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Wa'il Ashshowwaf

It is who is more reliable and who is more knowledgeable in the system.

So, the best thing is to be respectful. Do your best to be calm and you can simply say, I am not interested in having a conversation. I want to exercise my right to be silent and I would like to speak to an attorney. Then after that, this is the hard part. You really just stay silent. These are rights. You have them. Just be patient.

Matt C. Smith

Truth is, humanity can save itself and our planet, and right at this very moment, there is someone who has taken on this challenge and is on a path to solving an incredibly tough, global problem. This podcast was created to tell you about them.

You are listening to Better Heroes, a show from the global EY organization about the untold stories of entrepreneurs devoting their lives to impactful innovation and I am your host, Matt C. Smith. As an entrepreneur myself, I get my motivation from other founders and entrepreneurs. I love hearing about why they are so passionate about what they are building and what drives them to keep going, but Better Heroes is not just about the innovators. Each episode will share how technology is a tool for hope and how the solutions you are going to hear about can positively transform communities across the globe.

In our first season, we will tackle climate catastrophe, global unemployment, food insecurity, and social inequity. We have also invited founders and people from within the EY community and they will talk about the role that businesses, governments, and the social sector can play in championing impact entrepreneurs.

There are 30 basic human rights enumerated by the UN in 1948. Can you name a few of them? Five or 10 maybe? A lot of them are common sense. You should be free to practice your own religion, everyone should be treated equally, and no one should be wrongfully imprisoned.

But it gets a lot more complicated from there. Things like poverty rights, asylum, and references to “fair reason” and these rights are not the same around the world. Just within the United States of America, your rights can change depending on whichever state you are located in, and you cannot always stop to look up your rights the moment you are in a situation where you need to know them. REYETS spelled R-E-Y-E-T-S is an app meant to help you educate yourself about your rights and then help you through a situation when you need to exercise them. It offers tools for interactions with police or other times when you are a witness or the victim of injustice.

REYETS was founded by Wa'il Ashshowwaf after a legal situation that he says could have ended very differently if he knew what he knows now.

Ashshowwaf

It has been a journey for sure and that journey started more than 25 years ago. When I was 17, I was going to university in Upstate New York. I think it was my second week on campus, fresh out of home, living on my own, and I got arrested in the dorms, I was wrongfully arrested. But at the time being 17, I had no idea what my rights were whatsoever and I made every mistake you could think of, I did not exercise my right to be silent, I did not ask for a lawyer. In my head, all I thought was, well, the justice system is there to advocate for my innocence. It will be fine. It is just a mistake and then the people that were witnessing what happened to me, had no idea how to help me either. So, that incident did not end up so well for me. I ended up getting kicked out of university and it was not a pleasant experience.

Smith

In your experience there as well I think, we all assume that the justice system is there as a safety net. Oh, do not worry. Of course, as you said, wrongfully imprisoned or almost, there are so many cases of wrongful imprisonment that have come around and come full circle later on in many years of imprisonment, but the justice system is meant to be innocent until proven guilty, is it not?

Ashshowwaf

It is meant to be, but there is a caveat. The caveat is that the justice system is more like a playground where you can come with your evidence, with your tools, with your resources, and advocate for your own innocence, and the state is going to do the same. They are going to try to prosecute you because that is their role. That is how the justice system, at least in the US, that is how it works. So, that means if you have knowledge and resources, then you are in a better position to do that and if you do not, you are just out of luck.

Smith

As of now, REYETS is only available in the US, but Wail tells us that eventually, they plan to expand all over the world. They have tailored their approach based on location. In the US, for example, a lot of the rights people need more information about, are linked to the justice system and interactions with police.

Ashshowwaf

This light bulb went off in my head, it was like wow. So, if I do not know my rights, do I even really have them?

Smith

So, that started you on your journey, sort of your human rights journey because rights are something different that I really understood because are we ever taught our rights?

