The state of digital rights in Latin America
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Transcript: English(auto-generated)
00:00
This is our next talk coming up. It's Sofia Tseli with the state of digital rights in
00:21
Latin America. Sofia, up to you. Thank you so much. Thank you, everyone, for tuning in today. As Elwes said, my name is Sofia Tseli, and I'm a cryptographic researcher, mainly a cloud player, but I also led the development of the direct messaging protocol. And I also research about the state
00:44
of the digital rights in Latin America, and specifically, I research around the usage of digital tools to enhance gender-based violence in Latin America, specifically. But today, I was wanting to talk to you about the state of digital rights in Latin America, and this is a really big topic, so I will try to just cover the basics of all of it.
01:07
So don't expect that much in depth of the topics that I'm going to talk about. It's more of an outline so people are more aware of the state of it. So let's start with one of the most interesting questions we're talking about, the state of
01:23
the digital rights in Latin America, to actually talk about what is Latin America. And for example, to just ‑‑ because people already have a preconceived notion of what Latin American is. But actually, to Latin Americans or people living in South America or Central America or the Caribbean or the south of North America, this is not an
01:44
easy question, because it's a lot of questions around when actually Latin America was created as a concept and what actually means as a concept to be a Latin America. Does it actually mean to have some certain cultural background that is shared between each other? What actually
02:01
does this mean? And actually, in certain parts of what some people will actually think is Latin America, some people actually don't think they belong to Latin America, because sometimes they're associated to be part of Latin America, to have a background of being colonized by European powers and also have an indigenous background. And
02:24
certain people in Latin America that think themselves as white don't want to belong to Latin America because of the reasons. So, speaking of Latin America, Sanosha is a controversial topic in itself, in Latin America itself. But on this talk, I'm going to speak about and be referring to the Latin American region, specifically to countries
02:44
belonging to the ‑‑ to South America, to Central America and the Caribbean and to the south of North America, mainly to Mexico. And when I talk about Latin American as a region, I'm not including French Guiana, because that's part of the La France de Autremer and it's part of the Schengen area. So, that's the first question that
03:04
now sort of has been answered at least for this talk. And to actually give a little bit of background on why I think it's actually important to talk about the state of digital rights in Latin America, it's mainly one of the reasons why I wanted to give this talk at CCC was mainly because sometimes in these kind of conferences, we hear a lot
03:24
about the state of digital rights, mainly in the global north. But sometimes we are oblivious to actually what is happening in the global south. And it's the same kind of a state or the same kind of ideas and notions that we have for digital rights apply the same to the global south. And in this case, I'm just going to be focusing specifically on one region of the global south, mainly Latin America. But they will
03:45
be needed actually more research and more actually people talking about other regions of the world. I wanted to actually start with the specific instance of something that happened
04:02
in Latin America. The reason why I'm going to highlight this specific instance is because sometimes we think that this kind of surveillance or this kind of censorship of the kind of going against human rights only happens sometimes in the global north because we sort of associated that the transgression between the transgression between the digital rights
04:29
only happens between spies and big countries, but that's not actually the case. And in this historical context, I'm going to show you why it also happens sort of in Latin America. So, what is the scene? The scene right now is the Cold War. And this is
04:48
historical instance in which there were two superpowers basically fighting for economic, political, and even cultural, I would say, around the world. And the two superpowers were the Soviet Union and the United States of America. During that time, during the 70s and
05:04
the 80s, Latin America sort of elected a certain socialist, and I put socialist in quotes, socialist governments to be the representatives of the people. And I said socialist because we have a specific notion of what socialism is, but it wasn't a specific notion of socialism
05:21
in the Latin American context. So, these governments were actually elected. But certain other powers that exist also in the Americas didn't actually like that these governments were elected or even they didn't like what happened in Cuba, mainly the Cuban revolution. So, in order to prevent for all the Latin American countries turning completely socialist,
05:43
what happened is that the United States backed a campaign of political repression and state of terror involving intelligence operation and assassination of opponents mainly in Latin America. And in fact, the position of many of the socialist governments that were elected in Latin America. And this backed campaign of political repression happened in several countries
06:06
in Latin America, mainly Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Bolivia, Brazil, Ecuador, and Peru. And the involvement of the United States was not only about backing them economically, but they actually provided planning, military cooperation, training on torture, technical support, and
06:24
supply military aid. And this happened during various administrations of the United States, mainly during the administration of Johnson, Nixon, Paul, Carter, and Reagan. This not only happened between corporations between these Latin American countries and the United States, but it also happened between the same Latin American countries. So, the same countries
06:44
that I just mentioned also cooperated between each other to provide themselves with actual good planning on how to efficiently torture and efficiently kill political opponents to the regimes that were installed by the United States against the socialist governments.
