their investigations and criminal case-building

Tetiana Avdieieva is a Senior Legal Counsel at Digital Security Lab in Ukraine. She's also a member of the Expert Committee on Artificial Intelligence under the Ministry of Digital Transformation of Ukraine. She co-authored the media law reform in Ukraine and is currently engaged in AI governance processes both in Ukraine and on the Council of Europe level. Woah! What a glittery interview.

Lia Holland isfrom Fight for the Future, a group of artists, engineers, activists, and technologists fighting for a future where technology is a force for liberation— not oppression. An organization focused on technology and the rules governing it, fighting at the intersection of technology and human rights.

E-ling Chiu is theExecutive Director at Amnesty International Taiwan. where RightsCon2025 is currently underway. She is also a Board Member on the Human Rights Network for Tibet and Taiwan. We talk with her about some of the issues facing this small island including cable cutting, the death penalty and the impact of having such a powerful neighbour as China just across the Taiwan Strait.

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.

Betsy Popken is the Executive Director of the Human Rights Center at UC Berkeley School of Law where she directs the Climate Justice program, and leads a team that's conducting human rights impact assessments and evaluations of General large language models.She speaks with us about how digitalisation is disrupting traditional warfare around the world

Antonio Zappulla is CEO at the Thomson Reuters Foundation and in 2022 he was knighted as an Officer of the Italian Republic for “merit acquired in the fields of public service, and social, philanthropic and humanitarian activities” under the OMRI order, the highest-ranking honour of the Italian Republic.We talk with him about LGBTQ rights in the digital age and how to protect NGOs from legal challenges at RightsCon 2025 in Taipei.

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."

Taiwan has endured the world's longest Marshall Law - 37 years - under Chinese rule. Kuan-Ju Chou is from the Taiwan Association for Human Rights and she is at RightsCon 2025 in Taipei. It's the first time in a decade that the conference has been held in South East Asia and activists are building connections and solidarity.

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're in Taipei speaking with some incredible people working to advance human rights in the digital age. One of those at the forefront of this is Henri Verdier the French Ambassador for Digital Affairs within the French Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs. Since 2018, he has led and co-ordinated French digital diplomacy and he was instrumental in last week's AI Action Summit in Paris hosted by President Macron.

Mohammed al-Maskati is one of the 3,200 people participating live at RightsCon 2025 in Taipei. He is a Bahraini human rights activist who worked as a digital security consultant for the Middle East and North Africa. He founded the Bahrain Youth Society for Human Rights (BYSHR), and currently works with AccessNow as the Digital Security Helpline Director.

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.

We're in Taiwan where thousands of human rights activists are gathering for RightCon2025. This is a conference started by TWICS co-host Brett Solomon and this will be the first time that he's attending not as CEO of the organising body AccessNow but as a podcaster!He and Nell Schofield will be talking with around 25 global leaders who are defending and extending human rights in the digital age, and it seems like there's never been a more important time to work on this issue.

Satellite internet technology is go! But does it, as promised, help to close the digital divide? At least 2.6 billion people worldwide are still unable to access high-quality, open, secure internet, despite all the satellites up there. SpaceX's Starlink has nearly 7k satellites circling the Earth with plans for another 23,000!! And astronomers are concerned because the sunlight reflecting off them is interfering with sensitive telescopes investigating the origins of the universe.So what's more important - connectivity on Earth, or more knowledge about deep space?

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.

2024 was a big year, especially for elections with no less 2 billion people casting their votes. We've seen the impact of internet shutdowns in many countries and the influence of social media platforms, especially on the US election. In Russia Putin secured a 5th term and in Syria we saw a shift from digital control to digital freedom.We cast our eyes back on the year that was in cyberspace.

AI is not only harvesting original music to generate it's own cheap versions but taking away revenue from creatives. For the first time that amount has been calculated at about a quarter of the income of the creator within the next 5 years. The study on the global economic impact of Generative AI in the Music and Audio Visual Industries was released earlier this month in Paris. The study was put out by the International Confederation of Societies of Authors and Composers (CISAC), representing more than 5 million audio visual creators worldwide. And it's president, former ABBA band member Björn Ulvaeus, said that all eyes are on Australia and NZ because of our strong policy making to protect creatives.  

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.

We all know that governments like to censor the internet in times of crises, particularly authoritarian governments around election times to control the sort of information that voters have access to. Last Thursday, in a world first, the Australian Government introduced a bill to ban non-voters (all those under the age of 16) from accessing social media platforms because they're not considered to be safe places for children. With bi-partisan support it looks set to sail through parliament. But what are the implications for kids? And what is really behind this moral push back?

 The rise of the authoritarian right in the USA was actively facilitated by the algorithms of certain social media platforms. This sinister digital development has sent tremors through the progressive left. But some organisations are fighting back.  The Guardian said it will not post on the social media site  X, saying it's a toxic media platform while the fiercely non-partisan tech focused organisation Fight for the Future released a feisty manifesto resisting the rise of the broligarchy. We take a deep breath as the New World recalibrates.

One week on from the American election and the progressive world is still reeling. How could a racist sexist autocratic felon have scored the top job? What has happened to the actual culture of the United States to allow Donald Trump to win the popular vote? For the Republicans, who supported an insurrection, and promoted crazy conspiracy theories and spread misinformation and disinformation, for them to be rewarded by the majority of the public? What are the global ramifications? And how do we move forward from this?

