 Thank you for joining us today for a panel discussion on surveillance, safeguards, and strategy campaigns for surveillance reform in North America, Latin America, and Africa. I'm Lauren Sarkeesian, a senior policy council at New America's Open Technology Institute, which is based in the U.S., and works to ensure equitable access to digital technology and all its benefits. Today we're going to discuss the increasingly sophisticated tech tools available to governments worldwide and advocates' reform efforts to rein in mass government surveillance. In the United States, Congress recently considered reforms to U.S. surveillance laws via the USA Freedom Reauthorization Act. In Mexico, advocates have launched Gobierno Espia, a campaign to demand an end to impunity for the surveillance of journalists, human rights defenders, and activists. In Chile, civil society groups have been pushing back against police surveillance of social leaders, which has included surveillance of environmental organizations, workers' unions, political organizations, and human rights defenders. And in Nigeria, advocates continue to press for implementation of the Digital Rights and Freedom Bill, which would provide Nigerians protection from infringement of their fundamental freedoms on digital platforms. I'm excited to be joined by a great lineup of panelists from each of these countries who will discuss their recent efforts to rein in government surveillance, highlight lessons learned, and compare strategies for what works. If you have any questions, please add them into the chat and we'll work to address them towards the end of the session. Now I'd like to briefly introduce our panel. Sharon Bradford Franklin is the policy director at New America's Open Technology Institute. She also is the former executive director of the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board. Luis Fernando Garcia-Munoz is the executive director and co-founder of R3D, or Red and Defensa de los Derechos de Hitales, a Mexican organization dedicated to defending human rights in the digital world. Next, Maria Paz Canales is executive director of Derechos de Hitales, a nonprofit organization based in Chile, but which works across Latin American human rights in the digital environment. Finally, Vengas Desan is the executive director of Paradigm Initiative, a Pan-African social enterprise working on digital inclusion and digital rights in Ghana, Cameroon, Nigeria, Tanzania, and Zambia, and beyond. Thanks everyone for joining us. First, we'd like to set the scene by hearing a little bit more background from each of our experts here on those surveillance reform efforts that were going on pre-pandemic. Sharon, first over to you. In the U.S., like I just mentioned, Congress recently considered reauthorizing provisions of the Patriot Act and civil liberties groups, including ours, OTI, worked to reform those authorities through the USA Freedom Reauthorization Act. Can you discuss a bit more about what those reforms looked like that advocates were seeking and why exactly they're needed? Sure. Thank you. So when we first planned this session for RightsCon, I had actually expected to talk about how we had recently completed our campaign to seek reforms to the USA Patriot Act and to assess how well it had gone. I'm sure that audience members even from outside the United States have heard of the Patriot Act and the broad surveillance powers that it granted to the U.S. government by expanding its powers under the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA. Three of these surveillance law provisions had been set to expire last December. And Congress passed a short-term extension until March 15th of this year. The normal course of things with each sunset date is that Congress doesn't want the provisions to expire, but as it considers reauthorization of the expiring provisions, there's an opportunity for advocacy groups to engage in pressure for reforms to U.S. surveillance law. Amazingly, this year, Congress actually allowed the three provisions of surveillance law to expire this past March 15th and still has not passed a law to reauthorize them or to enact further reforms to U.S. surveillance law. So as I can discuss further later in the session, we are hopeful that we will now have a chance to explore even broader reforms to U.S. surveillance law. But to answer Lauren's question, through our campaign this year, there are a wide variety of reforms that OTI and our allies have been seeking, but I want to just outline a few of those key ones. First, as a bare minimum reform, Congress must end the Section 215 Call Detail Records or CDR program. This program replaced the bulk phone records program that Edward Snowden had revealed to the public in 2013. And that was the program through which the NSA swept up millions of records on which phone numbers were calling which other phone records, phone numbers, excuse me, and when. Although the currently authorized program is much narrower than the bulk program it replaced, it is still privacy invasive and the NSA actually shuttered it last year because it isn't even effective. So now Congress needs to permanently end this Section 215 CDR program as a first step toward reform. Second, Congress should strengthen and expand the role of the amici or friends of the court who participate in certain proceedings in our secret FISA court. Without the amici, those judges only hear from government attorneys. But these amici can contest the government's arguments and advise judges on privacy and civil liberties issues. Their role and authority needs to be expanded so they can provide much needed oversight for the FISA process. Third, Congress should clarify that U.S. government may not rely on Section 215 of FISA to collect any type of information that would require a search warrant in the context of criminal investigations. In particular, we need stronger safeguards for location information and for internet search and web browsing history. These sensitive and revealing types of information should require the government to meet a higher standard. We have also sought a variety of additional reforms, including establishing reasonable time limits on data collected under Section 215, meaningful notice to criminal defendants, and additional transparency requirements. Thanks, Sharon. And so can you give us a little more, can you contextualize that