The BHR Group Digital Rights Careers Newsletter - Issue 7

Oct 27, 2022

Dear Colleagues:

The main feature of these newsletters is a list of internships, fellowships, and jobs at the intersection of technology, policy, law, and human rights. With hope, however, you’ll also spend time reflecting on the lessons from the field offered by our guest practitioners. This week’s guest, Mishi Choudhary, is a superstar lawyer, thinker, writer, and advocate. She shares heaps of wisdom about careers, mentors, values, leadership, advocacy, and more. One aspect of advocacy I’ve learned over the years from leaders like Mishi and the ones she references (including Maria Ressa and David Kaye) is the need to use your voice, especially in places where you have access or influence (and even in places you don’t), to speak against injustice and for human rights.

If you read the intro to last month’s newsletter, you’ll recall that for personal and professional reasons, I’ve been following the nation-wide protests in Iran. I hope you’re following events there too. As a member of the Freedom Online Coalition Advisory Network and someone who works in digital rights, it was good to see the joint statement from the FOC on Internet shutdowns in Iran as well as statements by various organizations in the tech sector, including GNI, APC, Freedom House, Article 19, a joint civil society statement led by AccessNow, and others. Another important step was the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Asset Control (OFAC) issuance of General License D-2, intended to further the free flow of information over the Internet to, from, and among residents of Iran.

In support, in whatever small way, of keeping public attention focused on a nation-wide and women-led movement in Iran in the face of decades of state violence and repression, I posted an open Twitter thread that includes statements from academic institutions, faculty and students groups, scholars associations, etc. on the attacks by government forces on students in Iran during campus protests. I hope it might be used to persuade others in academia to condemn the violent attacks on students (and citizens more broadly), keep attention focused on injustice, and help advocate for human rights.

As you look through the internships, fellowships, and jobs in these newsletters, think about how the roles and organizations that interest you might position you to use your voice to speak and act against injustice and for human rights in the tech sector and beyond.

Michael Samway
The Business and Human Rights Group
Website: www.thebhrgroup.com
Twitter: @MichaelSamway

Guest Spotlight: Mishi Choudhary

Mishi Choudhary is a technology lawyer and an online civil liberties activist with law practices in New York and New Delhi. The Open magazine calls her an emerging legal guardian of the free and open internet. She is currently SVP and General Counsel at Virtru, a global data encryption and digital privacy provider. Until August 2022, she was Legal Director of the New York based Software Freedom Law Center and a Partner at Moglen & Associates. At SFLC, Mishi served as the primary legal representative for many of the world’s most significant free software developers and non-profit distributors, including Debian, the Apache Software Foundation, and OpenSSL. She advised technology startups and established businesses around the world on intellectual property matters, in particular on open source software licensing and strategy, export control compliance, diversity and inclusion, data protection, and content moderation.

In 2010, she founded SFLC.in. She served as its President and Executive Director until 2017. Under her direction, SFLC.in has become the premier non-profit organization representing the rights of Internet users and free software developers in India. One of the lead counsels for Mouthshut.com, including on a writ petition challenging online free speech and intermediary liability, Mishi Choudhary helped win the Shreya Singhal vs Union of India case in which the Supreme Court delivered a landmark verdict, ruling Section 66A of the Information Technology Act as unconstitutional. She was also part of the coalition that worked on the Network Neutrality campaign in India that put a stop to Freebasics by Facebook in India. Recently, SFLC.in members were petitioners in the landmark unanimous judgment delivered by the Indian Supreme Court holding Right to privacy as a fundamental right.

As of 2017, Mishi was the only lawyer in the world simultaneously to appear on briefs in the U.S. and Indian Supreme Courts in the same Term. In 2015, she was named one of the Asia Society’s 21 young leaders building Asia’s future. In 2016, she was inducted into the Aspen Global Leadership Network by the Aspen Institute. She advises Columbia University’s Global Freedom of Expression project and serves on the Board of IFEX and the Global Network Initiative.

Mishi has an Executive MBA/PLD from Harvard Business School, an LLM from Columbia Law School, an LLB degree and a bachelor’s degree in political science from the University of Delhi. Mishi is a member of the Bar Council of Delhi, licensed to appear before the Supreme Court of India, all the State High Courts in India, in the State of New York, and before the Southern District of New York.

What are some of the most formative period or events in your life that shaped your work in technology and human rights?

What changed my life was the opportunity to work as a lawyer for the world’s leading Open Source Projects and their communities. The work of collaborative software production instead of the American idea of “protect and exclude”. I believe this movement and its belief system has now convinced the majority of people in this field, including those originally opposed to it, that equity demands such systems. This community was also the first to caution me and make be sensitive to the idea of Internet Freedom. If we don’t control our technology, then everyone else will control us.