Ashshowwaf

You might be, but most people, they are guessing their rights. You get to learn from the TV unless you make a conscious effort to learn them, or schools are teaching you well, so where else are you going to learn your rights.

Smith

Do you think it should be taught in schools?

Ashshowwaf

Absolutely. Rights are so fundamental and yet not having them is self-destructive. Think about this scenario, when people's rights are violated, or they are disproportionately affected. That is not just robbing them of an opportunity to develop themselves, but it is also taking the time that they could use to focus their energy on being creative, learning things, and enjoying life, but instead, like in some parts of the US, you have parents talking to kids as young as eight or nine about what to do if you get arrested. What do you do if you get in trouble because they are so disproportionately targeted?

Smith

The United Nations has 17 published sustainable development goals that are meant to create a better future for people and our planet. Number 10 on that list is reduced inequalities. Teaching people about their rights is a major step toward this goal. Even if we all have the same rights, they are disproportionately violated for certain populations depending on race, gender, and socioeconomic status.

Ashshowwaf

So yes, it should be taught.

Smith

Because what I found when I did a little research into this, it is not on the national curriculum in a majority of countries. Now, the funny thing is those universal rights I mentioned that they are the 30 human universal basic rights, they are universal. So, that is actually not country to country. Does it differ from country to country, and we have these 30 universal and then just the countries make up their own or can they choose to not abide by some of those 30?

Ashshowwaf

So, the way I think of rights is there are different layers. So, you have like, for example, the universal rights, but for each country, those are recommended, not each country has to abide by them, but then within each country. Then you have your rights at a federal level, at least in the US and then at a state level, and it can even differ down to the county within the state that you are in. In some states, when a police officer asks you for an ID, for example, there is a different level of what you have to do to satisfy that vs. other states where you do not have to provide an ID. So, it can differ greatly.

Smith

I am curious, going back to your scenario of you being a young kid in university, getting into this trouble wrongfully, and end up getting kicked out of university. You had your bad luck experience through that method, how would you have done that situation differently with the knowledge you have now?

Ashshowwaf

So one, I would have known before the incident ever happened that I can just simply say, I would like to talk to a lawyer and I do not want to sign any documents that might incriminate me. So, those two things alone would have stopped the whole process of me starting to go into, oh, well, he signed the document that, said he was there, said this because I did not read it all. I just was scared and I signed it. Second, those people that were witnessing what happened, they would have known how to help me as well because they would have known that there are organizations out there that can provide free legal service. They would also have known how to do a citizen witnessing to document what happened to me, and then after this whole thing happened, I would have known at least where to go and how to advocate for myself because those three things did not exist and this was way before cell phones even existed, so, add to that a lot more barriers.

Smith

You might take your rights for granted, but if you are not informed, Wail says, it is almost like not having them at all.

Ashshowwaf

It is who is more reliable and who is more knowledgeable in the system. So, for example, what happens to some people is they will have an encounter with the police or immigration agents and they will try to assert their rights. So, in fact, say, I do not want to talk, I do not consent to you searching me and then the official at the other end, whether it is police or immigration, might say something, well, if you do not, I am just going to arrest you. You are breaking the law. You are going to be in more trouble. Not knowing that you can in fact just say fine, please get a warrant and if they insist to violate your rights, then that is just in your favor for a lawyer to help you, but you do not know that and you are so intimidated by the process that it is hard to know that.

Smith

And it is a high-stake situation. If someone were to walk in right now, we are recording this podcast. They said, Matthew Smith, you are under arrest or you are being accused for this, how would you recommend me to react if someone walked into this podcast studio right now and tried to throw some accusations at me and arrest me?

