What went down at #PrivacyCamp22?

EDRi’s annual flagship event Privacy Camp took place yesterday, on 25 January. Thanks to all of you who joined us to celebrate the 10th-anniversary edition of the conference.

In this special anniversary edition of Privacy Camp 2022, we reflected on a decade of digital activism and thought together about the best ways to advance human rights in the digital age. #PrivacyCamp22 brought together close to 300 academics, activists and privacy experts who built on the lessons of the past and collectively articulated strategic ways forward for the promotion of everyone’s digital rights.

All aspects of our lives have been subjected to rapid digitalisation, leading to the growing production of data in digital formats. In this context, corporate and government entities have gained unprecedented power. Internet services and digital technologies have developed within often inadequate and insufficient regulatory frameworks. As a result, many have been excluded from the benefits of the digitalisation process.

The digital rights field composition, organisational practices and methods have often left the people most affected by harmful uses of technologies outside of policy, advocacy or litigation work. This has resulted in siloed approaches to human rights in the digital age, or in overlooking the impact of digital infrastructure on marginalised groups and the planet itself.

During the event, we moved beyond empty calls to put ‘the (undefined) human at the centre’ into a genuine consideration of digital rights. We discussed why we need to stop data retention practices, how to include marginalised voices in the process of de-centering tech, and how AI-powered technology perpetrates harms in the criminal legal cycle. The panels explored the discriminatory practices embedded in the gig economy and migration control, the power dynamics between public and private data and tech dependency, and how collectives are challenging unequal power structures by working on alternatives such as a feminist internet, among others.

#PrivacyCamp22 in numbers

A total of 900 participants registered for the event. The event was led by 1 Mistress of Ceremonies, 16 moderators and 47 speakers who contributed to 13 panels and were representing 5 continents.

Since making the digital rights field diverse and representative was a priority, the line up of speakers at the event included women, non- binary people and people of colour bringing a variety of perspectives from different fields. Out of the total 63 speakers and moderators, 41 were women and non-binary people.

Thank you to everyone who sent us birthday wishes for Privacy Camp’s 10^th anniversary. We received over 100 messages from #PrivacyCamp fans. On Twitter, the #PrivacyCamp22 hashtag was used in 215 tweets with an approximate reach of 1.5M people, showing a growing interest in digital rights.

Special thanks

We would like to thank our co-organisers VUB’s Law, Science, Technology & Society (LSTS) Research Group, Privacy Salon and the Institute for European Studies (IES) of Université Saint-Louis – Bruxelles (USL-B) as well as the event funders epic.org, Kobler, EDPS, Nextcloud, NordVPN, Center for AI and Digital Policy, Clever cloud, Mysterium network, Vivaldi and Mojeek. We are grateful to all the session organisers, moderators, speakers and the audience, for making Privacy Camp 2022 a success. Finally we extend our gratitude to Senfcall for providing the infrastructure for the event to take place.

Coming up

Stay tuned for some exciting content to follow including:

• Video recordings of all sessions
• An event summary of each session’s main highlights
• Graphic visualisation of the highlights of several sessions

Want to make the next event a bigger success? Donate to Privacy Camp.