We are anonymous, we are legion

Takshashila's online Cogitatum on AI and Ethics in India

Admin — 2018-09-26T01:46:39Z

Elonnai Hickok participated in an event organized by Takhshashila on August 27, 2018 and made a presentation on Ethics and AI in India. The event was held in Takshashila Institution

Click to view the slides

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/takshashilas-online-cogitatum-on-ai-and-ethics-in-india

Taking Stock: Emerging Issues - Internet Surveillance

praskrishna — 2013-11-09T06:31:57Z

This session was held at the IGF in Bali on October 25. Pranesh Prakash made intervention in this session.

Read the original transcript published on the IGF website here.

The following is the output of the real-time captioning taken during the Eigth Meeting of the IGF, in Bali, Indonesia. Although it is largely accurate, in some cases it may be incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. It is posted as an aid to understanding the proceedings at the session, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.

>> MARKUS KUMMER: Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Please take your seat. We are about to start our session on surveillance. We are organising ourselves a bit on the fly. The room is already set for the Closing Ceremony this afternoon, but this makes a little bit of a distant feeling. We're up here and you're far away and there are not that many people in the room so what we intend to do is to move down from the podium for the discussion. We've already set up the Chairs on the first row where the panelists will sit and interact with the audience to make it a little bit more often interactive and positive atmosphere for discussion.

We have originally we have reserved 90 minutes for this session but then we thought maybe more time will be needed so we can move on. We have 3 hours at our disposal but we don't need to fill the three hours. If we run out of steam we can conclude earlier, as some people have indicated already that they have to be leaving, so we take it improvise a little bit. But please leave free the very first, as we intend to move down there.

Before asking our Session Chair to introduce the meeting, I'll make a few preliminary remarks, and I would also like to ask the Secretariat to put up the policy questions.

We have had a process when the mandate of the IGF was renewed to look at IGF improvements. There was a special Working Group set up and the Working Group made recommendations and one of the recommendations was that each situation should address some policy questions that would help shape the discussion, and we would also ask to reach out to the community and we did so. We asked for public input and we got the input and these policy questions we received are available on the IGF website, and they will be made available on the screen.

But for better comprehension, I will read them out and our moderators will bear them in mind.

Okay. On Internet surveillance, the first question was the need to prevent mass surveillance carried out in the guise of targeted surveillance. The second question was balancing cybersecurity and privacy. The third question, principles of open Internet/net neutrality.

Fourth question: One of the emerging issues is on Internet regulation. Regulation versus self‑regulation where the Internet is concerned. How can countries that have questions on Internet regulation versus self‑regulation be aided to work on a level playing field that assist the best industry practices being adopted, best practices that make the Internet and thus countries and institutions safer from harm.

Fifth question: Better channels of cooperation between stakeholders especially in areas such as cybersecurity. 6, agreement on fundamental minimum principles for Internet Governance and multistakeholder cooperation.

7, priorities for the IGF, the Internet community, and multistakeholder governance post‑2015.

And with that I hand over to our session Chair, Dr. Setyanto Santosa, you have the Chair.

>> SETYANTO SANTOSA: Thank you. Good morning, everybody. I hope you enjoy the dinner last night. You can also look at the Balinese dancers, the modern dancer and also the original Balinese dancers.

10 years ago I was the permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Tourism and culture. At that time we had Indonesian tourism. The result was at the time surprise me when a question to the foreign tourists deliver most of them said that what actually the question is what actually was is the strength of Indonesian tourism?

They said, the people. And then following the second question, which part of the people that make you attractive? They say the smile. So at the time, I just realized that Indonesia is a country with the highest smile per capita in the world. And you prove already the last 6 days and you can find the Indonesian people with a smile.

So with this introduction, I don't take much time and the issue also very attractive is as Markus just mentioned, regarding the emerging issues.

So I look to deliver the floor to our moderator. So please, Madam.

>> MARKUS KUMMER: Please introduce yourself.

>> ANNE-RACHEL INNE: Thank you, Markus. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Anne‑Rachel Inne, the Chief Operations Officer the AfriNIC, the Internet registry for the African region, so we're happy to be here. I will let Jovan introduce himself later on when he takes the floor.

We're happy to be here with you today to moderate this session on emerging issues. As panelists we will have this morning Scott Busby, the Director of Office of Multilateral and Global Affairs in the Bureau of Democracy, Rights and Labor at the United States State Department. Then we will have Ross LaJeunesse. He's the global head, free expression and international policy. The then we're having Jari Arkko, who is an expert on Internet architecture with Ericsson Research, and also the Chair of the Internet Engineering Task Force, which is IETF.

And then we have Johann Hallenborg from the Swedish Government. And our last and not least panelist will be Joana Varon. I'll pass to Jovan now. We actually will have commentators. When we finish presentations here, we'll come down to the floor so that everybody will be seated and we'll hopefully have a more convivial atmosphere than talking down to you there.

We'll have commenters from the floor, Bertrand de La Chapelle, the head of Internet and jurisdiction process in France. We will have Megi Margioyono from Civil Society. Nick Ashton‑Hart from CCIA from Switzerland, and Ambassador Fonseca from Brazil. So thank you very much for joining us all, and I'll pass on to Jovan now.

>> JOVAN KURBALIJA: Thank you, Anne‑Rachel. I'm the Director of DiploFoundation, a Swiss Foundation working on inclusive and effective diplomacy and global governance. First of all, I would like to thank Raul Echeberria and the group that he led which propose this topic to be discussed at the emerging session. And as we know, this topic has already emerged on the various diplomatic agendas worldwide. Therefore it is quite important issues to be addressed during the Internet Governance Forum.

It also is the proof of the relevance of the Internet Governance Forum in talking about issues which are of high importance for international community in general and Internet community in particular. Markus already outlined the main questions that were discussed in the preparation for the session and they will be some sort of architecture of our session.

We will tackle these questions in five main baskets and we'll organise five main baskets in 20 minutes time slot. The first basket will be on the question of infrastructure and basic functionality of the Internet, and we'll have expertise in each basket, both on the floor and in the room.

The second basket will deal with the Human Rights issues, question of privacy protection and the other Human Rights issues related to the Internet surveillance.

The third basket will focus on security, and the situations when surveillance is justified and under what conditions.

Fourth basket will deal with Data Protection and the economic model.

And fifth, the last basket, will wrap up the discussion within the general framework of Internet Governance Forum which is ethics. We will address the question of trust on the Internet and impact of Internet surveillance on trust.

The underlying issues which will be appearing in our discussion are issues of the law enforcement procedures and international law. Therefore, this is a general infrastructure and we plan to proceed with 20 minutes dedicated to each basket after we hear from our panelists introductory remarks, which they will also relate to these five main issues.

I think this is the general entry I would like to invite Scott Busby to provide his introductory remarks on the question of Internet surveillance. Scott, please.

>> SCOTT BUSBY: Thank you, Jovan. Well, I'm very happy to be here as all of us from the United States Government are. We had some drama in our country with our Government shutdown, which put in doubt whether or not we would be able to come here. And I'm pleased to say that even had the shutdown continued through this week, we had approval from the White House and other senior officials in our Government for us to attend the IGF because we recognize how important this Forum is to our own policy, as well as the overall policies relating to the Internet.

The United States comes to the Internet Governance Forum every year to stand by our commitment to an open, interoperable and secure Internet. We recognize the importance of the issue of surveillance to the international community, and are grateful for this opportunity to engage with all of you here today on it.

As President Obama has said, the United States welcomes a discussion about privacy and security, and we are right now intensively having that discussion in the United States, as well with all of you in the international community.

We know that many of you, as well as many people in the world, have questions and concerns stemming from the recent reports about alleged U.S. intelligence practices, and we look forward to engaging with you today on them.

When it comes to those practices, I can say that the United States gathers intelligence of the type gathered by all nations. All Governments are involved in efforts to protect their countries from real threats and harm, and all Governments collect information concerning such threats. As we undertake those practices, we remain committed to protecting the American people, as well as our friends in the international community, and those friends include not only Governments, but the private sector and Civil Society.

This commitment relies on robust intelligence capabilities to identify threats to our National interests, and to advance our foreign policy, which includes our commitment to Human Rights. At the same time, we also acknowledge that such intelligence efforts must be fully informed by our international commitments, our Democratic principles, our respect for Human Rights, and the privacy concerns of people around the world.

Consistent with the terms of open debate and the democratic process, President Obama has initiated an effort to review and reform our intelligence practices, and ensure that they are appropriate in light of our commitments and our principles. In terms of reform, the President has already ordered the Director of National intelligence to declassify and make public as much information as possible about certain sensitive intelligence collection programmes undertaken under the authority of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, otherwise known as FISA. Numerous documents including decisions if the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court have been released as part of this effort.

Furthermore, the President has appointed a group of outside experts to advise him on how, in light of advancements in technology, the United States can employ its technical collection capabilities in a way that optimally protects our National Security, and advances our foreign policy, while taking into account other policy considerations, such as our commitment to privacy and to Civil Liberties.

This group has begun its work and is expected to produce its recommendations by the end of this year. We look forward to those recommendations.

Consistent with our normal practice of not commenting on specific allegations of intelligence activities, I cannot say more than this about such allegations. But I can say a few things generally about our commitment to Human Rights and to an open Internet.

First, I would like to emphasize that the United States does not use intelligence collection for the purpose of repressing the citizens of any country for any reason, including their political, religious, or other beliefs. Thus, for instance, we do not use our intelligence capabilities to persecute anyone for ideas that they express online.

Let me also assure you that the United States takes privacy seriously, both that of Americans and of individuals around the world. That commitment to privacy is reaffirmed in the President's international strategy for cyberspace, which states that, quote, individuals should be protected from arbitrary or unlawful State interference with their privacy when they use the Internet, close quote.

As President Obama has recently said, America's not interested in spying on ordinary people. Our intelligence is focused, above all, on finding the information that's necessary to protect our people, and in many cases protect our allies, close quote.

Furthermore, the United States will continue to uphold its longstanding commitments to defend and advance Human Rights in our diplomacy. This includes preserving the consensus reflected in Human Rights Council Resolution 20/8, that the same rights people have online also apply offline. Sorry, rights that apply offline also apply online.

United States will also stay actively engaged in the Freedom Online Coalition, a group of 21 Governments that works with Civil Society and the private sector in a multistakeholder approach to support the ability of individuals to exercise their Human Rights and fundamental freedoms online. As several people have suggested over the course of this week, this Coalition may be a very good Forum in which to continue the discussion on balancing the need for security with Human Rights, and to identify an appropriate way ahead on these tough issues.

