00:31:01 RRSAgent has joined #human-rights 00:31:05 logging to https://www.w3.org/2025/11/12-human-rights-irc 00:31:05 RRSAgent, do not leave 00:31:06 RRSAgent, this meeting spans midnight 00:31:06 RRSAgent, make logs public 00:31:08 Meeting: Human Rights & Web Standards? 00:31:08 Chair: Simone Onofri, Daniel Appelquist, Hidde de Vries 00:31:08 Agenda: https://github.com/w3c/tpac2025-breakouts/issues/43 00:31:08 Zakim has joined #human-rights 00:31:09 Zakim, clear agenda 00:31:09 agenda cleared 00:31:09 Zakim, agenda+ Pick a scribe 00:31:10 agendum 1 added 00:31:10 Zakim, agenda+ Reminders: code of conduct, health policies, recorded session policy 00:31:10 agendum 2 added 00:31:10 Zakim, agenda+ Goal of this session 00:31:11 agendum 3 added 00:31:11 Zakim, agenda+ Discussion 00:31:11 agendum 4 added 00:31:11 Zakim, agenda+ Next steps / where discussion continues 00:31:14 agendum 5 added 00:31:14 Zakim, agenda+ Adjourn / Use IRC command: Zakim, end meeting 00:31:14 agendum 6 added 00:31:14 breakout-bot has left #human-rights 00:43:03 tantek-projector has joined #human-rights 00:51:49 DKA has joined #human-rights 00:52:54 mattreynolds has joined #human-rights 00:53:00 q? 00:57:44 Amirsh has joined #human-rights 00:59:10 q? 00:59:28 Bert has joined #human-rights 00:59:54 noamr has joined #human-rights 00:59:58 kenneth has joined #human-rights 01:00:21 present+ Coralie 01:00:26 present+ 01:00:27 plinss has joined #human-rights 01:01:03 hdv has joined #human-rights 01:01:05 hadleybeeman has joined #human-rights 01:01:06 kevin has joined #human-rights 01:01:08 kizu has joined #human-rights 01:01:13 npdoty has joined #human-rights 01:01:13 pchampin has joined #human-rights 01:01:20 present+ 01:01:24 present+ 01:01:25 present+ 01:01:26 present+ 01:01:27 present+ 01:01:28 present+ 01:01:42 now we can hear! 01:01:51 present+ 01:01:53 scribe+ 01:02:00 wendyreid has joined #human-rights 01:02:05 present+ 01:02:12 present+ 01:02:17 DKA: Good morning everyone 01:02:23 DKA: the topic is human rights and standards 01:02:36 csarven has joined #human-rights 01:02:43 shawn has joined #human-rights 01:02:46 present+ 01:02:51 aki has joined #human-rights 01:02:52 DKA: the focus of this session is on interactive discussion 01:02:55 IdentityWoman has joined #human-rights 01:02:58 lola has joined #human-rights 01:03:00 JenStrickland has joined #human-rights 01:03:01 Hidi has joined #human-rights 01:03:03 present+ 01:03:04 present+ 01:03:09 present+ 01:03:11 DKA: we'll start with some scene setting 01:04:17 present+ 01:04:28 ota has joined #human-rights 01:04:28 rene has joined #human-rights 01:04:33 Simone: welcome all 01:04:36 present+ 01:04:36 ewooton has joined #human-rights 01:05:12 lilin has joined #human-rights 01:05:13 Ben_Tillyer has joined #human-rights 01:05:22 present+ 01:05:24 Link: https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Member/w3c-archive/2025Jul/att-0280/Workshop_Report__Advancing_Human_Rights-Aligned_Standard-Setting.pdf 01:05:27 Simon: there was a report from the UN on human rights and technical standard-setting processees for new and emerging digital technologies, of which a new version was just recently published 01:05:33 s/Simon/Simone 01:05:57 ... there was a recent meeting in Madrid where some of this was presented 01:06:20 ... what's the problem? Standards define technial features, with that they are relevant for human rights 01:06:30 ... as a SDO we have the responsibility 01:06:50 ... coming from security, pretty much all kinds of technology are related to this 01:07:13 fershad has joined #human-rights 01:07:30 ... there are two main challenges. The first is lack of expertise and the second transparancy and participation gaps 01:07:54 ... we had a conversation with IETF as they also have a research group on human rights 01:08:11 ... another factor is providing training on human rights, which we want to do 01:08:12 while I appreciate the shoutout, I think it's pretty clear that we don't have nearly enough engagement and expertise from civil society. I am a poor substitute for participation from genuine human rights experts 01:09:03 DKA: to add onto what Simone said… last year we had an AC meeting in Hiroshima. It was notable that the Tim Engelhardt from the UN speak on the doc they had been working on in the Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights 01:09:18 DKA: they challenged W3C to take proactive actions towards realising a peaceful future 01:09:23 ananya has joined #human-rights 01:09:27 present+ 