Nicole Yanez is a trained computer scientist and human rights activist from Honduras. She is passionate about feminism, the influence of the internet, and protecting activists. It was through her work as a reporter for her local community radio station that she first became drawn to human rights.
After surviving a coup in Honduras in 2009, Nicole broadened her approach to focus on technology. She learned more about cybersecurity when she applied for the Amnesty Tech Security Lab Digital Forensics Fellowship in 2022, and what she learned from the organizations and collectives she regularly collaborates with. I was thinking of applying it.
In an interview with Elina Castillo, Amnesty Tech's advocacy and policy advisor, she highlighted her commitment to fostering a network of tech-savvy communities across Latin America.
Please tell us a little about yourself and your activities.
Human rights as a space of hope
I grew up in Honduras and lived through the 2009 coup. It was a difficult time when there were no rights and people were constantly in fear. I thought it was something only written about in history books, but it was happening right before my eyes. I felt like I was just trying to survive, but over time I grew stronger and wanted to fight for justice.
Despite the hardships, people in my community remained hopeful and established a community radio station that broadcasts stories about everyday people and their lives, with the aim of informing people about human rights. As a reporter, I was developing stories about individual people and their struggles for their rights. From there, he developed a passion for working with technology and computers, which led him to train to become a scientist.
I am always looking for ways to combine technology and activism, especially ways to support the struggles of women and indigenous peoples. While technology poses risks for human rights defenders, it also offers opportunities to better protect ourselves and strengthen our movements. Technology enhances our work by making our movements more visible, allowing us to connect with other people and learn new strategies.
Was there a moment when you realized how to combine what you've been doing with feminism with technology?
In my work, a feminist perspective helps center the experiences and needs of marginalized people in training and advocacy. It is important for me to publicly identify as an Afrofeminist in a society where the gender and racist violence that occurs every day goes unpunished. In Honduras, we must focus our energies on supporting these communities whose rights are most violated and whose stories are invisible.
For example, in 2006 I was working with a union to install the Ubuntu operating system (an open source operating system) on computers. We realized that trade unionists didn't know how to use computers, so we created a space for them to learn digital literacy and how to use computers at the same time. This wasn't just a teaching exercise, it was also an exercise in finding ways to connect these tools to what people are interested in. Something clicked for me at that moment, and this experience helped solidify my approach to working with technology and human rights. .
The intersection of digital forensics and feminism
What made you apply to the Digital Forensics program?
There aren't that many women working in technology and human rights. I don't want to be one of the only women, so it's my goal to see more female colleagues working on technical issues. I want women to be able to work in this field.
We also want to motivate more women to create change at the intersection of technology and human rights. Using feminist perspectives and approaches, we ask big questions about how we work, what approaches we need, and who we need to collaborate with.
Nicole Yanez Honduran human rights activist
For me, building a feminist internet means building an internet for everyone. This means creating spaces that do not reproduce gendered violence and finding communities that respond to people, groups, and organizations fighting for human rights. This includes involving women and marginalized people in building the infrastructure, configuring servers, and developing protocols on how to use all of these tools.
In Honduras, there are not many people trained in digital forensic analysis, but there are organizations that are constantly asking me to help them check their cell phones. This fellowship helped me learn about forensic analysis on phones and computers, and connected that learning to the practical work I do with different organizations and women's rights activists in my community. The fellowship was practical and based on civil society organization experience.
How would you explain the importance of digital forensics?
First, this is very important for women's rights defenders. Everyone wants to know if their phone has been hacked. That's their first question. “Can you actually tell if your phone has been hacked?” and “How do you know? Can you do it for me? How?” These come up in my training and conversations. It's something that comes.
We use technology all day long, so we want to help people think about protection as a process, as an ongoing thing. There are organizations and people that take years to figure that out. Therefore, it is not something that can be achieved in one conversation. A lot of things may have to happen, including bad things, for people to take this topic seriously.
And in this process of raising awareness, do you have your own definition that you use to explain to people what you're doing?
We talk about protection above all else. Learn about digital security and how to set up your phone. Something very simple and basic can help people feel more protected.
When we provide digital security support, we try to use very basic tools. You can do this no matter what device you use. This is a preventive tool. It's a process that not only applies technical knowledge, but also explains, trains, and shows that this work is not just for hackers and computer savvy people.
One of the challenges is spreading awareness about cybersecurity among indigenous and grassroots organizations that are not closely connected and do not consider digital forensics work to be relevant to them. Sometimes what we're doing is completely separate from their lives and they ask us, “What do we do?” “But what are you doing?” So our job is to understand their questions and where they come from, and build knowledge based on what people are actually doing. is to share.
take on the challenge
For people who are reading this and saying, “Oh, this touches me,'' where do I start? What do you recommend?
If you are a human rights defender, we encourage you to share your knowledge with the collective. Forensic analysis is, after all, a reaction to something that happened, so we can not only teach them the importance of knowing and practicing digital attacks, but also encourage training to prevent them.
Many precautions can be taken to minimize the impact. That's the best way to start. And it's important to stay up to date with the latest news, keep reading, and build your community.
If there are any girls or non-conformists out there reading this who are interested in technical matters, it doesn't matter if you don't have a degree or formal education, as long as you like it. Most hackers I've met become hackers because they're immersed in a subject, love it, and are passionate about it.
Nicole Yanez Honduran human rights activist
If you're passionate about these topics, take the plunge, seize the opportunity, and have fun! We need more people working on these issues.
This interview has been translated from Spanish and edited for length and clarity.
twitter: https://twitter.com/Nicolene
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