I will be hosting the next Ministerial meeting of the Coalition on April 28th and 29th in Tallinn. We will also continue to advance Internet freedom through our programmes. Since 2008, the United States has committed over $100 million to Internet freedom programmes around the world. We intend to maintain that robust level of support for such programmes. On Internet Governance, the United States remains steadfast in our support for a multistakeholder model that supports international trade and commerce, strengthens International security and fosters free expression and innovation. We strongly believe that proposals to centralize control over the Internet through a top‑down intergovernmental approach which is slow the pace of innovation and economic development and could lead to unprecedented control over what people say and do online. Such proposals play into the hands of repressive regimes that wish to legitimize inappropriate state control of content.

We also believe the current multistakeholder system should be strengthened and sustained, particularly through broader multistakeholder participation from the developing world. Through our programmes, we have sought to make such participation possible.

We are aware that some Governments seek to take advantage of the debate initiated by the recent disclosures to draw attention away from their repression of their citizens, or the need for democratic reforms in their countries. The acts of these Governments include for example arresting opponents for what they say or intimidating them into silence and stealing intellectual property for the benefit of their economies. We therefore want to emphasize how important it is not to let Governments that do not share a commitment to Human Rights and fairness to exploit the current debate to their benefit. We should not allow them to gloss over the very important differences between their Internet monitoring activities and those of countries like the United States that conduct intelligence activities to enable responsible state craft. We hope that the discussion today will reflect the fact that the issue of surveillance is a global one and will take into account the views and practices of everyone around the world. We intend to listen closely so that we can take account the many comments and recommendations from you and ensure that they are incorporated into our own Governmental deliberations. Thank you.

>> JOVAN KURBALIJA: Thank you, Scott. Our discussions will result in useful insights for the process that you indicated started in the United States and I will say reflections are going on all over the world as we will hear from the other interventions. Our next speaker is Ross LaJeunesse from Google, and we'll hear something more about the business perspective.

>> ROSS LaJEUNESSE: Thank you very much. It's a pleasure to be here. Am I all set to go? Oh, sorry.

Hi, I'm Ross LaJeunesse from Google, and it is a sincere pleasure to be here. There's been obviously a lot of discussion and debate about this issue, and that is of course a very good thing, and it's very necessary. But in order to have a discussion about this, a discussion based on reality and based on facts, I just want to start by providing a few clarifications so that we're all operating from the same understanding.

The first is that Google does not provide direct access for any Government to our data, our servers, our infrastructure and it never has. And you can use any term you like to try and describe that accusation, a back door, a side door, a trap door, anything like it, but the fact of the matter is that we simply don't do it.

We also don't accept large, blanket‑like Government requests for user data. We are subject to the law, so when we receive a Government request for user data, we look at each and every one of them very carefully. We have a team of lawyers at Google whose sole purpose is to do exactly that. They ensure that the request is valid, is legal, follows due process, and is as limited in scope as possible. And very often, we push back, and we sometimes refuse to comply. And you can see this if you go to our transparency report online, which lists the number of Government requests we receive, how many of them we comply with, and we do that around the world wherever we have services.

Now, on the issue of transparency, we believe this is a critical element to the debate. And we're not newcomers to this issue. We've published our first transparency report. We're the first country, first company, in the world to do so about three years ago, because we recognized long before the Snowden revelations that this is a critical part of our responsibility to our users.

Every 6 months we release an updated transparency report that is better and more granular and I'm glad to see that now many companies are doing the same. We're continuing this work by working with NGOs around the world to publish National transparency reports and we've released one in Estonia this year and we've highlighted another in Hong Kong and that work will continue.

So transparency of course isn't a cure‑all but we really believe you can't have a meaningful debate on the path forward, you can't have a debate on this issue, if you don't have the facts, which is why we're suing the U.S. Government right now to get them to reveal more information about the number of National Security requests and demands that they make on companies, and we're also on a separate track supporting key legislation in the United States Congress sponsored by Senator Franken and another Bill by Representative Lofgren to do the same thing.

Now, I want to emphasize that it would be much easier for us and much easier for any company to simply comply with Government requests for user data. But we don't. And we don't do that because we're a company built on the idea that if you put your user first, everything else will follow. We don't do that because we take our responsibility to our users very seriously, and that's both a matter of principle and a matter of good business.

We're very aware that if our users don't trust us, they won't use our products, and they'll go somewhere else. So again, this debate is good and absolutely necessary, but I also want to echo a point made by Scott and made by Mike Harris at the Index on Censorship, which is this: I'm all for holding the United States Government and Western countries to the highest of standards. We need to do that. But I don't want us to do that at the expense of not focusing on other countries, countries where their surveillance programmes are just as bad or worse. Countries where journalists are beaten, bloggers are imprisoned and activists are killed.

The Expression Online Initiative just released a very important report on Azerbaijan where we held last year's IGF and how horrible things have gotten there over the past year. So I'm all for this discussion about the alleged hypocrisy of the United States and Western Governments but let's not do so in a way that discounts or damages the ability of those Governments to continue their otherwise excellent work which they've long done in supporting Internet and journalist freedom, in supporting Human Rights around the world, and let's not attack them to the point where it undercuts their very important support for the multistakeholder model of Internet Governance. Thanks very much.

>> JOVAN KURBALIJA: Thank you, Ross. Our next speaker is Jari Arkko from IETF from Finland but currently Chairing IETF. Jari, please.

>> JARI ARKKO: Thank you. And thank you for the opportunity to talk, and also this is my first IGF and I really enjoyed all the discussions this week so thank you all for that, on this topic and many other topics.

And then onto this topic so obviously, the Internet community, all of us here, care deeply about how much we trust the commonly used Internet services and products that all these services are based on so the reports about large scale monitoring obviously disturb us.

Interception of targeted individuals and intelligence activities have of course been well known but I think many people are concerned about the scale. And if Internet technology itself is vulnerable to wholesale monitoring, that is also a big concern, and we take that very seriously at the IETF, as the people at least partially in charge of technical aspects of the Internet.

But I wanted to put these events in perspective. Maybe you can consider this talk as the "do not panic" message. These are hard times but we can also work on the problem, and we should.

The first observation that I would make is that surveillance is probably a wider problem in the world than what you would believe just by reading the most recent newspaper headlines. If you live in a glass house, be careful of throwing stones, and if it weren't true before, I'm sure there are many intelligence agencies in the world who have a bad case of NSA envy today.

Secondly, surveillance is not a new issue. Even we at the IETF have had to deal with some issues around that historically. In 1994, we articulated the view that encryption is an important tool to protect the privacy of communications, but at the time, big parts of the world considered encryption a dangerous tool and wanted to limit its availability.

In 2002 we decided that the IETF standard protocols must include appropriate strong security mechanisms. At the time various nations wanted to employ weaker security mechanisms. Now we are facing a new situation and once again Internet technology needs to evolve to match today's challenges.

We need to deprecate the encryptions that are considered weak and that is by the way something we do all the time with new information from research community and others. We also need to consider a bigger update to the security of the Internet. On Tuesday I talked about the by default security model. Maybe that's something we can pursue but technology alone is obviously not a solution. Even if we had a perfect communications security system, you would still need to trust the entity you're communicating with.

If the peer leaks your conversation it was not helpful. So let me talk a little bit about some of the other areas of work where some things might be useful.

First, network operations and buildout. We've seen some proposals to build more Internet exchange points and add more connectivity. Those are excellent things for many reasons. They will keep traffic more local. They will increase speed, lower costs and enable local Internet businesses to grow but an Internet that is more densely connected is a good thing.

Second, the open source community. Open source solutions are useful to assure ourselves about the reliability of our tools, whatever they might be. On some areas it may be that we should actually consider doing more than we have than so far so let us all support additional efforts in this area.

And there's more. Research community and analysis of security vulnerabilities, the attention on the matter will surely make it possible to have political and legal discussions. Maybe the transparency we just talked about, that's a good thing.

Finally, I wanted to say that I really do wish that we keep the ideals of the Internet clear in all of our minds, and not compromise them. We still need a global and open Internet, one where we can all work together across borders, with us not fragmenting the Internet and we still need an Internet that is open to innovation and new applications without asking for anybody's permission to create those conversations. And we still need an Internet that is managed and expanded. Thank you.

>> JOVAN KURBALIJA: Thank you, Jari, for this brief introduction. You give us more time for discussion later on. And our next speaker is Johann Hallenborg from the Swedish Government. Johann, please.

>> JOHANN HALLENBORG: Thank you very much. My name is Johann. I work with the Department of International law and Human Rights at the Foreign Ministry in Stockholm. Thank you very much for inviting us and me to this panel. We're happy to accept. We've been engaging with the IGF for many years, and we continue to really support this important institution.

And the reason why we're engaging is partly because we believe that the integration of a Human Rights perspective in the discussions on Internet and Internet's future is crucial. So that is part of the reasons why we're engaging so much in the IGF.

So the ultimate goal is actually to make sure that the promise on securing Human Rights online as well as offline is realized. We cannot forget that last year, we had an affirmation by consensus in the UN in the Resolution 28 that Human Rights, they do apply in the offline environment ‑‑ online environment, as well as offline.

This was also something that the entire community agreed to. The Resolution was put forward by Sweden, the U.S., Brazil, Tunisia, Turkey, and Nigeria, and it received support by 87 co‑sponsors, and then adoption by consensus. We need to remember that this is a great success, and we need to make this reality.

Governments have a duty to respect and protect Human Rights. This is a central part of our obligations. And security is needed to secure individuals' rights and freedoms and also ultimately it is to protect the open and democratic societies in which we live.

But it's important to remember that there is no tradeoff between Human Rights and security. It is not about balancing. It is about securing the respect for Human Rights, but doing it in a way that is secure.

In providing security, the Government will address several aspects. One important aspect is certainly to protect rights and freedoms of individuals from abuse of others. But equally important is to ensure the State itself does not violate rights and freedoms, in other words setting the limits for State power.

This is why the rule of law is so critically important. The Constitutional framework includes rules on legality, transparency and accountability and provides the fundamentals for what the State can do, to what extent it can utilize its powers in order to secure the well being of people.

In providing security, access to electronic communication has become an important tool for law enforcement agencies to combat crime, and for security agencies to improve security to the public. Swedish legislation makes a distinct separation between surveillance of electronic communication by law enforcement agencies on the one hand, and intelligence collection by security agencies on the other.

