Episode 92: Niels ten Oever on Human Rights, Open Source, and Digital Infrastructure

Guest Niels ten Oever Panelists Eric Berry | Justin Dorfman |
Richard Littauer Show Notes Hello and welcome to Sustain! The
podcast where we talk about sustaining open source for the long
haul. Our guest today is Niels ten Oever, who is a Postdoctoral
Researcher at the University of Amsterdam, and recently published a
really interesting report from the Ford Foundation on “Human Rights
Are Not A Bug: Upgrading Governance for an Equitable Internet,”
which we will learn more about. Today, Niels shares his thoughts on
what the internet is, what human rights are, and how to make sure
that we all work in the open. Niels tells us about the idea he had
to build this powerful tool for the people in Ethiopia and what
happened with that. He explains how he got interested in Internet
Governance, his thoughts on 5G, working with the Guardian Project
to develop the StoryMaker app, and more about his PhD report
called, “Wired Norms.” Niels also shares great advice for open
source developers on what they can do to make the world a better
place. Download this episode now to hear so much more from Niels.
[00:01:41] Niels tells us how he got into being a developer and
working in open source, and tells us about working with the
Guardian Project to develop the StoryMaker app. [00:04:25] Niels
explains how he came up with this idea to build this powerful tool
for the people in Ethiopia. He talks about his involvement with
Tactical Tech and more about the report he wrote for the Ford
Foundation on “Human Rights Are Not A Bug: Upgrading Governance for
an Equitable Internet” and he goes in depth about infrastructural
norm of interconnection.” [00:16:23] Since Niels is someone who is
an open source developer and has worked with open tools, Richard
asks him how he views the intersection between large unseen
infrastructure, human rights, and open source as this whole idea of
everything should be able to be used by anyone else and how does
that work with him with the idea of privacy. [00:20:56] Niels talks
about an article that he did along with Mallory Knodel, that the
New York Times printed called, ‘Master,’ ‘Slave’ and the Fight over
Offensive Terms in Computing. [00:26:06] Richard is curious to know
how Niels personally chooses what level of the stack to approach to
figure out how to be a better person. Niels shares his thoughts and
advice for open source developers on what they can do to make the
world a better place. He mentions Cloudflare as a company that has
adopted a Human Rights Policy. [00:31:58] We find out from Niels
about writing his PhD report called “Wired Norms,” why he came out
with it, and the best part of it. [00:36:12] Find out where you can
follow Niels online and learn more about things that he’s writing.
[00:36:27] Justin brings one final point about how Niels writes a
lot of papers on 5G and how in America there a certain people that
have this conspiracy theory that 5G is not secure, and since Niels
works very closely in that community, he shares his thoughts.
Quotes [00:03:18] “Then we develop different distros for the
different parts of the radio station that have been in use ever
since.” [00:03:52] “So we tend to think that you need the really
fancy computers to do things, but Linux actually allowed me to
reuse so much of the hardware and software there to enable freedom
of expression.” [00:05:38] “I had also studied a year in Berlin and
one of the quotes on top of the Humboldt University directly when
you entered is in German and it means “Philosophers have always
interpreted the world differently, but what really matters is to
change it.” And that’s what I actually wanted to do. I didn’t want
to be an armchair philosopher.” [00:08:42] “And then I thought like
hey, but all these smartphones people carry around, they have as
much computing power as my Linux boxes. Why don’t we actually do
editing on that?” [00:09:51] “So then I got really involved with
technical tech and other organizations working on digital security
issues, but also found out that like teaching people who were under
the most stressful situation of their lives to do something else
added on top and that the best possible outcome of that behavior is
nothing happens is almost like the worst premise for behavior
change.” [00:10:30] “So, then I started wondering, why don’t we
address this in the infrastructure itself?” [00:11:03] “So, that
really confused me because my whole premise, freedom of expression
plus access to information equals social change, clearly wasn’t
true.” [00:13:09] “What is so interesting about the internet, which
consist of more than 70,000 independent networks, lots of different
devices from different manufacturers, lots of networking stacks,
operating systems, that are all working together, that is possible
through what I call “infrastructural norm of interconnection.”
[00:14:49] “But this is the nature of infrastructure, it hides
itself, it only shows what it breaks.” [00:17:47] “But, as open
source developers know, the most central part in this are actually
people.” [00:18:35] “But, unfortunately, as the excellent
researcher Corinne Cath shows, is that many of these governance
bodies, such as the internet engineering task force, there is a
total monoculture that is actually very resistant to change.”