a bit for us? So I know you said the legislation is sort of at a standstill. But where does that leave the broader surveillance reform efforts in the U.S.? Sure. So as I noted, surprisingly, Congress actually allowed the three sunsetting provisions of U.S. law to expire this past March 15. The House of Representatives passed their version of the USA Freedom Reauthorization Act back in March, just before the March 15 sunset date. And it included some of the reforms that I outlined, but certainly not all of them. Then in May, two months later, after the expiration of provisions, the Senate passed its version of the same law, which was pretty much identical to the House version. But it included a key amendment that would further expand the role of the amici in the FISA court, as I described, the people who get in there to advise the judges. And that is a key reform that we had sought. But the Senate bill still failed to include other key reforms, such as the safeguards for internet search and browsing history. But we had expected the two Houses of Congress to go to conference and come up with a version of the bill that both Houses would pass and then would be enacted into law. But that still hasn't happened. And we have no word on whether it when or whether it will. It's possible that these provisions of surveillance law won't be reauthorized at all, or at least not anytime soon. In the case of Section 215, which allows the government to collect business records and also supports the Call Detail Records program that I mentioned, it's important to note that, first of all, the government is still allowed to continue investigations that it had gotten authorized and begun before the law expired on March 15th. So many of those we assume are still ongoing. And second, that since March 15th, this business records provision simply reverted to its pre-Patriot Act or pre-2001 version. So there still is a legal authority in place for the government, even though it's narrower. Also, though, some people are concerned that since these statutory provisions went dark, the government is instead relying on an authority called Executive Order 12333 or EO 12333. That order actually governs most of what our intelligence agencies do, but it does not provide for as many safeguards for privacy and civil liberties as the statute fies up. Under a proper interpretation of that order, EO 12333, the government should not be able to simply replicate the statutory authorities that have gone dark. But we have very little transparency and far less oversight for any surveillance conducted under that order. So but it is really important to note that this is an unprecedented situation for the United States since the original passage of the Patriot Act back in October of 2001. Also, earlier this month, as many audience members I'm sure are familiar in the Shrems 2 decision, the Court of Justice of the European Union invalidated the privacy shield finding that they're not adequate safeguards under US surveillance law to protect Europeans data. So we have several forces now pressing the US government to undertake a more serious overhaul of US surveillance law. And I'm hoping that we'll have the opportunity to engage in that kind of more thorough reworking of our surveillance law in a comprehensive way. Thank you. Luis, next, we'll turn to you. So in Mexico, as I mentioned, advocates launched the Gobierno-Esvia campaign in 2017 after numerous reports surfaced revealing that the Mexican government was targeting journalists, anti-corruption activists and human rights defenders with advanced spyware known as Pegasus. Luis, specifically, what does the Gobierno campaign call for? Sure. Thank you. Thank you for the invitation. Well, as you mentioned, this campaign Gobierno-Esvia was launched after the revelation of several attacks, surveillance attacks with this malware called Pegasus, which is sold by the Israeli company NSO Group in 2017, human rights defenders, journalists, et cetera. And although this was the main event that created this momentum for this call in Mexican society for reform and for an end of impunity, this is a culmination of years of research of advocacy. I have shown how in Mexico there are great irregularities on how surveillance is acquired and how it is used. And beyond that, how difficult it is to first detect abuse and second, once it is detected, how difficult it is for there not to be impunity about those abuses. And there's a direct link between those abuses, the impunity, the lack of clarity and transparency about the acquisition and use of these tools and regulation. So in a nutshell, I would say that the Gobierno-Esvia campaign obviously calls for consequences for an end of impunity, of surveillance to the group of people that was detected or surveilled, but that we have always said that it is a tip of the iceberg situation in which we just know a few people who have been targeted because also something that is really important to take into account is that these tools are being designed in a way in which they are made not to be detected. So it is similar to, for example, when the arms industry has produced weapons, firearms, that do not leave a fingerprint, for example, and that has been very controversial, but somehow we haven't discussed much about if it's legitimate that governments, democratic or supposedly democratic governments, acquire and use tools who they can use with impunity without any type of accountability. And this is what has happened in Mexico. Once we were able to demonstrate that there were these malware attacks with Pegasus in Mexico, then it was a matter of what now. And there's a lot of obstacles that the lack of regulation has produced, like there's apparently there's no registry of which tools the state has acquired, there's no registry of companies that sell this type of tools, there's a registry of people who are trained to operate this type of tools, and then the investigation becomes very difficult, which is why after three years of a lawsuit that we launched denouncing these events, there's been no real progress in this sense. However, there's been a change in government recently and the government has, new government has claimed that they will not use these tools and as part of some commitments that they've made, there's a working group in which civil society and authorities we are discussing in ways