This separation is critical since the operational mandates and objectives for law enforcement and security agencies are indeed very different. We are now at the point in time where trust in the Internet is challenged. Therefore, to Governments all over the world, it's crucial to strengthen the relationship with Civil Society and the trust with people. Governments simply cannot afford to lose legitimacy.

But to strengthen trust, we must reinforce the principles of rule of law, transparency, and also respect for Human Rights. This is done through a deeper dialogue with all stakeholders. Therefore, initiatives that come out of the Civil Society are important, and should be taken seriously.

The necessary and proportionate principles, they represent such an important initiative, and it deserves attention from us. Therefore, in recent months, we have arranged two consultations in Geneva and in New York with the International Civil Society Steering Committee and other Governments on these issues and principles. And as a result, foreign Minister Carl Bildt at the recent Seoul Conference on Cyberspace last week presented several fundamental principles that should apply to maintain respect for Human Rights when carrying out surveillance of electronic communications and these 7 principles, they are about legality, legitimate aim, necessity and adequacy, proportionality, judicial authority, transparency, and public oversight.

This is now the foundation where we would like to continue the discussions with all. We welcome a continued deeper dialogue with all stakeholders, and we're willing to engage with you. One such example is the work in the Freedom Online Coalition in which we will continue to engage deeply.

I conclude here, Mr. Chairman. Thank you very much for giving me the word.

>> JOVAN KURBALIJA: Thank you, Johann. I just realized we breached the diplomatic protocol by putting Joana at the end of the table. Joana Varon from Brazil, please go on.

>> JOANA VARON: Thank you for the invitation. Thank you all of you for being here, hearing us and discussing. What I want to highlight here is that the emerging details of the U.S. National Security Agency, mass surveillance programmes have painted a picture of pervasive mass cross‑border surveillance of unprecedented reach and scope, and a scope that's far wider than any reason that could be related to the enforcement of National Security, nothing to do with real threats or harms.

The scope of approved surveillance was broad as it involved tapping communications of the President of countries like Brazil, which could be considered a friendly nation, and as wide as it assessed sensitive strategic business communications, such as communications from our Royal company. This scenario is not only unacceptable for leaders of states but for all Human Rights defenders. It doesn't matter if this data was used or not. The simple collection of our data and our metadata already represents a complete disrespect to the privacy rights from citizens from all over the world and a disrespect of the provisions internationally agreed on international conventions and Treaties addressing fundamental Human Rights.

And it's also a bit hypocritical as all this surveillance was performed by countries that used to pose themselves as defenders for an open and free Internet, and I'm not saying that in order to promote any polarization between different countries that could be posed as good or evil, but I'm saying that to highlight the need that every country shall assume that we still need to work a lot in order to ensure that Human Rights are protected online and offline.

Significant changes are indeed needed. The scenario that we live now is the scenario in which trust among Governments and in the major ICT and Telecom companies is completely broken but it's time to move forward and I agree with the table here, and we need to think about solutions and engage on how to implement them.

As a response to this scenario, I'm happy to see that Brazil has been proactive and has been taking actions in many different levels, as a Brazilian, I'm happy with that. International scenario we have declared urgency to approve Marco Civil, our Civil Rights based framework for the Internet. Inspired by principles suggested through a multistakeholder mechanism incorporated by or promoted by our Internet Steering Committee, Marco Civil, as it's written today, became a model in terms of both content and process, as it was developed through a wide inclusive process of online and offline consultations and resulted in a draft that protects privacy, freedom of expression, and other digital rights. I think we could all learn about this process to think in international scenario, as well.

Also in the National scenario thinking about long‑term solutions, Brazil is now promoting incentives for research, development, and innovation of our ICT Sector. And particularly for building a mail service with encryption by design. But of course, the Internet is global and is meant to remain global, and we would not address this issue only with National policies.

So what I want to highlight here is that the actions taken at the international scenario. So besides delivering a very strong statement at the UN General Assembly, which highlighted all the principles from CGI.br and all the principles that are now drafted in Marco Civil and which are committed to Human Rights, our President now has proposed for us to engage in a multistakeholder fashion, and to develop a Summit, a Summit that in my view shall be bounded by the principles addressed by the President in her statement at the UN General Assembly.

And this could be an opportunity to address all those issues, and I believe that these issues on surveillance should be addressed in both ways, changing the way the companies are operating in order to ensure transparency, but also protection of these users, for instance, by promoting encryption by design, but on the other hand, states should review their practices.

It's good that the U.S. is willing to reform its intelligence practices, so I take this opportunity to ask the U.S. Government to refer and analyze the International Principles on the Application of Human Rights to Communications Surveillance which have been endorsed to date by over 280 international organisations, and represent an attempt to highlight and address some of these concerns.

These principles provide a framework in which to assess whether surveillance laws and practices are consistent with Human Rights standards in the current digital environment. As Johann has related, they focus on legality, legitimate aim, necessity, adequacy, proportionality, competent judicial authority, and due process. They also consider user notification, transparency, and public oversight.

I welcome the initiative from the Swedish Government to consider these principles, and invite other Governments from all over the world to do the same. As I've mentioned, it's time to reassess our practices in order to be sure they're drawing respect for Human Rights with a deep dialogue with all the States that care for the Internet. Thank you.

>> JOVAN KURBALIJA: Thank you, Joana. Thank you panelists for the initial intervention and I think the underlying point is that we can recognize and all panelists recognize the severity of the problem and the need for some action and solution as soon as possible, because it is affecting activities of Governments, business Sector and all Internet users, and there were a few underlying and interesting points that could trigger some discussion in your reflections.

As Scott mentioned, there is a need to observe international law and the existing rules. There is a need to achieve certain balancing acts between the security and Human Rights but we had later on slightly different view from Johann had it's possible to have win‑win solution and not necessarily to create the balancing act and that could be an interesting point of discussion between about balancing act between security and Human Rights.

Ross rightly indicated the need for evidence based policy making, moving from the general reflections to evidence based on the concrete issues, and transparency. Jari highlighted the importance of not only technological but also policy solutions. Technology is not enough.

Johann also indicated the importance of rule of law, institutional separation between electronic communication agency, if I'm correct, and intelligence agencies. Therefore, this is one aspect that we should tackle today, procedural checks and balances as a structural design that could help us to avoid this situation in the future.

And Joana listed an excellent summary on Human Rights, question of necessity ‑‑ necessary and proportional reaction, and the question of using existing international legal tools. And this is important. We have existing international tool that could be applied to this field, including International Covenant on the Civil and Political Rights, and it was clearly indicated throughout the discussion and it is position of all major players, including the United States, that existing international rules should be observed.

With this quick wrapup and ideas for discussion I pass the floor to Anne‑Rachel.

>> ANNE-RACHEL INNE: Thank you very much, Jovan. I think we're going to go directly to our commenters from the floor, so I am going to give the floor to Ambassador Benedicto Fonseca Filho from Brazil to respond to some of the ‑‑ do we have microphones somewhere?

>> JOVAN KURBALIJA: A microphone is coming, yes.

>> ANNE-RACHEL INNE: Thank you.

>> BENEDICTO FONSECA FILHO: Thank you very much. I'd like to start by doing something that usually we do in intergovernmental setting at the UN. For example, I served at the UN a few years ago, and we used to initiate our talk by saying we align our statement with the statement that was delivered before by some Regional Group or some larger setting so I'd like maybe to innovate in the context of IGF, and say that I'd like to align my statement with the one that was delivered by Joana Varon on behalf of Civil Society because I think she expressed in a very clear way most of the things I was prepared to say, and so she made my life much easier, so I'd like to align my statement to what she has expressed and also to a large extent as well to what has been stated by the representative of Sweden, we share also the view that it is not inconsistent to pursue Human Rights dimension and examine the surveillance context and the disclosures in the context of enhancing the Human Rights dimension. It's not inconsistent with the fact that we all and some of us we are very firmly committed to Human Rights.

We are not diverting the discussion. We are not ignoring that this discussion could serve the purposes which are not our own, but at the same time, we do not think it is ‑‑ it would be a good thing to, because of this, to ignore the situation, try to improve on the situation we have.

So the 7 principles that were spelled out by Minister Carl Bildt at the Seoul Conference also I'd say very much express the kind of approach we'd like to take in that regard.

Having said that, and referring to the speech that was delivered by our President at the United Nations, at the opening of the general debate of this year's United Nations General Assembly, I'd like to highlight that the protection of Human Rights, privacy, freedom of expression ‑‑ women's rights, and it's those two specific manifestations, are at the core of the concern of President Dilma. She has clearly indicated that from the Brazilian perspective, there is a clear need that at the international level we should devise and launch a process that would lead us as international community to achieve principles and norms that would guide use and operation of Internet. And these should be guided by a vision inspired by the multistakeholderism approach, and also be firmly grounded on Human Rights and other principles she spelled out.

So we see no inconsistency in pursuing these, and not taking into account the larger picture that we want to be very careful about.

And in that sense, it is very important as has been highlighted by Joana, that we view the Summit, we intend to hold in Brazil, as a follow‑up of the speech that was presented by President Dilma and of course we came to this setting, our Minister of Communication came here, and he was mandated by the President to further discussion and collect views, and I would say that without deviating from our main subject, that the Summit in Brazil today will also incorporate other dimensions of discussion, not only focusing on principles and norms, but this is indeed one of the very clear parameters for us for the meeting that will enable to engage in other aspects of the discussion as a result of the consultations we have held here.

But the clear focus on the necessity as international community working in a multistakeholder environment to develop principles and norms is clearly one of the main objectives we have in mind.

And if I can just clarify one point that has been the object of some misunderstanding in the course of this meeting, when President Dilma delivered her speech at the UN, she referred to a multilateral framework, civil framework, with the support, full support and full involvement of Civil Society, private sector and other stakeholders, and later on when we came to this meeting, our Minister was in contact with her, and as a result of the information he provided, she made clear that she meant what she really meant was referring to multistakeholder, not only multilateral.

And I was just reviewing the news from Brazil, and I saw that yesterday, President Dilma referred again to this, and again she used the word "multilateral," so I know this in the heads of Many people will maybe lead to a confusing reflection on the situation, and say: Well, Brazil is a swing state. Doesn't know if it wants to be multilateral, multistakeholder, or what is the situation.

What I would say, that even, first of all, President Dilma, she has interpreted what she has said, and we maintain there's no contradiction what she said in those circumstances. From the point of your Government, and this is a very important thing that has been discussed here in some panels, that we should be very careful about the concept, the language we use.