01:09:33 denkeni has joined #human-rights 01:09:34 simone has joined #human-rights 01:09:41 present+ 01:09:45 s/they/the president of Hiroshima University/ 01:10:17 DKA: they referenced the Code of Conduct and the Ethical Web Principles, of which I'm a co-editor. I'm Dan Appelquist, I work for Samsung's open source group and was chair of TAG for a while 01:10:27 DKA: now I'm a co-chair of the Advisory Board 01:10:40 sarahj has joined #human-rights 01:10:49 DKA: in that document we said we need to put internationally recognised human rights at the core of the web platform, especially related to the UN Declaration of Human Rights 01:11:03 DKA: some work the TAG has done on privacy principles is trying to push that forward into the web platform 01:11:24 q+ 01:11:27 q+ 01:11:32 q? 01:11:35 DKA: how can we actually make it part of our requirements rather than just have it as some promise? 01:11:56 q+ 01:12:15 IdentityWoman: Human rights is a very broad term. So my question is… which human rights are talking about? All of them? There's like a hundred 01:12:50 UDHR is Universal Declaration of Human Rights 01:12:57 DKA: we're talking specifically about the work that the Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights is discussing, specifically their work on technical standards. 01:13:12 IdentityWoman: but that's still broad. People who are more technical struggle to understand what it actually means 01:13:30 q+ to make the rights more specific so they can be used in our standards work 01:13:30 DKA: it's not about being nice, it's about specifically looking at what technical requirements can we add into our work 01:13:56 Link to the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights: https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-human-rights 01:13:57 DKA: coming back to our work on privacy… all work on web privacy hangs off of specific items in the UN declaration of human rights 01:14:14 q? 01:14:14 hiroshige has joined #human-rights 01:14:21 ack ident 01:14:54 ack wendy 01:15:00 simone: we are talking about independent standards and human rights as something robust. One of the approaches we're experimenting with is focus on @@@ 01:16:00 wendyreid: re the last question… one of the things called out in the report is not just about human rights, it's about how do we make the work we do and the processes that feed into that accessible to experts in the fields we're looking to talk to. We need human rights experts, privacy experts, disability experts… we need to make ourselves accessible to them 01:16:19 s/@@@/harms 01:16:24 q+ 01:16:31 wendyreid: realistically, even if they don't give us the technical solutions… that's our job… we need to informed by their information and experience 01:17:01 wendyreid: I tried to get folks from the publishing industry to give input on age verification… was actually hard to get them to be involved… they weren't sure how to share their perspective 01:17:05 wendyreid: the hurdle was too high 01:17:09 q? 01:17:30 DKA: that's absolutely right. One thing in the UN report was to encourage NGOs to have more participation from civil society groups 01:17:59 DKA: it's great we have CDT and npdoty, but… we only have CDT… there are many more NGOs and civil society groups that could participate about his 01:18:00 ack aki 01:18:44 q? 01:18:56 aki: +1 you need to have these different orgs participating… we do have the benefit having more than just industry groups in W3C 01:19:07 aki: I work with ACMA international, another NGO 01:19:31 ack npdoty 01:19:31 npdoty, you wanted to make the rights more specific so they can be used in our standards work 01:19:32 aki: how can we actively recruit folks to work on web standards without coming to W3C first? 01:19:34 s/ACMA/ECMA/ 01:19:54 s/NGO/SDO 01:20:24 npdoty: there's some important themes in the UN report… I do think W3C is well positioned being not just industry 01:21:03 npdoty: but I think we're not going as deep and broad as we need to be to be effective… I think horizontal review is a great way to become more effective 01:21:22 The UN report that has been referenced multiple times "Human rights and technical standard-setting processes for new and emerging digital technologies" 2023 - https://docs.un.org/a/hrc/53/42 01:21:28 npdoty: we could gather people with expertise in privacy for instance and see how it applies… and same for other rights liek freedom of association and expression 01:21:53 q+ 01:22:01 npdoty: we need them to explain implication. We