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Session Descriptions

Tuesday, July 19

Understanding Technology Safety
Presenters: Safety Net (NNEDV)
We use the term “tech safety” to encompasses the many ways that technology can impact a survivor’s experience of abuse. We include experiences of both harm and healing, as well as efforts to prevent harm or promote healing. Any aspect of a technology or technology product can be relevant to tech safety, from original design, to implementation and use, to its evolution or when it’s obsolete. Thinking about technologies in multifaceted ways is essential to effective survivor advocacy work and safety planning. To be survivor-centered and meet survivors where they are, advocates must consider the many ways technology is a part of survivor’s lives and their experiences of abuse. Technologies can be misused as a tactic of abuse and can pose significant privacy risks, but they can also be harnessed strategically to increase safety and privacy and provide more options for healing. This session will discuss the scope of tech safety work and some of the most common ways that technology can impact survivors.

Assessing and Identifying Tech Abuse & Risk
Presenters: Safety Net (NNEDV)
To effectively safety plan and hold abusers accountable for abuse, we need to be able to identify what they are misusing or using. Unfortunately, as technology has evolved and merged, identifying what type of technology is behind a certain behavior can be incredibly difficult. Our phones, watches, dog collars, teddy bears, and cars – just to name a few - all have technology to track our location. Our personal information, including our online and offline habits, can be easily revealed without our consent. Too often, a survivor is only able to tell us that the abuser knows too much or is constantly aware of where they are. But identifying how they know that is the challenge. In this session, we will discuss a range of scenarios and the important questions and steps that can help narrow in on what is happening. Even narrowing down the options for what the abuser is doing can dramatically impact the direction of safety plans and help identify what options are available for recourse.

Technology Safety Planning
Presenter: Safety Net (NNEDV)
We know the long list of technologies that can be misused and the various potential privacy risks. We also know questions to ask to narrow down the possibilities of what could be happening in various scenarios. The next critical piece is thinking through a safety plan that incorporates the many ways technology can impact safety, privacy, and healing. Advocates and others working with survivors can help strategize around the misuse, as well as the ways that that technology is used in their everyday life. Technology safety planning can include look at both immediate and long-term device and account security, online spaces and personal information, and a myriad of ways that it all connects. This session will dive into a discussion on the complexities of technology safety planning.

Wednesday, July 20
Clinic to End Tech Abuse: Understanding, Investigating, and Preventing Tech Abuse
Presenters: Rosanna Bellini, Lana Ramjit (Cornell Tech)
Since 2017, our research group at Cornell University has been looking at the role of technology in intimate partner violence (IPV) contexts. We have worked with victim-survivors, support professionals and advocates to design the Clinic to End Tech Abuse (CETA), a voluntary-run service that pairs victim-survivors of tech abuse with privacy and security experts to identify and respond to threats and harms posed by the abuser. In this talk, we will share the origins of our  model and show how our research can blend with practice to equip victim-survivors with the skills and knowledge to help navigate their technology concerns in a supportive and caring environment. We impart some considerations for how other professional services might adopt some of these approaches in their own work . We are grateful to have worked with many collaborators including our primary partner The Mayor's Office to End Domestic and Gender-Based Violence (ENDGBV) and clinic volunteers, please see the website for Computer Security and Privacy research and the Clinic to End Tech Abuse for more information.

Survivor Privacy Online: Understanding Data Connections
Presenters: Audace Garnett (NNEDV), Jessie Lowell
It’s well known that for survivors of abuse, privacy is intrinsically connected to safety. But managing privacy is becoming harder and harder in a world where data is constantly collected and shared, even without our participation or knowledge. Survivors have a right to be in online spaces and to feel safe doing so. This session will look at some of the ways that survivor information can be revealed online. This includes the growing reach of data brokers (people search sites) and a look at how personal data can be used by abusive people to discover online social accounts and connections. We’ll also offer tips for managing personal information online.

Thursday, July 21

Using Technology to Communicate with Survivors: Lessons from the Pandemic
Presenter: Toby Shulruff (NNEDV)
The pandemic has highlighted opportunities to use technology in our work with survivors. Yet, how we use technology can directly impact survivors’ privacy and safety. In our 2021 Needs Assessment, over half of respondents said they routed hotline calls to home and about 1 in 5 responded that they had added text messaging or web chat to their hotline. For ongoing work with survivors, most people said they used voice calls and about half said they used text or video. Over a third of respondents shifted support groups to video. In this session, we’ll look at the benefits and challenges of these tools, and what lessons we should take with us into the future.

Immigrant Survivors and Technology
Presenters: Casey Swegman, Hellitz Villegas (Tahirih Justice Center)
In this session we will discuss the intersection of gender-based trauma, the migration journey and the immigrant experience in the U.S. We will share some of the added barriers that immigrant survivors of violence endure on their journeys to safety and emphasis will be placed on the immigrant tech divide. We will review practical strategies learned from our time providing virtual services during the Covid-19 pandemic and reflections from our experiences providing technical assistance nationwide via our Afghan Asylum Helpline.

Tech Panel: Supporting Safe and Empowered Use of Tech
Moderator: Erica Olsen
Panelists: Representatives from tech companies, TBD.
This panel will discuss the role of technology companies in addressing technology safety. We’ll look at the importance of trauma-informed technology design, the role of technology in prevention efforts, and how technology can be harnessed to support healing.