just in three aspects that are really important. One, which rules need to be established with regard to the acquisition of surveillance tools. Also, which rules should be established to make the use of surveillance tools and powers accountable in this sense. And third, how the Mexican government is gonna give truth and clarity to the whole society about what happened in the past and how to make sure that there's no impunity about the abuses that for years have happened in Mexico, perhaps further along the conversation, I can discuss about all the policy proposals that we are having pushing. Thank you, Luis. And I was gonna ask about sort of progress. It sounds like you haven't had the progress that you would like in terms of seeing real regulatory reform, but at least in civil society, you are making these moves to come together and develop these rules. There's a process ongoing that it's, we're yet to see if that process is going to produce any substantive results, but there is a discussion in which we're in a table with the government and civil society and we're discussing these things, which is a progress in the sense that two years ago that the government was spying on civil society. So we'll see if this comes from this, something more material comes because it's needed. The truth is today, the same rules that gave, that produced this situation in which there's rampant abuse of surveillance without accountability and with total impunity, the same rules are still there. There's been no reform. There's been just a promise and political will shown, but we need to make that concrete and materialize in reforms. Absolutely, thank you, Luis. So next over to Maria. So in Chile, civil society groups have been pushing back against police surveillance and social media monitoring of leaders, which has included surveillance of, like I said, environmental organization, leaders, workers unions, political organizations, human rights defenders. So can you provide a bit more background on the conversation that's happening there in Chile? How and when the surveillance came to light and what advocates are doing to push back? Sure, thank you very much. Thank you very much for the invitation and to have the opportunity to share with these wonderful colleagues with experience from different places of the world. So I will talk a little bit of the Chilean case in particular, but as you mentioned in my presentation, we work in Latin America. So I think that I would like to connect a little bit with the reality that we are seeing here in Chile with things that are happening across Latin America in general and in many cases, even they are more severe in other Latin American countries that in Chile. So the context for all these, just for the people that is joining us in this session and doesn't have a clear panorama about what is going on in these terms in Latin America. Just before the pandemic, the last months of 2019, we have several different situation of social uprising in different Latin American countries. We have social protests in Ecuador, in Colombia, in Bolivia, in Chile. Majority of them linked with the claiming of the people for changing some economic and social structure that had been placed for a long time in the region. And they were questioning how the government should engage and provide a fair opportunity to everybody to benefit of the world that had been created in the recent years. Others are also linked to a political situation and in the case of Colombia also and the conflict play a big role, all those issues that are very complex social and economic issues were in place. So in this context, people was exercising in general their right to peacefully assembly and peacefully protest. But of course, in all these situations, there are some facts that go out of control and there is some incidents of violence either from the protesters but also in the reaction from the police force. So in this context, there was all a narrative coming from the police force and not only from the law enforcement in general, but also from the government, from the central government to try to use and leverage all the civilian capacities that have been developed in the recent years from the intelligence service side and also from the law enforcement side. So all these capabilities have been developed in the recent years in the region and in particularly in Chile without having a clear legal framework. There is in Chile, particularly intelligence and service law that broadly regulate the activities and civilian activities that are commanded to different bodies of the government. Among them, one role is played directly by law enforcement, which is uncommon because usually in other countries, those functions are separated. But the thing is that the provisions are quite old at this moment, 10 years old or more and they don't capture well the use of technology particularly for these kind of activities of intelligence activities and surveillance in case in which could be authorized inside the provisions of the law. So what we have is that the government have increased their capability of acquisition of these technologies, the same that Luis was describing for Mexico. They acquired these technologies and there's no transparency about how they conduct this process of acquisition of the technologies, what are the actual capabilities of the technologies who inside the different agencies that are acquiring this technology will be in charge of managing them. All that kind of things are uncertain. So at the end, what we have is that the capability is being developed in the acquisition of the technology but the legal framework is not updated for dealing with that situation. And we have a situation of social protest and social manifestation on the street that create in some way and a scenario in which the authority is tempted to use all this for precisely try to control this social movement and go beyond in our opinion of what is authorized in this law framework but because they are outdated and they are very general in their provision, they provide this space of interpretation that we think that is unfair and we will like much challenge but in many cases, the way in which this is being developed is very opaque, which make really difficult to go against these measures and challenge them judicially. The same thing that the Mexican case pointed out is the difficulty