MANILA, Philippines – The third panel at Social Good Summit 2024 was about, “Tech and its harms.”
It was a conversation between Rappler CEO and 2021 Nobel laureate Maria Ressa and Meredith Whittaker, president of The Signal Foundation, the nonprofit that developed the secure messaging app Signal.
Whittaker is a longtime advocate of privacy protections and encryption. She first became known for co-organizing the so-called Google walkouts, in which 20,000 employees of the search engine giant protested the company’s stance on state surveillance and how it dealt with sexual harassment cases.
Since then, she has testified in US congressional hearings, advised federal government agencies, and taught in universities. She has long defended encryption as “deeply threatening” to regimes that use information and surveillance to wield power against ordinary citizens and users.
Amid the rush to adopt generative artificial intelligence, the Signal app has resisted, believing it goes against their primary mission to protect the privacy of its users and enable secure communications.
Click below to watch the video:
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This panel took place on October 19, 2024, at De La Salle University Manila’s Teresa Yuchengco Auditorium.
– Rappler.com