need more engagement but I don't think we can expect we'll have many civil society orgs to try and keep up with all of our standards and working groups all the time 01:22:30 npdoty: but we can more affirmatively experct us to be succesful in reaching more groups and making hte actionable pricniples 01:22:32 q? 01:22:37 s/pricniples/principles 01:22:38 my blog post on what we should work on for implementing the recommendations: https://cdt.org/insights/implementing-recommendations-for-supporting-human-rights-in-web-standards/ 01:23:04 JenStrickland: following aki's example… I'm Jen, was in industry, primarily work with US gov now. I also chair the Equity CG 01:23:09 q? 01:23:13 ack jen 01:23:17 (transparency is also a topic that does more to enable access and participation, and again an area where W3C is doing better than many SDOs, but also still isn't fully successful) 01:23:34 JenStrickland: we're working on the Equity maturity model. I am also doing a masters in public administration, and a public speaker 01:23:48 JenStrickland: one of the things I'm hearing is we need to make W3C more accessible to others that we need in these conversations 01:24:07 JenStrickland: I think rather us opening the door, we need to get our of our ivory tour, include people not in technical orgs 01:24:17 JenStrickland: we need to talk to people on the ground with lived experiences 01:24:28 s/ivory tour/ivory tower 01:24:45 q? 01:24:51 JenStrickland: to make people aware and show them we want their input. We have big gaps in our coverage. We need to go to them rather than put the onus on them 01:24:57 ack lola 01:25:37 tara has joined #human-rights 01:26:30 +1 to lola 01:26:34 lola: re Jen's point… before I joined Bocoup they did a number of community-based standards work, out side the W3C, engaging people who were doing the kind of work we're talking about., looking for collaboration and getting folks to share their expertise, without needing them to be embroiled into the kinds of politics we have at W3C. 01:26:36 lola: They just come to bring their expertise to very specific, while they're shielded from things that can feel intimidating 01:26:43 q? 01:26:46 lola: W3C needs some kind of advocay program 01:27:15 lola: so while we advocate for specs and tech, we also need to actively send members to communities where we can expect impact 01:27:24 q+ 01:27:25 s/advocay/advocacy 01:27:35 W3C ambassadors/advocates to reach out to different communities and explain what's going on, or solicit feedback 01:27:39 DKA: do you think that should be a function of the Team or membership? 01:28:03 lola: not sure where… Marie Claire is doing training and Sylvia is doing outreach too 01:28:23 lola: we can identify a number of working groups that need this kind of integrated work 01:28:26 q+ 01:28:33 q+ 01:28:45 lola: and we can make sure community members feel t hey can participate and allow them to be invited experts 01:28:46 ack simone 01:29:33 simone: even as technical people we don't always understand these kinds of abstract topics 01:29:43 q+ on new technical work that could help address particular community concerns, not just review. (gender-based violence as an area, for example) 01:30:08 simone: we should not just put people together but also define the process and share competences, developrs struggle using the examples 01:30:21 q+ to give another example - the societal impact questionnaire from TAG: https://www.w3.org/TR/societal-impact-questionnaire/ 01:30:22 simone: we need training on both sides 01:30:34 ack jen 01:31:08 JenStrickland: the purpose of today's meeting is to discuss the general area… one thing that could be useful is to document follow up actions, eg brainstorm how we might engage how to encorporate the community 01:31:22 JenStrickland: at the government we had relationships with local community organisations and academia 01:31:56 q+ 01:32:09 JenStrickland: out of compassion for them would like to keep them far away from us and our culture, as their expertise is of tremendous value 01:32:19 JenStrickland: wouldn't like to just excavate their expertise 01:32:37 DKA: I'm looking for helping defining what we can do as a community, what AB can do as well. 01:32:59 AmirSh has joined #human-rights 01:33:00 q+ 01:33:04 DKA: the AB has a 2026 priority projects to engage with policy and regulatory, this kind of fits under that umbrella. Are there work items or specific things … how can we help AB frame that work item? 01:33:16 q+ 01:33:17 ack koalie 01:33:41 