of catching when this is happening because you need a technical capability from civil society or from the very affected by these surveillance activities that usually lacks to identify that you have been subject to this kind of surveillance measure and being able to have legal resources and support for challenging this situation and to keep the evidence for actually being able to be successful in those challenge. So all that is very critical and maybe a last point that I want to wrap up on this is that when we're talking about this, in general, we are focusing a little bit more in the surveillance technologies that are related with communication surveillance. So the cases of Mexico, for example, it's the use of a spyware. You were also talking about the provision in the Patrick Act in the US that are linked to how to have access to the information regarding the communication. But also, as I mentioned in the introduction, many of these technologies are being deployed in the recent years in Latin America, more linked to the surveillance of the public space and the surveillance of the body as we try to capture it in a constant because those also imply the use, for example, of camera, facial recognition cameras that are deployed in the public spaces or even high definition cameras that are being deployed in the public spaces and they are interconnected in central services that allow the authority to have a panopticon that when you are thinking that all these have been put in place under the narrative of public safety, people can think that it could be acceptable. But when you realize that the same technology is being used in the situation of protests for pursuing and restraining the action of social movements and try to further marginalize people that is already in the street because they feel that government don't hurt them and they need to transmit their message. These technologies become a tool of surveillance, not a tool of protection of the safety of the people but exactly the other way around. So it's also a thing to have in mind. And the last piece of the categorization of technologies that are being used in this sense that also was mentioned in the introduction. So I don't want to leave it up in the air is the increasing trend that we are seeing in Latin America in general about the use of the open source intelligence. This referred to the concept of using information that is up there in the public platforms and social network regarding the activities because a lot of this social organizing and social movement takes place now in the digital network. So the intelligence services and the law enforcement are going into Facebook or other open network to try to catch the activity of these different groups and using that information in order to take action in many cases illegitimately repress or subject them to surveillance when they are not guilty of any crime. They are exercising their constitutional rights of organizing. And we think that this is also very problematic because many of these activities again are taking place without clear guidelines. They are not rules that allows to understand that this is going on, what are the limits in which purpose can be used and how to claim when some of this action are trespassing the limit and really creating a limitation and a violation of the human rights of the subject. So I will stop there but I think that those are important elements for the trend that we are seeing in Latin America in general. Thank you. And I like that framing open source intelligence. That's certainly a thing that we're seeing here in the United States as well. So thank you. Next, we'll move to Venga. And so in Nigeria, advocates continue to press for implementation of the digital rights and freedom bill which was enacted by the two chambers of Nigeria's National Assembly and sent to the president back in early 2019 but still has not been signed into law. Can you tell us a bit more about the bill itself? What's in it? What would it change? And why hasn't it been implemented? Thanks. Thank you, Lauren. And just before I talk about the bill itself, I just want to set this within the context of what's happening within the region generally and saying that 2013, seven years ago was a very important year as far as surveillance in Africa are concerned. And I say that because that incidentally was the same year where research outputs by digital rights actors and academia and people in academia sort of revealed all of this use of surveillance tools by many African governments. Of course, they've always been there. We've always known about this but I think the most interesting was one that became the report of, I mean, Finfisha was of course, you know, one of the things found with Nigeria and a few other countries but that year was when we found out two key things. One was that all along, all of the surveillance tools being bought by governments were included in the public budget. And it was kind of interesting because it was an easy way to find out what was going on because those budget line items had exact names of the products that were being bought. So for example, in 2013, you had this product that was being sold by Israel-based Elbit Systems that was listed exactly in the annual budget. Of course, it was inflated in the budget which also brings the issue of surveillance and corruption to the fore but that was the one year where a lot of coverage happened on that and that was very helpful. It was helpful because all along when we had met with various government institutions, it had always been denial. Like no one is doing this. Yes, we have a military past but since 1999, we've been good boys and girls and things like that. But of course, everyone knew it wasn't true. So it was really useful to do that. And then we went to court. We went to court because we thought now we have this information in public and it would be interesting to ask the government. Now you started doing this and you've admitted to doing this but what are the principles behind this? What sort of regulation is this following? What standards? And of course, we knew that there wasn't. The rule was being made up as things were going. So the objective was surveillance and so when there was the trouble of terrorism then terrorism became an excuse to implement surveillance programs. Then when there is the issue of any kind of unrest then that