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.
From facial recognition software being used by governments to identify people who participate in street demonstrations, to the collection, aggregation and sale of our data and activities by internet platform providers that we rely on so heavily for our online engagement such as Google and Facebook - it seems like the internet is significantly shifting from a distributed space of multiplicity to a consolidated space of multinational private enterprise.
The problem with pictures
At the FTX, WITNESS.org shared their development of a software called ObscuraCam, that can enable android smart phone users to easily obscure faces of the people captured through the phone’s camera. This is quite an innovative solution to ensure that privacy and anonymity is designed into the technology, and that we do not make the assumption that everyone is okay with images of their faces being captured and shared into spaces outside of their control.