07:02
During the 70s and the 80s, not much was known actually in how these operations were actually carried out. Of course, it was known that a lot of people were killed and a lot of people were disappeared and a lot of people were tortured. But it was only until December of 1992 that Martin Alma and José Agustín Fernández dropped to an obscure police station
07:22
in the suburb of La Mare in Asunción in Paraguay. And why they dropped into this station was because a whistleblower actually sketched out the plan of where this police station was. So, they drove to it. And what they found is that they found a cache of 700,000 documents
07:41
pioneered to the ceiling of something that later was going to be called the terror archive. Which was a complete paper database of the interrogation of records of the interrogation, torture, and surveillance that was conducted under the military dictatorship of Alfredo Stroessner, which was the Paraguayan dictatorship during the
08:03
military intervention of Latin America. What they found out is that mainly it was informants, telephoto cameras, watch apps to build this paper database of everyone that was viewed as a threat. And I highlight here that everyone that was viewed as a threat was not actually only people who were actually deemed to be actual political opponents to the military
08:25
regimes during those times. But it was mainly everyone that they thought was actually some kind of threat. It could have been artists creating art that was against the regime. It could have been students that for some reason decided to read Karl Marx.
08:40
So, all of these people that somehow were associated with socialism or somehow were deemed to be opponents of the regime in that time were targeted as threats. And it was not only them, but also the friends and their associates. So, they created a database of not only the people that they think they were a threat to the military regime, but also of
09:01
any kind of friend or any kind of family that they have. The archive was a total of 60,000 documents and it compromised 593,000 microfilm pages. The result of all of this and of all of the database and all of the killings was that up to 50,000 people were killed.
09:22
30,000 disappeared. And 400,000 were arrested and imprisoned. And until this day, if you go to any of the countries that I have just mentioned, you will see several families of actually of people or relatives of people who actually disappeared. And until these days, there's a lot of countries in which a lot of people still ask for the bodies of the people who disappear
09:44
or at least to know what happened to the people to disappear. So, while I'm speaking about this, the reason why I'm speaking about this is because we sometimes think that these things don't happen at this level. That people don't get disappeared because there exists a paper database of you that showcases yourself as a threat for some reason, for whatever reason,
10:06
just because you somehow read some book that someone deemed that it should be unacceptable to be read during that time. Which was what happened in Latin America at that time. And the other reason why I'm showcasing this is because sometimes we think that countries only
10:21
surveil their own citizens. Well, this is not true. It was even true in the 70s and the 80s that several different countries that had military governments at that time were surveilling the citizens of other countries. And these countries were sharing these databases between each other. And the other reason why I'm highlighting this is because this was not like stall or solitary operation that was happening because these Latin American countries decided to
10:45
do it. This was backed up and actually planned by the United States. It's well known and the victims of the torture have actually stated several times that, for example, when they were being tortured, there was always the presence of a United States person in the room actually training people on how to efficiently track people, training people on how to efficiently
11:06
create this database. What will happen today? Today will be that this kind of paper databases that existed at that time will be much more efficient because people are using the digital tools every day. And it will be the same that they will be backed by some
11:22
power, some more powerful country that will have an interest in the economic and political scenario of several different countries. So, today there's much they will be much worse. But the reason why I wanted to highlight this is to actually show you a historical instance when indeed this happened and that it could indeed happen in the future as well.
11:44
So, what's the theme when talking about the digital rights of Latin American countries? In this talk I decided to talk about four main topics that I think are really important when talking about digital rights in the region. The first one is to talk about what kind of privacy laws exist on those countries. The second one is talking about the types
12:01
of cohesion that exist in these countries by the usage of digital tools. The third one is to talk about the state of surveillance of those countries. And the fourth one is to actually talk what kind of secure communication are actually provided in those countries. So, let's start with the first one, which is actually the privacy laws. And on this,
12:22
since the arrival of GDPR has been like a hot topic for now some years. But indeed, this is not something that just was just created by the arrival of GDPR. But indeed, for example, in the human rights, it's actually defined, privacy is actually defined as a human right. And because of this, most of Latin American constitutions actually provide some
12:42
certain kind of protection towards privacy because it's part of the human rights. Mostly in the past the Constitution was only focusing on privacy as part of the nondigital world. But as with the arrival of the digital world, privacy is also applied to the digital world. Since 2010, 62 new countries have enacted data protection laws. And every country,
13:07
as I have said, in Latin America, has some form of private data protection. In Latin America, the first country to actually have a privacy law was Chile in 1999. Followed by Uruguay, Mexico, Peru, Brazil. Even though it was created in 2018, some parts of the law still need to be
13:31
debated. And some parts of the law were actually vetoed by the current president. And there has been some pushback around that law for a while now. Other countries that have actually a privacy
13:44
law are Barbados and Panama. One of the questions that you can ask yourself when actually talking about privacy laws in Latin America, if this is actually a phenomenon in itself, or it's just like something that has been inspired because of the arrival of GDPR. Most of the cases that we have actually seen, it's actually mostly inspired by GDPR because
14:03
it's mostly what is right now in fashion, so to say. But it actually needs to actually happen, still a lot of research to actually say that this is a phenomenon of their own or that these privacy laws are actually thinking of the reality of Latin America on their own and not just taking some other privacy laws from other countries. So, the first question that actually
14:24
needs to be addressed when talking about privacy laws in the Latin American context itself is to talk about what is privacy itself. And this is something that now scholars and researchers are actually talking much more around in the sense that even though for one region, privacy will
14:41
mean something because of the cultural background of this region. For another region, maybe privacy will not be the same because of the different culture meaning of privacy depending on the region or the world that you're talking about. So, for example, something that still needs to be researched is what actually means what privacy actually means for a Latin American context. What
15:03
does Latin America actually think of privacy? The other thing that actually gives a lot of talking when you're talking about privacy laws is what actually applies to privacy. Privacy is only the content of communication that gets the status of being private or if anything,
15:20
for example, the network transmissions are actually also part of privacy. And this is something that's still being talked about. The same when talking about privacy laws in Latin America, actually thinking about what data is defined as private as I have said. And what about metadata or subscriber data? And what about linked data? Metadata is usually
15:42
what the status they usually define it as, like, auxiliary data that gets created during, for example, having a conversation. Subscriber data, sometimes they define it as the auxiliary data that the initiator actually created. And linked data is more about this data that can actually be linked to an individual and used, for example, for advertisement.
