The Washington PostDemocracy Dies in Darkness

Information Disorder with Damian Collins MP & Will Hurd

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January 11, 2022 at 11:00 a.m. EST
Damian Collins MP & Will Hurd join Washington post Live on Tuesday, Jan. 11 (Video: The Washington Post)

Disinformation is a global security threat -- interfering with elections, contributing to the rise of authoritarian sentiments and spreading harmful medical misinformation about COVID-19. On Tuesday, Jan. 11, join thought leaders and key players for a discussion on the outsized impact disinformation campaigns have had around the world and what solutions are necessary to curb a global information disorder.

Click here for transcript

Highlights

“There’s definitely some changes that can be made to section 230… I don’t see a lot of bipartisanship happening… House leadership is not interested in working on bipartisan solutions… The Senate is going to be consumed over the next couple of months with a number of other issues before they’d ever be able to get to something like this.” (Video: Washington Post Live)
“These companies should outline what their terms of use are and enforce them, right? And so president Trump and these others have been violating these terms. The company should have the ability to do that.” (Video: Washington Post Live)
“I think the data, when you look at some of the conservative outlets on Facebook at least, they have way more following than a lot of the mainstream media, even when you combine them… I don’t think the facts… play out that way.” (Video: Washington Post Live)
“What the covid pandemic has demonstrated is just how dangerous disinformation can be in the context of public health where… bogus treatments and anti-vaccine conspiracy theories are being promoted and… can have a real impact on public health.” (Video: Washington Post Live)
“In the Online Safety Bill, the idea of empowering an independent regulator with the right to have access to data and information… from within companies means… we can understand the impact some of their services are having.” (Video: Washington Post Live)
“It’s peoples’ actual direct experience with… tech companies… which is leading them to… think the companies will never do this on their own satisfactorily, we need to create proper structures now to get this done.” (Video: Washington Post Live)

Damian Collins MP

Damian Collins is the Conservative Member of Parliament for Folkestone and Hythe, England, first elected in 2010. From 2016 to 2019 Damian chaired the House of Commons Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee, leading inquiries into sports governance, addictive and immersive technologies, and disinformation and ‘fake news’. During this time he also launched the International Grand Committee, a group of parliamentarians around the world who work on electoral communications, online harms, digital competition, and data privacy. Damian now chairs the Joint Committee on the Draft Online Safety Bill, examining the UK Government’s plans to make the UK ‘the safest place in the world to be online’. He also hosts a popular podcast on digital policy, the Infotagion Podcast.


Will Hurd

Provided by representatives of Will Hurd.

Will Hurd is a former member of Congress, cybersecurity executive, and undercover officer in the CIA. For almost two decades he’s been involved in the most pressing national security issues challenging the country whether it was in the back-alleys of dangerous places, boardrooms of top international businesses or halls of Congress.

After stopping terrorists, preventing Russian spies from stealing our secrets, and putting nuclear weapons proliferators out of business, Will helped build a cybersecurity company that prepared businesses for the next domain of conflict – cyberspace.

While in Congress, Texas Monthly and Politico Magazine called Will “The Future of the GOP,” because he put good policy over good politics at a time when America was often consumed with what divides us rather than what unites us. He was able to get more legislation signed into law in three terms than most congressmen do in three decades – substantive legislation like a national strategy for Artificial Intelligence.

Will is a native of San Antonio and earned a Computer Science degree from Texas A&M University. He is growing the US transatlantic partnership with Europe as a trustee of the German Marshall Fund and most recently served as a fellow at the University of Chicago Institute of Politics

Content from Omidyar Network

The following content is produced and paid for by a Washington Post Live event sponsor. The Washington Post newsroom is not involved in the production of this content.

