Figure: “Bucket & spade” by Dale Gillard is licensed under CC BY 2.0 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.

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 (@nllz@mastodon.cloud) is a researcher in the intersection of tech and human rights, and particiapates in IRTF together with the current chairs Mallory Knodel of the Center for Democracy & Technology and Sofía Celi of Brave Software.

A few days ago, I found myself attending a pitch by the Consumer Reports Digital Lab for their Data Rights Protocol. 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.