Daniel Appelquist – Shifting Left on Human Rights? #FOSSBack

In this talk, the speaker discusses the importance of W3C wide review processes and their role in promoting ethics within technological standards. As co-chair of the W3C advisory board, the speaker emphasizes the need to assess specifications for accessibility, privacy, security, and sustainability to create a web that benefits society as a whole. They critique the notion that technology is neutral, arguing instead that technology embeds political implications and affects marginalized groups. Additionally, the speaker highlights the ethical web principles initiated by the technical architecture group, asserting that ethical considerations should be integrated into the development of standards. The session also references the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and the value of including human rights due diligence in the standardization process.

Hi everyone. Thanks for um so happy to be talking about this. So, I actually work for Samsung open source group um but I'm here really talking about my more in the capacity of a co-chair of the W3C advisory board, which is one of the governance uh boards of the of the W3C. We're here to talk a little bit about W3C wide review and what it means, how

how we're using it to create uh we think a a better society. Um so, one of the things that we do in W3C whenever a spec is going through the process is we review it in a uh you know, for various types of things like accessibility, internationalization, privacy, security, architecture and design, and and also sustainability. Um this is uh this is part of a a kind of

culture of wide review that's intended to uh uh make sure that what whatever it goes through W3C World Wide Web Consortium is also have it is also beneficial uh to you know, to to society in the in the in the larger scheme of things. So, we have special review groups like accessible platform architectures, internationalization, privacy working group, security interest group, technical architecture group. And we also have

a kind of you may have heard or read this already, but we have a kind of ethos that user needs come before the needs of web page authors, which come before the needs of user agent implementers, which come before the needs of specification writers, which comes before theoretical purity. And this goes way back to the beginning of W3C and and the kind of start start of the

whole organization. Uh we wanted to go further than this. So, um I and a couple of other people in the technical architecture group uh started some work called the ethical principles, ethical web principles, um which are kind of core principles that we can build on top of which put internationally recognized human rights at the core of the web platform. So, I'll get back to that in a

second. Um and part of the reason for that is because we think that technology without ethics makes social inequality worse, which leads to this kind of situation, which we don't want to be creating um, with the future of the web. Um, so we get a lot of uh, arguments back, well, but you're not ethicists. You're not How can you possibly be doing this, right? Um, well, this

uh, kind of goes back to the whole topic of the talk, which is about shift left. So, um, in the security uh, arena, we hear a lot about shift left, how the uh, security uh, of code should be increasingly the the provenance not only of the security experts, but also of the developers that are actually writing the code. Um, so we think that you should be able

to apply this uh, same principle to the kinds of domains that we're talking about when we're talking about reviewing um, specifications and tech and technologies for ethical um, considerations. This is all of our responsibility. It's not just some ethical design board. Uh, we all need to be thinking about how uh, you know, what we build uh, affects society. Um, so what do standards have to do with

human rights? Um, technical standards are rules that tell systems what they can and cannot do. Therefore, they tell people what they can and cannot do and what can be done to them. That's something I strongly believe. Um, we can build standards that accommodate the needs of people outside of the mainstream of society, such as marginalized groups, or we can choose to ignore those needs. We can build

standards that resist surveillance or we can build uh, surveillance into the platform. Um, we make those decisions affirmatively. Um, but technology is neutral, many people say. Well, it turns out no. Technology is not neutral. All human endeavors are political. Um, and if you realize this, then it becomes clear why we need to uh, incorporate this thinking into our work. Um, so the United Nations High Commissioner for

Human Rights last year released a report after a number of workshops, some of which I participated in, which talks about the relationship between human rights and technical standards. Amongst other things, I talk about supporting inclusion of human rights due diligence, a development of mechanisms that allow human rights to be addressed at multiple points throughout the standards life cycle, and ensuring that the standards development processes are are

multi-stakeholder, that there's a diverse and inclusive culture behind the production of these kinds of technical standards. Extremely important stuff, and also references some of the work that I did on ethical web principles, which really you know, gave me a good feeling. So anyway, and that is all based around this document, which is the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which I encourage you to read. So if you

want to you know, answer the question more fully about what the relationship between human rights and technical standards is, I strongly encourage you to take take a look at this report. QR code is up on the screen. And I think that's about it for me, and I'm that's the end of my five minutes. Thank you very much.