Disruption Network Lab

Upcoming Conference: 'Exposing Crimes is not a Crime: The Real-World Consequences of WikiLeaks', March 19–22 2025, Berlin - follow us for tickets and news!  This episode: Techno-Policing & Civic Control With: Sonja Peteranderl (Investigative Journalist, Founder of BuzzingCities Lab, DE) and Matthias Monroy (Journalist, Activist, Expert on Civil Rights, Policing, and Security Technologies, DE). Thi...

Upcoming Conference: Shadows of Illiberalism , June 13–15 2025, Berlin This episode: Illiberal Realities: Understanding Propaganda and the Orbanisation of Europe With: Péter Adamik and Sára Szedlár (Freie Ungarische Botschaft, HU/DE).  Two activists from the Berlin-based Hungarian expat organisation Freie Ungarische Botschaft (Free Hungarian Embassy) will give an overview of how Viktor Orbán's gov...

How can we ensure the dystopian tech-enabled violence we are witnessing in Gaza is neither normalized nor harnessed in future armed conflicts? Marwa Fatafta discusses the technologies used by Israel in Gaza and the role of tech companies. Marwa leads Access Now's policy and advocacy work on digital rights in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. Read more at  https://dnlb.org/perfectstor...

Corruption Unveiled: Austria's Troublesome Path from Strache to Kurz  From #DNL31 #OrganisedCrime . Watch this talk and others here Julian Hessenthaler, the private detective who set the trap for Strache and triggered the "Ibiza affair," delves into the issues of power and abuse of power in the state of Austria with Frederik Obermaier one of the journalists to whom he leaked the video. In 2019, a...

Philosopher Émile P. Torres takes you on a journey through the surreal and very influential techno-utopian – and dystopian - philosophies and ideologies of Silicon Valley billionaires and leaders. Recorded at a meet-up and workshop curated by Sabina Barcucci. Read more about the meet-up here: https://dnlb.org/torres . Our next conference is Organised Crime: A Global Business, Nov 24–26 2023: https...

Sharon Hom (Executive Director, Human Rights in China, HK/US). Moderated by Magnus Ag (Journalist, Human Rights Advocate, Founder of Bridge Figures, DK/NO). In recent decades, the Communist Party of China (CPC) has increasingly challenged international human rights norms and values and aggressively promoted its alternative models for human rights, development, and even, as it claims, "democracy."...

Award-winning investigative journalist and author Tom Burgis discusses the opportunities that the pandemic has provided for kleptocracy to flourish. Across the world, we've seen dramatic increases in government spending, logistical obstacles for watchdogs monitoring kleptocratic financial flows, and a ready-made excuse for restrictions on freedom of movement... and political protest. In our conver...

Renata Avila, Joseph Farrell & Rima Sghaier discuss the role of whistleblowers during COVID-19 and the importance of exposing the truth during the pandemic. The work of whistleblowers is central to denounce power violations and to protect the most vulnerable sectors of our society, but also whistleblowers are people at risk. They are subjects of repression and opposition before and after blowing t...

In this conversation between Wu Ming 1 and Florian Cramer, QAnon is discussed as a template for contemporary social-media-driven conspiracy fantasies that work simultaneously as games and a new kind of cults. By focusing on the mutation of conspiracy myths from countercultural phenomena to contemporary meme and influencer culture, they will focus on three conspiracy narratives: "The Great Replacem...

This keynote conversation brings together Eileen Chubb, a former care assistant in the UK who became a whistleblower and later a campaigner, and Erika Cheung, one of the key whistleblowers in the Theranos scandal and today co-founder and executive director of Ethics in Entrepreneurship. The conversation is based on two important experiences of raising concerns in the healthcare field, wants to dis...

Jennifer Robinson is an Australian human rights lawyer and barrister with Doughty Street Chambers in London. Her practice focuses on defending cases for freedom of expression before national and international courts such as the European Court of Human Rights. Robinson is best known for her role as a long-standing member of the legal team defending Julian Assange and WikiLeaks. www.disruptionlab.or...

This panel brings together four experts in the field of technology, human rights, investigative journalism and law to address the importance of transparency, government accountability and media freedom through the case and the present conditions of Julian Assange. www.disruptionlab.org/behind-the-mask

Helen O'Connor, National Health Service nurse in the United Kingdom for many years and today GMB NHS Union Organiser will give a critical perspective on the UK health care system and the measures that need to be taken to protect the rights of the workers, rather than allowing private companies to profit, in order to help resolve the pandemic and future public health emergencies. From the conferenc...