Sometimes from the point of view of Government, when the word "multilateral" is used, what is meant primarily is that this is, we use in opposition to unilateral, more than meaning it's something to be done on a purely intergovernmental setting. I think this was the meaning she wanted to convey when she delivered the speech at the UN, that we want a framework that would be indeed done by many parties, not only reflecting the view of one single party or a restricted group of parties.

And she explained that this certainly does not convey the idea of excluding any stakeholder, so I would just maybe, and I apologize for taking so much time, but to clarify that we need maybe not to pay too much attention to particular statement on a particular setting, responding to a journalist that made some question, but having into account the larger picture, and the larger picture, the President interpreted as meaning "multistakeholder."

And when she mentioned the civil framework as a reference for her speech at the United Nations, she used the word, as Joana has spelled out, this was developed in a multistakeholder setting. The principles developed by the Commission are a multistakeholder way are clearly inspired President Dilma's speech, so when she was referring that we need international level such an instrument, clearly there is a linkage to the multistakeholder dimension, even if there is not the word there.

So I just want to caution that sometimes from the part of Government, at that level of leaders maybe we should not be too much vigilant about any particular word, but see the larger picture and what is the real intent.

So I just wanted to take this opportunity to thank all stakeholders we have been meeting in the course of this IGF on the part of Government, Civil Society, private sector. We have seen an overwhelming support for the idea to develop, to go in the direction that was indicated by ‑‑ proposed by President Dilma, but also building on contributions that will add to the process, and it was very stimulating for us to see that there is a willingness to mobilize different stakeholders, to come forward with proposals, to be involved in the preparation for this meeting that we intend to be truly multistakeholder from its outset from the agenda setting, from the kind of outcomes. And we see it as a contribution to the processes that are existing processes.

We wanted to be respectful of the existing process and not compete or overlap or supersede any of the existing processes that exist. And maybe a final word, that is Brazil is a very firm defendant of Human Rights. We have been as was spelled out at the core group that drafted these landmark Human Rights Council Resolution, that gave this very clear message that Human Rights offline should be also respected online.

We are ready to uphold Human Rights in many settings, and in settings that would be global, that would be constructive, that would lead to stimulate countries and provide for positive incentives for Human Rights to be upheld on a worldwide basis. Thank you. Thank you very much.

>> ANNE-RACHEL INNE: Thank you very much, Ambassador Fonseca. I'll go directly now to Bertrand.

We have remote interventions.

>> Yes, there are ‑‑

>> ANNE-RACHEL INNE: Hold on a second Bertrand. We're going to start with remote questions. Go ahead.

>> SUBI CHATURVEDI: Thank you, Anne. There are two questions from Peter Hellman, and we have interaction as well, so that's a wonderful thing. Peter has a question for the U.S. representative, and he wants to know: Does defending U.S. foreign policy interests include surveillance of the phones of heads of Governments, of countries that are friends of the USA?

And there is a question for the representative from Google: There have been reports that U.S. cloud business can expect loss of business from non‑U.S. customers in the coming 3 years to the tune of about 30 billion U.S. dollars and that the overall negative impact for the IT industry over the next three years could be up to 180 billion U.S. dollars because of a loss of trust. What do you intend to do to restore that trust so that people feel that they can trust cloud providers to keep their data private and secure?

The Tweet also relates to the same theme of proportionate and necessary steps that governments can take on the theme of surveillance vis‑a‑vis security.

>> ANNE-RACHEL INNE: Thanks so much, Subi. So now we'll go to Bertrand while our panelists can reflect on what they want to say later. Thank you.

>> BERTRAND DE LA CHAPELLE: Thank you, Anne‑Rachel. Again I'm Bertrand de la Chapelle, the Director of the Internet and Jurisdiction Project. And following the discussion before, I wanted to highlight that this debate on surveillance actually can be placed in a larger framework of issues and I'd like to tackle quickly three. The first word is "sovereignty."

What we're talking about here among others things is the exercise of sovereignty in the digital age. The traditional exercise of sovereignty is on the National territory. And the advent of the Internet is introducing an incredible new capacity for National decisions for better or worse to have a transboundary impact on other ‑‑ on citizens of other countries. The fact that operators are based in one country allows by definition in any country the authorities of that country to exercise sovereignty on those operators and impact decisions that have consequences for actors on another territory.

This is a potential extraterritorial extension of sovereignty, and it reduces and balances among the different countries depending on the number of actors located on their soil.

But the reverse is true, as well. Following what has been named the recent events and the revelation of the Snowden affair, a large number of actors and countries in particular have taken positions in reaction in order to defend their sovereignty and have pushed forward for instance the notion of data sovereignty, requiring or intending to require the location of the data regarding their citizens on the territory.

This is a reintroduction potentially of physical frontiers in a certain way, in a technical infrastructure that was intended from the onset as a cross‑border architecture, not necessarily a completely borderless but a cross‑border architecture.

This is a challenge because the traditional notion of the international system is based on the separation of sovereignties and most international organisations are based on the principle of non‑interference in the affairs of some other country. The current situation is challenging this, and is putting in front of Governments an incredible challenge, which is: How do you cooperate to manage shared online spaces? That's the first point. This is a new type of challenge.

The second word that I would like to highlight, and this goes to what Joana was mentioning, is the notion of due process, of fair process, or any kind of element that ensures that the procedures for issues related to surveillance but also to law enforcement related to freedom of expression, privacy and so on, any kind of process that deals with Human Rights and the rights of citizens and Internet users have to be done according to a set of rules that are fair and en sure due process.

This is particularly difficult when you deal with transborder relations. When something is done in one country across the Internet and you have to obtain data, take down content, have to ask for the removal of a website. There is currently a lack of procedures to handle this and fair process mechanisms to handle the relationship between states, platforms, end users in a fair process manner across borders. And this question is reflection also of what happens here in this debate on surveillance because what we've been talking about is the implementation fair process, oversight, and that's the main issue. Because principles in themselves are not sufficient to ensure the protection of Human Rights. They are necessary but not sufficient.

If the procedures are not appropriate, if the National frameworks are not sufficiently protective, it is not enough. And even when the framework is present, the actual implementation of the framework may be faulty sometimes. And oversight is an important element.

Finally, the third word that I would like to use is the law of unintended consequences. The trend that we're seeing today, in reaction to the recent events and the debate on surveillance, is a very troublesome one for everybody. The notion that in reaction and by legitimate concern regarding the protection of their citizens, Governments are thinking about establishing rules regarding so‑called data sovereignty is something that we should explore with extreme caution. There are extreme technical challenges to do this, and there is a great likelihood that if you want to sort in the databases of large global corporations which users are from one given country or located in one given country, you might end up having to do a larger breach of privacy than the protection you want to establish, or the things you want to correct.

And the second element, and this was very present in a meeting that we organised in Delhi in the Internet jurisdiction project where the industry in India, not the foreign companies, the industry in India, was explicitly saying to the government, be careful what you wish for., because if the principle of data sovereignty is pushed too far you're harming the potential of the local industry to be an actor, a major actor, in the global cloud business.

So without elaborating, the challenge is we are in a situation where because there is no sufficient international frameworks for discussion, among the different stakeholders on those issues of sovereignty in the digital age, and due process, we run the risk of having a large number of uncoordinated actions by different Governments and different private actors that will look perfectly natural as a first step, but what was a communative effect will be harmful to everyone, which leads me to this my conclusion which is this meeting of the IGF has proved beyond doubt the benefit of addressing those issues in a multistakeholder format.

The fact that the whole environment has triggered an event that is likely to take place in Brazil is providing an opportunity to address some of those issues, and to probably hold a little on some of the National decisions that are under discussions until there is a certainty that the communative effect is not harmful. The Brazil meeting will be important. There are other processes. The meeting of the Freedom Online Coalition has been mentioned. There's been a great effort and I'm sure somebody in the audience will refer to on a set of principles called necessary and proportionate. There are not enough but that will certainly be part of the discussion.

And I want to highlight a final element regarding the Council of Europe recommendation two years ago that established the principle of no transboundary harm, i.e., the responsibility of States from the decisions at the National level that may have an impact across borders.

So those elements are aspects that require a lot of caution in the individual actions that the different Governments are contemplating to make sure that they're collectively for the benefit of an open and unified Internet.

>> JOVAN KURBALIJA: Thank you, Bertrand. Before we continue with the other commentators and remote participants I'd like to invite Jari who has to leave in about 10 minutes to reflect on the discussion so far especially from the point of view of the infrastructure and basic functionality of the Internet. Please, Jari.

>> JARI ARKKO: Thank you. Apologies for being forced to leave. I had another commitment in another room in a moment. And of course, much of the discussion has been at the different level not so much about the infrastructure perhaps or the technical things. I wanted to highlight a couple of things I've heard in the discussion so far. I really wholeheartedly agree with Ross about a fact based approach to this. This is really crucial.

The other thing that is important that was highlighted by many people, or almost everyone, is transparency, and the rule of law. Those are very good things, and worthwhile to work towards.

And then I kind of wanted to return also to the important principle question, and many of you had these points, as well, to look after Human Rights, multistakeholder model, decentralized nature of the Internet, in particular the multistakeholder model is really key for us to have an open, well‑functioning Internet that balances the different concerns, and I with pleasure noted the comments from Ambassador Fonseca Filho and others on how important the multistakeholder model is and there's consensus at least here on multistakeholder being the way forward. And I think it was Johann who commented also that the Internet needs to stay global. That really is true.

Sort of the only thing that I gathered from all of the discussions so far that kind of relates to infrastructure or technical things was this possible demand for keeping data local and I just wanted to raise an issue from the technical community perspective that sometimes we may have conflicting desires or requirements, and we need to be careful what we wish for.

I think a blanket requirement for data to be local within a country would probably harm innovation in the Internet. Because if I'm a small enterprise that comes up with a great idea, and I will invite users from all over the world, I don't necessarily immediately have an ability to build out facilities all over the place. I need to be able to innovate without too much burden.

And this is just one example of the kinds of things that we may run into, but we need to be careful about setting too many demands on how the network actually runs. The management and buildout needs to be possible still, and cheap. That's a key, and the innovation needs to continue.

So those were the short remarks that I have at the moment.

>> JOVAN KURBALIJA: Thank you, Jari. You gave us quite comprehensive overview of the infrastructure and technical aspects of the Internet, and a few warnings that we don't go too far with some prescriptions but more guiding principles, and nudging towards useful solution and leave everything as to develop more spontaneously.