unrest then becomes an excuse to also continue with the agenda. So the constant factor was surveillance all through the spirit. What it did, going to court was to challenge this and say there must be rules in place before you can do these things. It would interest you. What the judge, in terms of that case, said the judge called us busy bodies and asked why we're interested in what was being used to ons terrorists. And this obviously paints the picture of the sort of work that needed to be done. So civil society, we then decided we're not gonna keep saying we don't want this, we don't want that, we don't want mass surveillance, we don't want that. We then decided, what exactly do we want? We started with a short thing that I wrote. It was called the Internet Freedom Declaration for Nigeria. And then we had a forum with a few other colleagues of ours and drafted what then became the first draft of a digital rights and freedom bill. Of course, as private citizens we can't take this to parliament ourselves. So we found an ally who eventually sponsored this bill. And busy components of the bill were things that we thought would answer the questions of what exactly do we want? One was a focus on right to digital privacy. The other was of course anonymity, which became a very controversial topic because the question was if you're not, I mean, if you're not doing something wrong, why do you want to be anonymous and things like that? And it's interesting that we also focused a lot on surveillance, I mean, for obvious reasons because this was something that was already being done and there was no rule around it. We also focused on data protection and on freedom of expression. And in, you know, all through the period. So in 2014, this whole process started. We eventually got a sponsor in 2016. We invited the legislator to our forum and he did promise at the forum in, you know, September 2016 that he will sponsor the bill in August 2016, he will sponsor the bill. And before the end of the year, he will go through, you know, a few process and things like that. Good news is that he did sponsor the bill. It's not every time that a politician says something in public, that he fulfills the promise. So, you know, we're kind of grateful that he did that. Honorable Tukemeika Iwijam, he did that by the end of December. The bill had gone through second reading. That's by the end of 2016. And then everything went quiet until 2018 when the bill got passed eventually and then a whole year of immunization before it got passed by the second chamber of parliament. And then it got to the president's table and the president did not sign the bill. The reasons he gave are quite interesting. You know, one of the reasons he gave was that the bill focuses on too many technical subjects, which you know is quite interesting is a way to say the other was that the bill addresses data protection, which is a subject of another piece of legislation. Don't forget the fact that at that time there was nothing. The only thing that Nigeria had for data protection was a bill. It was a bill that was also being considered. So we knew that that wasn't the real reason. And of course, the good news by the way is that it wasn't just civil society that saw the need for this bill. And I think this is really important in terms of legislative advocacy, that it shouldn't be one of those silos talking to yourselves and then eventually you realize that this is not what other people want. So this was declined in 2019. And the first thing we did was to call and meet. We knew who said no, right? I mean, it was very easy for us to tell because from the language of the president we could tell which agency of government was sort of behind that. I mean, come on, we were born into this country and we've been here for at least almost 40 years. So we kind of know who said what. We invited them into the room and asked them questions about what exactly they thought. And we made them realize that, you know what? As individuals, it is in your own interest for you to have a fair playing field. And what also was the fact that in 2015 there was a change of government. So all of the surveillance tools I was invested in by the previous government and was used against the then opposition is now in the hands of the then opposition which is now the government. Of course, which is now being used against the new opposition which was then government. And so we basically said to them, if you do not want to be a victim of your own investments we think it's a good idea for you to invest in a level playing field at least for you to have a right to fair hearing. And it was very easy to say that because the man who was national security advisor at the time when we started our campaign who said to us at some points that, oh, are you guys friends with terrorists? You eventually fell out when his political party lost elections. And, you know, till today he's still trying to demand for his own rights. In fact, at some point we cracked a joke when he released a statement and we said, you know what? This statement looks like something we will say. So we should sue him for plagiarism for using our words about rights and freedom and things like that. But, you know, while the consultation continued we also realized that it was important for us. So right now instead of having one bill that addresses digital rights and freedoms and also a digital protection we've taken out the elements of the protection and we're now working with other partners to make sure that that in itself sees the light of day, you know? And that we think is important. You do not want to dilute the bill but at the same time you don't want to have political bottlenecks in terms of having it signed by the president. And the good news is that while all of this is going on there are also conversations with many other countries where these processes have now started. So in Cameroon, in Malawi, in Togo, in Zambia and a few other countries. In fact, we just had one of the East African countries member of Parliament, which now recently to get a copy of this bill. And we're not only waiting for this to happen because now that the president signed in 2019 that session of the National Assembly is gone. There's now the ninth National Assembly. The process has started again. I think we were very fortunate that the person who chose to sponsor the bill at this time