Work on Tech-Dossier on Privacy Since January 2025 ISOC-CH is working on privacy-focused Tech Dossiers (TD), which relate to various projects which are technically supported by Next Generation Internet (NGI) funding, provided by the EU Commission and the State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation (SERI) of the Swiss Confederation (cf. https://www.sbfi.admin.ch/sbfi/en/home/seri/seri.html). In scope of this work, also the Artificial Intelligence (AI) topic was given special attention as to show how to make a more sovereign use of its potentials without neglecting the risks associated to the intensified practice in datafication of everything (including the collection and use of Personal Identifiable Information, PII) to make those systems generate (sometimes useful) answers. Teaching the Teachers on Privacy As an audience, we choose to raise awareness among early stage secondary school teachers in their last step of formation about the dangers of datafication, which (soon) will have the job to teach their topic (e.g., German or Mathematics) on secondary schools among Switzerland. As teaching is done more and more interdisciplinary and with an increasing relation to digitization, teachers are formed at University of Zurich (UZH) also in aspects of digital educational tools used in teaching. From our perspective, it’s absolutely vital that at least young teachers get themselves and critically tought in aspects of digitization such that they can raise awareness among kids about it and we can have a scalable effect on spreading critical knowledge on privacy implications of digital systems, increasing thus media literacy in the general public and give insights to alternatives which can be used. Concrete Teacher Audience at University of Zurich To start this task, we teamed up with Tessa Consoli, Academic Associate to the Chair of Prof. Dr. Dominik Petko on Teaching and Educational Technology at UZH in the Institute of Education (IfE; cf. https://www.ife.uzh.ch/en/research/petko/staff/consolitessa.html), researching on aspects of the influence and use of digitzation in the secondary school system. Since Spring Semester 2025 she runs a course on Transerversal Learning including a strong focus on digitization topics in schools (cf. course description: https://studentservices.uzh.ch/uzh/anonym/vvz/?sap-language=DE&sap-ui-language=DE#/details/2024/004/SM/51260439). With her work, the IfE is assessing which digital educational tools are being used in the secondary school system across Switzerland, running surveys (cf. corresponding research work: https://www.ife.uzh.ch/en/research/petko.html). First Efforts with a Presentation and Reactions As the course lecturer Tessa sees and shares the interest to shed light not only on chances, but also on the risks of the ongoing pervasive (mass) datafication — including the loss of digital sovereignty in the public school system —, we were invited to give a public intervention in her course on 18.3.2025 (cf. in PDF: slides), not only showing the problematic global situation of mass datafication through, e.g., means of Mass Surveillance as shown since — at the very latest — the Snowden revelations since June 2013, but also how to engage in self-defense by using technological tools for a more decentralized and private Internet, using means of media literacy and tools which are also supported by the NGI funding framework (like, e.g., Mastodon, Tor or Jitsi). The intervention at UZH proved to be very useful as the teachers present weren’t generally aware of the scope of the (non-consensual) datafication going on, which happens to be used, e.g., in AI systems as training material, imposing privacy risks of data leakage and loss of control through automatic decision-making with people don’t understand why certain (e.g., insurance) prices for them rise or they don’t get a credit. Awareness at which points data gets collected by own actions was also not very sharp: most people weren’t aware that “simple” news sites massively collect behavioral data and share it with hundreds of “partners” — a problem which can be reduced by using certain Add-Ons or Browser Bundles (especially for smart phones) to share less data by technical means. The post NGI0: Teach the Teachers on Dangers of (Mass) Datafication appeared first on ISOC Switzerland Chapter.

ISOC-CH is a key partner in the Horizon Europe NGI0 Commons Fund, and through this engagement a great opportunity arises to develop as an organization both locally in Switzerland and abroad, creating links between local issues and struggles for digital rights and important developments at the European and global level. The role of ISOC-CH in the NGI0 project is to develop the so-called “Tech dossiers” of free/libre and open software. That is, a comprehensive introduction to a certain are of digital services (e.g., cloud storage, video conferencing, AI), addressing specific audiences (e.g., policy makers, youth, educators, elderly) with a suitable medium (e.g., guidelines, podcast, curriculum). For this project, we are searching for a candidate that will cover the topic of cloud solutions, addressing policy makers and the government in the context of digital sovereignty with an expected engagement of 20% for a period of 1 year, with a possible extension up to 2 years.. In addition, this year, the Board of ISOC Switzerland will be reshuffled. We are looking for additional board members, including for treasurer and/or policy.  For more information and application process, you can reach us at contact@isoc.ch or in one of the upcoming events announced on our web site, https://isoc.ch, and linkedin page. More details about the application process will be announced after the General Assembly 2025. Before, you are very welcome to join the ISOC-CH’s Policy Sessions 2025 on the topic of E-ID, an excellent introduction for this job position! The ISOC-CH board. The post ISOC-CH is hiring! appeared first on ISOC Switzerland Chapter.

The ISOC Switzerland Chapter is proud to be one of the partners of the Horizon Europe project NGI0 Commons Fund, which started on January 1st 2024. The project is part of the NGI0 NGI Zero coalition, led by NLnet Foundation, which uses a very flexible cascading funding scheme that enables a large number of carefully... The post ISOC-CH is a partner of the NGI0 Commons Fund appeared first on ISOC Switzerland Chapter.

The Next Generation Internet initiative has supported Free Software projects with funding and technical assistance since 2018. Despite its proven success, the European Commission made the decision to cut this funding in the current draft for the Horizon Europe 2025 Work Programme. This open letter to the European Commission to revert this decision was initially... The post The support of the European Union for free and open source software is at stake. appeared first on ISOC Switzerland Chapter.