Kilómetro Cero, a Puerto Rican organization, has joined the Cooperativa de Libertad Tecnológica, an alliance of human rights, justice, and data organizations. The cooperative aims to reduce dependence on large technology corporations and develop independent capabilities for working with large-scale language models. The alliance includes organizations from Puerto Rico, the US, Canada, Mexico, and Europe, and is supported by the John D. and Catherine T.
MacArthur Foundation. According to Mari Mari Narváez, director of Kilómetro Cero, the goal is to protect data and promote accountability for state violence and access to justice, without relying on corporate interests. The cooperative will provide distributed systems for data backup and local AI infrastructure for organizations documenting human rights violations and state violence.
The alliance cited the example of Microsoft revoking the account of the International Criminal Court's chief prosecutor, Karim Khan, after the US imposed economic sanctions, highlighting the need for independent data preservation and technical expertise.