Human Rights Monitoring, Google Glass, and the Right to Privacy

COLIN LAWRENCE

I’m a big fan of new technologies in general, and the introduction of Google Glass has me really excited. Will I be able to afford one? No. Will most people? At $1500 for the current developer-oriented kit, I highly doubt it, unless you work somewhere on Wall Street. What intrigues me about Google Glass is it’s potential for human rights monitoring projects.  Not to mention the other technologies that have become available in the global struggle for consistent and reliable accountability mechanisms.

Simmering conflicts around the globe have spawned numerous allegations of human rights abuse but are often areas of limited access.

New Media in Southeast Asia: Lessons from the Aspen Institute’s Dialogue on Diplomacy and Technology

LAURA JAGLA

On July 24 – 26, the University of Denver’s Josef Korbel School of International Studies partnered with the Aspen Institute to convene leaders from the worlds of foreign policy and communication technology for the Institute’s 2nd Annual Dialogue on Diplomacy and Technology (ADDTech). During the conference, which focused on Southeast Asia, the attendees participated in a role-playing scenario of a diplomacy crisis in Myanmar (created by the Josef Korbel School’s Marc Nathanson Fellows). Taking the roles of diplomats, activists, bloggers, and senior government leadership (American, Chinese, and Myanmarese), participants were tasked with resolving a hypothetical hostage situation Myanmar. During the simulation, participants were presented with posts from Twitter, Facebook, blogs, and additional social media sites, which gave participants rapid information with debatable reliability. While ADDTech participants took away different lessons from the simulation, I came up with several themes that pertain to the future of the Southeast Asian landscape and diplomacy: