Abstract

We rely on dozens of companies – such as Facebook, Google and AT&T – for the products and services that power our digital lives. But how committed are these companies to respecting our digital rights like privacy and freedom of expression? In early November, New America’s Ranking Digital Rights project will launch its inaugural Corporate Accountability Index with a ranking of 16 of the world’s most powerful Internet and telecommunications companies on their commitments and disclosed practices affecting users’ freedom of expression and privacy. Which companies are doing better than others? What concrete steps can companies take to improve? Come hear director Rebecca MacKinnon explain the most important and surprising findings from the Index.

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Rebecca MacKinnon is Director of the Ranking Digital Rights project at New America. Author of Consent of the Networked: The Worldwide Struggle For Internet Freedom and co-founder of Global Voices Online, she was a founding board member of the Global Network Initiative and now serves on the Board of the Committee to Protect Journalists. Fluent in Mandarin Chinese, MacKinnon was a Bureau Chief and correspondent for CNN in China and Japan in the late 90s and early 00s. She is a visiting affiliate at the Annenberg School for Communication’s Center for Global Communication Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, was an adjunct lecturer at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, and served on the faculty at the University of Hong Kong’s Journalism and Media Studies Centre. She has held fellowships at Harvard’s Shorenstein and Berkman Centers, the Open Society Foundations, and Princeton’s Center for Information Technology Policy.