is a very senior person. You know, we met with him and realized he had picked the bill before we even advocated for it. And I think the word digital was very useful in making that happen. And the reasons he chose the bill were quite interesting but it's not covered by today's curriculum. So I'll leave it out. And so we've seen some progress, major progress on the bill in the National Assembly. We're talking to various stakeholders. We're talking to even people who are close to the presidency to make sure that this time it doesn't get to him with any enemies waiting to say don't sign and don't sign and don't sign. And at the same time, we're also making sure that one of the biggest tools that is used not just for surveillance but majorly for oppression or opposition of journalists and all of that. We also challenged the cyber crime law of Nigeria that was signed in 2015. We've challenged that because as usual we lost the case at the beginning but then we appealed and now we have appealed all the way to the Supreme Court and we're just waiting for a day from the chief law officer so that we can then go to court. But that has also been helped by the fact that the ECOAS Court actually listened to the same case and has now asked the government of Nigeria to remove sections 24 and the other section 38 from that cyber crime law because it doesn't in line with the constitution of Nigeria. So we have all these two different processes going on at the same time. One is don't want, which is basically what is wrong with current legislative provisions and things like that and what we do want which is the digital rights and freedom bill and I'll stop here so we can continue with the conversation and I'm happy to answer specific questions about the bill itself and also what's happening in other countries within the region. Thanks, Larry. Thank you, Vanga. Thank you for all the helpful background. So it sounds like I'm hearing similar themes from everybody sort of uphill battles and a struggle to create sort of permanent lasting rules for acquisition laws, et cetera of these technologies. So I'd like to try to draw from lessons across regions here and discuss strategies for success a little bit in scaling back surveillance. What do you guys think? What has been most successful whether it's litigation or if it's grassroots efforts whether it's just elections and the changes in administrations what have you found that's worked best for your organizations or civil society generally? Maria, it sounds, looks like you're ready. Oh, sure. Yeah, I can go. I think that the answer as usual is a combination of all of them. I think that the one element that maybe it would work that I highlight because my colleagues can focus in the other ones also it's the usefulness that the international human rights framework has also as an element of advocacy particularly from the perspective of Latin America has been very difficult to drive attention and local attention on these issues because they are complex in terms of the technical aspect and because these are issues that are very sensitive. So many, many person can have a personal opinion on this but a lot of people also is afraid to publicly appear like advocating for some of these things and being framed in the way in which given what's describing for Africa also like that you want to protect criminal you want to protect terrorists that kind of narrative is very common and also in different contexts in Latin America we have a situation of lack of respect of human rights and persecution of human rights defenders that put them at risk of life. So at the end it's not easy sometimes advocating against these complex situation and precisely as I was pointing out previously because there are not much evidence also for how strong legal cases that can be followed with at the national level. So many times the role of the international human rights bodies on this is very relevant in terms of high light attention on these issues and the role of society providing evidence to these international human rights bodies for example, the special rapporteurs or the different mechanisms inside the different body treaties are very relevant in terms of like a building a set of evidence of what is going on in terms of the use of all these civilian mechanisms and how they are actually impacted in a very concrete way in limiting the exercise of different human rights particularly civil and political rights of freedom of expression, freedom of assembly but also freedom of movement in many cases but also in general also they are taken as way in which the control can be exercised on the society and keep things on change when they are a political opposition that want to move things in different direction. So I think that it's very relevant to understand these as elements that can be leveraged for using in the national strategy and those are building blocks of course that the more concrete impact you will have if you are able to successfully advocate for changing laws at the local level at the national level or federal level for the federal states but this piece of international pressure are very relevant to really point attention from the political powers and from the community at large in this situation and how severe they are. So the working of the special rapporteurs in freedom of expression at the UN level and the work of the special rapporteurs in the civil assembly have been very key in this sense and also the special rapporteurs in freedom of expression from the inter-american system that also have paid a lot of attention to these issues lately and all these mechanisms can continue to enrich this discussion. Oh, Sharon, go ahead. Okay, maybe after you. Either way. All right, you're muted, I'm not, all right. That's okay. So I just wanted to add on to this. In the United States, I would agree that all of the strategies can be helpful although as various of our allies have pursued litigation strategies, these can be particularly challenging when you're looking at surveillance because of a couple of judicial doctrines. It can be often be difficult if not impossible for any kind of plaintiff to prove that they were actually subject to surveillance and so to have their day in court and also because often our government is successful in asserting the state secrets privilege saying that in order to defend itself it would have to