5Rights’ Baroness Kidron named EPIC 2023 Champion of Freedom
The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) on 25 May presented the title of 2023 Champion of Freedom to 5Rights founder and Chair, Baroness Beeban Kidron for her work in crafting the Age Appropriate Design Code and fighting for children’s privacy online.
Shoshana Zuboff, Harvard professor, social psychologist, philosopher, author of the best-selling The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 5Rights Trustee and 2021 recipient of the award, delivered the award address, paying tribute to Baroness Kidron as a fearless and visionary lioness:
“The 5Rights Foundation under Beeban’s leadership says that it is building the digital world that young people deserve. Is this true? Yes. But it is also not the end of the story.
Lioness Kidron and 5Rights are building the world that all people deserve. Once that realisation catches fire, which is will, surveillance capitalism will crumble and our societies will be free to build the democratic worlds of knowledge and innovation that finally end our 21st Century dystopia.
Thanks to the lioness of 5Rights and her brilliant colleagues, a new path through our digital century can emerge. It will demand the lions, and the leaders, and each one of us.”
Accepting the award, Baroness Kidron said:
“This award means the world to me … because the narrative that children’s safety in the digital world is automatically in tension with adult privacy is somewhat overturned by this award. In any system there are choices and balances to be reached…, but I have long felt that the privacy protections that we achieve for children will, in the long run, be available to us all and that those who benefit most from the crude binary of children or privacy are the tech behemoth who extract data behaviour and attention from us all.”
EPIC established the Champions of Freedom Award in 2004 to recognize individuals and organizations that have helped safeguard the right of privacy, promote open government, and protect democratic values with courage and integrity. The 2023 Award was delivered at the 16th International Computers, Privacy and Data Protection (CPDP) conference in Brussels, Belgium.
