So again, this talk is called Rebel Cities Talls, a global network of neighborhoods and cities rejecting surveillance. Your speaker is Renata Avila. She's a human rights lawyer,

she represented joining us and is a board member of the Creative Commons and chairperson

also to find some people who would like to get involved with the Courage Foundation campaign. So if that's one of your things, go find her later. And for now, enjoy the talk.

Well, first of all, thank you so much for having me here. It is a humbling experience to be on this side because I'm usually on that side. And now I know what my mother, who was one of the four women in engineering school, felt in the classroom every day.

But it is not intimidating at all, actually. It is challenging because I know that most of you know far more about technology and its uses, but I know that I can contribute something to you today and I hope I can contribute something to this challenging conversation

around cities. And I really, really hope that you will leave this room with a long list of to-dos that you can do locally in order to challenge surveillance. So the proposal of this talk was inspired because there's an increased paranoia on me. I used to, I mean,

I was surprised when I started to spend more time in Europe instead of in Latin America on how used to oppressive surveillance technologies Latin Americans are, me included. Constantly, like the typical day for a Latin American involves so many checkpoints,

points of control and things that we simply got used to it. For example, to enter a building, you will have to show your ID like twice to private security officers. You will have your ID that is a biometric ID scanned and stored somewhere. Most of the countries do not have

even data protection laws and so on. So basically, also another layer of worry started to bother me and that was the increased protection on trade secrets. And if we saw the

talk before with Mr. Harvey, I mean, it is getting more and more complex, these sophisticated systems of commercial surveillance to sell us the stuff. And at the same time, it is getting more and more challenging to even know how these systems are built. Europe passed this year the

new trade secrets directive and that will likely be exported everywhere, so the scrutiny that citizens can exercise is getting limited. And also nets of corruption. I mean, this year was especially interesting to understand and I think that, again, Latin

Americans, we are more used to these sophisticated, connected networks of corrupted people, corrupting elections, corrupting many, many other things, media. But I think that this year and the election of Donald Trump and many other things that happened showed that the rich,

so-called democratic countries are not immune to that. And it is there. It was just not as visible. So I started, okay, activism is great, but I have been working on grassroots digital

activism for the three years and nothing is really happening. And so I am a positive, very positive person, so I decided instead of looking at what wasn't working, to look at communities and networks where their activism is working, even with little resources and with

very high opponents. So I found the inspiration at home. And that's long before Standing Rock situation in the US. Indigenous people, because of a legal frame, an international legal frame

on the right of indigenous people to be consulted in projects that affect them and impact their territories and the place they live. They have been exercising community processes of either accepting or rejecting mining projects, fracking projects,

and any project that might affect the place where they live. They were like the first hint of inspiration for me to prepare this talk, because most of the indigenous communities doing this live below the poverty line. Most of the indigenous communities doing these exercises and

rejecting things that will bring to their communities relative wealth, economic wealth, but will damage the rest are doing very courageous, constant exercises of democracy and defeating very powerful multinationals by getting active. But that's not new,

and that's happening more and more and more. It's very invisible because of course your press will not report it, and of course they are under great threat. My second inspiration was what happened, and it's happening in Europe, and it's very exciting. It's

like really radical majors that care, that place public interest above financial gain are getting elected. And it is amazing how we have been tricked. I think we have been tricked to believe

that government is bad, that you shouldn't get involved in politics, and you cannot change anything. In fact you can change a lot if you are inside power. And in Spain it's an interesting example because two radical mayors got elected in the most important cities of Madrid and

Barcelona, and one of the first policies that the mayor of Madrid did was policy of refugees welcome. Even if her governments, her central government is saying like, no, no, no, no, we don't want refugees in Spain, and they are very racist and so on, opening the doors of the

city of Madrid to those coming and dedicating and allocating public funds to that, it is a big step. So bear with me, I'm getting closer to our issues. The next thing, and that was super

exciting, is like, okay, a city can do a lot, but a network of cities can send a powerful message to those on the other side trying to control us and to manipulate us. And that was the third example which hinted me at the power of cities and neighborhoods to change things is

the free TTIP zones, 60 municipalities in Europe declared themselves as cities like challenging the TTIP. And I think that 60 municipalities, if you combine all the services

that they purchase, all the policies that they influence, and the constituency that they have behind, it is a very powerful political force. It is all together, I mean the population of those cities, the most populated cities of Europe can really shift an election at some point.