>> ANNE-RACHEL INNE: Thanks, Jovan, and thanks very much Jari for joining us so far. I know that Joana had another commitment. You're still okay? Great. Fantastic.

So I'm first going to go to the remote participation people, and then I will come back to Nick Ashton‑Hart.

>> SUBI CHATURVEDI: Thank you, Anne. There's a question from Monika Arnett, who is a freelance reporter and a journalist from Germany. And her question is to U.S. and Sweden representatives. She wishes to know: do the more mighty technical tools oblige us to fundamentally reconsider intelligence legislation? Because we otherwise face a state within the State which blinds public trust, oversight, erodes democratic control, and starts to possibly blackmail those elected to govern. Thank you.

>> ANNE-RACHEL INNE: Thanks, Subi. So up to Nick now. Thank you.

>> NICK ASHTON-HART: Thank you very much. The Computer and Communications Industry Association is made up of many of the Internet's more successful business to consumer companies, so of course we have a strong interest in this, though I would say that our comments stand on their own and our members including Google, who are here, have made their own statements, and you shouldn't conflate the two.

I think fundamentally we're facing a problem that is not technical or an Internet problem even though the Internet has made ‑‑ the tools of the Internet has made it possible and many aspects cannot be solved by legislating, especially at the National level, about the Internet, such as Johann put on hosting. We have a paradigm where we're common digital citizens but also common digital foreigners, by which I mean that in the analog past, our nationally protected rights of privacy were protected because each country could only post, frankly, so many cultural attaches in their foreign embassies before countries would say: No, that's too many spies. You have to get out.

So you could only spy in the analog world frankly on a fairly limited number of non‑nationals. Unfortunately now that situation is inverted and it is now ‑‑ the lack of any legal prohibition on countries spying on other countries' nationals means that we're all in some way fair game for an almost unlimited amount of surveillance by countries, except the one we live in.

And so in previous debates about ACTA in Europe, SOPA, PIPA in the United States, we saw a strong reaction against using the Internet in a way that was harmful to the Internet itself, to solve a specific issue for the benefit for stakeholder or stakeholders, and in a way we can argue we have the same dynamic here where technology is being employed by security services to facilitate information gathering with few limits, especially on non‑nationals, thanks to technology, yet at the same time, the Internet relays on trust. Without trust, people simply will use services less. They will say less. They will fear more.

And right now, we have a debate that is largely focused I think on negative incentives, characterized by a lack of trust, an increase of suspicion, and a fairly continuous stream of revelations which I think we all realize will continue for quite some time. It's understandable that this would generate a lot of unhappiness.

But I think it also obscures a few fundamental things that we share in common, which is that we all would want to trust the online world more rather than less for social and for commercial purposes, that the further development and spread of the Internet, for those who have yet to go online, which is more than half the human family, is a shared goal, so efforts which make that more expensive or more difficult are not welcome.

That legitimate law enforcement efforts as relates to crime of whatever nature, that societies decide need to be interdicted, is a reasonable activity. That fundamental transparency in Government operations is important even if there is a tension about the relative level of transparency in some respects of Government activity.

We want our National Constitutional protections of rights to privacy and the like to have real meaning, online and offline. We want to enjoy the internationally protected Human Rights that are pretty universally accepted, even if they're not always universally observed as we would like.

These are profound common shared needs, and perhaps we can find a way to use them as a basis for a constructive conversation about the role of security services and law enforcement online as it relates in particular to the everyday lives of individuals especially those who are not employed by the Government or in Government service.

The debate we have right now, I don't think leads to a positive end for the Internet community, and especially for the Internet. But as a community, we have the knowledge and the incentive to work to change that debate. I hope that can be another shared interest that we can build on, recognizing of course that criticism of Government behavior is a fundamental right of all, and there must be room for such criticism.

But to return to my original point governments have a responsibility not to allow surveillance of their nationals to get out of control and ironically in a digital age, for those National protections to mean anything, that responsibility really cannot end at your National border because if it does, the result counter‑intuitively is that if everyone but you is spying on your nationals, how can you say that your National Constitutional protections have meaning name? They have even less meaning because you have no idea who knows what and is doing what in relation to you. In that vein I think the explanations we've heard from Ambassador Fonseca of the Brazilian initiative are welcome.

A conversation about what we share, the beliefs we share, is not something we should fear. It's I think essential if we're to meet this conundrum of an analog past meeting a digital future in terms of surveillance.

>> JOVAN KURBALIJA: Thank you very much for your excellent intervention. We'll try to tap this enormous expertise in the room, experience, expertise and knowledge and we will like to ask you for your comments and questions. I think there is one person in the room who comes from the organisation that can help us to address these balancing acts in the surveillance issues. We already heard about Human Rights aspect, security aspect, and Data Protection. And Council of Europe is organisation which has under its one roof three conventions and three institutional mechanisms for covering cybersecurity, Data Protection, Human Rights. I don't know if somebody from Council of Europe, Jan Malinowski, is here. Could you give us a quick remark, a few points, how to address this balancing act between different aspects? It has been underlying theme throughout the discussion, please.

>> JAN MALINOWSKI: The Council of Europe approach I think mirrors in many respects the different dimensions that have been mentioned here already, and I wouldn't go into that. I think that in substantive terms, what Johann Hallenborg has said is valid and it does exemplify the different responses of the Council of Europe.

But the Council of Europe approach I think can be described as multistakeholder. One has to listen in order to deliver good governance, one has to listen to the different voices and leave whoever is responsible for something to take the decisions, but taking into account everything that others have to say.

The Council of Europe response is multidisciplinary. There are different issues that need to be expressed in one topic and we see there are issues relating to National Security, to privacy, to freedom of expression, to crime, to rule of law. All of them need to be taken into account, and that requires a broad vision.

There are in the Council of Europe multiple responses. There are in addition to dialogue, there are responses that go through the intergovernmental negotiation line, with soft law, with recommendations, Bertrand de la Chapelle mentioned some of them. There are a host of others that would apply to this and there is hard law. There is international Treaty law as well. We have the cybercrime Convention that's been mentioned. We have the Data Protection Convention and above all we have the European Convention on Human Rights that encompasses all of it. It goes all the range from freedom of expression to others.

And we have multiple accountability responses, as well. We have political accountability. We have legal accountability in the court. We have discussions in the specialized Committees, in the Data Protection Committee, in the cybercrime Committee and so on.

In connection with the Snowden case in particular, the Council of Europe does not have a response or has not given or attempted to give a response at this stage but there are two things that I would like to draw your attention to in that respect.

Already from the '70s, the European Court of Human Rights has made it clear that a system of mass surveillance can undermine or destroy democracy under the cloak of protecting it. I think that's a very important statement. As I said, it relates to cases well before Snowden, well before the Internet.

And the other aspect which is very relevant to the Snowden affair is that the Council of Europe cares about whistleblowers. Whistleblowers who disclose information in the public interest should be protected, and I think that the discussions that we are having demonstrate that Snowden has made revelations and disclosures that are in the public interest. Thank you very much.

>> JOVAN KURBALIJA: Thank you for addressing this main dilemma if you have in the same room people from cyber security, data collection community and Human Rights community, what is the way to address the question of intersurveillance? And we will be facing it more and more, that interprofessional dialogue.

I saw some hands over there. Khaled, please. And over there, yes.

>> KHALED FATTAL: Thank you, Jovan. Can everybody hear me? Yes? Okay, thank you. My name is Khaled Fattal, Chairman of the Multilingual Internet Group. The issue that I see in front of us here is not about alleged or not alleged. It's really goes to the core and to the values of what multistakeholderism stands for.

Many who attend ICANN would remember that I took the lead on making this a topic that needs to be addressed by ICANN, by the international community during the ICANN Durban. Raising the issue that unless we deal squarely with the issue of surveillance, we are not giving the true value of how damaging it is to multistakeholderism.

This is like a cancer scare to the trust of the multistakeholderism we all believe in. We believe many of us believe in multistakeholderism from an altruistic point of view, and we believe in privacy, freedom online. I'm a Syrian American, and nobody needs to lecture me on the importance of democracy and privacy and freedom of expression. But when the values are being challenged of what this stands for, I think it's time to come to terms with greater acknowledgment of what damage has been done, and how to fix it is required.

In emerging markets, we're embarking on major events in emerging markets. This is the subject matter that people want to talk about at many levels of society. And unless we deal with it very, very squarely, very ‑‑ at a high priority level, we will not be able to diffuse the situation, because so far all I see is an attempt to diffuse, that people get it off their chest. The values of what we stand for is really what's at stake.

I'll just close with this one remark: The war against terror was angled at our values versus theirs. The war against terrorism is our values versus theirs.

What does it say that in pushing towards a free and open Internet, we discover we are spying on the rest of the world? It's again going back to the values. Please take note, a cancer scare does not get treated with an aspirin. It needs an acknowledgment of what had happened, and a desire and a genuine desire and process put in place to show this is being addressed and fixed, rather than just being an attempt to diffuse.

This is my recommendation, because all of us who believe in this do not want to see this multistakeholderism damaged. I will close with that remark. Thank you.

>> JOVAN KURBALIJA: Thank you, Khaled, contributing to the fifth basket on ethics and trust, importance of trust and values in addressing internet surveillance and we will try to organise our discussion along these main five lines. Please could you introduce yourself, Sir?

>> REN YISHENG: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I believe we have ‑‑

>> JOVAN KURBALIJA: Could you introduce yourself?

>> REN YISHENG: Yes, okay. My name is Ren Yisheng. I'm from the Foreign Ministry of China. I was going to introduce myself in my mother tongue Chinese because I believe we have interpretation in the room so please put on your earphones.

Let me start by making my intervention in English while you are getting your earphones. I have a couple of points to make. Number one, we all have consensus on the common values of the universality or universal value of Human Rights. On the other hand, that we would also like to stress that Human Rights concept is an integral concept, it's a whole concept that we should not neglect the other parts or elements of Human Rights, which is to say that we have two sets of rights, civil political rights, economic, social and cultural rights, and in fact the right to development.

On the other hand, also there is a check and balance of rights. We have rights. On the other hand, we have our obligations, responsibilities. Our obligation, our responsibilities to the society, to respect the rights of others. This is the first point I want to make.

The second point is on Internet. I think that we have so many elements, so many factors that we need to look at. There is at least in my view that we have many elements that we need to look at. For example, the right to access. I think this is a very important issue for many countries, the developing countries in particular.

