This workshop will be convened as part of the Youth Track of IGF Argentina 2026, in coordination with IGF Argentina’s annual event, as a space designed for and with young people to examine how recent and pending legislative proposals across Latin America—requiring message traceability, data retention on encrypted platforms, or “lawful access” mechanisms—function in practice as encryption backdoors and what they mean for the region’s digital rights landscape.
The session has two parts. The first is a short framing segment to build shared literacy: participants map recent regional and global precedents (such as Brazil’s proposed traceability obligations for encrypted messaging apps, debates in the EU around “Chat Control”/ProtectEU, and backdoor mandates already in force in the UK and Australia) to see how these mechanisms undermine end-to-end encryption even when framed around child safety, disinformation, or organized crime. The second and central part hands the floor to the young participants themselves: organized in small groups, they design their own alternative policy approaches—addressing the legitimate public-safety or platform-accountability concerns lawmakers raise, without weakening encryption (e.g., metadata-limited investigative powers, judicial oversight requirements, and targeted lawful-access mechanisms subject to due process). This is deliberately structured as a youth-authored exercise, not adults presenting conclusions for young people to absorb.
Expected results: (1) a set of policy alternatives designed by the youth participants themselves, compiled and published as a statement—something like “What young people have to say on encryption and backdoors”—to be shared with the Global Encryption Coalition, IGF Argentina’s broader community, and AdS’s own advocacy channels; (2) a shared glossary/one-pager mapping regional encryption-weakening proposals in plain language for use by IGF Argentina’s Youth Track and partner ISOC chapters going forward; (3) stronger, durable links between young digital-rights advocates in Argentina and the regional/global encryption advocacy network.