Ashshowwaf

There are two superpowers that you can have in a situation like this. The first superpower is being calm, but you could only be calm if you know what your rights are, but being absolutely as hard as it is being calm and the second is exercising your right to be silent. Be respectful, do your best to be calm and you can simply say, I am not interested in having a conversation. I want to exercise my right to be silent and I would like to speak to an attorney. Then after that, this is the hard part, you really just stay silent because what will happen next is they'll just try to talk to you. They might just say, well, I am just trying to have a conversation with you, you do not want to tell me who else lives here or what were you doing? They will start asking you all these questions and it is not necessary that you are doing anything wrong. It is just that you might give out information that is either going to make you be perceived as inconsistent because you are, oh, it is just a casual conversation or are you going to put yourself in a position to make it more difficult for a lawyer to help you if you are in trouble? So, it is not about like I want to encourage people to avoid the law, but these are rights, you have them and just stay silent and just be patient. It is hard though.

Smith

So, take me back to that story. So, you are at university. You have experienced this injustice. You reacted on emotion, on fear as any human being would do. You were actually being played against the system here and obviously, you were wrongful, I do not know if you were convicted or however that prevailed, but that was a pretty horrific experience. What continued after that? So, was it that where you felt compelled to make a change? What was your first step after that injustice?

Ashshowwaf

So, what was interesting when that happened, a lot of people said, you must be really angry. You must be angry this happened to you and actually, at the moment, it was not anger that was the dominant emotion. It was fascination more than frustration. I was really generally fascinated like wait, how did this just happen and is this happening to many other people? Is it just me or is it a one-off? It really kind of started to give me that thread to start to pull at and unravel and so, over the course, it has been something in the back of my head that one day, I want to do something to overcome this.

Smith

Wail went into a career in banking, but social justice never left his mind. He travelled to South Africa to learn about the apartheid and worked with the Desmond Tutu Truth and Reconciliation Institute out there. He also went to Alabama to meet with activists who marched with Dr. Martin Luther King. Eventually, it came to him that he could combine his passion for activism with a knowledge of technology and entrepreneurship.

Ashshowwaf

So, when the time came and at that time, I had been in banking for about 14 years. I was watching these videos of I think it was Philando Castile who got shot in a vehicle with his girlfriend's daughter in the back and I was just like, wow there has to be a solution to this and that was the first time I got super serious about it, okay, I want to do something about this and over a weekend, I built up a prototype of concept for what this would look like. Showed it to some people, and had a conversation about it and I think within maybe the next month, I left this 14-year career in banking to pursue this journey.

Smith

What did that first product look like? That sort of MVP, minimum viable product of REYETS 1.0 or 0.01?

Ashshowwaf

The very first product was focused on filming the police because that is what everyone was doing at the time. There was a lot of visibility and it was a better tool to be able to film the police. So, you backup your video to the cloud. It would allow you to notify emergency contacts and things like that. So, that was the original focus.

Smith

Is that a good strategy? Say, if someone walks into this room right now and tries to arrest me or confronts me and pushes me to speak about topics or themes that I am not willing to or that makes me feel uncomfortable is getting my phone out and filming, am I allowed to do that? Am I allowed to record visual, audio. What am I allowed and what am I not allowed to do in that scenario?

Ashshowwaf

So, in an ideal world, we should normalize citizen witnessing and where you have a right to be a citizen witness and video record, you should be able to do that. In real life, it is a bit more intimidating at your comfort level and you might even be arrested and wrongfully even physical force used for you doing that. There's some very visceral reactions. As far as the legality of it, in the majority of states you are allowed to do it in public so long as you are not impeding what the officer is doing or obstructing them. There are some states where you need two-party consent to record the audio. So, in that scenario you have to say, I am recording in. I am recording the audio, and if they say I do not consent, then you have to mute and we have that built into the app where it will tell you that and then it will allow you just to mute the audio so you do not collect evidence in a wrongful manner and then if you are on private property, it is up to the owner of that property. So, if I am at a restaurant and something is happening and I want to film and they say, hey, no filming in the restaurant, it is private property. So, short answer is I personally believe we should just normalize citizen witnessing. The intent is to create more transparency. It is not to impede. The short answer is do not do what does not feel comfortable for you. Do what puts you in the best position to protect your rights.