16:01
Several of the different laws in several Latin American countries have different approach to all of these definitions. But most of them are mainly inspired by the same GDPR definitions. What about anonymous data? Certain of the privacy laws indeed have in Latin America, indeed have some kind of mention of anonymous data. I think in the Brazilian one, for example,
16:24
they say that anonymous data should be private. By some reason, for example, you are able to deanonymize the data by using the same mechanism that the service that anonymized the data used. You manage to deanonymize it and then the data is also considered private.
16:43
But if, like, for example, you took the data created by some service and you later, by using a completely different mechanism than the one provided by the service, you manage to deanonymize it, then that data is not private anymore. And this is sort of mentioned a little bit in a vague terms, but at least it's there. So, I just wanted to highlight these questions
17:06
in the sense to actually say that most of the time when you read the privacy laws of different Latin American countries, the sort of notions are sort of vaguely mentioned, but not that much going in depth with the different notions. One important thing to actually
17:21
think about when talking about Latin American privacy laws is what about the data that gets sent or transmitted to other countries? Because one of the realities of Latin America is that there are some services that provide that provide certain kind of services in Latin America that are Latin American in itself. Meaning that they are like companies that were created in
17:44
Latin American countries and where the data is stored in the same country. But most of the time in Latin America, the consumers of applications mainly use social media that is created in other countries and where the data goes to another country. Or communication systems that go to
18:01
another country. Most of the privacy laws in Latin America actually says that if the data gets transmitted to another country, that this other country should have the same level of protection as the one that is given in the owner's country. But even though this is
18:22
in most of the privacy laws, in practice, this actually does not happen. And until this day, I have not actually seen anyone actually asking any of the companies that we use for social media or for communication to actually surrender the data or to say that they are not applying the same level of protection that Latin American laws provide for their own data.
18:43
So, that is still in the law. But in practice, not much happening. Another question that you should ask yourself when talking about privacy laws is what about the data that is already stored? So, one of the things is that even though this privacy laws exist, even though they existed for some long time, still certain countries and certain companies in other countries
19:07
have been installing this data for a really long time. And we don't know if there will be at any point any kind of request to actually say, yes, surrender the data for all our citizens that you have a store for this amount of time. That doesn't have happened so far.
19:23
Now, let's talk about the second topic that I was outlining in the introduction. The second topic is the times of cohesion. What kind of cohesion actually exists in Latin America in regards to digital rest and in regards specifically to freedom of expression of the current state of what happened in COVID 19 and about gender based violence by using digital tools. So,
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the first thing about the health system and COVID 19. So, this is a really complex topic, but I will just try to highlight certain points about instances in which digital tools are being used to actually diminish the rights that people have to other things. Specifically,
20:05
something digital tools have been used to diminish the rights of people to the health system and to the education system. So, one instance of this happening, for example, is by the usage of biometrics, which is on a rise in Latin America, specifically in Chile and in Brazil. One of the proposals, for example, for Chile was to use biometrics during health
20:27
checks. Meaning that you will have access to certain public systems and to certain to certain health checks only by surrendering the biometrics of yourself.
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This actually doesn't apply to the Latin American region in the sense that, for example, in the rural areas, most of the people that were asked to surrender the fingerprints, because they work the field or because they sometimes have some kind of disabilities, the fingerprints could not be read because there was no fingerprint or because the fingerprint was really difficult to be read. What this means is that the health system became unfair in itself
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because the people were not able to access a health system anymore because they could not really surrender the biometrics because the idea of biometrics didn't match the current reality. And this is something that we will talk during this talk quite a lot, that sometimes in Latin
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American governments, they take one technology because they think it's cool or it's what other countries right now are using, but they don't think of what it means to actually apply this technology in a Latin American reality. Not an instance in which biometrics are actually abused in Latin America, and this is an abuse that is happening not because of Latin American
21:42
governments, or maybe it is in a way, but mainly because when Latin Americans have to travel to another country for tourism or for working or for whatever reasons, they usually have to apply for a visa, for the United States. And most of the times they're asked to surrender the biometrics at the time of applying for the visa or sometimes at the time of crossing the border.
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It's not really known what happens with the biometrics of the people who are being asked to surrender them for the visas or the legality of actually all of this. It's not known where is this stored. And in some instances, even when you are surrendering your application for your
22:23
visas and surrendering your biometrics, you're also asked to sort of surrender your social media in the sense that most of the times in order to be guaranteed to be given a visa, you have to sort of know that your social media is going to be examined and it's going to be checked that you don't have anything that the country that you're willing to travel to deems
22:43
bad. But coming back to the health system, sometimes in the health system, for example, the reason why, for example, Latin Americans use social media quite a lot is because sometimes the social media is the only option that they have. And this you will see in a few slides that
23:01
I will talk about this in the future. But sometimes because Latin America has an unfairness between what kind of discourse gets pushed in the mass media, what happens is that minorities usually go to social media to actually try to put themselves in the discourse or to actually have support from other people or to showcase what kind of fairness is happening to them.
