Open Conversations: Digital Privacy as a Human Right (Al Smith)

[Music] I think the world is changing and attitudes are changing about technology because more and more of us rely on technology in every part of our lives and we're seeing the negative impact that happens both when technology fails and when technology betrays us you know when when our data is bought and sold when we get an unsolicited piece of mail about having a baby even though I've had a miscarriage 6 weeks ago and that is a result of my Humanity being stripped from the online experience my name is Al uh my pronouns are they them I'm the director of fundraising for the tour project the tour project is a 501c3 nonprofit We Build and maintain the digital public infrastructure called the tour Network we have about 50 employees that work on anti- censorship Tech cryptography privacy and all the intersecting pieces of The Human Experience that go into privacy online I think more and more people are seeing what happens when all parts of the stack are built in a way that does not PRI prioritize their Humanity are built in a way that can fail at any moment and can put their information or even their lives in in a precarious situation and talking more about how each part of the stack is often maintained by one single person for free is really important and I also think it's important to talk about this in a way that's super accessible you know stack is probably even a word that's that's too far beyond what most people are willing to understand but I think the concept of building blocks is really understandable to people and using metaphors of public goods that already exist like roads and Parks uh people understand that and people have a great uh appreciation for these these public goods and using that as a metaphor for what's happening online I think can be really effective there's a lot of Mythology about what it means to be private online and the tour project is adjacent to privacy tools like or like vpns um the differentiator is that we are a completely decentralized Network that's got about 7,000 nodes that are run by volunteers all over the world so there's no single point of failure there's no centralization and there's no need to trust one person or one entity in power I started participating in funding the commons because I was looking for other ways to fund open- Source software we were we were running into these problems of sustainability at the tour project and funding the commons was offering a completely new vision of what it looks like to fund something that's open and free and I was super excited by projects like gitcoin like octant like drips and I just wanted to learn more I wasn't involved in the ethereum community or any kind of web 3 community at all I was interested in New Innovative funding mechanisms and new Innovative funding communities that were relevant to people who love the internet basically and I ended up here and I have really found some incredibly smart incredibly motivated people who want to solve the problem of Open Source sustainability and beyond that who really want to make public goods sustainable and it's been an incredible incredible process to be a part of the funding the commons Comm Community one of the latest projects that the tour project has been working on is making the open internet more available in China Hong Kong and Tibet as many people know there's something called the Great firewall which isolates Chinese citizens from any internet resource or service that is not basically run in China and the tour project is trying to make the tour Network and therefore the rest of the internet more available to those citizens it's a really complex technical problem uh and we've invested a lot of time into both the technical side of this issue and The Human Side because there's there's not just a technical solution there's reaching out to people there's localizing content there's making sure that these tools really work for the people who want them and that they're available in the languages that need both the tour Network and the internet in general is dig public infrastructure it's Commons that we are all responsible for cultivating maintaining keeping healthy and that is not free you know we need to fund that somehow and some projects do that by being for-profit and we've seen how for-profit internet Ventures can really harm us they manipulate our basic human fears and our human behavior and we want to build an internet that's different that based on the principle of privacy and and doesn't suck up data to sell it and that requires a different kind of funding we're often caught in a moment where we're trying to build an internet up against adversaries that have a lot of money and can move really fast so one of the things that the tour project is trying to think about and always trying to push the edge on is how can we get flexible funding that benefits fits the people so that we are moving at the same speed as technology something like the tour project is a piece of digital public infrastructure it's like a road and that needs to be maintained there's nothing exciting about filling a pothole and when you regularly fill potholes people don't notice that the road has degraded and been fixed and that maintenance is on schedule same thing with the tour network if we're regularly fixing problems fixing bugs people don't see that it's really under to the surface and it's not shiny and it's not necessarily sexy but that is really important for keeping a a piece of digital public infrastructure strong so one of the challenges that we have is funding that work when people really want and people when I say people I mean traditional funders traditional funders really want a shiny new feature or a big new project something new that you're adding on top and in some cases that's really what we want to do we want to build something new for Chinese users or for users in Iran but in many cases what we need to do is fill the pop hole and something that we're trying to do is unlock how to get more funding that's unrestricted it's not tied to a brand new project it's really it allows us to be flexible and fill the potholes when we need to or pay an accountant when we need to some of these things are are not flashy but they keep the road going they keep the Digital P public infrastructure alive and well and I think there's actually a turning point happening within both traditional funders and funders of digital public goods the understanding that maintenance is important that keep keeping something alive is is really key and Reinventing the wheel every 5 years when something new happens is not successful it's not going to change the world I think advice I would give to people who are interested in learning more is to really look into the concept of surveillance capitalism and you'll learn more more about how and why our data has been manipulated and sucked up and why it's so valuable and how we actually have a lot of power in our attention and our eyeballs and our presence success looks like everyone can get online in a way that is as private as they choose to be where everybody has agency to use digital products and Digital Services in ways that value their consent around data and I do think that that is possible I think that it's a really difficult road but I think talking about the impact of privacy violations and talking about the fact that privacy is actually a human right that has been codified by the United Nations is important it brings this issue to the surface and it motivates people to say it's not right that using free services sucks up my data and then harms me in the future I think that people are motivated by making change when they see the impact of that negativity and in the future I think we can have a more private internet I think people are motivated to make that happen and we have the tools to make it happen and if we can find funding streams for products that are free and open source to sustain them and grow them and innovate I think we can get there oh