Smith

So, citizens have a role to play in this too. It is not just the ill-accused or unaccused or accused in those scenarios. So, back to your example there. Early days, what year is this? You decided not to quit everything. You quit your probably very well-paid banking job of 14 years. People are going, dude, you are crazy. Why are you trying to create something that does not exist for something that we did not even know we needed?

Ashshowwaf

It was basically I was obsessed with this thing. I do not think I got any sleep, but I did not feel it. It was just like, I think, I spent about a year just like I want to have conversations. So, I talked to people that were like activists. I talked to people that worked in not-for-profits. I talked to people that were impacted. I talked and talked until I was like, okay, I think I see what everyone is saying and what is missing here. So, I had this couple of insights that were really valuable to us. So, one, we were like, okay, people have tools. They can just use their cell phone camera to film an incident that is happening, but also people were mistaking visibility for progress.

Smith

People knew they could film interactions with the police, but they did not know how to do that, or how to leverage what they had filmed. You can actually film in REYETS currently in the app and it will walk you through what to do in your current situation, while also uploading the video to the cloud.

Ashshowwaf

So we are like, okay, we need to design this in a way that is engaging. By nature of the subject matter, civil rights can be really depressing. So, we need to find a way to use positive psychology. So, we should not just highlight the tragedies. We need to also focus on the wins to keep people hopeful.

Smith

That is a really interesting narrative because it is true. It is. You look at it and it is all doom and gloom in this scenario is that when there is injustice and I am looking at the 30 basic human rights right now, the list. Number one is the right to equality, and the last one is freedom from state or personal interference in the above rights. So, it is actually an all of above kind of thing. How do you begin to interpret that and how do you begin to make that user friendly and layman's terms because I am reading half of these and then I feel like unless I have a law degree, where do I begin? How do I imply that into my life?

Ashshowwaf

Perfect question. So, one, we started with the belief that all rights start at a hyperlocal level that means with the individual. Two, we recognize most people are not going to be able to understand legal jargon, nor should they be expected to. So, what we did is we have devised the format for how we are going to interpret and display the information. So, our first premise was that if you only had 30 seconds to answer a question and you are like, hey, Matt, what do I do? Police turned up at my school campus. What would that 30 second answer be? And so when you look at the question that is going to be the answer there. You have the right to be silent. Do not resist arrest. Ask for a lawyer. Then the second thing would be if there is any exception or warning that would be in one sentence or two and it might be something like they may arrest you even if you remain silent, do not resist and then we have like a long body of the text if you want to dig in and see the sources and get information.

Smith

You do not only need to know your rights when being stopped by the police or arrested. Do you know your voting rights? Your rights at work or at school or your rights at a protest?

Ashshowwaf

We take all these questions and answers in a human way. So, it is actionable, not just like, oh, I know what the law is.

Smith

So, let us continue with the example in this. I am in my podcast studio right now. Someone walks in right now, I would go into, is it an app?

Ashshowwaf

It is a mobile app, yes.

Smith

Mobile application, called R-E-Y-E-T-S?

Ashshowwaf

Yes, correct. It is a combination of rights like r-i-g-h-t-s and eye, e-y-e as in like being the eyewitness and kind of mashed together.

Smith

I love it. REYETS.

Ashshowwaf

So, as soon as you open the app, the first page is basically a camera view, so like the viewfinder of the camera, but while you are filming, you could navigate the rest of the app.

You also can set the app to film immediately upon opening and send your location to emergency contacts.