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Which is which is bad in itself because this is the only way that they can publish what is happening to themselves. And at the same time, they are surrendering the information to social media companies that exist in other countries. So, in the case of the health system, for example,
23:41
this happens quite a lot with people who are HIV positive in the sense that because they don't have a support from the local governments, from the local Latin American governments, they use social media to actually find psychological support or to find any kind of support. Or even to actually find any way to buy the medicine that they need. Because the
24:00
government is not providing the medicines that they need. What they do is that they have created their own market in which they can buy the medicines that they need because the government is not providing these. What in reality this makes is that there is an unregulated market for medicines. And there's distortion and, of course, there's data that is being stored in
24:24
the social media of these companies that exist outside of Latin America about the health status of the people suffering from this. The same happened during COVID 19 in which mainly all of the health system of all Latin American countries collapsed. And what happened
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is that there was a lack of medicines. And people started selling medicine, again, through social media. Or oxygen tanks or other kind of ways. That's the only way that people could actually sometimes get medicines through the usage of social media. And this, again, poses the question that this was the only way that people could actually access the health
25:02
system. And at the same time, they were giving away the private information and the health information to companies that exist outside of the Latin American countries because it was the only way in which they could access some kind of health checks. Just to give you an example in a specific example and a study in 2019, showcased in Ecuador 10.7% of people between
25:28
the ages of 15 and 49 are defined as digital illiterates. And only 41.4% has access to a smartphone. And there's more access to smartphones and in general to the Internet in
25:41
European areas. And there's more access to smartphones from men than from women and other genders. This is really important to highlight, especially when talking about COVID 19. Because one of the proposals that the Latin American governments have had is that in order to know how much people have been infected with COVID, you should install an application on your phone
26:03
that actually tracks your movements. And these, of course, have privacy implications for your data around your location. But it also doesn't really make sense in a Latin American scenario because most of the people don't actually have a smartphone. So, actually asking people to install an application for COVID 19 when they don't have a
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smartphone or asking people to start an application to, for example, schedule health checks doesn't make sense in Latin America. And just makes it wider the unfairness of the health system itself. And this is, again, an example of the unfair of the ideas that sometimes local
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Latin American governments have that they just see that other countries are actually creating an application for tracking the COVID 19. But it doesn't really make sense into a Latin American reality. So, yeah. And another topic related to cohesion and unfairness is gender
27:03
based violence. One study of the World Health Organization in 2002 showcased that gender based violence is the main cause of death of women in the world. And that 23% of women worldwide have reported some kind of digital gender violence. For example, in the Latin America, every 71 hours a woman is killed. And it's these women that get killed in
27:27
Ecuador, it's not because someone, for example, was trying to steal something from them, but they were killed because they were women. So, this is often times called a femicide. Latin American countries are pretty much sexy. So, as I said, most of the minorities in Latin
27:46
America don't have a way to express their struggles or to gather support through mass media or through the discourse or the main discourse that happens in the countries. So, what they do is that they switch to social media or any other kind of digital to sort of empower
28:02
the struggle that they are living. But what happens is that because they have been using social media or they have been using digital tools, some other groups have actually targeted them through the Internet and actually surveilled their usage of social media. They have
28:21
created strategies for hate speech, unauthorized determination of intimate images, cyber sexual harassment, trafficking of their identity and censorship. So, if you talk to any person or activist who is actually working on gender based activism or an LGBTI plus activism, you will see that they are always targeted
28:43
by the usage of social media. And there's actually on some instance that I talked to some activists, there was actually a showcase that right wing parties and right wing people actually create trainings on how to actually harass activists by using social media.
29:02
One important case to highlight here, and it's again from Ecuador, is the case of Juliana Campoverde, a woman that was killed by a Christian pastor. And what this Christian pastor did was that he hacked into the social media of this woman to actually try to convince the family that she was not disappeared. And this was actually at the
29:24
beginning not even taking into account by the court, but later by actually by pressuring it, it was actually taking into account. As I said, mainly the people, the minorities who actually try to be actively ‑‑ actively fight for the rights of women or LGBTI
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plus Latin America get a lot of hate speech. They always get the fresh sharing of the photography, monitoring, commenting, reporting every post. They send masturbation videos of men. And what also happens, and in one instance that I was helping one woman, for example,
30:04
all of their photographs were taken from the social media. And it was specific men created art based on them. And there was sexual ‑‑ of sexual nature of these photographers that this person took from her account. And that happens all the time. And
30:21
most of the time when women or other groups actually try to publicly say that this is what is happening to them, or they go into the judicial system to say that this is happening to them and that it's unfair and illegal, most of the time they are diminished because they say that this is just hysteria of women. In the case of grooming, this specifically happens
30:44
in Latin America for teenagers and for children. And what the research has shown is that it happens through the usage of social media for teenagers and the usage of games for children. One important thing to note here is that in most of the countries, it has been said that one of the reasons why we should break into an encryption is because
31:05
they're trying to find predators that have ‑‑ or child sexual harassment that operate at a level that sometimes is international. And while it's true that sometimes they find the sexual predators, what happens is that this person gets locked or something similar, but
31:22
not really a reparation for the people who were harassed in global south countries. So, yeah. And as I said, there's massive attacks against people fighting for rights specific to gender. In one instance, for example, we know that they were even giving
31:40
like training sessions for how to censor people ‑‑ activists that were working in gender‑based rights. For example, there was one instance in which they were given seminars on how to efficiently target and how to efficiently send like memes and create sexual imagery of this person. So, they will silence themselves in the activist
32:05
plans. So, the goal is with the silence and intimidation. In the specific context of domestic gender‑based violence, it doesn't happen as often highlighted in the global north that it happens often by installing, for example, more in the cell phones or in the devices of the
32:21
victims. That doesn't happen a lot. What happens most of the time is that the password gets stolen by cohesion or because the person sort of guessed. Or what also happens is that most of the time in domestic abuse cases, what happens is that the perpetrator will
32:40
take away the devices of the victim. They will take away their computer or their smartphones or whatever they have instead of to isolate the victim. So, it's not much more about installing malware as it is in global north countries. But in this case, there's a lot that is actually missing. And there's a lot of research that is needed around the topic.