Then, that's my other inspiration. She's Nerida Cifuentes, she's a parliamentarian from Bolivia and she is my age. When I read the list of achievements of Nerida and my tiny

list of achievements, I feel like really, really, really, I have done nothing with my life. She's a community leader and radio activist and she got elected to the assembly in Bolivia. An indigenous woman imagined all the barriers that she had to defeat

and she became free software activist. I know that we haven't heard so much of this kind of activism but again it's the things that don't get reported so much. And as part of the amazing work that Nerida has done on the local is to design

a whole framework for free software, free hardware and digital sovereignty. And what is very interesting is, okay, it might be super impractical, it might be like really difficult to implement in Bolivia but what is really important for me is

that she departed from what she experienced of colonization, of oppression, of exclusion, of racism. So all the frames that she developed are designed from the local realities and trying to affect local policies. And if in Bolivia someone who only adopted like late in life

technology is thinking about that, why we are not thinking on more proactive positive agendas around our issues. And my last inspiration was of course the mayor of Barcelona,

Ada Colau. She got elected last year and one of the first things that she did was to invite a bunch of digital rights organizations to her office. And in her office instead of having, you know, like diplomas and things about herself, what she had in her desk was

the picture of the first anarchist woman who got into power in Spain, the first minister I think it was of health. And it was a very interesting experience because she didn't know anything about our topics, technology, surveillance and all of that. But she opened the door and because she comes from social movements so she was this welcoming authority that was willing to listen.

And that really started a process to renovating and examining and taking a critical approach on what kind of technology was purchased. And then getting closer to the topics,

ACLU connected also a network of cities to challenge police surveillance and the kind of technology that police was getting in order to monitor citizens. Well that got me back to my

local neighborhood because bad policy is contagious, not only courage is contagious but policy too. And bad public policy, when money is involved, it really gets, it spreads quickly, especially when the asymmetry of the knowledge of those who take the decisions

in public office and those outside convincing them and with a big stake making a big profit on it, it is huge. Municipalities in Latin America, in many countries, even here, municipalities and the people buying the things, they do not have a very sophisticated

knowledge on what they are acquiring and usually vendors of surveillance technologies and vendors of controlled technologies and even vendors of these fake technologies to improve bad neighborhoods and so on arrive with very shiny videos and brochures trying to convince them that

it is good and they will get results and it will be good for the city to adopt this technology. And adopting a technological solution usually sounds good when you are trying to sell your political project. Usually in each and

every government plan nowadays you hear the mention of technology, technology, technology to improve our lives and smart cities, of course, but I do not even want to get into the smart cities issue. I want just to state in this imbalance in the power of taking those decisions.

So the thing is, and I wanted to make that very clear, that when a city and when a space, when a neighborhood embraces surveillance technologies, we are sacrificing more than just

privacy and I think that we have failed in the activism to quantify what we are losing, not only in terms of rights but also in terms of what you can do instead with the money and the resources that we are investing in all the surveillance technology and all the

sensors around us in the cities and that could be like better parks, better libraries, better public spaces for youth at risk and the benefits of these kind of places

are bigger but we are also sacrificing the right to protest. So basically this surveillance populism is lots of lights and empty promises. I quote my city as an example. First we had

open doors, then all the doors were secured, then electrified cables we put around the houses and then a little camera was installed, then you needed a guard every four blocks

and so we live more and more and more trapped into that and less and less secure. Just in my city there are 16 murders per day so it is obviously not working and every year the municipalities get these vendors and usually even international aid

pushing them to install cameras everywhere, pushing them to measure and to tag certain behaviors and to monitor specifically certain neighborhoods that are usually the poorest and those needing other kind of intervention. So

moving to the practical aspects. So I want to explain basically what I'm proposing and I would like to hear from you whether it sounds right and ideally I would like to

move and dedicate my 2017 in developing this positive agenda and this series of guidelines on when we have an ally in power or when we have the opportunity to participate and intervene in the local decisions and how to get rid of the problem. And if we are lucky enough

and if we have a supportive local government elected, the first step that I suggest in this frame of rebel neighborhoods and cities against surveillance is to make an inventory of all the surveillance that has been installed over the last five years and to look into the kind of

