In the MENA region, there is much data and knowledge among local groups, pro bono teams and lawyers protecting and advocating in courts on behalf of people prosecuted for their gender and sexual identities. A lot of these cases depend on digital evidence gathered from the defendants' devices, and in recent years this data has been gathered from queer dating apps. Through research carried out so far, we know evidence-gathering is generally from chatlogs, photos, and linking public and private accounts; understanding what exact evidence is taken from these tools, and what type of evidence becomes most detrimental to LGBTQ users is vital.
At this closed private session,
Afsaneh Rigot will provide a space to discuss a methodology to
reverse-engineer the prosecution process of queer app users. The focus will be Egypt, Lebanon and Tunisia for the purpose of this session. This reverse-engineering process looks at how, through analysing evidence gathered in police investigations and successfully used in court to convict users, we can learn to reverse the process, step-by-step, and find methods to protect users in the future, enforce harm reduction techniques and identify company responsibility recommendations. The session will also briefly look at how tactics, knowledge and precedent from previous cases where these legal teams have gained acquittals or proved such digital evidence to be inadmissible can also help build solutions and provide better support the communities and the teams that advocate for them. Insight into the
intial research done on dating app targetting and entrapment in Iran, Lebanon and Egypt with
ARTICLE 19 will be presented, and I will discuss how this work will be expanding in the future.
Afsaneh will be joined by
Genwa Samhat, a human rights researcher and the former Director of
Helem. Genwa will talk about the initial findings and work with ARTICLE 19, and discuss the evidentuary process from her experiences working on these cases in Lebanon.
This new research being carried out at the
Berkman Klien Center for Internet & Society at Haravrd University, is being done with the support of local groups - many of whom, unfortunately, cannot come to Lebanon.
So, come to the session brainstorm, discuss and listen to work done so far. This is another angle of understanding how to support communities and groups severely under pressure and understanding the responsibility of companies and technologists to make user-centred tech.