Who are some people or an individual you’ve met during your work in this field who have had profound influence on your work? And in what way?

Eben Moglen: my mentor, teacher, friend and an inspiration for dedicating my life to bringing justice in the world using words. There are very few people in the world who have a firm grasp of the obvious and can see decades ahead. The fact that Eben is a genius in the true form of the word is known to the world, how much of his life is dedicated to nurturing leaders of the world is also apparent from his teaching position but how comprehensively he understands the world from a macro perspective and meets each of his mentees where they are and helps them shape their lives to be real contributors to the society is rarely talked about. He has taught me to always see the bigger picture, always believe in principles and take pride in sailing one’s own boat.

The children and teachers of AC3: For teaching me that a community must lift everyone and no matter how little you have, you can multiply it with sharing. This center is in a Bangalore slum where resources are very scarce but courage is not. The young men and women who work in big technology companies spend their evenings and weekends repairing old computers, installing FOSS on them, and teaching kids a vocation so they have some of the opportunities that all the other kids have. SFLC.in supports this center in whatever way we can, but they give us so much more than we can ever could give to them. **(New Gurupanpallaya, Sudarshan Layout is a slum like any other in the booming IT hub of Bangalore situated off Bannerghatta Road. It is here that Ambedkar Community Computing Center (AC3) started on July 6, 2008.)

Based on a community computing model, it is an empowerment initiative within the local community to bridge the widening of the digital divide using FOSS. At AC3, the children are taught how to operate computers, work on basic applications which allow them to prepare documents, spreadsheets, use GIMP for images, and more. Over and above these, they are taught to access the internet, use email, search the web, use chat and do other basic tasks. All these are done with the help of free and open source software. After successful completion of the basic course and proper evaluation, AC3 encourages the higher courses to be organic. Each student is encouraged to identify their areas of interest and the core staff at SFLC.in helps them pursue their interest in the field.

Women of Khabar Lahariya: For teaching me how to turn your disadvantages into strengths.

Maria Ressa: For always keeping one’s humor, staying humble and marching on.

David Kaye: For teaching me how one can be assertive and brave with politeness. How amplifying others’ work makes one bigger not smaller. For always crediting people and being a true ally of the Global South.

What are some of the values that guide you in this field or in life more broadly?

I am a very private person but also unapologetic for my beliefs and values.

The right to communicate outside the earshot of anyone with whomever I want is a right which any system committed to freedom of expression must guarantee to us or we lose our liberty. I truly believe in this for myself and that’s why I work for ensuring that everyone has it.
Time is a very valuable commodity for all of us and I want to spend my time for a cause.
Having the courage of my convictions: standing up for anything takes courage and demands a price and sacrifice. But without anything to stand for and then acting on it, I won’t know who am I.
Being true to my word: I am the old-fashioned person who wants to stand by her word.
With me, there are no layers, what you see is what you get.
Paying it Forward: I am so privileged to work in an area that surrounds me with young people curious about this hot new subject. I always want to help them with specific guidance instead of generalities. I learned because people invested in me. That’s what I do. SFLC.in is now in very capable hands of young leaders who make me really proud. Just like Free and Open Source Software: share and share alike.

I recently moved into a new role in my day job as SVP and General Counsel for Virtru as I wanted to dedicate time to help build products that make privacy possible in the simplest possible way. Empowering people through ease of usage and simple products is something I am very passionate about. When we started conducting Digital Security trainings, we didn’t want to be smug about knowing technology. We learned how people are keen on using tools that are good for them without compromising privacy. But most often, these technologies are hard, usage esoteric, and experts too busy being experts.

While I work in my activist life to help enact legislation and bring in policies that provide people protection while ensuring secure sharing of data, my daily lawyer life helps my company build privacy protecting products. Because it truly is a multi-stakeholder effort that is required to build pro-humanity IT.

What’s a specific event when you feel like your team’s or organization’s work was able to make a significant impact in the field of digital rights?

The Internet.org fight against Facebook. A true David v Goliath learning.

The technology package sweeping the human race, consisting of smartphones and ‘social media’ companies, peddles a form of convenience that we are all buying into. This convenience ensures that a form of inhuman social control, antithetical to the ideals of individual human rights and democratic social self-governance gets established.

The root of the problem is the business model of these convenient services. The social media companies sell people to advertisers. The value in digital advertising lies in collecting information about peoples’ behavior, on a scale previously unimagined in the history of humankind. Gram for gram, the smartphone is the densest collection of sensors ever assembled: it’s a spy satellite in your pocket, aimed at you.

