Cynthia Khoo
@cyn-k.bsky.social
2K followers 790 following 380 posts
⚖️ Senior Fellow @citizenlab.ca | fmr @cippic.bsky.social | fmr @georgetownprivacy.bsky.social 👩🏻‍💻 Tech & human rights lawyer @ tekhnoslaw.ca 🎓 LLM @cdtsuottawaclts.bsky.social | JD @UVicLaw 🤸🏻‍♀️ Capoeirista
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cyn-k.bsky.social
Back-burnered this far longer than I should have, but finally polished for distribution a keynote I did way back in April/May, now available in full on SSRN: papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.... Hope it will provide an alternative perspective to the destructive "AI-first" path Min. Solomon seems set on.
Reposted by Cynthia Khoo
prismreports.org
"We were focused on freedom of expression even before Oct 7 because as recognition of Israel's apartheid was growing worldwide, Israel and its supporters were developing additional tactics to silence dissent and silence critics." — Aline Batarseh visualizingpalestine.org/visual/syste...
A System of Silencing - Visualizing Palestine
As recognition of Israeli apartheid grows, the Israeli regime and its supporters continuously develop tactics to silence advocates for the Palestinian liberation movement as well as any criticism of I...
visualizingpalestine.org
Reposted by Cynthia Khoo
prismreports.org
"There are so many Arabs/Muslims who have left journalism; they've said what they can, & now they have had to ask themselves 'Do I stay in an industry that is directly complicit in the extermination of 2.2 million people, or do I get out now to save what I can of my soul?'" @sanasaeed.bsky.social
Reposted by Cynthia Khoo
prismreports.org
"The greatest tragedy is a press that voluntarily enmeshes itself w/ the interests of the state & the state itself without any coercion. Even with their freedom, they are still willing to do that... I don't think there is a greater example than what American media has done." — @sanasaeed.bsky.social
Reposted by Cynthia Khoo
prismreports.org
"Pitching Palestinian stories to American media often felt like pitching UFOs. Like, "Prove it. Verify it. Then let us know why we should care." "Explain to us why they're human like the rest of us." There is no self awareness, all free speech posturing fizzles away." — Eman Mohammed
Reposted by Cynthia Khoo
prismreports.org
"'Look at these sad babies who are brown, but don't name their killer; don't name the perpetrator; don't name why they are being starved.' You don't name the doer. It does the work of the occupier. It strips agency from the people of Palestine & accountability from the Zionist regime."—Eman Mohammed
Reposted by Cynthia Khoo
prismreports.org
This event is FREE, but if you are in a position to donate via a ticket, all proceeds will go to the organizations & people featured on this list compiled by Prism.

If you are able, we encourage you to donate directly to any of the fundraisers & organizations as well🍉
Fundraisers for Palestinian liberation: We owe Palestinians our money and support
For those of us outside of Gaza, we are witnessing the U.S.-backed, Israeli-imposed mass starvation and famine of Palestinians in Gaza. Prism has
prismreports.org
Reposted by Cynthia Khoo
jeff.doctor
I've also compiled a list of resources on Bill C-2: jeff.doctor/resources/bi...
I focused on C-2 because I don't see it mentioned much in Indigenous spaces and I'm trying to change that. It'll have sweeping implications on our privacy and data sovereignty if it passes, none of it good.
Bill C-2
LandBack, CashBack, Databack
jeff.doctor
Reposted by Cynthia Khoo
jeff.doctor
I finally did it and organized my thoughts on Bill C-2, C-5, 5 etc. into a concise(ish) narrative. There's many threads to navigate through below if you wanna spend your day / week going down all the rabbit holes I did.

I made a more accessible version in this article: jeff.doctor/blog/my-summ...
cyn-k.bsky.social
"Ignorance isn’t always innocent. A lot of the time, it’s strategic. ... White ignorance doesn’t persist bc there’s a lack of information—it persists bc there’s a refusal to engage... once you admit you knew & did nothing... you’d have to admit you were fine with it. You have to admit complicity."
angryblacklady.blacksky.app
"Black people are tired. Not metaphorically tired—actually tired. The kind of tired that turns every group chat into a mix of gallows humor and emotional triage."

I write about white ignorance and how exhausting it is to hear white ppl insist "this isn't who we are, when it's ALWAYS who we've been.
White People’s Performative Ignorance Is Exhausting—Opinion
Disbelief over authoritarianism in America isn’t a cutesy personality trait. It’s a confession: You haven’t been paying attention.
rewirenewsgroup.com
cyn-k.bsky.social
Thank you, and good on you, for writing that! Hopefully more people follow your lead in responding similarly to the "consultation".
Reposted by Cynthia Khoo
prismreports.org
📢Join us for Killing the Story, a virtual event on Oct. 7, 1pm PT/4pm ET!