Ashshowwaf

It starts filming. On the bottom you will have like some emergency contacts and then you will have the rights logo. When you tap the rights logo, it will drop down a menu of rights, where you can continue filming, but you can scroll through and look, okay, stops and arrest and then find what applies to you. The second thing the app does though is we try to use your geolocation to guess what the situation might be. So, for example, if you are opening the app on a highway, the app is going to assume it is a traffic stop. So, right on the viewfinder of the camera, it is going to have a little shortcut for traffic stops in your area. If you are at an airport, it is probably travel or immigration. If you are in a residential area, it is probably home, if you at school, and so on and so on just to kind of make it easier and accessible, and then we might have other shortcuts, like things you should know. So, once you are documenting, you can see a script there. It will even tell you this is what to say to the police officer. I want to be silent. I do not want to talk, I would like a lawyer, etc., but if your phone gets taken away, if you lock your phone, it will continue recording audio and all that is backed up to your cloud. So later after the incident, you can go back to whatever cloud service you use, whether that is Apple or Android, and you can find those files there. We purposely made it so that we will never get access to your videos unless you physically send them to us to protect you because we do not want to be in a position where we are subpoenaed to give up your information.

Smith

Because I almost feel like you said at the beginning of this a lot of it, when we go into a scenario that is with police or with enforcement, there is that asymmetry of information. They have all the knowledge. We have none of the knowledge because the majority of arrests are first time in many cases, such as yours. So, we almost are setting ourselves up for failure to further incriminate ourselves unless we plead the fifth amendment, the right to remain silent. So, I almost feel as if law enforcement, don't they have an incentive to partner with you to create campaigns around, hey, if you are ever in a sticky situation, whether it be rightfully or wrongfully. REYETS, think REYETS, open up this product. It is a state-funded, state-organized, or are you facing friction?

Ashshowwaf

Common sense would dictate what you said would be correct, that they should want people to know their rights. However, at the same time, if you step back and think about what you are asking them to do, it is almost like, oh, we are going to help an auditor audit us. So, from a culture standpoint, there was a huge policing culture in the US. You might have heard this term, the blue line. Do not cross the blue line. So, because of that culture, it makes it very difficult for us to get their buy-in, but also, if we did get their buy-in, it might hurt our stance with our users because our users want to trust that we are independent. So, if they believe, oh, you are working directly with law enforcement, they might feel like, are you giving up on information there? So, it is this kind of balancing act where we want to focus on helping people, let law enforcement know this tool is available with the goal to help people.

Smith

So, since the beginning, you launched this product so many years ago and have been growing and developing since then. Since your initial passion many years ago at university, where are you in that journey so far and how much further do we have to go until everybody knows their rights?

Ashshowwaf

So, I think for us, as you probably recognize, it is not an easy journey because there is lots of parties that you need to involve, but you also need to balance their motivations. So, for us along the journey, the biggest thing that we are focused on today right now with the product and our mission, what we are doing is making sure that we help people learn their rights in a way that is being able to be engaging. So, for example, the way I have just described the product and you have said it, oh, you have to remember, REYETS is there. First of all, I got to download it, then I have to look for the information. It is all based on knowledge retention. I need to retain the knowledge and learn. That is not a viable system if you want millions of people to use it and Gen Z who are learning things in 15 second increments that needs to change. So, for us, we want to go from being like what I call the Web MD of civil rights to the Duolingo of civil rights. Where there is actually learning modules that are interactive where they are like, oh, I am at home. What are my rights at home? And then it will be more like I am swiping up. There is a little video. There is a quiz. There is some interactive elements, and then I am getting a badge, and then that is becoming very public, so, it is becoming like a gamification of it to get people to really learn and that is something you can deploy, like at schools, workplaces. So, we want to build up that infrastructure to make it much more attractive, and then the second phase of that is building out the tools that we have already built. So, I think we have kind of built the tools first when we should have focused on the education first in hindsight.

Smith

So, given that analogy of Duolingo actually, I like that angle there. It is sort of the Web MD and Duolingo, will you go into different rights in different jurisdictions. So currently, the product is live in the US and is tailored and targeted toward the US.

