The other day, I was asked by a friend what it is I’m doing with this project. He’s very much into following technological trends, but not a deeply technical person himself. That drove home yet again how hard it is to provide an “elevator pitch” summary of our work.

When I speak about a “human centric” Internet, what I mean is a digital place where human rights are protected, and human needs are met. Now most people will agree that this is a worthy goal, but almost certainly will still ask “so what do you mean by that?”

And that’s the problem.

Because what this means depends strongly on your own experiences. If I say “a place where …

This year, we were presenting at the Linux Days in Chemnitz. The talk was about how to achieve full distribution with authorization in networked systems -- of course using CAProck. The slides are in English, but the presentation itself was held in German.

Just over a week ago, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights hosted a consultation on human rights in technical standard-setting processes, which I managed to attend the first half of. I live blogged some impressions, that deserve a summary here.

Speaking were human rights researches, security standards contributors, and representatives of standards organizations.

Niels ten Oever is a researcher in the intersection of tech and human rights, and particiapates in the group at the together with the current chairs of the Center for Democracy & Technology and of Brave Software.

of Fastly is working with and ; Gurshabad Grover is a cryptographer contributing to …

A few days ago, I found myself attending a pitch by the Consumer Reports Digital Lab for their . At first glance, it’s a great idea! Give organizations a standardized interface for exercising your data rights, which means you can use a simple app to request what data is collected about you, have it deleted, etc. What’s not to love?

Turns out, there are some immediate concerns, and some longer-term, more vague issues that need addressing.

Background

A few years ago, the State of California passed their , which is now being implemented into law. It’s modelled somewhat similarly to the European Union’s , though there are also some differences between them.

Under these …