Palestinian, Arab, & Muslim journalists give firsthand accounts about how media manufactures consent & silences dissent as we approach 2 years of the Israeli-imposed & U.S.-backed genocide in Gaza.
tinyurl.com/killingthest...
Killing the story: Journalists speak on Palestine in U.S. newsrooms
October 7
Panelists
Aline Batarseh
Abdallah Fayyad
Eman Mohammed
Sana Saeed

Hosted by 
Laura Albast
cyn-k.bsky.social
It's been two years. Are we there yet?
salenagodden.bsky.social
🕊️🕊️🕊️
Text: one day, when it's safe, when there's no personal downside to calling a thing what it is, when it's too late to hold anyone accountable, everyone will have always been against this.
— Omar El Akkad / image of a burning ambulance
cyn-k.bsky.social
"[D]ays after the massacre of 7 October, I warned of revenge that would achieve nothing but yet more violence and suffering. I feared the unbridled Israeli response I knew would follow, but even in my worst nightmares I did not imagine it could amount to such systematic, calculated annihilation."
joolia.bsky.social
"It feels as if everything has vanished. Not only the tens of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza erased without graves, without records, as if they had never existed – so many other things have been hollowed out: basic conceptions of morality, decency, compassion, humanity, hope, future."
Disappearing people, disappearing morals – how two years has changed Gaza and Israel | Orly Noy
There can be no healing until the world stares into and acknowledges the void torn open by this conflict, says Israeli journalist Orly Noy
www.theguardian.com
Reposted by Cynthia Khoo
spiderswarz.bsky.social
It is so, so vital to understand and internalize that the Gaza Genocide has been waged in key part at the behest of tech and surveillance oligarchs who beyond cruelly test their violent technology on Palestinians in order to determine how to apply them here.

Palestine is a laboratory.
Reposted by Cynthia Khoo
fahad-s-ali.bsky.social
Why not a consistent moral position against any loss of human life? Well, that's easy: because they don't think we're human.
Reposted by Cynthia Khoo
fahad-s-ali.bsky.social
Our politicians have accepted that Palestinian lives are worthless, so an infinite number of us can be butchered. Two years on, they still act as though there is no greater tragedy in the modern age than October 7, when much worse, on a much larger scale, has been done to Gaza.
cyn-k.bsky.social
"How dare I entertain nihilism when Bisan daily stares down death in Gaza? ... How dare I entertain complacency as this Palestinian storyteller outruns a genocidal Israeli regime, armed and funded by the most powerful country in the world, determined to annihilate her people?"
Essay: Why I Write
I have begun and abandoned several essays lately because I collide into a voice that taunts and challenges: “You can’t write that.
www.feministgiant.com
Reposted by Cynthia Khoo
karnythia.bsky.social
If you only knew how much of tech's energy is devoted to building better tools for abusers
hypervisible.blacksky.app
“…that Sora is being used for stalking and harassment will likely not be an edge case, because deepfaking yourself and others into videos is one of its core selling points.”

Far from an edge case, it’s the primary use case.
Stalker Already Using OpenAI's Sora 2 to Harass Victim
A journalist claims that her stalker used Sora 2, the latest video app from OpenAI, to churn out videos of her.
futurism.com
Reposted by Cynthia Khoo
nsqe.bsky.social
Anyway. I'm not an expert in human behavior or anything. I'm just saying, if you're in a situation that calls for some level of expertise, and maybe there were some warning signs you passed a mile back, and maybe there are experts shouting at you?

Please. Listen to advice. Admit you might be wrong.
Reposted by Cynthia Khoo
nsqe.bsky.social
...and I know. I just described a lot of the people running this country right now. And other countries. And a lot of the people leading major tech companies. And editing our newspapers.

A whole lot of people are driving this world up Black Bear Pass in a rented Kia right now. It's a little scary.
Reposted by Cynthia Khoo
nsqe.bsky.social
And this situation is emblematic of a problem that arises in so many other circumstances. Wild overconfidence untempered by any experience and capped off by a complete inability to listen to advice or admit any error...it's a /really/ toxic combination that gets people killed.
Reposted by Cynthia Khoo
kojamf.bsky.social
Dr. Jane Goodall filmed an interview with Netflix in March 2025 that she understood would only be released after her death.
cyn-k.bsky.social
Yup. And unfortunately, we only got to this point of corporations being able to conscript the entire public because they were left unchecked when testing and training (and inflicting harm) "just" on those segments of the public hardly anyone with a voice or in power cared about 🙃
cyn-k.bsky.social
Others have drawn these links already, but: colonialism, rape culture, and AI /big tech are intertwined. It all comes down to a deliberate unwillingness to respect consent. Whether land, sex/bodies, or data—if those driven by white supremacist patriarchy want it, doesn't matter if someone says no.