[00:19:09] “And there is nothing inherently wrong with that, but it
is wrong if they set the rules for a global internet.” [00:20:56]
“Together with Mallory Knodel, officer at the Center for Democracy
and Technology, I made a really simple internet draft to request
people to stop using “master,” “slave” and “blacklist”,
“whitelist,” and that ended up being a huge route which ended up in
the New York Times.” [00:23:22] “But what’s the most important part
I think is that it’s never done, your human rights are like
muscles, you need to keep training them or else you lose them.”
[00:24:10] “If your code is used for a bad thing, that doesn’t make
you a bad person, but it makes you a bad person if you don’t do
anything about it and if you don’t relate to that.” [00:24:37] “Our
actions have consequences and people who work with computers have a
disproportional impact on society.” [00:27:20] “Try to make the
things a bit better, try to document your code better, try having
discussions, try having people who are not just all CS white dudes
on the developing team, but really do your best to bring more
people in.” [00:28:43] “So, I do a lot of martial arts and I really
enjoy it. And so, the first time you get punched in the face, you
feel almost like insulted, right, like whoa, what, can you do
this?” [00:29:35] “And I think that’s what open source software is
and can be really good for because we can fork, we can change, we
can make iterative changes, discuss them in our meetings.”
[00:30:41] “So like it’s just another sign that says, “Club, need
to comply to our methods, our tools, to be able to partake in
this.” Spotlight [00:38:22] Eric’s spotlight is news that he just
heard that Nadia Eghbal got engaged! [00:38:52] Justin’s spotlight
is cosign, a container signing, verification storage application.
[00:39:23] Richard's spotlight is Der Kleine Hobbit (The Hobbit in
German) by J.R.R. Tolkien. [00:39:55] Niels spotlights are**
**organizations that are active in Internet Governance: ARTICLE19
and the Center for Democracy and Technology. Also, great
researchers such as Corinne Cath, and great pieces of software such
as the Python community and Debian. He is also working on building
5G networks and has the Ettus B210. Links SustainOSS
(https://sustainoss.org/) SustainOSS Twitter
(https://twitter.com/SustainOSS?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor)
SustainOSS Discourse (https://discourse.sustainoss.org/) Niels ten
Oever Twitter
(https://twitter.com/nielstenoever?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor)
Niels ten Oever Website (https://nielstenoever.net/) “Human Rights
Are Not A Bug: Upgrading Governance for an Equitable Internet” by
Niels ten Oever
(https://www.fordfoundation.org/work/learning/research-reports/human-rights-are-not-a-bug-upgrading-governance-for-an-equitable-internet/)
Wired Norms: Inscription, resistance, and subversion in the
governance of the internet infrastructure by Niels ten Oever
(https://nielstenoever.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/WiredNorms-NielstenOever.pdf)
‘Master,’ ‘Slave’ and the Fight Over Offensive Terms in
Computing-New York Times
(https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/13/technology/racist-computer-engineering-terms-ietf.html)
Guardian Project-StoryMaker
(https://dev.guardianproject.info/projects/wrapp/) Tactical Tech
(https://tacticaltech.org/) Dr. Corinne Cath-Speth Website
(https://corinnecath.com/) Qalb (programming language)
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qalb_(programming_language))
Cloudflare-Human Rights Policy
(https://www.cloudflare.com/resources/images/slt3lc6tev37/fdLHB1OGp8ZWwzCTVlM0n/e0a42a032592ded778bda8c31c6747b1/BDES-2133_Impact-Week-Human-Rights-Policy.pdf)
ARTICLE19 (https://www.article19.org/) Python Software Foundation
(https://www.python.org/psf/) Ettus-USRP B210
(https://www.ettus.com/all-products/ub210-kit/) Debian
(https://www.debian.org/) Nadia Eghbal Twitter
(https://twitter.com/nayafia?lang=en) cosign-GitHub
(https://github.com/sigstore/cosign) [Der Klein Hobbit (The Hobbit
in German) by J.R.
Tolkien](https://www.amazon.com/Kleine-Hobbit-German-dp-0828811938/dp/0828811938/ref=mtother?encoding=UTF8&me=&qid=)
[Harry Potter y la Piedra filosofal (Harry Potter and the
Sorcerer’s Stone in Spanish) by J.K.
Rowling](https://www.amazon.com/Harry-Potter-piedra-filosofal-Sorcerers-Spanish/dp/1644732076/ref=sr11?dchild=1&keywords=harry+potter+in+spanish&qid=1629927272&s=books&sr=1-1)
Center for Democracy & Technology (https://cdt.org/) Credits
Produced by Richard Littauer (https://www.burntfen.com/) Edited by
Paul M. Bahr at Peachtree Sound (https://www.peachtreesound.com/)
Show notes by DeAnn Bahr at Peachtree Sound
(https://www.peachtreesound.com/) Special Guest: Niels ten Oever.