koalie: I'm Coralie Mercier, head of marketing and communications… ever since I read the UN report I have been hoping that W3C could create a horizontal that looks at human rights 01:34:04 I had an email thread going for a while about human rights horizontal review ... but some people seemed to think it was too abstract to act upon 01:34:13 DKA: do we need a specific human rights threats and harms, say, interest or community group, do you think the time is right for that? 01:34:25 q? 01:34:37 koalie: that's too focused of a question, we don't have CGs or IGs for all of our horizontals… might use those as a mechanism to make that work 01:34:53 koalie: at Process level, I want to look at the mechanisms we have or can have in place 01:35:07 ack npdoty 01:35:07 npdoty, you wanted to comment on new technical work that could help address particular community concerns, not just review. (gender-based violence as an area, for example) 01:35:08 koalie: many specs might benefit from a human rights related horizontal review 01:35:27 q+ 01:35:36 npdoty: another way we could work on this topic, there may be new substantive technical work that's needed to support specific human rights 01:35:40 +1 npdoty 01:35:44 npdoty: and to reach out to specific communities 01:35:46 +1 npdoty 01:36:43 npdoty: an IETF example… we identified this area where BT location trackers where used for stalking and intimate partner violence… that affected a certain community and we spoke to experts and groups who work with survivors of domestic violence to find out about mitigations against that type of location tracking 01:36:52 sarahj has joined #human-rights 01:36:58 npdoty: that was new substantive work for a particular human rights concern we had identified 01:37:28 q? 01:37:28 npdoty: if we had the ambassador idea… when we hear a particular policy need or a concern re harms that people see from web technology… we can then potentially charter new work based on those topics 01:38:08 npdoty: there are particular areas, like gender based violence, there are many other areas we can think of, where we can identify new work proactively 01:38:27 DKA: ongoing tech review can also increase quality and work to mitigate, to make things better 01:38:31 I wonder if a horizontal review process takes time to develop: research, analysis, design, review, iterate, then document, etc.… So, for a long tail goal, I see it as helpful. For a shorter term vision, having the discussions, opening collaboration, it takes quite a bit of time to develop the relationships, trust, rapport, etc., for these network 01:38:31 efforts. These would then inform the development or evolution of a horizontal review process. 01:38:40 @koalie you're absolutely right. horizontals shouldn't just be for review, but some of us who work in horizontals have more often been focused on review :) 01:39:08 but even for Privacy in particular, re-chartering as a Privacy Working Group was so that we could both do horizontal review and new standards work as needed 01:39:12 q? 01:39:12 DKA: in the TAG review of the Web of Things work, a number of years back, we came back with probing questions re abuse cases of IoT devices, like surveillance and stalking, that really wasn't something they had thought about, but after the review they did 01:39:13 q+ 01:39:15 ack dka 01:39:15 DKA, you wanted to give another example - the societal impact questionnaire from TAG: https://www.w3.org/TR/societal-impact-questionnaire/ 01:39:24 Note: some of these devices are also used by us survivors to protect us, to know where the perpetrators are to avoid dangers. 01:39:42 DKA: in that same context… TAG just released a note, the societal impact questionnaire 01:39:58 noamr has left #human-rights 01:40:18 DKA: many specs developed by people in industry have not had potential societal impacts considered, but we can prompt them with documents like these 01:40:31 q? 01:40:33 DKA: that's also an effective approach, ambient info that relates back to rights questions 01:40:35 ack aki 01:40:47 q+ 01:41:00 q? 01:41:21 "not subjecting people" is a real concern. I was pretty cautious about introducing people to IETF, and still worry about having done that. 01:41:57 aki: Jen earlier mentioned 'not subjecting people to this'… standards people talk about this a lot… this can be hard when it is not your background. I worked in standards for many many years and recently started at a new standards org and very nearly quit after the first day. It was a hostile environment, don't think anyone meant it that way, but it made me feel confused 01:42:09 +1 to aki 01:42:15 +100000 01:42:23 q? 01:42:27 +1 to @aki's point. I know I am among many who regularly consider leaving the W3C -- and I know many who have left the W3C because of cultural "splinters". 