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So, again, this talk is
rebels is called rebel cities Toltz, a
global network of neighborhoods
and cities rejecting surveillance.
Um,
your speaker is Renata
Avila.
She's a human rights lawyer.
She represented Julian Assange and
WikiLeaks
and is a board member of the Creative
Commons and chairperson of Creative
Commons, Guatemala.
And yet the Congress
also to find some people that would like
to get involved with the Courage
Foundation campaign. So that's one of
your things. Go find you 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 not 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.
It is challenging because I know
that most of you know
far more about technology and its
Deuce's, but I know that I can contribute
something to you today.
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
tools that you can do locally
in order to challenge surveillance.
So the proposal of this dog
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 included
constantly, like the typical day
for a Latin American involves
so many checkpoints, points of control
and things that we 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 you will have your I.D.
There is a biometric I.D.
scanned and stored somewhere.
Most of the countries do not have even
data protection laws and so on.
So basically
also another another layer
of worry is start 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 and 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 notes 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, corrupt in many, many other
things, media.
But I think that this year and
the election of Donald Trump and many
other things that happen as show that
the rich
so-called democratic countries are not
immune to to that.
And it is there it
was just not as visible.
So but
so I started OK,
activism is great.
But I have been working on 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 examples of communities
and networks that where
there activism is working
even with little resources
and with very high opponents.
So I found inspiration
home at home.
And that's long before
standing rock situation.
The U.S. indigenous people,
because of a
legal frame and 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 the right they have been
exercising community
processes of of of
either accepting or rejecting mining
projects, fracking projects, and
any project that might affect
the place where they live.
They were like the the first
hint of inspiration for me to prepare
this stuff, because, I mean, they
most of the indigenous communities doing
this live below the poverty
line, most of the indigenous communities
that are doing these exercises and
rejecting things that will
bring to their communities a relative
wealth, economic wealth, but
will damage the rest,
are doing a very courageous,
constant exercises of democracy
and.
A very powerful multinational's
by getting like
active, but
that's not new and that's that's
happening more and more and more is very
visible because, of course, your prayers
were not reported.
And, of course, they are under great
stress. My second inspiration was
what happened and is happening in Europe,
and it's very exciting.
Is that really radical majors
that care a
place of public interest above
a financial gain or
getting elected?
And it is amazing how well we
we have been tricked.
I think we have been tricked to believe
that you cannot that government is bad,
that you can you shouldn't get involved
in politics and you cannot change
anything. In fact, you can change
a lot if you are if you are
inside power.
And in Spain, this is 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 a
policy of refugees welcome
even even if her governments,
their 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 and
I bear with me.
I'm getting closer to our issues.
The next thing and that was superexcited
is like, OK, a city
can do a lot, but a network
of cities can send a powerful message
to those 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
to and neighborhoods to do to change
things. Is there free
tip zones?
60 municipalities
in Europe declared themselves
as cities
like challenging that that tip.
I think that 60 municipalities, if
you if you combine
all the services that they
purchase, all their 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,
most of the most populated cities
of Europe can can
really shift an election
that at some point
then that's my other inspiration.
She's Nerida Cifuentes.
She's a parliamentarian from Bolivia.
And she is my age.
I when I read the list
of achievements of Neruda and
my tiny, tiny list of achievements,
I feel like like really, really,
really. I have done nothing with my
life.
She's she's a community
leader and radio activist.
And she got elected to the assembly
in Bolivia, an indigenous woman.
Imagine all the barriers that she had to
defeat and she became free software
activist.
I know that we
haven't heard so much of all 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 work the narrator has done
on the local level is to
design a
complete whole
framework for free software, free hard
work and digital sovereignty.
And what is very interesting is, OK,
it might it might be super impractical.
It might be like really difficult to
implement in Bolivia.
But what it what it's really important
for me is that
as she departed from
what she experience 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
if in Bolivia, someone
who only adopted late in
life technology is thinking about that,
why why we are not thinking on more
proactive, positive agendas around
our issues.
And my last inspiration was,
of course, the mayor of Barcelona at
Akolo, and 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 thinks about herself.