33:01
There's a lot of research to actually call this as it is. This is actually targeted surveillance. Even though some people have actually not called it that way. Because they say that this is just activists being targeted. Or this is just activists that are complaining too much. Or this is, you know, the state of the world in which obviously if you're a feminist,
33:22
you will get all of this targeted harassment. But that's not true. This is actually what the research has actually shown in Latin America is that this is actually targeted harassment around groups. So, there are seminars to actually train how to efficiently do this. There are Facebook groups and private WhatsApp groups in which the social media of activists
33:44
share. And people are encouraged to sexually harass or harass in any way these people. There's something that is missing that is an interesting research to actually do is to actually find out how the campaign of the homosexualization clinics happen in Latin America.
34:01
They usually happen over social media. What is the homosexualization clinics? There's basically some clinics that exist in Latin America that they say there are clinics for drug related issues. So, you recover your drug addiction. But in reality, what they are is that there are clinics in which LGBTI A plus people are actually kidnapped and tortured until they
34:23
become straight. What actually means becoming straight, I don't know. But they are actually tortured. Many cases they are raped. And this happens all over Latin America. And the way that these clinics are showcased or advertised is through the usage of social media. So, it will be really interesting to show to have a research around how what are actually the
34:44
strategies that these people are making by the usage of these tools. And the same for abortion clinics. And abortion clinics, in quotes. Because abortion is mostly illegal in Latin America with the exception of Uruguay and since yesterday, Argentina. But what they do is that
35:03
sometimes the university forums in social media, they advertise these abortion clinics, which are not really abortion clinics, but are like just places where women go to think to have a safe abortion. But it's actually places where they either convince women to not abort or try to kidnap them so they don't abort. This will be an interesting research to actually do. And if
35:26
you want to know more details about gender based violence and how it's actually executed in Latin America, have an upcoming talk specifically this. But let's move on to another topic. And the topic is surveillance. As I said, when talking about activists, women's activists,
35:44
and LGBTIA plus activists, and certain of the different activists that have already said that these kind of minorities get all the time targeted surveillance. Even if people don't want to call it surveillance itself, it is surveillance of these groups and targeted harassment of them.
36:05
But to the most classical surveillance that people have in their mind, the surveillance that is either mass surveillance or targeted surveillance or political opponents and human rights activists, let's talk it now in this point. So, surveillance is also a question that has been
36:21
asked when talking about privacy laws in Latin America. One of the interesting debates that happened around that time was what is surveillance? If it's only like if you have the data of one and you're reading it as a human, is that surveillance or that also includes, for example, if there's machine reading? Meaning that if it's gathering your information and later creating
36:43
advertisement based on it, is that surveillance or not? And there's still some ongoing debate around that. I really like the definition made in this report, which is really good. So, you should read it if you're interested. In which surveillance is not only about private reading, private communication for another human being, but also collecting, monitoring, intercepting,
37:05
analyzing it, using, preserving it, retaining it. And what I like about this definition is also that it says past, present or future. Because surveillance is not only about what is right now happening, but also how much it has happened in the past. In Latin American reality itself,
37:24
Latin American governments oftentimes allow some form of white happening or surveillance in the face of crime. In many of the definitions that I have found, they allow in the face of crime if this is a serious crime, if it's terrorism, or if it's an investigation. What exactly is a serious
37:42
crime is not actually defined. Or when does a crime become serious? What actually defines terrorism itself sometimes is not actually properly defined. Or when to aid an investigation is actually a good case for actually having white happening. It's actually also not really defined.