I'm glad that you're getting your earphones so that I can switch back to my mother tongue language, Chinese.

Since all of you have earphones right now, I'm going to switch back to my mother tongue. Over the past two days, few days, IGF discussed many important issues in relation to Internet development including the stability of Internet, the resource allocation issues of the Internet, and the Internet crime issues, spam e‑mails, as well as how to enhance the trust of the public to Internet.

Meanwhile today, the issues we're discussing and issues we discuss over the past few days is that some individual country carrying out largescale surveillance over other countries, like other Delegations of other countries, we are very surprised, very much concerned over this issue. We believe massive surveillance no matter over the individual citizens or other politicians of other countries is a infringement of sovereignty, National interest, and privacies of other countries, and also it poses as a threat to the safe operation, secure operation, of Internet operation.

Meanwhile, this conduct seriously damaged the public trust of Internet. Last but not least, I'd like to say to discuss the principle of Internet Governance, several points are extremely important, such as transparency, inclusiveness, participatory principles, and cooperation. And so on and so forth. Therefore, we're very much in favor of the points made by the Brazilian Ambassador, the governance of Internet is something that we have to work very hard on the basis of multistakeholder, no matter be it the Government or Internet companies, academic circle, Civil Society, no part should be excluded from this process.

We believe all people should participate. If you exclude any stakeholder in the course of Internet Governance, it's not good. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

>> JOVAN KURBALIJA: Thank you for your patience with our technical facilities and readiness to address us in English, and I think you reiterated quite a few important principles for our discussion, and elements of trust, Human Rights, in comprehensive way, question of sovereignty and I think we have quite a few interesting points. We have intervention here.

>> SUBI CHATURVEDI: Thank you. Am I on? Hi. Is the mic working? Okay. My name is Subi Chaturvedi, and I teach communication and new media technology at a University in India. It's a women's college, and we run a Foundation called media for change. The issues that we primarily look at is how the Internet and new media technologies can empower developing countries. I thank Raul once again for organising this session because we're looking at some of the most important questions that go to the heart of the matter. At the core of the Internet is trust.

The fact that we can trust this wonderful empowering technology which data which is immensely and increasingly private, personal and confidential. I do want to raise a couple of points here. When we start talking about situations such as these, I'm reminded of a story and we all grew up reading Sherlock Holmes and one of the stories was about why the dog didn't bark.

And this was about how we've decided to keep quiet at moments such as these, and when we are faced with uncomfortable situations, we decide to take positions. This is an important moment, and I can't agree more with what Khaled had to say. This is about trust but this is also about working in a space which is collaborative and I do not believe that cybersecurity and concerns around sovereignty can exist in isolation without the consideration for individual rights of States and citizens.

And I do want to reiterate that this journey from being the slave to the citizen has been a long one, and when we come to this point, of data collection by Governments for what purpose, by whom, and for how long, and where is it going to be kept? When we create honey pots such as these, these are questions that we worry about, not just from the Human Rights perspective. And I come from India. We have laws to protect children and women, and vulnerable communities in particular and we have just had two 18‑year‑old girls go to jail for updating a status, because they decided to voice their dissent.

And this is all for our own good, which is what I hear increasingly more often from Governments across the world, but I do want to say that two wrongs don't make a right, but what we have with us is a wonderful process which is bottoms‑up, inclusive and multistakeholder. Yes, there might be problems in the current system but that does not mean that we privilege one stakeholder which is largely the Government and most of us do not know then when these conversations take place, whether our voices would be heard.

Democracy is a wonderful thing and a participatory democracy is an even better one but it's not the same as multistakeholderism. I think we've got a solution. We have a platform. Let's acknowledge this, let's take it from here, and let's keep working with this platform. But let us work to reinforce the system that we have in multistakeholderism.

I think that is the only way forward. Thank you, Chair. Thank you for giving me this opportunity.

>> JOVAN KURBALIJA: Thank you for bringing Sherlock Holmes into our discussion, as well.

>> May I? My very brief question is for Mr. Scott Busby. I was really pleased to hear a changed statement or a changed tone from the U.S. Government, and I would hope and I believe that it is a reflection of the changed mindset within the U.S. Government towards surveillance, and Human Rights and privacy.

And if that's indeed the case, I would like to ask you that at the center of this whole ‑‑ at the center of these developments is a man called Snowden, whom Mr. Obama has referred to as a traitor. Is that still the position? Or has that position changed? Is this changed tone from the U.S. reflective also of the position on Snowden?

Because it's an important Human Rights issue. Snowden as a cause and Snowden as an individual, I'm talking about Snowden as an individual, what does the U.S. Government want to do with him? That's my very brief question and I would like that answer. Thank you.

>> JIMMY SCHULZ: May I? Okay. My name is Jimmy Schulz and I was a member of the German Parliament until Tuesday and the Committee for Internal Affairs and Home. And I've been taking care of the issue since it occurred.

It was said the whole thing of surveillance is not new. It was said that others do that, too. That's true. That doesn't make it better, and that's no excuse.

A question to Google: You said you don't give direct access, which sounds a little bit like Keith Alexander said in last year's Defcon, we don't spy on every American. That doesn't mean we don't give direct access. Is there any indirect access?

Because you've talked about legal interception, are you forced by any law not to tell us everything? That's a question to Google.

To the U.S. Representative: Keith Alexander said earlier this year those who encrypt are treated as potential terrorists, wherefore I am a potential terrorist. Do you think I am a potential terrorist?

And you also said some countries are taking advantage of the situation. Does this apply to Germany? Because I think the whole thing is an earthquake in our relationship. Friends don't do that.

And you said you're taking recommendations. I give you something that is not a recommendation: Stop surveillance now. But to be more coming to the point, I think we have to take three steps. First of all, I expect and I think we need complete transparency, complete transparency which means you have to tell us everything, and everyone has to be open on that issue.

Second, what we need are international contracts that friends don't spy on friends. And, third ‑‑ and this is a thing we really should do ‑‑ is encrypt all our communication so surveillance won't work. Thank you.

[ Applause ]

>> Thank you very much. Yes?

>> EVERTON LUCERO: Hello. So I'm with the Brazilian Government. I think we are dealing with a situation now that requires clarity in terms of what we need to address in the future, so as we avoid that it will ever happen again.

I mean, the unprecedented mass surveillance and un authorized monitoring of communications of millions of citizens worldwide by one intelligence Agency of one single country has naturally revealed something. First, I agree that it reveals we do not have a technological gap to fill in. This is an ethical and a political question. We have an institutional gap clearly. Because the only way that we will avoid there to happen again is if we agree in a set of principles and norms, and an institutional framework that would on the one hand recognize legitimate multistakeholder processes, and on the other hand, create an ethical ground for every actor to behave in the future in a way that will not damage Human Rights and privacy of any citizen in the world based on any grounds.

In particular, when it comes to National Security, I believe this argument does not stand for it any longer since you may hardly conceive a situation in which normal Brazilian citizens or companies or authorities are violated in their privacy. Is that done in the name of National Security? And how come? Does that mean that there is a suspicion that millions of Brazilian citizens and Brazilian companies and authorities are somehow involved with terrorism or any other activity that may be harmful to National Security of other countries?

As a Brazilian citizen and as a Brazilian public servant, to me, these are questions that are still to be answered. And the only thing we can proceed with this in order to create a new vision is to get together all the stakeholders and think deeply about how to make sure that we will agree on a minimum core set of rules and principles that will become the norm, and that will be observed from now on, so that this situation will not repeat itself. Thank you.

>> ANNE-RACHEL INNE: Thank you very much, Mr. Lucero. I'm going to ask for you forgiveness for a few minutes. Given what Everton said I would like to call on our commenter, Megi. Megi is a special consultant with the right of Internet users so we'd like to hear from him now. Thank you.

>> MEGI MARGIYONO: Thank you, moderators and Chairman. As I am an Information Technology lawyer, so my comments will be on the legal aspects. I think our discussions should move forward, not just track a debate whether the surveillance are accepted or not accepted, but on how to make Internet still free and open despite surveillance activities. One of the issues is striking the balance of rights, the rights of security and the rights of privacy and freedom of expressions.

However, to make globally accepted set of standards, principles, and rule to striking the balance of those rights seems difficult, because despite Human Rights is accepted as universal rights, but the applications of Human Rights differs from places to places.

Also on the threat of security issues also different from countries to countries. Freedom of expression in the U.S. is regarded as quote, unquote, the most important right, because protected under First Amendment, but privacy in the U.S. is not clearly whether it's protected under U.S. Constitution. At least it's not written on the U.S. Constitution, despite there are some interpretations that privacy is Constitutional right in the U.S.

On the contrary, in European countries, privacy is most important and there are some sets of limitations of the applications of freedom of expression. We know there are margins of appreciations that apply and applications of the freedom of expressions in European countries.

In Asia, privacy and freedom of expression seems not a strong right, and not strongly protected. Government of Asia like Indonesia pay more attention on security than freedom of expression, also privacy. Some say that privacy don't have cultural rules in Asia like Indonesia.

So regarding to the matter of facts, it seems difficult to set up a globally accepted rule to striking the balance of these rights.

Sorry. However, democratic on the surveillance activity is very important. Maybe the surveillance activity have to be commissioned by Parliament to make sure the surveillance technology is not abused by Government. It's important because technology of surveillance has been proved to be abused by some Governments of Emirates Arab Union and Bahrain. According to a report, surveillance technology provided by United Kingdom company named Gamma Group International is misused to monitor journalists, bloggers and activists in those countries. That is also a report that militia use surveillance technology to monitor the activities of opposition parties prior to the general election last year.

And Indonesia just signed a contract with Gamma Group International on September this year and we should make sure that Indonesian Government don't use this surveillance technology to monitor the opposition activities on the election next year.

>> JOVAN KURBALIJA: Thank you. For our next speakers while they're queuing, a few ideas I can think of. One is this question of balancing act ‑‑ and we just heard that balancing act is not the same in Europe, Asia, United States and other places ‑‑ between security and privacy. Second point, we have the rules on privacy protection and international Government on civil and political rules, and as I've already indicated, there is a question how to apply it, what are the mechanisms.

>> One more point, please.

>> JOVAN KURBALIJA: How we can make the next ‑‑ while you're waiting in the queues think about these two issues: Balancing act in different regions and how we can move from applying the general rules to the problem that exists. Thank you.

