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Eleven years ago, we learned that every email we sent, every chat message, phone call, and document shared in the cloud was accessible to intelligence agencies of the United States and allied countries. This became known after Edward Snowden leaked thousands of documents from the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) published in some of the world’s most important media outlets. This column will recall some of the key facts of this story and reflect on what has changed since then.

The days following the elections in Venezuela have once again demonstrated the ruling party’s lack of political tolerance. A consecutive series of elections without any progress over the last decade has fueled the current situation in which fear joins the sense of hope and outrage at what seemed to be an opportunity for real change in a country where a complex humanitarian crisis persists, hitting its population without mercy or respite.

Thinking about the future of work, and especially of work mediated by digital platforms, has never been as hopeless as it is today. The promise and threats of automation, the precarization of old forms of work – creative and cultural, for example – and the creation of new forms of digital work in slave-like conditions – all contribute to this scenario.

It is not new that the trade agenda is advancing over the rights agenda. Digital-related aspects have not been exempt from this dynamic, but some recent developments in international geopolitics made the last Ministerial Conference of the World Trade Organization (WTO) a critical forum for discussions on the subject. Despite the many expectations surrounding the revision of measures that historically limit the action of States in the area of electronic commerce, the final decision was to maintain the status quo and, thus, to continue perpetuating historical inequalities.

Technology-facilitated gender-based violence is deeply rooted in patriarchal systems. It is not an isolated phenomenon but a continuum of gender-based violence in society, where online and offline manifestations complement and reflect each other. The development of comprehensive policies with a human rights perspective is urgent in order to generate systemic changes.

This past July, the second annual report by the Open-ended Working Group on security of information at the UN was approved; in an agenda crowded with multilateral meetings, it emerges as a new forum for geopolitical conflicts that could affect all of cyberspace.

The use of digital trade agreements to regulate artificial intelligence, as well as mechanisms that could prevent its transparency, warrant greater attention from Latin American States.

It is essential that the governments gathered at the CSW67 build their conclusions on the notion, strongly proven by the lived experience of millions of people, that technology will not solve structural problems related to the fact that certain populations have been historically marginalized from access to fundamental rights.