38:02
Measures of all the means of surveillance is not really there. So, for example, there's not really an instance when they say that malware installation is allowed. But in practice, as you will see in a few slides, that actually occurs. And most of the times when there is malware that is being installed to target political opponents or human rights activists, it's oftentimes
38:21
malware and software that is sold by Global North companies. Which opens up many questions that I will cover in a few minutes. In the case of location tracking, also some kind of access is provided depending on the Latin American country. In Colombia, for example, just to give an example, it is required that telecommunications services, the two main ones in Colombia, Claro and Movistar,
38:46
and network providers, can over location data authorities. In Ecuador, it's actually really easy to get location data about someone. It was an incident, for example, if you go to the police and you say that someone is disappeared, they will actually turn location tracking for that
39:01
person in order to find it pretty easily. But something that is oftentimes found in most of the laws of Latin America is that, well, it says that authorities can get access to location tracking. There's no clear distinction around which authorities actually have access to this location tracking. Or even more, if the authorities share between other authorities,
39:24
how is the sharing actually happening? That's not really defined. In the case of Brazil, Colombia, Chile, Mexico, Peru, Honduras, they all have that obligation which requires that they log vast amounts of data about the users and provide law enforcement access to it
39:43
if they need it. In the case, for example, of an investigation of a serious crime. In practice, this is really oblivious to the user. Sometimes there's sometimes some kind of notification that says that we're using a service, this data is locked. But most
40:02
of the time the user doesn't really know that this is indeed happening. And if you ask an everyday person in Latin America, if they know that their data could be potentially used later to aid an investigation or that it could be given the authorities, most of the people will not really actually know that that's indeed what is happening. And again, there's no clear
40:21
distinction around which authorities have actually access to it. Let's talk about in general about the question of surveillance, if there's actually mass surveillance in Latin America. What has been shown in contrast to the global north is not this traditional instance of mass surveillance in the sense that they have not been really that much leaked documents that showcase
40:42
that there's a plan from the governments to actually surveil all the citizens at this scale. But there has been very much instances of targeted surveillance. It could be and it's mainly reasonable to say that there could be mass surveillance, but at least so far we have not
41:02
had that much of examples of it. So, notable examples of actually targeted surveillance are software installed by Columbia, that's called Esperanza, and the other one that was sold by Berin Systems, that is called Puma. And this was a spy software for telephone communication. And it was targeted towards journalists, political opposition parties, human
41:24
rights activists, and this was all done during the Alvaro U.S. government in Colombia. Most of the time the software or the reason why they tried to justify that they bought this malware and they bought this software is because they tried to help anti kidnapping operations, anti extortion operations, anti terrorism, anti drug trade. And this is a common
41:43
thing all over the world that the reason why they say that they break into an encryption order, that they need to buy malware is because they're trying for a criminal investigation. This is a laugh on the Canada Center for Global Security Studies Munk School of Global Affairs. Actually, we build the systems of command and control servers from Team Spike,
42:03
the government is a national, remote, civilian software in Mexico and Panama. And, of course, the spy was developed by a German based company. And the same happened with the hacking team in other countries, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, Honduras, Mexico and Panama. And it was the
42:22
same. It was mainly targeted to political opponents. It was targeted to human rights activists. It was targeted for journalists. How it was fought, that raises a lot of questions of why the Global North countries and these companies were actually selling this malware to governments. In the legality of it, these companies couldn't actually sell it as it
42:42
is. So, they tried to find a legal way to actually sell it the way that they found it by using intermediaries. Mainly, for example, in the case of Ecuador, there was a Colombian based company that was the one that was buying the software from the Global North companies
43:02
and then reselling it to Colombia and Ecuador. Another question is, if it was safe to use, in the sense, was this malware really doing only spying on the political opposition or whatever they wanted to spy and it was not backfiring and also logging data of the Latin
43:24
as we know now, it was also doing that. So, there was not even a notion of the governments that bought this or what actually they were buying. And what about the reality? What about actually buying another software from another country to actually spy on your citizens? That
43:41
raises a lot of questions. In the case of secure messaging, what we have found is that there's not a lot of useful secure messaging in the sense of traditional secure messaging application that exists today. In the case of signal, in the case of wire, many people in Latin America use social media. If they're activists, they mostly use social
44:02
media because that's the only way, as they don't have access to mass media, the social media gives them a way to access to have a way to publish what they are doing in some kind of way. And the way that, for example, they operate, how they are going to create meetings, what kind of strategy they are developing is through the usage of WhatsApp groups.