(Video: Washington Post Live)

Beyond Encryption: Trustworthy Messaging in a Viral World

Private messaging platforms have taken the world by storm, with usage growing exponentially across the globe during the pandemic. Today, two out of five people use real-time chat apps like Messenger, Signal, Telegram, WeChat, and WhatsApp to connect, collectively sending hundreds of billions of messages each day. Backed by encryption, these innovations have assumed an important role in empowering ideas and social movements by facilitating trust and solidarity among users. At the same time, so too have private messaging platforms accelerated the spread of hate, misinformation, and violence online thanks to design features that encourage scale, virality, and monetization. Wafa Ben-Hassine, a human rights lawyer and principal at Omidyar Network, joins Washington Post Live to discuss how introducing new rules and incentives can help messaging platforms be more than private, but also safe and trustworthy.

Wafa Ben-Hassine

Provided by Omidyar Network.

As a principal on the Responsible Technology team at Omidyar Network, Wafa leads the firm’s efforts related to encrypted messaging platforms and the nature of safe and private online messaging spaces.

Prior to joining Omidyar Network, Wafa served as a consultant at the International Finance Corporation in Tunisia, where she managed an open innovation challenge to advance the IFC’s financial inclusion agenda. Wafa also consulted for the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), and the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). Previously, she was the Middle East and North Africa policy manager for Access Now, a global non-profit organization defending human rights online.

Wafa has served as the co-chair of the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) Global Future Council (GFC) on Human Rights and the Fourth Industrial Revolution, and she currently sits on the GFC on Data Policy.

Wafa holds a JD from the University of Denver, Sturm College of Law, and a BA in political science, public law from the University of California, San Diego. She is a licensed attorney with the state of New York specializing in international law and technology.

Rose Jackson

Provided by Atlantic Council.

Rose Jackson is an entrepreneur and former diplomat with 15+ years of experience strengthening democracy and defending human rights, leveraging technology for social impact, and building institutions to support democratic activists around the world. Jackson is currently the director of the Democracy & Tech Initiative at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab. She previously founded and served as CEO of Beacon, a platform leveraging data and marketing technology to make it easier for people to take meaningful civic and political action.

Prior to founding her company, Jackson served as a senior policy adviser at the Open Society Foundations (OSF) where she led a presidential transition initiative focused on reforming U.S. support to foreign military and police. During the Obama Administration, Jackson served as the chief of staff to the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor at the State Department, and before that as an advisor to Senator Chris Coons on foreign policy and national security issues as a Galloway Fellow.

Jackson has consulted and worked for a wide range of campaigns, governments and party organizations both in the United States and abroad. Internationally, with the National Democratic Institute, she advised parties, parliaments, and civil society organizations in East and Southern Africa. Jackson also served as a Benghazi-based adviser and political analyst to the International Organization for Migration during the Libyan uprising in 2011.

Jackson completed her Masters in International Relations as a Rotary Scholar in Kenya and earned her Bachelors in International Relations and Economics at Wheaton College in Massachusetts. She is a Truman National Security Project fellow, term member of the Council on Foreign Relations, research fellow at the Stanford Handa Center for Human Rights, and a prior Center for New American Security NextGen fellow.

Interviewed by Elise Labott

Elise Labott is a leading journalist covering foreign US foreign policy and international issues. Elise is a columnist at Foreign Policy magazine and before that was CNN’s Global Affairs Correspondent. She has reported from more than 80 countries, traveled the world with seven secretaries of state and has interviewed many world leaders and newsmakers. Elise is the founder of Twopoint.o Media, a digital media platform that aims to engage, inform and inspire citizens to solve today’s most pressing global challenges, and an adjunct professor at American University’s School of International Service. She is a contributor to Politico, provides commentary for MSNBC, NPR, BBC and several other broadcast outlets and is a sought-after interviewer and moderator. Elise also serves as a global ambassador for Vital Voices, an organization that empowers female entrepreneurs around the world and is on the advisory committee of Global Kids DC, a program which introduces high school students in underserved communities to international affairs. Prior to joining CNN, Elise covered the UN for ABC News and also reported on diplomatic and foreign policy issues for Agence France-Presse and other publications. Elise is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. She received her bachelor’s degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and earned a master’s degree from the New School for Social Research.