contracts, have the cost and efficiency of the surveillance installed and if it's not working or if it's not even data available of that, get rid of that. If a person in a position of power is

able to decide get rid of this system, it is important to make it one of the first interventions in the government exposing to the city and how it is a waste of time and money. The other thing that we can also dismantle the surveillance systems in our

neighborhoods and buildings. I don't know if many more and more we live in privatized spaces governed by the dictatorship of the administrator. I don't know if that happens to you but I am living for a while in Belgrade and I don't understand Cyrillic so there was a

notice in my building saying I couldn't read and it was inviting all the tenants to come because they wanted to install a camera. I missed the meeting. I really regret that I couldn't read Cyrillic and I missed the meeting because I came back from a travel and

there was a big camera installed in front of my door and sometimes out of laziness, out of apathy, out of lack of time we do not participate in these kind of decisions and then surveillance is deployed in private places and then we do not even question who decided that, how much we are paying for it and how much we are giving away with it,

especially when it's for free. The other thing that I propose here in this frame and very quickly is cities have the ability to regulate a lot and they regulate whether

you can walk your dog here, whether you can plant cactus or whatever here. The public space in a city is heavily regulated but surprisingly cities are not regulating these invisible but yet intrusive activities in public space so I am proposing in this frame

to regulate data collection, to regulate any wi-fi service, any free service that is provided within the areas of competence of a city. I know that many question me, oh but it is very

difficult to enforce. Well we need to find the right incentives to do that if for example music that is played in a place or whether it is loud or whether it is too low, it is regulated like very, very hard to regulate things. We need to make very, very difficult to these,

as Aralbal calls them, data farmers, collecting data of people. We need to make very difficult for them to be able to execute these activities in public spaces, especially in places where children go, in places where we want to have a private time away from the cameras,

and also cameras that are becoming more and more and more invisible and more like melted into the environment. We need to start regulating that and regulating what private actors do to more private securities, invading every space, not only public space but spaces that are

open to the public. And we need to increase, like cities can increase the scrutiny on what they are doing with the data and what these people are actually doing with the monitoring

activities. And the third thing is efficiency and expenditure. I mean we need to quantify what we are giving away every time that these systems are deployed. And we also need to point out at those who are wasting public funds deploying systems that are inefficient and that are intrusive. And also encouraging local vendors because more and more, and that's

very important and I will need the help of many of you here, is when a city is going to buy equipment of this kind, usually they write the specifications of the equipment and the systems

based on the brochures that they are getting from the dominant vendors. And at the end we have basically Cisco and other two or three companies selling all these kind of things to all the cities all over the world because the others cannot compete in price. So there's lots to be done and

lots of proactive things to do to specify what do we want actually in the cities if there's this kind of technology. We really need to fulfill a specific mission. Like I will not have time to go through this space regulation, public procurement and also take up proactive

steps to create some shared data commons and research by citizens on things that we actually should monitor like quality of air, quality of water and quality of life.

Before we open to the questions, because I want to get questions and comments, what I wanted to say is as well, in cities where there's increased inequality, it's very, very important to be vigilant to the technologies and surveillance technologies to deploy against those who actually need the most. In many countries and cities there's coupons or aid provided to those on the

resource and often there are mechanisms to monitor and control the poor, to monitor and control their movements, their consumption and also to deploy even harsher measures to exclude them.

And that's happening a lot as well with the collaboration of organizations like the United Nations with the refugees coming to Europe. And it is like, okay, we need to get them registered biometrically,

get them tagged, give them cards so they can only access internet via our services and then track them. And I think that it is not only unethical but it is abusive because they are not in a position of power and they cannot act the way

we can act and exercise their citizenship because they don't have in order to collaborate. And lastly, I just want to mention how we can move next. There's many initiatives that you can take part of. I think that the way that the chaos computer club and similar

computer clubs can get closer to the local authorities if they are welcoming and get nasty to the local authorities if they are not, if they are abusive and increase in the surveillance

and scrutinize every public decision that has been taken in this. That's the initiative in Barcelona, the Barcelona initiative of technological sovereignty and many cities are involved in that and it needs really a lot of help especially from technologists to create

positive frames in order to eradicate this pervasive surveillance. I am a member of the advisory board of DiEM25, the initiative towards a more democratic Europe and we are setting up a technology task force to invite technologists to help us not only on these aspects but in

general aspects to have a technology agenda consistent with democracy and if you are in a position of power and inside a government and you find a contract of these very sophisticated contracts of surveillance technology, link it to your preferred submission platform

and make it available because we need a repository and we need to document all the practices of all the municipalities doing these kind of things. Questions or comments? Thank you Renato. If you have questions please line up behind the microphones

here and yeah just ask your question. Do we have questions from the internet?

