Encryption and Feminism: Reimagining Child Safety Without Surveillance

By Audrey Hingle, Mallory Knodel and Ramma Shahid Cheema

The debate over encryption is often framed as a tradeoff between safety and security, with law enforcement and child protection advocates in particular claiming it hinders efforts to combat child exploitation. Feminist technologists are offering a new lens on this topic: one that centers the dignity, safety and freedom provided by encryption as non-negotiables. The Internet Exchange is bringing this conversation to MozFest Barcelona with a live session that asks a simple question: what if protecting children doesn’t require surveillance?

The session, Encryption and Feminism: Reimagining Child Safety Without Surveillance, will build on insights from a recent policy briefing coauthored by IX’s Mallory Knodel and Chayn’s Hera Hussain, which reframes encryption as essential to gender-based violence prevention and survivor safety. Expanding on that work, the session brings together leading feminist technologists and digital rights advocates to explore how encryption can safeguard vulnerable communities while upholding privacy and human rights. Speakers include Chayn’s Hera Hussain, Superbloom’s Georgia Bullen, APC’s Diana Bichanga, Courage Everywhere’s Lucy Purdon, UNICEF’s Gerda Binder, and IX’s Mallory Knodel, Ramma Shahid Cheema and Audrey Hingle.

Feminist perspectives remind us that privacy isn’t a privilege, it’s protection. Encryption allows survivors of gender-based violence to seek help safely, LGBTQ+ people to explore identity without fear, and activists to organize without retaliation. Children should also be respected in their privacy and personhood as both children and future adults. When governments propose weakening encryption in the name of child safety, they risk stripping away the very safeguards that keep women, queer people, and children themselves safe.

Attendees will take part in a short activity to ground themselves in the encryption debate, followed by a moderated panel discussion and audience Q&A. The collaborative session will co-create Feminist Principles for Encryption and Child Safety, offering participants a chance to shape one of the most important policy conversations of the year which we’ll feature in this publication.

MozFest has always been a space for imaging a better, more inclusive digital world. We’re proud to continue that tradition, centering feminist voices in a debate too often dominated by law enforcement and surveillance proponents.

Encryption and Feminism: Reimagining Child Safety Without Surveillance
🗓 November 8, 13:30 CET
📍 Zone B - Room B3, MozFest Barcelona

Social Web Foundation: MozFest Fringe Event

Can’t get enough of IX? Join us for lunch in Barcelona. We're co-hosting a MozFest Fringe gathering with the Social Web Foundation, an intimate gathering for folks working on the social web in order to gather actions that can help us strategize and plan for the coming year.

The meeting is taking place at Cantina LAB, part of Can Batlló, a community-led cooperative project transforming a former industrial site into a socially and environmentally responsible neighborhood.

🗓 November 7, 2025, 14:45-15:45 CET
📍 Cantina LAB: Gran Via de les Corts Catalanes, 169, Sants-Montjuïc

From the Group Chat 👥 💬

This week in our Signal community, we got talking about:

When AWS went down this week, so did Signal, briefly reminding everyone just how dependent even smaller, independent platforms are on Big Tech infrastructure. Some in our group chat wondered if Signal should move to a federated or self-hosted model, but others pointed out that the reality isn’t so simple: running your own global infrastructure means hiring engineers, managing uptime, and absorbing massive operational costs.

In Tech Policy Press, Dr. Corinne Cath and Don Le argue that such outages are not just technical failures but democratic ones, since the concentration of cloud infrastructure power in companies like Amazon, Google, and Microsoft gives them a huge amount of control over how information and communication systems function. After all, it wasn’t just Signal that went down. It also disrupted major services, from Lloyds Bank to key British government platforms.

This Week's Links

Open Social Web

• Free Our Feeds is moving ahead with plans for open, decentralized social media infrastructure in Europe. Its latest update highlights progress on Eurosky and CoCoMo, a moderation commons for ATProto projects, and announces Eurosky Live: its first in-person event in Berlin this November. https://free-our-feeds.ghost.io/free-our-feeds-update-4-october-2025 
• NLnet’s NGI Zero Commons Fund has awarded grants to 29 new open source projects advancing the digital commons, from privacy tools and secure infrastructure to decentralized social platforms, including four built on or extending ActivityPub! https://nlnet.nl/news/2025/20251016-selection-NGI0CommonsFund.html 
• The Trump administration and several federal agencies recently joined Bluesky, using the open social network to troll and threaten political opponents. The administration’s antagonistic entry poses a dilemma: enforce rules and risk retaliation, loosen standards, or ignore violations. Could composable moderation ease this pressure?  https://www.techpolicy.press/trump-administrations-arrival-on-bluesky-highlights-growing-pains-for-open-networks 