Ashshowwaf

Correct. We have got people both in Canada and Europe and even parts of Africa and the Middle East have asked if we would expand. We definitely would, but I think the US is a good place for us to perfect the model to make expansion easier vs. us just going back right now, look, I am going to be in South Africa, Norway and the UK, it would be very challenging for us to do in an efficient way. So, I think the US is where we hone the model, we get it down and I think that is something we can do within the next 12 months, and then we start thinking about, okay, where are the next places that we want to expand to?

Smith

So, what gives you hope?

Ashshowwaf

What gives me hope is that people are excited about what we are doing. Gen Z and millennials are by far the most engaged of any generation. I think there is a crazy statistic out there where it is like 91% have participated in some sort of activism, 70 plus percent are aware and engaged about Black Lives Smither movements and other things and given that their population is growing and they are coming of age, they are also going to be the future leaders, lawmakers, politicians, police officers. So, that is opportunity to create generational change.

Smith

So, after this, you have given us some advice. How can we all from this second onward go and lead our lives living forward? Give us three steps to understand our rights. What would be next three steps from today going forward?

Ashshowwaf

Yes. So one, thinking about scenarios that was an excellent, realistic scenario. Make it real. What are the things that are important to you and people around you and actually go start researching. Our app is an excellent place to start with that if you are in the US. Second, engage with organizations around you. So, what I would do is I would literally just Google. Think about something you really care about. So, let us say that is immigration rights. I would look for an organization. I would sign up and whatever time I am allowed to do, I would contribute some time or effort to go educate myself, and the third, and I think most important step and most difficult is not to engage in willful blindness and what I mean by that is that it is very easy to see an injustice and think, wow, I do not want to get a part of that. I must stand behind and just walk away. Do not walk away. That does not mean I am not telling people go be vigilantes or put yourself in harm's way, but do at least the bare minimum. It might be taking a picture. It might be going reporting it somewhere, but do not let that moment pass without you contributing in a way that can help that person or that situation, but again, that takes some intentionality to get there.

Smith

So, I am going to tell you what exactly I have just done. So, I have just downloaded REYETS by the way, there you can see it there.

Ashshowwaf

Beautiful.

Smith

So, I have downloaded it. Ignorance is not an argument for injustice, for not knowing. So, I am just going to spend a short amount of time learning and skimming these kind of things. I have done a bit of knowledge. Whatever I remember, I remember. Whatever I do not, I do not. If I'm ever, God forbid, in a situation like that, I just need to remember REYETS, REYETS, REYETS, REYETS. Just remember REYETS.

Wa'il, thank you so much for joining us mate. This has been really insightful to learn about our basic human rights that actually the majority of us are not as well aware of as we should be.

Ashshowwaf

Thank you. It has been a pleasure coming on here and it is a privilege to have this platform to talk about it, talk to your audience, and the work of justice does not stop. So, let's keep doing it.

Smith

So, that is it. Thank you all for joining me, Matt C. Smith, on this episode, Better Heroes. You can learn more about REYETS at Reyets.com and you can learn more about EY Ripples and all of our impact entrepreneurs at ey.com/eyripples. The links are in our show notes.

Before you go, please do not forget to subscribe to our podcast, Better Heroes wherever you listen to podcasts. You can also rate and leave our show a review to help others find out about the amazing work of our impact entrepreneurs. We would like to thank our podcast producers, Hueman Group Media, who helped us bring this show to life.

That is it for today’s episode. We’ll be back next week.

Better Heroes is a project of EY Ripples, a global program to mobilize people across the EY network to help solve the world's most urgent social and environmental challenges. By extending EY skills, knowledge and experience to impact entrepreneurs on a not-for-profit basis and forging collaborations with like-minded organizations, EY Ripples is helping scale new technologies and business models that are purposefully driving progress toward the UN’s 17 sustainable development goals.

The views of third parties set out in this podcast are not necessarily the views of the global EY organization or its member firms. Moreover, they should be seen in the context of the time that they were made.

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