>> RAUL ECHEBERRIA: My name is Raul Echeberria. I'm the CEO of LACNIC. I think that some consensus seems to be emerging from the discussion. One thing is that it seems that all of us agree that massive surveillance is something bad. It is something that should not be done, no matter who does it and no matter what are the motivations for doing it. There is also a kind of consensus that some kind of investigations should be permitted using technology but that this kind of use of technology should be done based on the respect of Human Rights given the due process warranted to everybody.

And I have heard many people speaking, using almost the same words about principles, and that any use of technologies for this kind of purpose should be done in the framework of certain principles so here is my question for all of the panelists, because it seems that the speech of the representative of the Swedish Government was very interesting, and it seems to me that they are applying this concept. So my question for all the panelists is: Could be what the Swedish Government is doing a basis for continuing to develop this concept and trying to get a solution in the future? I'm not expecting to have a full agreement today about the principles.

But probably we can get a kind of common view in this session about that this is the path forward. Thank you.

>> MATTHEW SHEARS: Thank you. My name is Matthew Shears with the Center for Technology and Democracy. A couple of comments on what we've heard so far. Let's not trivialize this discussion. I've heard others are worse, NSA envy, alleged hypocrisy. When we use the sentence "others are worse," that's no justification for our own mass surveillance. When we say NSA envy, that's pretty serious stuff, because there are countries out there who are exactly saying that, this is not a joke.

And it is hypocrisy. It's not alleged so let's be clear on this.

Second, thank you to the representative from the Government of Sweden for saying there is no balancing act. We've waited a long time for someone to say, there is no balancing act. Respecting Human Rights increases security, diminishing Human Rights diminishes security.

Three, Frank La Rue, to paraphrase him ‑‑ I'm sure very poorly ‑‑ says that mass surveillance not only makes a mockery of Human Rights, but threatens the very foundations of our societies and the rule of law. Let's remember that. It's very important.

And finally, I don't know about everybody else here, but I have not lost my trust in the Internet. Let's stop saying that. I've lost my trust in the institutions that use the Internet for the purposes of undermining my fundamental rights. Thank you.

[ Applause ]

>> PINDAR WONG: Good morning. I am Pindar Wong from Hong Kong. Hong Kong has been where Snowden chose to make his revelations. My question really was a question is about forgiveness. Partly because as a long time Internet participant, I think what's been demonstrated is spying on an open network or surveillance on a network are low hanging fruit. We really shouldn't be surprised. What we are surprised on about is the scale. So I'll echo what Jimmy Schulz's intervention in terms of full disclosure.

Those of us who have kids know that kids make mistakes, and although the Internet is in its adolescence, looking forward clearly there's been a mistake that has been made. So a starting point really is that full disclosure. It may be naive to ask it. I'm not saying who discloses to whom, but it is a basis of recognizing that you've made a mistake, coming clean, and then going forward.

But what is that going forward? What is that vision? I don't agree with the previous intervention by the CTD guy. There is no balancing act. At least I have a very clear vision of the future that we wish to build, and I think I would suggest that whilst there's a temptation to fall within our National boundaries, to go back to what I would call a pre‑internet era, let's not forget the opportunity before us, the opportunity to really build trade.

And let us view things in positive terms. The next 1.5 billion people perhaps will be coming on the Internet through their mobile phones, making payment over that mobile network. So let's not also look at the issue of routing money over the Internet.

So trade, money, these are all very important issues and those issues if we have a vision of our future, I would hope we can find forgiveness because I'm not surprised of the surveillance, I'm surprised about the scale but let's find mechanisms to reestablish trust and let's look at how we can do so through the old '70s concept: Peace through trade. Thank you.

>> MARKUS KUMMER: Just a quick correction to the scribes. Please correct in the final version the name of the gentleman who just spoke as Pindar Wong. Thank you.

>> MIKE GURSTEIN: Mike Gurstein from the Community Informatics Network from Canada. It's a global network. About a month ago I wrote a blog post arguing or pointing out that the Internet was in fact a two‑way system, and that the National Security Agency while drawing information from the Internet, was also fully capable of putting information into the Internet, and having significant impacts in many of the places, if not most of the places, where it was drawing information from.

In the meantime, we've had confirmation of that, direct confirmation, one being the fact that Mr. Cheney's heart pacer was made hacker‑proof because of fears that using the Internet, it was possible to interfere with his pacemaker and assassinate him in that way. That came out recently.

The second was the use of the Internet and Internet surveillance as a direct input into the drone wars that's being conducted in various parts of the world as guidance systems and as direction systems for these drone wars.

I guess my observation, it's not really a question, is that I think we're dealing with something far more serious than simply surveillance. I think we're dealing with the potential for the active intervention in spurious and potentially dangerous ways into whatever elements of the Internet that we use for whatever purposes that we choose to in our daily lives, including our banking, our health records, our internal organisational communications, our financial communications, and so on and so forth, so that whatever response that's developed into the issues of surveillance also have to take into account the issues of aggressive and offensive actions by those who are in a position to undertake this kind of surveillance. Thank you.

>> And the speaker's name was Michael Gurstein. Thank you.

>> WOUT DE NATRIS: Good morning. I'm here on behalf of NLIGF and reporting back on discussions we had which were relevant. I think one of the main things that came up in the two panels that we did is that Internet is becoming more and more a part of our lives and isn't it time to start acting towards the Internet as if it is normal and not something which is far away from us and unseeable. So in other words if that is true, then what goes on in regular life also goes for Internet life so that would mean there's a triangle of economic development on the one side and the other side is security and the last part is freedom. So in other words, if you treat it like that, then economic development becomes possible, and the Internet becomes safer because there are so many best practices we heard of that it's about time that we stop talking and start to act upon those best practices.

And I won't recall which ones they are but they're in the transcripts. You heard some excellent ones.

And some things that really came forward is that would if Governments want the Internet to be safer, then start showing leadership through showing the best practice. So we did a head count saying who actually orders software off the shelf, or who says, I wanted to have this, this or these qualities before you can sell it to me? And only the commercial parties showed their hands saying, we're doing these sort of demands on software and all the Governments were looking, what are we talking about?

So in other words if you want leadership on security for the Internet, then start showing it yourself by demanding security before you buy something from the Internet.

And the last comment I would like to make is that we tried to envision how large this table should be if you want to have all parties discussing Internet Governance, and we probably have a table as long as this hall up and down and still not enough. And about 50% of the people know each other and still they're responsible for making the same products. So how do you get these sort of people at the table? Maybe never. But let's start with software developers, because they're hardly here in the IGF discussion, they're hardly ever there so Governments can show leadership in security by bringing the right people to the room in your country or regionally or internationally, and start discussing security with the right people, because that's the only way to make the Internet more secure.

And that was one of the comments made by the IETF, which I think made some excellent comments during this IGF, and I was happy to hear them.

>> JOVAN KURBALIJA: The last two presentations brought the broader context for this issue and importance of this issue of surveillance also for individuals, and the way they use the Internet. Now we have the next speaker.

>> JOHN LAPRISE: Good morning. My name is John Laprise. I'm a Professor at Northwestern University. As a scholar and historian, I'm surprised so many States are so surprised by the scope of the NSA surveillance, and I'd just like to offer to those States that perhaps you better take a better look at your intelligence‑gathering entities in your own countries, because they're either demonstrating incompetence in terms of not seeing the history of intelligence gathering or they know about it and are not saying anything, in which case they're guilty of collusion. Either way you have a few problems to remedy in your own countries for your own intelligence organisations. Thank you.

>> JOVAN KURBALIJA: Thank you. Nothing new under the sun.

>> NORBERT BOLLOW: Thank you. My name is Norbert Bollow, speaking in personal capacity right now as a human being who cares about my Human Rights. I start by echoing some remarks that have been made. We should not try to balance Human Rights and security. We need security that protects our Human Rights, our ability to fully experience our Human Rights.

We already have a good set of international Human Rights standards. What we need is the ability to effectively enforce them. This requires, as it has been said, full transparency. And I think it requires an international Treaty of sorts to deal with these widespread transborder Human Rights violations that we have experienced.

And perhaps most importantly, we need to get serious about looking at the technical side of metadata encryption. This is much more difficult technically than encrypting communications content. I am absolutely convinced it can be done, but it requires a fundamental rethinking of the architecture that we use for communicating via the Internet, so I propose the creation of a Dynamic Coalition of metadata privacy protection. Thank you.

>> JOVAN KURBALIJA: Thank you. We have the last two comments and then we'll pass the floor to the panelists, last three comments, I'm sorry.

>> MALCOLM HUTTY: My name is Malcolm Hutty. I work for the London Internet Exchange, and my comments are informed by this, but I'm speaking entirely on my own behalf. I think we've heard a great deal of "can't" about the surveillance issue. It is plainly and always has been the proper purpose of intelligence agencies to gather information about foreign countries, and their activities, insofar as they affect the essential National business and the proper business of security services to identify and do something about those that would cause us harm.

What has changed however is that it is now being said that these proper purposes can only be purr sized if the intelligence and security agencies essentially know everything about everyone. This has never been previous approach of anything except totalitarian societies. And if the Heads of Intelligence and security services cannot be persuaded their mission can be pursued in other fashion I hope that the political leaders will understand that the reaction that's being built around the world here shows that it's worth more than the beliefs of the appropriate way to pursue their mission on the part of those authorities. It is undermining our friends and allies.

Secondly and finally, the activity that work to undermine the protective security mechanisms, in particular undermining fundamental encryption standards, do not merely help the intelligence and security agencies identify those that would do us harm, but generally advance the interests of those who would penetrate information systems and undermine those who would protect them. Fundamentally this is a poor tradeoff for the National Security interests. I would urge you to consider the consequences to business, as well as to citizens, of making flaws generally available as they are becoming generally available to those that would penetrate information systems whether they be states or not state actors. This is an owned goal. Thank you for your attention.

>> PRANESH PRAKASH: My name is Pranesh Prakash. I work with the Center for The Internet Society in India and with the Yale Information Society project. While issues of Human Rights privacy and surveillance will be dealt with at the National level, and there are some indications that in some cases they are being dealt and reforms are ‑‑ will be attempted at least, we need to agree that privacy is a right that belongs not just to the citizens of one country or another, but no one country should be able to deny me the right of being human that privacy is indeed a human right and a country can't escape its international Human Rights obligations by saying that we are safeguarding the privacy of our own citizens and only our own citizens.