It's V-Day - Tuesday Nov 5 - the day America votes. But is the US election really coming down to a stand off between men and women? Trump is telling women that he'll be their protector, while at the same time saying former congresswoman Liz Cheney should have guns trained at her face for critisising the storming of the Capitol last time. It's a monumental shit show in the Republican Camp with Harris rising above the hateful rhetoric being hurled her way. But is morality going to win this election? And what about the impact of AI on democracy? 

The US election has hit a new low with Donald Trump's rally in Maddison Square Garden on Sunday Night turning into a real hate fest. Parallels have been made between the event and a Nazi rally in Maddison Square Garden back in 1939. The Republican nominee vowed to “Launch the largest deportation program in American history” and denounced the press “the enemy of the people”. Meanwhile in the swing state of Pennsylvania, Kamala Harris held a much smaller rally in Philadelphia and focused on the future and women's right to choose. Brett Solomon was there.

A new study has revealed that Americans are deeply concerned about the impact of Artificial Intelligence on the election. Nearly 40% of those polled reckon AI will be used for evil with only 5% believing it is a force for good.  And then there's the money issue. Elon Musk has started giving away $1m a day to a voter who signs up to his America Political Action Committee petition, and he says he's going to keep it up until election day.  This strictly capitalist competition is intended to get Trump into office and is open to voters in key battleground states but is a lottery like this even legal?

With just three weeks to go before the US election, all eyes are on the two major candidates - one, a vibrant 59 year-old woman of the people, and of colour; the other a 78 year- old white male billionaire who has just got a massive leg up from the richest man in the world. Elon Musk is using his powerful social media platform X to trumpet his support of the Republican candidate to his  201 million followers. So will Musk's support of  Trump be enough to beat the beacon of hope that is Vice President Kamala Harris?

In this special extended edition of TWICS, co-host Brett Solomon reflects on his 15 years as Executive Director of Access Now. When he started in the job Facebook and Twitter were just emerging as social media platforms. Since then we've seen the rise of both as powerful tech tools and the internet as a force for good, evil and all the grey areas in between. What are the challenges ahead for digital rights defenders and how can citizens get involved to protect their data online?

This Week In Cyberspace, Julian Assange was brought back home to Australian soil in Canberra after a 14 year trial. The following morning, Senator David Shoebridge organised a press conference in Parliament House with Assange's wife Stella Assange, legal team Jennifer Robinson and Barry Pollock, Senators Zoe Daniel, Murray Watt, Peter Wish-Wilson, and former Senator Scott Ludlam. TWICS was on the sideline.

We examine the growing battle between tech giants and governments around the world. In the US, Biden has signed off on an ultimatum to Tik Tok to divest or be banned. In Australia, the eSafety Commissioner has issued an ultimatum to X to either take down the video of the stabbing of a bishop in Sydney or pay a daily fine of $785,000 per day. And then there's the European Union where the digital commissioner says a new ‘task and reward program' on TikTok Lite could be as ‘addictive as cigarettes'. It's the age of global digital brinksmanship.

The Prime Minister of Australia has called him an “arrogant billionaire” who's “chosen ego and violence over common sense”. In return, Elon Musk has sarcastically thanked the PM for informing the public that his platform "is the only truthful one”.  The battle lines are clearly drawn with the eSaftey Commissioner issuing a court order for X to remove a video of the stabbing of a bishop in Sydney last Monday. It's a contest between what Musk sees as the right to free speech and what the Australian government claims is a duty to protect its citizens from “extreme violent content”, So, what goes up? And what comes down? And who decides?

Lavender. Sounds pretty vanilla right? But it's actually the name of the Artificial Intelligence machine allegedly targeting Israel's bombs at Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad operatives in Gaza. The system has generated  “mass target creation and lethality”, especially in the first six weeks of the conflict. But with a 10% error rating,  the fallout for Gazan civilians has been horrific. On the back of a report by +972 Magazine, we probe into the interplay between technology and conflict.

This Week In Cyberspace we take a look at hate speech online in the context of conflict. With the UN calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, and the horrific human toll of Palestinian civilian lives still rising, certain words are coming under intense scrutiny. META is reviewing the use of the word 'Zionist' on its platforms, while the Arabic term 'Saheed' - the word for martyr - is responsible for the most content takedowns across all of its platforms. But what are the implications for free speech and rational debate online?

It's the biggest year of voting in global history. Seventy countries will decide their governance including citizens of no less than twenty-one African nations. But with many of those already on the Election Watchlist for internet interference, how many will claim to be bastions of democracy? With a humanitarian crisis of apocalyptic proportions underway in the African heartland of Sudan, what role do tech-cos have in navigating a way through this?

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!

Did Kate Middleton actually doctor her own family photograph? Or has she actually been abducted by aliens? How fake images can ignite a bonfire of wild conspiracy theories. And turncoat Donald Trump once wanted TikTok banished from the USA. Now that he's banned from Facebook for telling lies and inciting his followers to storm the Capitol, he wants the legislation he introduced to be reversed. But with Biden poised to sign off on it, is it all too late for him and TikTok's 150 million American users?

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.