internet rights

I found myself being confronted with the issue of anonymity and accountability in different ways at the AWID Forum. At the Feminist Tech Exchange (FTX) and Connect Your Rights events that took place just before the Forum, we discussed about the different and increasingly sophisticated ways that internet technologies have been used to erode any sense of anonymity online.

When I saw this quote on Mozilla's new Collusion website: "If you're not paying for something, you're not the customer; you're the product being sold - Andrew Lewis." I felt it summed up the economics tool box session on Commodification of Knowledge that APC led at the 2012 AWID Forum quite nicely. The session, organised by APC, brought together speakers to spark debate and reflection, but the…

I'm sure we've all seen amazing testimony videos of incredibly sensitive subjects: of women who choose to have abortion and share why despite risking imprisonment in their country for this act of taking control of their bodies; lesbians who come out fighting against "correctional rape"; rural women living in isolated regions sharing stories of cultural violence. I cringe and wonder - do they know…

The question in the headline elicits a complicit smile. Have you ever? Or have you spied on their new partner? Or have you googled someone you just met and liked a lot? At the interactive session on “Privacy and pleasure” that was held as part of the 2012 AWID Forum there were a variety of participants, of diverse ages, that raised their hands, recognizing that both Facebook and Google are tools…

Who said we should write things in our own names? It makes it personal. Today there was a debate at AWID Forum about a letter that was distributed criticising the exclusion of a certain discourse in the MENA region, and a point that was used to attack the letter was that it was not signed, you can't identify the authors of the letter, and no one "to take responsibility" for its content.

Empower Foundation of Thailand has creatively used art and media to promote the rights of sex workers for over 20 years. Empower has collaborated with artists to bring their messages to people in Thailand, in cartoons, in nearly life-size papier mache dolls that are more well traveled than the sex workers they represent, and in their own books. But these have been primarily for audiences in…

Today Gita Sen said “we are in a fierce vicious unequal new economic world where battlegrounds are many” and a few hours later in the session on “Commodification of knowledge: how increasing access and availability of the internet had transformed the way knowledge is produced and shared” a participant made us notice that “We were being watched." And it's true behind the gorgeous beauty of…

As the day passed I saw myself surrendering to the fact that there is nothing good in the laziness of a routine that prevent us from thinking about technological abuse that we as women activists can suffer and make the other suffering. When on the 18 we had the feminist tech exchange I understood that I need, I have to anonymize myself.

The women's programme of world’s oldest progressive internet network outlines its priority issues for the 12th AWID International Forum on Women’s Rights in Development that will gather over 2000 women’s rights activists from around the world from April 19 to 22, 2012 in Istanbul, Turkey.

The final meeting of the ‘Gender and Citizenship in the Information Society’(CITIGEN) research network was organized by IT for Change in Bangalore in February 2012. The CITIGEN research programme studies whether marginalised women benefit from new information and communication technologies and whether the internet and mobile phones strengthened their active citizenship. The final meeting of…