HC2P Webinar: Promoting Digital Safety Through Whistleblower Protection

While frontier technologies like AI, quantum and neurotechnologies promise considerable benefits, they also raise critical legal, political, and ethical concerns, particularly around fundamental rights… and the protection of those brave enough to disclose these issues. Years of regulatory inaction have fostered unchecked AI and socio-technical systems currently plagued by a troubling lack of transparency, oversight, and accountability. Failure of internal governance models, infrastructure design choices and proper internal feedback loops fuelled hate speech, misinformation and societal harm. In our quest for a safe digital future, we must empower and protect those who are familiar with the technical reality and design choices, and those at the decision and design tables—for AI and beyond. Whistleblowers have unravelled numerous technological scandals, asserting the essential role of disclosing security breaches, surveillance, and hacktivism in protecting our digital security. Whistleblowers and security researchers unveiled mass evidence of state and corporate surveillance, and of deliberate malice and harmful choices that negatively impacted society. Our approach to responsible and safe transformative technology has overlooked this need to protect whistleblowers and public interest researchers to support secured systems and responsible development and deployment of AI and other technical systems. Countries, including Canada, have been criticized for lacking robust whistleblower protection, leaving vulnerable those who alert authorities and the public. The talk will proposes strategy to address this gap, prioritizing public safety and striking a fair balance between public disclosures and the safeguarding of trade and state secrets. It will propose policies and actions to protect whistleblowers and public interest researchers, ensuring a safer and better digital future.