Whether you are open-minded or strongly inclined to the value system of your immediate social group; whether you are outgoing or introverted; whether you are inclined to positive or confrontational social interactions – these and other factors of personality can be derived from the trail you leave behind with your ‘social media’ and telecommunications service providers. As political professionals in and around the world have learnt this decade, the Net we now have it is not a place for making arguments addressed to voters’ conscious minds, but rather a venue for making emotional appeals to their unconscious.

Democratic self-government depends on thoughtfulness: as voters and citizens, we must govern through our ability to understand one another and seek the common good. But time and again our governments fail us and so do private players who. I do believe in taking things in our hands and not letting our freedoms be squandered away.

What are some ways you think the technology, policy, and legal fields can become more diverse, inclusive, and equitable in composition, policy topics, and advocacy?

We rely too much on brand names: whether it is institutions or experts. We must go to where people are, markets are, and the usage is. I saw this on Twitter in some other context and have used it since: India and the United States are watching the same reality TV show, it’s just that India is a few seasons ahead. I truly believe that most interesting issues are happening where large markets are, where governments and societies are using technologies without many guardrails. We don’t listen to them. We can do so by constantly challenging journalists who cover these stories, the funders who want to always use intermediaries for “oversight”, by telling everyone that minorities face issues before others do, the developing world sees it before the developed world does.

For undergraduate or graduate students reading this, what type course or activities (e.g., internships, summer jobs) do you think might be most helpful as they contemplate careers in technology, public policy, and human rights?

There are some wonderful institutions at Columbia University and Harvard University, my alma maters, working on free speech and expression and privacy. Stanford, Oxford, and Yale have dedicated centers. But I would say the most exciting work is at Civil Society organizations like CDT, GNI and ACLU. Working in companies and government institutions gives you exposure that will come in very handy as you advocate for people’s rights. I would say go to other countries where real matters are emerging but very little attention is being paid. Look at the places where journalists are being jailed, that’s a sign. Non-profits in India, Nigeria, Kenya, Mexico, Lebanon, Colombia, Chile, and other countries are doing fantastic work, and they need you.

For current practitioners in this field, what are some considerations when deciding whether to change sectors, say from civil society or academia to the private sector? Or from the private sector to government or civil society?

I feel all sectors benefit from such cross-overs bringing perspectives that help us find common motivations. Each offers very different monetary incentives, career trajectory and work-life balance. Who you want to be and how you want to achieve that kind of result may help you make that decision.

I will also say, a decision made once is not set in stone. Try it, if you don’t like it move on. Please be mindful of the fact that each of the sectors has its own quirks, politics, challenges, and perks.

What are some obstacles you’ve faced in the digital rights field? And what are some unconventional strategies you find helpful when responding?

The usual ones that everyone faces. I am nobody special, but I am amused by the contrast of support for this work in the Western world in contrast to the Global South. Very little funding, boys clubs, very little understanding of issues, being called a “convenience party pooper”, being targeted by the Government if you stand up for rights.

What’s something you didn’t expect at work in this field?

Extraordinary support that women extend to each other across countries. Several of them go out of their way to find opportunities, amplify each other’s work. Gaining this sisterhood was something I did not expect and am I am richer for it.
How little attention is paid to people over 50 unless they are billionaires. That part of the population and their interaction with the technology and impact on society is totally ignored.

What are some ideas on how to find and engage regularly with mentors in this sector?

People are very nice in this community. Reach out with specific requests.
Ask for help instead of beating around the bush, and don’t be offended if people say no or don’t have time. It’s not about you; life is hard and we don’t know what the other person may be going through.
Be prepared and remember all relationships are symbiotic. Teach them something as well and let them know how you can contribute to their work.
Attend conferences or events if you can. Hybrid events are great.

What are three books, podcasts, albums, poems, works of art, etc. that you’d recommend to people interested in working in this field?

I actually listen and read a lot of outside the field to get inspiration. History, poetry, fiction, theater, comedy have given me more ideas than anything else. Everyone now uses technology, so I am more interested in learning from others and seeing things from their perspective. I do read a lot of newspapers, academic and legal articles, and talk to technologists. I also use Twitter to follow interesting folks (yes it’s possible). I don’t have any other social media. I have LinkedIn for work but rarely check it.

The BHR Group Digital Rights Careers Newsletter

The BHR Group Digital Rights Careers Newsletter - Issue 7

Guest Spotlight: Mishi Choudhary

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