And what she had on 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 she
comes from social movements.
So she she was this welcoming
authority that was willing to listen.
And that really started the process to
renovating and
examining and taking a critical approach
on what what kind of technology,
what was purchased.
And then getting
closer to the topics and
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
to my my my
local neighborhood, because
bad policy is contagious.
Not only courage is contagious, but
policy and bad public
policy.
When money is involved, it really
gets it.
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 in in
Latin America, in many countries, even
here, municipalities and 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 control
technologies and even vendors of these
fake technologies to
improve bad neighborhoods and so on,
that arrive with very shiny videos
and brochures trying
to convince them that this is good and
they will get results and they will
it will it will be good for
the city to adopt this technology.
And technology like
adopting a technological solution
usually
sounds good when you are trying to sell
to sell your political project,
usually in the in in
each and every government plan.
Nowadays, you hear
the mention of technology, technology,
the analogy 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 stay in this
in this imbalance
in the power of those taking those
decisions.
So.
The thing is,
I wanted to make that very clear, that
when when 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 due to quantified
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,
in in all the surveillance
technology and all the sensors
around us in the cities.
And that that could be like
that, like better parks,
better libraries, better, better public
spaces for youth at risk and
by the benefits
of these kind of places are.
A 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 we had open doors,
then all the
doors were secured, then
cables, electrified cables we put
around the houses and then a little
camera was installed.
Then you needed a guard for
every every four blocks.
And so we leave more and
more and more trapped into that
and less and less secure.
16 Jesse Muqtedar,
16 murders per day.
So it is 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 mesure
and to target
a certain certain behaviors
and to monitor specifically
certain neighborhoods that are usually
those are the poorest and those
needing other kind
of intervention.
So
I
move into the practical aspect.
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 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
reference neighborhoods and cities
against surveillance is to make an
inventory of all the surveillance that
has been like installed over the last
five years and to look into
the into the kind of
contracts have the cost
and efficiency of the surveillance
installed and.
If it's not working and or
if it's not even data available
of that, get rid of that.
If if a person in in
in a position of power is
able to decide, get rid of the
system, it is important to
it is important to make it the one of the
first interventions in the government
exposing to the to the city
how it is a waste of time and money.
The other thing.
The other thing that we can
also dismantle the surveillance systems
in our neighborhoods and buildings,
I don't know how 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 in for a while in Belgrade
and I don't understand Cyrillic.
So it was there was a notice in my
building saying I didn't I
couldn't read.
And he was inviting all the 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 it means the meeting
because I came back from a travel
and there was a big camera installed in
front in front of my door and and
sometimes out of laziness,
out of apathy, of the lack of time.
We do not participate in this kind of
decisions.
And then surveillance is deployed
in private places.
And then we do not even question
who 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 and
they regulate, like whether you can
walk your dog here or
whether you can plant cactus or
whatever here, like
the space, the public space
in the city's heavily regulated.
But surprisingly, cities
are not regulating this
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
any free
service that is provided even
within the
areas of competence of a city.
I know that many
questioned me about 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 what
is too low, it is regulated
like very, very hard to regulate things.
We need to make very, very difficult
to use as a relvar,
condemn calls, 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 be more in
more private security
is invading every space,
not only public space, but
spaces that the general that
is 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 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 a very important that we need the
help of many of you here is
when is going to
buy buy equipment of
this kind?
Usually they grade
the specifications of the equipment and
on the systems based on the brochures
that they're getting from the dominant
vendors.
And at the end, we have the basically
Cisco, another 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
need really need to fulfill a specific
mission.
Like I will not have
time to go through these airspace
regulation, public procurement, and
also take a proactive
step steps to create some
data, comments and research
by citizens on things that we
actually should monitor the 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, is as well,
in cities with this increase, inequality
is very, very important to be vigilant
to the technologies and surveillance
technologies deployed 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.
Their mechanisms to monitor and control
the poor, to monitor and control their
movements, their consumption, and
and also do the even
harsher measures to exclude them.
And that's happening a lot as
well. In the end, with
the collaboration of organizations
that like even like the United Nations,
with the refugees coming to Europe.
