08-16, 21:00–21:50 (US/Eastern), Marillac Auditorium
This panel discussion will offer insights into the challenges faced by human rights defenders and hacktivists in today’s context of intensified digital repression, including surveillance, censorship, and cyberwarfare. The three panelists will report from the frontlines, sharing their technical expertise and experiences living among activists and supporting them in their work in different countries. Topics will include hacktivism in Ukraine, disrupting surveillance in Serbia and Thailand, and tech and reproductive rights in the USA and worldwide. Each panelist will briefly share their stories and insights, and then the discussion between them and the audience will be opened.
Gabrielle Joni Verreault is a PhD candidate in bioethics at Universite de Montreal. She explores the intersection of bioethics and technology to address emerging ethical challenges in the digital age. Applying bioethical frameworks to cyberspace, she identifies herself as a cyberethicist, focusing on how technology can empower civilians in conflict situations and support ethical practices in complex, high-stakes environments.
Elina Castillo-Jimnez is a feminist lawyer and human rights strategist, committed to using her voice and skills to contribute to building a more just and inclusive world. She started law school at 16, convinced it would give her the tools to understand and promote social justice. After a J.D. in the Dominican Republic, she pursued an LL.M. She is Amnesty International’s security lab researcher on targeted digital surveillance.
Jane Eklund is the digital rights program manager for Women on Web (WoW), which is a Canadian nonprofit organization that has supported access to abortion for care seekers in over 180 countries. She focuses on advocacy initiatives related to digital resilience to abortion censorship globally. Prior to her role at WoW, she supported Amnesty International USA’s work to fight the suppression of reproductive health and rights content online as the tech and reproductive rights fellow, and assisted AIUSA’s gender, sexuality, and identity program on state-level abortion rights work and research on human rights abuses against Indigenous women in the U.S.
Ken Mayers has taught about instructional technology and human rights (among other things) since the 1980s. He is also a veteran reader of 2600 Magazine (since the 1980s) and HOPE attendee (since the single digits). He is the chair of the North Africa Coordination Group at AIUSA and has worked closely with human rights defenders from Western Sahara across to Egypt since 2008.