Seems not so okay. Microphone number one. Hi, thanks for the great talk. We hear very often that yeah why should I care and I have nothing to hide and I think all most of us here know that it's not a very productive way to react to mass surveillance. What would be a suggestion to

try to reach people that doesn't know that how to try to convince especially non-technical people, people of stem area, what would be your suggestion to show them that this is a really important issue? You know for me it's a super good question because usually surveillance is

linked to criminal activity and it is linked to okay it is just for those doing dodgy things and the important thing of many of the data collection activities that they take place in public spaces is that it has nothing to do with crime prevention,

it has everything to do with marketing, with commodification of our behaviors, with us getting excluded from certain services, getting more expensive services and too often also with mechanisms of social control. So I think that we have to move away from all surveillance and

cameras just to activists and dissidents and to monitor crime and we have to make it personal and recognize that it's part of a system of a sophisticated system of manipulation of human behavior that's making our lives not better but actually more expensive and

exclusion and discrimination easier. Thank you. Single angle, question from the internet. So the question is empowering locals would mean that they would need to see the importance of having no surveillance. So what should you advise to tell people who are convinced that surveillance

is a good thing? I think that quantifying like making very very visible and that's part of what I want to encourage others to join and collaborate with making visible how inefficient surveillance is and getting more cases written about local failures of surveillance and how much

money goes to waste and also making visible and visual what we gave away when we spent millions in a system and surveillance system that didn't work or that was abused for political purposes and what we are missing in the city. For example, child care places or parks or

libraries and that contrast on all the money that goes to waste and all the money that could go for social good I think is a good way forward. All right, Mike from number two.

Hi Renata, it's more of a comment really but that's okay I guess if this space is open. It just occurred to me that maybe to mention once upon a time in Mexico City I was swooped upon by various police cars and they closed off the block I was walking down about 2 a.m in the morning and came down and grabbed my bag and insisted on explaining why I

had a wi-fi router in it etc. But the reason why they stopped me was because I had my hoodie up on my sweatshirt and they told me that they had been watching me on the cameras since four streets back. So maybe there's some value in documenting or opening some kind of

method for documenting these kinds of experiences so that we can show what some negative effects are at times because it was quite a traumatic experience you know and as you know it's dangerous in those kinds of situations when you're alone in the street at night and you have lots of cops around. Absolutely okay. In Mexico it was very dangerous.

That's sweet. Microphone number five, last question. Hello, I'd like to know is there some particular cases that you could give anecdotal stories that surveillance was used for

marketing purposes? Well I can mention some. I think that I mean actually I think that like the kind of surveillance that we have in our browsers all the time that monitors our habits

and our consumption patterns in order to sell us stuff. But I have a quick other example on free wi-fi. Usually when you have to sign like when you are in a public space in a public park and a company agrees and give you or provide your city, your small city of free wi-fi

in public spaces there's no such thing as free wi-fi if it's provided by a company and usually what it does is captures the data of all the people attending a certain and monitors and quantifies the data of all the people using this service for free and then they get it back in

sophisticated forms of advertising that like benefit at the end consumption of certain kind of products yeah. But some particular cases of surveillance used in that manner surveillance deployed by the city? As surveillance deployed by the city is usually when

it's in combination it's in public-private partnership but I can tell the case in Guatemala but you know everything happens in Guatemala so it's not the best case but usually like what the municipality was doing is they were selling the data of high-profile people

movements that they capture with the camera to blackmail politically. So they will get collect all who went to which place at what time the video because all the all the cities covered with cameras and that was done with the purpose of political blackmail.

Unfortunately time is up are you still available if people have more questions? Can I still find you essentially? Are you still at a conference if people have more questions?