And that's that's
it is like, oh, OK, we need to
get them registered, biometrically
get them together, give them a
card so they can only access
Internet via our services and then track
them, track them, track them.
And I think that they
like it is it
is not only unethical, but it
is, it is obviously because they are not
in a position of power and they they
cannot act the way we can act
and exercised their citizen
citizenship because they don't have
in order to collaborate.
And lastly, like, 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
deploy and increasing the surveillance
and scrutinize every public
decision, that is that is being
taken. This
that that's the initiative in Barcelona,
the Barcelona initiative
of the 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 the M twenty five, the
initiative towards a more democratic
Europe. And we are setting up the
technology task force to
invite technologists to help us not
only on these aspects, but in general
aspects to have a
technology agenda consistent,
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 constructs of surveillance
technology and likit to
your preferred submission platform
and and make it available,
because we need a repository and we need
to document all the practices of all
the municipalities in these kind of
things. And
yes. Or questions
or anyone
comments.
Thank you, Renato.
If you have questions, please line up
behind the microphones here
and just
ask your question.
Do we have questions from the Internet?
Seems not so OK,
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 almost of all
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 not 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 is superglued question,
because usually
surveillance is linked to criminal
activity and it is linked
to OK, it is just for those
doing dodgy things.
And the important thing of many
of the data collection activities that
take place in public spaces
is that it has nothing to do with
the crime prevention.
It has everything to do with marketing,
with commodification of our behaviors,
with us getting excluded from certain
services, of getting more expensive
services, and too
often also with mechanisms of
social control.
So I think that we have to move
away from surveillance and cameras
just to activists and dissidents
and to monitor crime.
And we have to make
it personal and recognize that is 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, Segolene Royal, Christopher,
from the Internet.
So the question is empowering
locals would mean that they would need to
see the importance of having no servants.
So what should you advise
to 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 great about local failures
of surveillance and how much
money goes to waste.
And also making visible
and visual what we gave away.
When we spend millions in
assistance and surveillance system that
didn't work.
There was abuse for political purposes.
And what we we are missing
in the city, for example,
childcare places or parks or libraries,
and that 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.
Oh, yeah, Michael.
Number two, I
guess more more of a comment, really,
but that's OK. I guess 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 2:00 a.m.
in the morning and came down and grabbed
my bag and insisted on explaining why I
had a Wi-Fi router, etc..
But this is 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 of documenting
these kinds of experiences so
that we could 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, but
absolutely in
Mexico was very dangerous.
That's it. Oh, my phone number five.
Last question.
Hello.
I'd like to know, is there a particular
case that you could give
anecdotal stories that
surveillance was used for marketing
purposes?
Well, I can mention some.
I
I think that I mean, I actually I think
that the kind of surveillance that
we have in our browsers
all the time that monitors our
habits and our our consumer
consumption patterns
in order to sell us the stuff.
But I have a quick other example
on free Wi-Fi.
Usually when you have to like
when you are in a public space, in a
public park and a company
agrees on give you of provide
you your CD, you small CD of
free Wi-Fi in public spaces,
there's no no no such thing as free
Wi-Fi if it's provided by a company.
And usually what it does is it captures
the data of all the people attending a
certain and monitored and quantified
the data of all the people using the
service for for free.
And then they get it back
in and sophisticated
forms of advertising that
benefit and then consumption
of certain kind of products.
Yeah, but
some particular cases of
surveillance used in that manner,
surveillance deployed by the KDDI.
As civilians, it blows by this is usually
when this combination is a public private
partnership, but I can tell
you the case in Guatemala,
you know, everything happens in
Guatemala. So this is not
the worst case.
But usually, like what the municipality
was doing is they were selling
the data of high profile
people, movements that they captured
with a camera to blackmail politically.
So they will get they will get the
collector who went to
which place at what time the video,
because all the all the cities covered
with cameras.
And that was that was
done with the purpose of political
blackmail. Now,
unfortunately, time's up.
Are you still available? People have more
questions.
I can also find
you essentially financial
or are you still at a conference of
people have more questions?