reveal classified information in court and so a lot of these cases get kicked out without ever being heard. But I did want to point to two strategies for advocacy that are somewhat similar to what Maria was talking about in terms of tactics and getting other bodies to show the real need for reform or having those kind of tactical strategies. And in the US, sadly, many members of our Congress are less looking to international bodies like special repertors, but we have been able to have some success when we can get Inspector General investigations. And those reports can be very convincing to members of Congress and showing abuses and in past reauthorizations of the Patriot Act we have often been able to get, I would say often, sometimes been able to get directions for specific Inspector General reports. And even in the absence of any kind of malicious actors our surveillance system is so large and so complex that there always seem to be violations of the rules. And when those can be documented by an Inspector General investigation it really can help build the case for reform. And in fact, in the past year we've had two public reports by the Department of Justice Inspector General on FBI and Department of Justice implementation of FISA and have some very serious problems and have been helpful in building bipartisan support for reform even though no one's enacted anything yet. The second one I wanted to point to is that in general has been helpful in the US to keep having a sunset dates for the surveillance law provisions. So when provisions are set to expire to date certain this requires Congress to reconsider them and has often been a juncture to get reforms enacted. And in this case it actually led to an actual sunset. Yeah, so I wanted to quickly jump in on litigation and admit of course it is difficult and the outcomes can never be predictable. But the good news is that it also it has a way of demonstrating seriousness on the part of advocates. And apart from that I think it provides a lot of material for not just president in court but also information for research. Also in terms of citizen awareness I think that the narratives and like I said earlier many times this is framed as a security versus freedom conversation. And I think that we need to change we need to frame this conversation so that it is very clear that security and rights it's not a dichotomy it's a fact that one supports the other. In fact, I realized that many times who then say oh it's either you choose security or you choose freedom it's because they're hiding behind that emotive dichotomy and it doesn't help with framing the conversation. And the last thing is to say what has worked what has helped us so far is document, document, document. Once COVID set in and the restriction set in March the courts were not working but one thing we made sure to do and that will then be published and reported in here alongside the work in terms of advocacy and things like that is to document everything to make sure that we have records of all violations so that when we then make our case it is not an emotional sentimental case it is a fact-based case that we're then pushing. Thanks, Benga. How about you, Luis? Yeah, also I want to mention of course I think we cannot afford a civil society to choose one and proceed from other strategies we have to do everything and choose where it makes more sense. For example, in Mexico we do have a better environment for litigation, we don't have to prove standing we don't have, I mean there's a lot of advantages for doing litigation in Mexico but also of course challenges. We already have a case in the three American system which as we know is the most advanced in the system although it's very lengthy procedure in the three American commission but eventually it can become a very important case that sets a precedent for the whole region. Some extra strategies that I want to mention is statistics and access information laws we have used very intensively to produce evidence about irregularities in the use of surveillance tools. Joining and working with journalists who can uncover and produce documents that come from whistleblowers have been essential and the documentation of cases because for a lot of people this still seems like science fiction or something that they cannot touch and see and once you put a face on the big themes of surveillance it becomes easier and the narrative's changed and we've seen that in Mexico in which surveillance has been sold as this magical tool against organized crime and once we demonstrated all these cases the public shift and now we don't generally accept this and the other thing is that we need to get into the specifics of reform not just fluffy, don't spy on us stuff but more concrete policy proposals and that's why out of the challenges that we have for impunity or for abuse that's why we're calling for very specific things if you want to sell this type of tools like Grenga said, this is a business ripe of corruption for corruption. For example, Pegasus in Mexico was sold by a company that is a share company that has never sold anything to anyone before this and has never sold anything after that. It was just a company that was just made up to make this contract which is obviously protected by secrecy laws et cetera which you can break if you fight for it but you have to fight for it. So I think definitely attacking also the business side of this which is a corrupt business between companies and governments is also very important and for that we need rules that make that more difficult and we've been calling for registries of companies that have to obtain authorization to sell these types of tools which limits on which tools can a government acquire which registrations and which paper trail needs to exist first to be able to detect abuses and second once they're detected so you have documents and paper teller that you can investigate on to try to attribute those cases to someone. So I think definitely also do I'll be more on the specifics and what we as civil society are calling for what does regulation accountability transparency actually means in practice? It's totally essential and for that collaboration in all of these strategies between organizations is key. Thank you. Okay, so you all laid out a lot of different efforts that you're working on and of course amid all of these efforts to