01:42:33 ack wendy 01:42:33 aki: so I think it makes sense to sit with folks for a while before trying to get them to actually sit here, as otherwise it can be very intimidating and/or isolating 01:42:47 I think it does matter how much we make it a welcoming place! but I agree that it's not enough to do that. 01:42:57 wendyreid: +100^100 to what aki said 01:43:08 +1 to joining PWEtf 01:43:33 wendyreid: training chairs helps improve the environment we work on 01:43:38 wendyreid: join the PWETF! 01:44:09 wendyreid: an area we should look into, hopefully the AB can… is how can we diversify how feedback comes into our work 01:44:20 +1 for getting more pathways for feedback 01:44:46 wendyreid: having worked on getting docs through the publication process, I also know that horizontal review is hard and could get a lot of negative feedback from folks going through 01:45:14 wendyreid: timing matters, you don't want to find out about a massive human rights mistake and have to rewrite your whole spec just before publication 01:45:15 I would also like to invite interested folks to join the Equity Community Group. Full disclosure, though, we're in a very grueling literature review phase. https://www.w3.org/community/equity/ 01:45:17 +1 for plain language blog posts for more transparency and channels 01:45:27 q? 01:45:47 ack lola 01:45:52 wendyreid: to get wider feedback, we can encourage folks to talk more publicly about their work, post on LinkedIn, Bluesky, your own blog… share it in as many channels as possible, this way we could get more diverse feedback 01:46:12 Yeah, a group gets a survivor in it and then dismisses concerns raised… it is really hard in the W3C sometimes, speaking from experience. 01:46:18 lola: Sarven and I are co-editors of the Societal Impact questionnaire 01:46:32 Positive Work Environment: https://www.w3.org/community/pwe/ 01:46:49 lola: it's not part of horizontal review, it's kind of late to find out about these things during horizontal review … we want folks to think about societal impact much earlier 01:46:49 q+ to also mention the draft finding on "preventing abuse of digital credentials" https://w3ctag.github.io/prevent-credential-abuse/ 01:47:20 lola: the UK government is interested in participaton in standards, they're trying to improve it; I wonder if there's opportunity for us to collaborate with the UK goverment with this kind of work 01:47:35 +qq 01:47:38 getting harder to find non-hostile governments for some of us 01:47:54 q+ aki 01:47:55 lola: the EU is also interested in standards stuff… are there other bodies interested in getting more diverse voices? 01:47:57 q- q 01:48:28 q? 01:48:39 ack simone 01:48:48 aki: the EU wants to get involved and there is an opportunity right now to add comments to, you can do before December 17th, will drop a link 01:49:38 simone: +1 to others, horizontal review is too late… it's impossible and impractical to make suggestions at that pint 01:50:15 simone: when the features are ready we should start monitoring human rights 01:50:15 pascoe has joined #human-rights 01:51:06 simone: we need to focus on the user. Taking some frameworks, in particular one from Microsoft that is also in the RFC for human rights… we need to understand stakeholders. That can be the user, different users… but also non-users 01:51:28 simone: to work in the UK you need digital credentials…so it's also non-users we should consider 01:52:02 simone: we are also working on a diagram to put hundreds of spec pages into something easier to understand 01:52:08 simone: this helps start mitigating the threads 01:52:15 ack ben 01:52:30 This link for the European Commission's "Have your say" regarding European Standards provides background of the process so far. The link to contribute your voice is about ⅔ down the page and says "Go to consultation" https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/better-regulation/have-your-say/initiatives/14511-Standardisation-Regulation-revision_en 01:52:36 q? 01:52:51 Ben_Tillyer: I work for the Uni of Oxford and we are bound by the Public Sector Equality Duty 01:53:11 q- 01:53:23 npdoty yes, non-users are important, to find discrimination if you don't use the technology 01:53:43 Ben_Tillyer: so every time I need to make a decision I am bound by this… it asks me to think about whether the decision I am making does not result in unlawful discrimination according to UK law, asks me to consider equality of opportunity 01:54:30 have people found the PSED actionable? or successful? 