This talk brings into dialogue different modalities of fighting speculation, sharing tactics of resistance in the political and media landscape, and presenting concrete interventions in the urban territory of Berlin and internationally. www.disruptionlab.org/evicted-by-greed

This keynote event brings in conversation Leilani Farha, the former UN Special Rapporteur on the right to housing, and Justus von Daniels, Editor-in-Chief of CORRECTIV, to discuss how civil society can be directly involved in fighting real estate speculation, and which measures can be adopted to guarantee the right to adequate housing on a global scale. www.disruptionlab.org/evicted-by-greed

Volkan Sayman from Deutsche Wohnen & Co Enteignen discusses Berlin's housing crisis as a result of the privatisation and financialisation of housing, highlights major milestones of the expropriation campaign, and gives a glimpse on what's next in the struggle against displacement and for socialised housing in Berlin. www.disruptionlab.org/evicted-by-greed

In major cities across the world local working and middle class citizens are being pushed out of their very own homes – because living in them has become unaffordable. Join us for a discussion between PUSH: the film director Fredrik Gertten and activist Leilani Farha on the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic on real estate speculation and eviction. www.disruptionlab.org/evicted-by-greed

This keynote panel focuses on two different but related investigations in Berlin and Barcelona on real estate ownership and aggressive international investors. https://disruptionlab.org/evicted-by-greed

In this panel Sam Leon from "Global Witness" and Karina Shedrofsky from "OCCRP" analyse how money laundering, organised crime and corruption interfere and influence real estate, addressing respectively the contexts of London and Dubai. www.disruptionlab.org/evicted-by-greed

AN AUTOPSY OF ONLINE LOVE, LABOUR, SURVEILLANCE AND ELECTRICITY/ENERGY Joana Moll (Artist and Researcher, ES) in conversation with Tatiana Bazzichelli (Founding Director, Disruption Network Lab, IT/DE). Our so-called networked society has failed so far to transpose the logic of interconnectedness into our lives. Citizens are becoming increasingly machine-like and dependent on data, threatening the...

UNTANGLING COMPLEXITY: Working on Anti-Corruption From the International to the Local Level Max Heywood (Transparency International Global Outreach and Advocacy Coordinator, UK/DE) and Stephan Ohme (Lawyer and Financial Expert, Transparency International Deutschland e. V., DE). In the fight against corruption, one of the key elements is making the complex and often hidden system of global economic...

ALGORITHMIC BIAS: AI Traps and Possible Escapes Caroline Sinders (Machine Learning Designer/User Researcher, Artist, Digital Anthropologist, USA/DE) and Sarah Grant (Media Artist and Educator, Radical Networks, USA/DE) in conversation with Ruth Catlow (Co-Founder and Co-Artistic Director, Furtherfield, UK). Algorithms are not neutral and unbiased, but instead often reflect, reinforce and automate...

AI TRAPS: Automating Discrimination The Art of Exposing Injustice - Part 2 The 16th conference of the Disruption Network Lab ON THE POLITICS OF AI: Fighting Injustice & Automatic Supremacism Dia Kayyali (Leader of the Tech & Advocacy program at WITNESS, SY/US/DE), Os Keyes (Ada Lovelace Fellow, Human-Centred Design & Engineering, University of Washington, US), Dan McQuillan (Lecturer in Creative &...

AI TRAPS: Automating Discrimination The Art of Exposing Injustice - Part 2 The 16th conference of the Disruption Network Lab RACIAL DISCRIMINATION IN THE AGE OF AI: The Future of Civil Rights in the United States Mutale Nkonde (Tech Policy Advisor and Fellow at Data & Society Research Institute, US). Moderated by Rhianna Ilube (Writer, Curator and Host at The Advocacy Academy, UK/DE) To many, the...

AI TRAPS: Automating Discrimination The Art of Exposing Injustice - Part 2 The 16th conference of the Disruption Network Lab HOW IS GOVERNMENT USING BIG DATA? Crofton Black (Researcher, Journalist & Writer, The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, UK). Moderated by Daniel Eriksson (Head of Technology, Transparency International, SE/DE). AI, algorithms, deep learning, big data - barely a week goes b...