Cybersecurity at the edge: Researching the privacy and security dimensions of indigenous cyberactivism in Ecuador

如今，厄瓜多多数原住民社群使用脸书、WhatsApp和推特等资讯与通讯科技，支持争取权利、生计和文化的抗议活动。然而，这加剧了这些网络活动人士的隐私和安全风险，他们通过网络攻击、互联网审查和加强监控成为厄瓜多尔政府的目标。引起国际愤怒的一个突出例子是在2019年，当时政府试图使互联网关闭合法化。可以保护这些土著群体的隐私增强工具（pet）并不符合他们的需求和本体，因为它们通常是为西方主流受众而开发的。因此，本研究将探讨如何利用或重新配置宠物，以支持厄瓜多尔本土的网路行动主义。我将在厄瓜多尔进行为期12个月的人种学田野调查，与土著抗议者、非政府组织和网络政策制定者一起。这项工作的结果将是一套针对土著抗议者的需求量身定制的pet设计建议，也可转移到世界其他地区的边缘化社区，以及对拉丁美洲隐私和网络安全经验研究不足的领域做出贡献。

Nowadays, most indigenous communities in Ecuador use information and communication technologies (ICTs) such as Facebook, WhatsApp, and Twitter to support protests for their rights, livelihoods, and culture. However, this exacerbates privacy and security risks for these cyberactivists, who become targets of the Ecuadorian state through cyberattacks, internet censorship and increased surveillance. A prominent example that caused international outrage was in 2019, when the government attempted to legalise internet shutdowns. Privacy-enhancing-tools (PETs) that could protect these indigenous groups are not attuned to their needs and ontologies, as they are usually developed with mainstream Western audiences in mind. Therefore, this research will explore how PETs are appropriated or reconfigured to support indigenous cyberactivism in Ecuador. I will conduct 12 months of ethnographic fieldwork in Ecuador with indigenous protesters, non-governmental organisations, and cyber-policy makers. The outcome of this work will be a set of recommendations for the design of PETs that are tailored to the needs of indigenous protesters and also transferable to marginalised communities in other parts of the world, as well as a contribution to the under-researched field of privacy and cybersecurity experiences in Latin America.