01:54:34 Ben_Tillyer: when I saw this breakout session today, I thought the W3C might be able to take learnings from what the PSED has achieved in the UK and look to see whether some version of it could be implemented as part of horizontal review and/or as something for chairs 01:55:09 https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/public-sector-equality-duty 01:55:15 q? 01:55:22 Ben_Tillyer: there's a legal expectation in the UK for written records with evidence of your considerations about key decisions. Without increasing chair's workload, how can we make something like this work for this? 01:56:31 DKA: there are a couple of documents recently published as W3C Statements, like the Vision for W3C… they are not binding but they can hopefully help people focusing on these areas. They don't have teeth, is it apt to have teeth? 01:56:32 ack iden 01:57:06 IdentityWoman: wanted to share something I heard about… 'programmable human rights'… sounded like code word for censoring things we don't like…  01:57:36 IdentityWoman: as a value-oriented technoligst, I came to the work via civil society. I was in a community that published a paper called the Augmented Social Network 01:58:06 IdentityWoman: holding onto the vision and making technology you work with industry folks as well as civil society 01:58:22 Some links: 1) Intro to PSED: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/public-sector-equality-duty-guidance-for-public-authorities/public-sector-equality-duty-guidance-for-public-authorities#introduction 2) A guide to PSED for civil servants in the UK: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/63568bca8fa8f557cc0b8f97/The_Judge_Over_Your_Shoulder_accessible_PDF.pdf 3) 01:58:32 s/ 3) / 01:58:33 IdentityWoman: in a forum we've hosted called Internet Identity workshop we had Jay Stanley from ACLU to come. 01:58:36 q? 01:58:38 I can't find anything online about "programmable human rights" 01:58:50 thanks Ben_Tillyer for those links 01:58:54 IdentityWoman: I believe @@@ could have more impact by showing up more often in technical forums 01:59:14 RightsCon is one potential "partner" I thought could be where we might reach out. https://www.rightscon.org 01:59:41 +1 JenStrickland, RightsCon is a useful venue 01:59:51 s/@@@ could/those dollars could/ 02:00:03 q? 02:00:05 scribe+ 02:00:07 ack dka 02:00:07 DKA, you wanted to also mention the draft finding on "preventing abuse of digital credentials" https://w3ctag.github.io/prevent-credential-abuse/ 02:00:24 +1 to RightsCon, lots of professionals there 02:00:35 scribe- 02:00:37 present+ 02:01:06 DKA: I and Martin Thompson worked on a finding called Preventing Abuse of Digital Credentials 02:01:13 sarahj has joined #human-rights 02:01:14 present+ 02:01:36 s/Thompson/Thomson/ 02:01:48 q+ 02:02:03 DKA: at W3C we can give people the feeling that they can spend their time and energy on human rights 02:02:34 JenStrickland: maybe there's a way to providing cover for more hostile situations? 02:02:37 DKA: something to think about 02:02:43 DKA: thanks everyone for participating 02:02:50 DKA: please talk more about this in the break and continue to engage 02:03:14 RRSAgent, make minutes please 02:03:15 I have made the request to generate https://www.w3.org/2025/11/12-human-rights-minutes.html hdv 02:03:22 Zakim, make minutes please 02:03:22 I don't understand 'make minutes', hdv 02:14:19 kevin has left #human-rights 02:21:19 shawn has left #human-rights 02:30:24 present+ emil_lundberg, hiroshi_ota, jsasson, roman_komarov, tara_whalen, DKA, aki_braun, sylvia_cadena, kaliya_young, patilmayur 02:30:28 RRSagent, make minutes 02:30:29 I have made the request to generate https://www.w3.org/2025/11/12-human-rights-minutes.html koalie 02:37:48 present+ Bert Bos 02:37:51 RRSagent, make minutes 02:37:52 I have made the request to generate https://www.w3.org/2025/11/12-human-rights-minutes.html Bert 02:38:04 kenneth has left #human-rights 02:54:11 Ben_Tillyer has left #human-rights 06:31:54 wendyreid has left #human-rights 06:49:11 koalie has left #human-rights 07:08:24 tantek-projector has left #human-rights 13:45:05 tidoust has joined #human-rights 13:45:10 RRSAgent, bye 13:45:10 I see no action items