Latest Articles

All or nothing? The relationship between privacy and safety in addressing online harms

To better understand the relationship between privacy and safety in addressing online harms, Digital Rights Watch has commissioned a research report featuring polling conducted by Essential Media. It covers some topical technologies like facial recognition and age assurance tech, client-side scanning in CSAEM detection, and methods of improving safety without impacting privacy.

The Fight for Digital Rights in the Age of AI

Image: Yutong Liu & The Bigger Picture / https://betterimagesofai.org / https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

The promise of AI innovation has captured the attention of the technology industry and its associated policy makers. While we wait for the development of a National AI Capability Plan in Australia, companies are left with a set of voluntary guardrails to navigate the technologies’ associated risks.

Interview with Dr Miah Hammond-Errey

Digital Rights Advocate, Kate Bower

In October, I had the pleasure of seeing national security analyst, Dr Miah Hammond-Errey speak on a panel about mis- and dis-information at this year’s SXSW Sydney. I was impressed with her nuanced and informed take on the topic and how she described the data-extractive business models of digital platforms as key to understanding and therefore tackling mis- and dis-information. It aligned strongly with our thinking at Digital Rights Watch, that we need to disrupt the business models of Big Tech and digital platforms, rather than rely on content moderation as a solution to the mis- and dis-information problem, and the best way to do that is by strong and meaningful reform of our privacy law. In this interview, Miah reflects on the unlikely pairing of national security and privacy, the role of human rights and how we might regulate Big Tech.

Submission: Review of AI and Australian Consumer Law 2024

Image: Alexa Steinbrück / https://betterimagesofai.org / https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

AI-enabled goods and services are now commonplace in the Australian market and people interact with AI-enabled products in their daily lives. These products range from entirely online digital products, such as subscription streaming services for entertainment and customer service chatbots, to internet-connected physical goods such as digital assistants in smart phones and smart speakers, to internet-of-things goods that have little to no human interactivity, such as robot vacuums.