scale back surveillance the pandemic hit, right? And as a result we've seen governments increasing public health surveillance and considering tools that in some cases are for digital contact tracing or exposure notification in some cases quarantine enforcement collection of cell phone location information and beyond. So I wanna talk about how this added layer of the pandemic and this increased surveillance really impacts the overall narrative and the overall efforts that you all have been working on. And who would like to go first? Maria. Okay. Yeah, I mean, we could have an entire panel and we have had panels on this in rights corner already. So only to quickly summarize, I think that the most relevant connection of this new pandemic technology optimism that have been deployed yet. It's precisely the risk of shifting again the narrative. The same, a lot of people is using the comparison that I think that is very useful between what happened in the 9-11 in the United States and the implementation of measure that's supposed to be only for the emergency situation and then they will go away. And here we are with this measure being still in place after so many years and after they never have been proven that they are really efficient and appropriate for tackling the problem that they supposed to tackle in the first place. So it's very similar with the use of technology in pandemic situation that it's presented and packaged in this moment as technology that will help to save lives, to protect everybody and ensure that everybody can exercise their right of health and people is being told that they should worry a lot about privacy or other consideration because governments care about them and in this moment it's more important to save lives and we can handle the other issues later. But the reality is not the way in which these things are working. These things have this ability and governments have this incredible temptation to once they have in place the system and they are able to gather the data then they find creative ways to reuse that data. And something that is started with one purpose at the end is very difficult to track that is keeping in that purpose because we don't have the oversight mechanism, the rules that you have been talking about for really be sure that this don't end in the function of the script, it's the way in which the phenomena is being described. So I think that that's the most important piece. Like this is a very huge thread in terms of narrative and at the end convince the people that for being safe they need to give up rights. It's a wrong framework in any situation and even more in emergency situation in which later we will need a world in which we can fully exercise all our rights in order to better recovery and be able to more equally participate in the social life. I'd like to agree 100% with everything Maria said she even gave my Patriot Act example. So which is great. No, no, no, that's good. That's good. I can be faster and give everybody a chance to talk. So just two things. One, on the very specific issue of the contact tracing and digital tools Lauren and I and a team of colleagues from OTI have actually been doing a lot of work on this and we actually issued a report at the beginning of this month outlining the equity, privacy and civil liberties risks posed by digital tools that can be used to supplement contact tracing and looking at as well it's safeguards that policy makers can adopt to mitigate those concerns. So that's important, really critical to have guard wealth in place including making sure that you're using the Bluetooth apps that measure how close people come to each other instead of location information and addressing the fact that somebody don't even have smartphones and the equity issues there. On the broader point that Maria made I agree absolutely and completely and we're very concerned about that. I am hopeful though that unlike the case with terrorism where policy makers can never safely say okay, that risk is over we can rein in surveillance that one day in the not too distant future we can say that this pandemic is actually ending and that justification will go away. And so it's really critical we put those guard rails in place and have sunset dates for any kind of surveillance measures that are adopted. Thank you. And I think one trend that we've seen now very quickly is that we've seen the appropriation of health surveillance for political and anti-popular opinion surveillance. And that's very worrying because one of the things that we hope does not happen is that some of the things that have been done now during this pandemic do not become the new normal and an excuse for governments with a agenda to implement what everybody had in mind. So I think if there's any time we need to pay attention it is now. If there's any time we need to speak up about the issues, document things and make sure that nothing escapes us it is now because this is the moment that anyone with an agenda would take advantage of very clearly as we've seen done across from the north to the south. Thank you. Go ahead Luis. Very quickly and also building on the point that all of you have made I think some that are seeing this opportunity also and I think this is something that will be difficult one of the things that I think will be more permanently with us even when we find the vaccine and there's no pandemic anymore is that there's a lot of push behind these digital ID initiatives because everything is digitized now and to access services and for example in Mexico there's a lot of discussion and now urgency apparently on rushing a centralized biometric database and digital ID system that can provide this even more granular surveillance on all citizens and constitutes a massive surveillance system in a sense. So definitely that's something to point out and to also look for around the world because I think this is one of the agendas that Durango was saying that I think it's definitely trying to use this opportunity to push it even further all over the world. Well, thank you everyone. I think we might need to wrap it up there since we're about at time but thank you to our amazing panelists who gave such insightful thoughts and thank you to RightsCon for hosting us and thank you to everybody in the audience who tuned in. Appreciate the opportunity to chat. Thank you all. Thank you. Bye. Thank you.