44:24
There's not much useful signal that I have known of because it's not so known because it's too slow. Specifically when I have spoken with journalists in Latin America, they sometimes told me they don't use it because it's too slow because people cannot really send documents through signal because it will take forever. Because it's too difficult to use and people
44:43
say it and mostly because contacts do not use it. So, most of the people don't really use signal and so, therefore, they don't really use it. If your family or your friends don't use it, then you will not use it also. Something that is really used is Telegram because they have sort of a marketing campaign for Latin American activists. So, most of Latin
45:04
American groups actually use Telegram. Other secure messaging communication systems are used. You hardly see people using OTR or PGP because they are much more difficult to install. So, not really that much use. And what often happens, specifically, we are talking to activists
45:21
about the fight for indigenous rights is that they often don't have enough economic advantage to actually buy lots of smartphones and put signal into it or buy a lot of computers. What they do is oftentimes they have one desktop computer and they share it between each other. That's why they can't. So, in this case, there's another really good solution for secure messaging
45:44
for them. There's one instance in which you can actually say that there's a country who has actually asked WhatsApp to actually surrender encrypted data of someone to aid an investigation. In this case, it was Brazil between 2015 and 2016. And because WhatsApp refused to provide this
46:05
data, it was blocked during that time. Which to this day, there's still some debate about the legality of actually blocking it or not. So, as I'm running out of time, let's go directly to some conclusions. So, in conclusion, there's still a lot to actually think about
46:22
Latin America in terms of the digital tools and the privacy of them and the surveillance that you can actually make of them. And there's a need to actually be thinking about Latin American context and what means privacy to the region itself instead of just thinking that we need a lot. We're just going to just, you know, copy some of the same concepts and put the same into the Latin American concept and not work the same. The same in the context
46:44
of COVID that even though it's nice maybe to have tracking applications for COVID 19, if their privacy is preserving, of course. But maybe in the Latin American concept, it will not make sense because not a lot of people have actually access to one smartphone that they carry around all day. There's still a need to think about the data that's consumed
47:05
by other countries. So, mainly because most of the people in Latin America are using social media that is developed by other countries. And mainly they're using Facebook and WhatsApp. What actually means that the data gets stored in another country. We need to think about the
47:20
malware market and why certain companies from global north countries are actually selling this malware and what does it mean and, like, what legality has done, actually. What we know is that malware is mainly used for targeted surveillance, specifically for journalists. But it's highly used for digital gender-based violence. I know there's a lot of studies from the global north
47:43
for how malware is actually installed for malware and other kind of things. But it's not that much used for gender-based violence in Latin America. In Latin America, it's mostly about hacking social media accounts or, like, restricting the access to the device. We need more research to actually know how digital tools how harassment or digital tools
48:05
actually impact the minorities. What actually means, for example, for women's rights activists or LGBTAI activists to actually be harassed all the time and monitor all the activities through digital tools. And we also need to think there's a secure
48:24
messaging solution that actually works in Latin America for activists that sometimes don't have the same level of access to technology as they do have in the global north or the same access to the Internet in general, the connection of the Internet as in the global north. More details around all of this will be discussed actually at the panel that I will be
48:43
inviting you now to happen maybe in January and February and to actually talk to people who have been doing all of this research around what actually the findings are and what we can actually do to actually think about a specific way to create a secure messaging solution or to think about privacy in a Latin American context. Just some time of reference, if you want to
49:05
read about privacy laws, the same for surveillance, the same for cohesion. When we talk about domestic abuse, hate speech, gender-based violence, and all of this. With that, thank you very much. I don't know how the questions went, but yeah, thank you very much.
49:30
So, Vija, muchas gracias a ver esta presentación, muy enteresante. Thanks a lot for that really interesting presentation. There is still time for
49:44
some questions here. Use our RC jet. It's linked in the jet tab below in your video browser here. You can also go to Twitter and master on RC3-CSH would be the hashtag.
50:06
So far, let me quickly see. Yes, no questions, but I have a couple of questions. So, in the meanwhile, folks, if you're interested, send us your questions. They will be collected and forwarded by me. In the meanwhile, I have a couple of questions, let's say, to you until the others
50:29
come up with their questions. You said that police treats females, which have been harassed, when they go actually to indicate that there's something really going wrong as
50:44
historical beings. So, the question is for me, that's a typical, say, male reaction. So, what's the distribution between males and females in police, in jurisdiction, like for example, judges, lawyers, and so on and so forth. So, I suppose there is certain disequilibrium.
51:08
Yes, there is not a balance between the number of women in the police and in general, in the judicial system, in Latin American countries, even as far as going, for example,
51:21
women presidents in Latin America are hardly a thing. I can think of an instance in Argentina, in Chile, in Brazil. In my country, it has not been an Ecuadorian president, although it should have happened, because there was actually an Ecuadorian woman, she could have been the president, but they didn't allow her. Anyhow. But, yeah, there's always a
51:43
disadvantage about it, which actually asks the question if there will be women, more women in police or in legal authorities to actually believe women. That could certainly be the case, but it could also be certainly the case that even there were women, sometimes the women join mostly male-dominated fields. What happens is that they integrate into the same
52:04
pattern of thinking, so they get more easily, so they feel more is at comfort on the work that they are doing. So, that could also be that even there are women that will still be treating other women reporting back because they have integrated into the same
52:25
male thinking just to preserve the job. Okay. Well, that's a sad story, obviously. I mean, that's exactly the way it shouldn't work. Okay, we have some questions flowing in. So, the first one is, what is the reason for people not thinking about their own privacy?
52:44
What do you think about it? So, in general, I think that in Latin America, they're stealing digital tools. They're stealing this notion that you are actually being surveilled and that the data that you are giving to companies actually have some kind of cost or that it has some kind of, yeah, that it has some kind of cost. So, what people think
53:04
is that they only use social media as they will be using casual conversation. They could social media with that. For example, social media is the same as having a casual conversation with someone. Meaning that after I finish this casual conversation, it will go to the air and there's no record of it. So, there's this notion of that. There's still some need
53:24
to actually say, no, this actually is almost as writing something into a paper because it has the same level of storage. It's not like only talking. It's the same. So, that still needs to actually push into the agenda. Maybe in the same education system to actually set
53:40
the usage of social media or the usage of digital tools has indeed these actual implications. And this is to happen. I don't know if it's specific to Latin America. Certainly in Latin America happens. But I think it's also in the world that people treat the usage of specifically social media and WhatsApp as if it was like, you know, casual conversations. But it's not actually the case.
54:04
Great. Thanks for that elaborate answer. Oh, wow. Now it's going on. That's good. We are having the questions now. Can activists operate properly under the circumstances that they actually know that they're being spied on?
