Community and economic development practitioners and community members gathered at a Thrive Rural Open Field session to share tips, techniques, and resources to help build rural and Native nations’ capacity. One of the questions participants engaged with during the Open Field session focused on how the government, at all levels, could better foster rural capacity.

In 2021, Aspen Digital joined a diverse group of tech companies, researchers, and DEI experts in publishing the landmark ACT Report, which outlines a wide range of recommendations for improving the representation, inclusion, and empowerment of underserved and marginalized communities. As a next step to this work, the Aspen Institute is launching a new initiative to carry out the vision and recommendations of that report and translate them to measurable, collective action.

By issuing warrants for search histories, combing through social media posts, and tapping location data to track movement, law enforcement will be able to exploit an ever-growing suite of unregulated digital forensic tools to find and prosecute so-called “offenders” en masse. What role can tech companies, advocates, and legislators play in protecting reproductive rights through better privacy protections, and how can individuals shield themselves going forward?