under CTRL

When data privacy means life or death, with Ethan Gutmann

Episode Summary

Join human rights advocate Ethan Gutmann as he discusses how the right technology can protect whistle-blowers and witnesses in some of the world’s most oppressive regimes.

Episode Notes

Across the globe, governments are using cutting-edge technology to surveil their citizens en masse. In oppressive or autocratic regimes, state security services regularly exploit tools such as facial recognition and GPS tracking to find and imprison political dissidents.

Luckily, digital innovation is also unlocking new possibilities for human rights defenders who need to protect both themselves and the vital testimonies they gather.

In this episode, researcher, author, and Nobel prize-nominee Ethan Gutmann joins Tresorit’s Stefan Killer-Haug to discuss how end-to-end encryption and zero-knowledge principles can help human rights advocates to carry out their important work.

As well as recounting his personal experiences of evading state surveillance while gathering evidence of China’s forced organ harvesting program, Ethan discusses the solutions he’s found to protect the lives of those fleeing persecution — and what the future could hold for human rights defenders in a world of AI.