Internet Governance

• W3C’s Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2 have been approved as an ISO/IEC international standard, strengthening global adoption of web accessibility principles. https://www.w3.org/press-releases/2025/wcag22-iso-pas 
• Amin Dayekh’s investigation into Smart Africa’s influence over AFRINIC—the continent’s Regional Internet Registry—raises the question: what if the real issue is not whether the board can execute, but whether it is free to act independently at all? says Alice Munyua. https://substack.com/home/post/p-176319128 
• The European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) has published its draft VPN cybersecurity standards developed under the EU Cyber Resilience Act. They’re now open for public review and feedback: https://labs.etsi.org/rep/stan4cra 

Digital Rights

• EFF and major US labor unions have filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration, alleging that their AI-driven social media surveillance program targets citizens, non-citizens and union members for their political views, violating First Amendment rights and chilling free speech online. https://www.eff.org/press/releases/labor-unions-eff-sue-trump-administration-stop-surveillance-free-speech-online 
• A German court ruling on data protection called the Trump administration “autocratic to fascist.” (de) https://www.lto.de/recht/nachrichten/n/13o15624-lg-bonn-usa-trump-autokratisch-bis-faschistisch 

Technology for Society

• A new initiative called The Agentic State, backed by the World Bank and the Global Government Technology Centre, claims agentic AI will “rewire” government operations, from procurement to crisis response. It’s a bold vision of algorithmic bureaucracy, but is it innovation or techno-solutionism? https://agenticstate.org 
• Microsoft, OpenAI, and Anthropic are giving millions to teachers’ unions to build AI training hubs and workshops. In exchange, the tech companies get a chance to “make inroads into schools” and win over future users. https://apnews.com/article/artificial-intelligence-teacher-union-microsoft-f7554b6550fb90519dd8129acac8e291 
  • Related: New research from CDT finds that nearly 1 in 5 high schoolers say they or someone they know has had a romantic relationship with artificial intelligence. And 42% of students surveyed say they or someone they know have used AI for companionship. https://www.npr.org/2025/10/08/nx-s1-5561981/ai-students-schools-teachers 
• Doha Debates asks whether today’s gig workers are free agents or modern serfs serving the new lords of industry. https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=jINEg8h511Q 
• The Institute for Journalism and Social Change has released The Feminist Investigative Journalism Handbook, showing how feminist approaches and digital platforms like TikTok are reshaping investigative reporting. https://www.theijsc.org/feminist-investigative-journalism-handbook 
• Cloudflare is partnering with Visa, Mastercard, and American Express to build a secure authentication layer for “agentic commerce,” enabling AI shopping agents to safely transact with millions of merchants worldwide using its new Web Bot Auth and Trusted Agent Protocol frameworks. https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20251014144421/en/Cloudflare-Collaborates-with-Leading-Payments-Companies-to-Secure-and-Enable-Agentic-Commerce 
• All Tech Is Human has launched five dynamic Responsible AI courses designed for aspiring RAI practitioners and AI Governance professionals, as well as those preparing to build AI Governance programs within an organization. https://alltechishuman.org/rai-courses 

Privacy and Security

• Hacking groups, including at least one from North Korea, have found a new and inexpensive way to distribute malware: stashing them on public cryptocurrency blockchains. https://arstechnica.com/security/2025/10/hackers-bullet-proof-hosts-deliver-malware-from-blockchains 
• Viral “cheater buster” sites are using facial recognition to let anyone uncover people’s Tinder profiles, with 404 Media confirming the tools work and that influencers are being paid to promote them. https://www.404media.co/viral-cheater-buster-sites-use-facial-recognition-to-let-anyone-reveal-peoples-tinder-profiles 

Upcoming Events

• The 10th European Cyber Week will bring together Europe’s cyber and defense AI community to advance digital sovereignty and resilience. November 17-20. Rennes, France. https://www.european-cyber-week.eu/en 
• Disobey 2026 is Finland’s premier hacker conference. February 13-14. Helsinki, Finland. https://disobey.fi/2026/# 
• SplinterCon: Paris will bring together technologists, researchers, and policymakers to consider what resilient, interconnected digital societies require today and in the future. December 8-10. Paris, France. https://splintercon.net/paris

Careers and Funding Opportunities

• Glitch: Advocacy Director. Remote UK. Apply by November 15. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1LQLR2ZNbbkHI-pq8C9d1nCOtFkhP6OYJ2pxtJa516Os/edit?tab=t.0 

Opportunities to Get Involved

• Rappler is on the lookout for talented and dedicated student interns. Manila. Apply by October 30. https://www.rappler.com/moveph/263-rappler-internship-program-careers 
• Call for Papers: Cambridge Disinformation Summit 2026. Submissions due November 15. https://www.mctd.ac.uk/call-for-papers-cambridge-disinformation-summit-2026 
• ICANN’s Applicant Support Program (ASP) is offering financial and technical assistance to applicants seeking to operate new generic top-level domains (gTLDs). Apply by December 19. https://newgtldprogram.icann.org/en/application-rounds/round2/asp 

What did we miss? Please send us a reply or write to editor@exchangepoint.tech.