54:23
There's been some instances in which activists have been actually targeted and sort of been aware of this. There's a lot of journalists who have actually been aware of this. And in Ecuador, for example, what they started doing is that they started collecting the malware that they were sent. So, there's like a little collection of the malware that was
54:41
sent to them. And they sort of realized this. But there was no way, for example, they sort of figured out this later. At the time, they were already targeted. Because most of the time people don't have access in Latin America to antivirus software. Because it's really expensive and your company will not pay for it. Or sometimes you install
55:03
your antivirus software from buying it in an illegal way. The license in an illegal way, that happens a lot in Latin America. So, there's no way. In the case of sometimes when governments actually target political opposition or activists, sometimes they don't know exactly
55:26
how to target. So, there was one instance in one. There was one judge in Argentina who got killed. And when people analyzed his phone, they found out that he had malware installed. But the malware was not functioning because the malware was only to be used for a computer,
55:41
for a desktop computer, but not for the phone. So, even the government sent this malware to try to target him. But it was not efficient because it was not for the purpose that they wanted. So, sometimes even when governments buy this malware, they don't know exactly how it works. So, they just only send it. Is there a way that they can keep working? There's some ways that they can still work. But most of the time what
56:04
activists in Latin America use is mostly they use social media and WhatsApp. And they get infiltrated quite heavily in those groups so they can track. Most of the times what they do is that they have now created like a strategy on how to efficiently use social media and how to
56:21
use WhatsApp. And they actually need to come up with certain important decisions or certain important meetings. What they do is that they gather themselves in person rather than using any kind of digital tools. So, that's like a common thing that they prefer to meet in person rather than using any digital tool. Okay. Yeah. Okay. There's a question actually about
56:45
this panel you've mentioned. Folks out there are not quite sure how to find it. So, basically, if you can comment on that, that would be cool. Yeah. So, I'm still thinking of exactly what is going to happen. The idea is to have people from Article 19, from Carisma, from EFF. I did
57:04
something similar on an event about secure messaging. But it was with activists from Hong Kong. And this one is going to only be focused in Latin America. I will put on my Twitter because that's the way I put it. I usually send it also to mailing lists. Last time, I also sent it to the mailing list. But if people have an idea of what other mailing
57:25
lists I can advertise this to, I can also send it along. It's very in a happy way in the sense that it's very self-created. Nothing like advertised by the companies. So, yeah. Want to know about it? Tell us your Twitter. My Twitter is Klaus.
57:45
Just tell us. There you go. Perfect. That's the one we need. That's the one we need. Very good. Okay. Let me see. We still have a little bit of time left now. So, maybe another question. You were talking about data retention in several countries of
58:08
South America. Are they usually then requested by judges? Or do you have some information that this actually flows by some other weird, let's say, channels? It flows by a lot of weird channels.
58:24
Specifically, sometimes police has access to this data that gets stored if it's important for a crime. I don't know how much we're supporting companies. And that's a question to us in itself. For example, in the companies who have access to the data that's being stored
58:43
by the same companies. If there's like some kind of internal guidelines of how actually who has access, probably not. But usually the police is the one who has access. Or if it's in a serious crime, when I say serious crime, I mean something that gets more like public attention
59:02
or mass media attention. Usually it's the prosecution. Usually it's the judge. Those are the ones who have access. Okay. Okay. Yeah. We also got some tech comments here. Basically, one person is saying, well, would a cheap disposable life USB OS be of help for activists
59:23
over there? For people like Tails, Ninja OS or something like that? It will definitely be of help. There has been some instances in, for example, the tour projects actually trying to reach out to Latin American activists and actually helping them. And I know they have been doing lots of
59:42
good work around that area. With Tails, it's a little bit less. Because installing Tails for people, it's still a little bit scary. And sometimes they don't really know where they need to install Tails. And most of the operating systems that I have seen being used by activists, specifically indigenous activists in Latin America as well.
01:00:00
Windows. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's not the way, but the other operating systems, they're a little bit tougher to use. And plus you said people are very, very, um, let's call it illiterate when it comes to digital, uh, communication. I mean, they are using their phones and just think it vanishes in the air.
01:00:21
So I think it's really hard to communicate, um, use of those operating systems. I mean, there is also one, I mean, digital rights. Yes. That's also part of the, of the topic. Somebody's wondering if there are, uh, hints that manipulations were done on the level of, uh,
01:00:43
elections. Do you know anything about that? Yes. Specifically in Brazil, there's a really interesting cryptography by the name of Diego Arana, who actually made a huge research about the Brazilian elections. Um, in terms of COVID, actually, this is an interesting, really interesting question because some governments have actually been
01:01:03
proposing to do digital, um, ways to actually elect, uh, presidents, uh, to this day, they haven't come with a good proposal in terms of physical elections. There's always manipulation in Latin America, in my country, in Ecuador, there has been lots of scandals of actually physical manipulation of
01:01:21
elections when they create, uh, for, for, uh, when they toss out some like big containers of balance that they don't want. So even in the physical sense, there's still lots of attacks. Okay. Sophia, again, lots of things for this interesting hour with you,
01:01:43
uh, in the name of the audience and my name, which is Gracias. They can actually reach you through your contacts. Now back to the studio.