Second point I wanted to make is that mass surveillance at the level of Internet infrastructure and architecture as is being done by countries like our friends in the West and India, are contrary to the UDHR and ICCPR and its non‑targeted, non‑proportionate, non‑reasonable nature makes it an arbitrary or unlawful interference in the enjoyment of privacy, that this is contained in itself in International Human Rights Doctrine that mass surveillance of the sort that we are seeing today, especially at the level of the Internet infrastructure, just is not legal. Thank you very much.

>> FURIYANI AMALIA: Thank you very much. My name is Furiani Amalia. I'm from Indonesia. During the last few days we have heard and listened to many challenges that portrayed by multistakeholders in the Internet field. However, we also come up with the common views that trust and cooperation are important issues that we should address. We have a problem of trust there but we cannot stop just right there.

So we need to think what IGF as one of maybe the most Forum that involve many various multistakeholder worldwide. That we need to think what IGF could offer in the future, what IGF can do in the future in leading the role of setting out the principles or norms that are agreeable by all stakeholders, because in this multistakeholder Forum, it's not only to speak up what your interests are. It's not only a Forum to tell everybody else what your concerns are but we need to understand what other interests are so therefore IGF should be a bridge for all stakeholders to be a Forum where everybody can understand each others. Thank you.

>> ANDRES AZPURUA: My name is Andres. I come from Venezuela as part of ISOC Ambassadors Programme. My country is a relatively small country with Human Rights problems makes completely no sense in making the decision if you have Human Rights problems or challenges as they like to be said here.

It doesn't make any sense distinguishing if they're online or offline so I would like to put my perspective on many of the subjects we've been talking in this IGF from the perspective of small countries that are not frequently represented in this Forum or that their issues are not usually commented too much. It's a little sad when Governments defend their actions by saying that they only target foreigners as if they were not subject to Human Rights, and the international Declaration of Human Rights.

I'm also really sad to see that the U.S. who had a very strong agenda in pushing it throughout the world now lacks the moral authority to keep doing that. I think it's time for other countries to step up if they decide not to change their policies.

Mass surveillance and other advanced persistent threats that are more targeted are being used not only by big Governments, also by small ones. In the case of these Governments, usually the controls and oversights are even more weak than in the famous case we've all been discussing. So it would be of much help for countries like mine to actually know what's getting into our countries, because most of this technology doesn't come from our own industries or our own tech industries. It comes from developed nations or nations with stronger IT industries.

So more controls and transparency in those important experts would definitely help activists like myself.

So as I said I'm not a lawyer. I'm just an activist with a tech background. And for me, it's obviously clear that mass surveillance should be treated as a huge Human Rights transgression. So I hope that in the meantime, we learn to use encryption correctly to protect ourselves, our colleagues, and our work. I hope that for next IGF or next meetings of this kind we'll see a lot more PGP fingerprint keys on business cards so that we could start to share the knowledge on how to communicate effectively and securely. Thank you.

>> ANNE-RACHEL INNE: Thanks very much. We're going to go to the online remote participation. Subi?

>> SUBI CHATURVEDI: Yes, we have a question, there's one from Twitter that talks about what Government can do another from the same team about ethics and trust, and this is a question to European Governments. Sweden, as a representative of Europe regarding the individual Snowden issue who has done a great service to the global public in making this information accessible, do European countries consider him to be a whistleblower who needs to be protected? Or is he to be considered a traitor who should not receive protection?

Would any European country, any member of the Council of Europe, now be willing to grant Snowden asylum?

>> ANNE-RACHEL INNE: That's very much. So I think we're going to wrap up a little bit Jovan and then we're going to give the floor to our panelists to respond to some of the questions that we've had. Jovan?

>> JOVAN KURBALIJA: There were ‑‑ I think there was quite high level of consensus of both problems and main issues and controversies, and here are a few points.

There is agreement about the severity of the problems. I think it was equaled in all intervention comments. And also highlighted that there is a question of trust, fundamental trust, as underlying element for the success in the future development of the Internet.

Second point, I think we agreed that there are existing rules in international law that cover this issue, and there is Article 17 of the International Covenant on Political and Civil Rights saying clearly that no one should be suggested to arbitrarily or unlawful interference with his privacy and so on. The international law exists. As we know, international law is sometimes not easily applicable and then we come to the next point which was raised in many comments from Bertrand, how to apply international law. What are the procedures? And here the key words were: Checks and balances, introduce checks and balances, careful transparency, use due process, observe the rule of the law, and have institutional division as Johann from Sweden mentioned between different players in this field.

That will be the main challenge, and one can argue that maybe some new reporting mechanism of existing conventions should be introduced, or it should be introduced in universal periodical review in the work of the UN Council of Human Rights. We're speaking about the way how to implement existing rules.

There was a bit of ‑‑ there are quite a few different views about possibility of having win‑win solution or balancing act. We should act and we should aim for win‑win solution by achieving Human Rights protection through more security. But we should be equally ready to have some balancing acts, because it is reality of political life.

What are the next steps? First, we are waiting for the results of the review process in the United States. In the meantime, there are quite a few international initiatives in the UN Human Rights Council, and it will be moving on especially on the issues on protection of privacy and Data Protection.

And we should start exploring some National models like Swedish model for tackling these issues and these delicate balances between security, Human Rights and Data Protection and it was clear from all interventions the topic is extremely important and the IGF should find ways and means to continue discussion including proposal to create Dynamic Coalition dealing with these issues.

I hope it reflected in a few Tweets what was ‑‑ were underlying messages. Please.

>> I think there is one important issue that I should address, it's the liability and responsibility of technology providers. Technology providers should ensure that technology, they provide not be misused by Government so there should be any legal remedy if the technology used to suppress or to monitor the activity of activists or journalists. So there is the contract between the technology providers and Government should be cover an Article saying that the Government only use this technology for legitimate purposes, not misuse et cetera.

>> JOVAN KURBALIJA: We'll start now with our panelists answering the questions and commenting on overall discussion and also this underlying elements for possible summary of our discussion.

I think we had the most questions addressed to Scott. Scott, could you start, please?

>> SCOTT BUSBY: Thank you, Jovan.

>> JOVAN KURBALIJA: It's not surprising.

>> SCOTT BUSBY: I'm not sure I'll be able to answer them all, but I'll do my best. First of all I want to thank my Fellow panelists, commentators as well as the audience for all of your many thoughtful comments and questions. The United States Government is here in force. There are over 10 of us here. On the heels of a Government shutdown, mind you, which there was travel restrictions on virtually every U.S. Government Agency, and I hope that demonstrates to all of you not only the seriousness with which we take the IGF, but the seriousness with which we take this issue.

We intend to take back your comments, your questions, to report back to our senior leadership on what we've heard here, with the goal of ensuring that those views are taken account of in the deliberations that are now taking place in the United States.

Second of all, to Khaled who first made this point but the woman from India, as well, about the seriousness or potential lack of seriousness with which we take this issue, I don't think that President Obama and the rest of the U.S. Government is not taking this issue seriously, is trying to deflect. The President has taken extraordinary action in setting up this review Board of independent experts to give him their best advice on how the U.S. should move ahead on this issue.

As I just mentioned, the U.S. Government has come here in force knowing this issue was going to be at the heart of the discussions at this IGF and willing to engage with you, to hear you out, on this issue. So we take very seriously this issue.

With regards to transparency, which several commentators mentioned, the President has already ordered that as much transparency about what the NSA has been doing, the judicial orders relating to the NSA activities, that those be released, and indeed, you can find those online. If anyone wants to know the site where they can be found, I'd be happy to send that to them.

On Edward Snowden, I don't have anything to say on that beyond what President Obama has already said, so I would refer the questioner to what President Obama has said.

On China, on our intervention from a colleague from China, I would simply ask anyone who has questions about the Human Rights situation in China and the Human Rights situation in the United States to look at any independent Human Rights report on these issues, and draw their own conclusions. One of the best reports I think is the Freedom on the Net report issued by Freedom House. We have Freedom House here. There are copies of that report here. That report is critical of the United States, I would mind you. It's not often that a Government official refers people to a report that's critical of the United States.

I would urge people to look at that report, and draw their own conclusions.

To the Indonesian representative, the lawyer here, who asked about privacy in the United States, so interesting story here in the United States, for good or worse, we have a very old Constitution in the United States, older than most countries, and the concept of privacy actually post‑dates the creation of our Constitution.

So, yes, the concept of privacy is covered by our Constitution, but it's covered through legal interpretations of that Constitution by our Supreme Court. And there are a slew of decisions in the last century that essentially create this concept of privacy and indeed it is now considered a Constitutional right.

And lastly, there were several questions about the NSA and sort of the NSA out of control, being a state within a state. I would just urge folks to look at what the President has said. The NSA and these activities are subject to judicial review. They are subject to legislative review, and the NSA finally is subject to the command and control of our Commander in Chief, namely, the President of the United States.

So the President has said what he intends to do in this area. He has empowered a review panel to look at these issues, and we will be considering the recommendations of that review panel going forward. Thank you.

>> ANNE-RACHEL INNE: Thank you very much, Scott. Now we go on to Ross.

>> ROSS LaJEUNESSE: Thanks very much. I want to echo Scott's sentiments that I've enjoyed today's panel, and particularly enjoy hearing questions from all of you. And so I've taken a couple notes. I don't think I was as thorough as you were, Scott.

But to Jimmy's question, I appreciated that very much, about direct access versus access. It's a very good point. When I meant we don't provide direct access, what I meant is that we really don't provide access to the infrastructure. I was trying to draw distinction between that and the process I outlined that when we get a legal request from the Government, we look at it thoroughly, and so it is possible for the U.S. Government to get user data, but only through that process that I outlined in my remarks. So thank you for that clarification.

There was a comment or question from a remote participant about user trust. And that is something that we are very focused on. It really is what drives everything we do at Google, so we're incredibly concerned about the impact of users' trust on us from the Snowden revelations. It drives everything we do. It's why we spend the resources that we do on our security infrastructure, on our encryption, with search encrypted by design and Gmail being encrypted and I would make the point that I feel the cloud is certainly more secure than alternative models as Bertrand characterized it, data sovereignty, data localization. The cloud is much more secure than that model.

But this issue of user trust drives much more than our security infrastructure and our technology. It drives the work we do on Internet Governance, our membership, our founding membership in GNI, which is a third party which audits the practices of companies. It drives our development of things like Project Shield, which allows independent news sites and similar sites to take advantage of Google's own security infrastructure for those sites that have been subject to DDoS attacks and the like, and it drives our sponsorship of Civil Society and our work which we do really in each and every country in which we have an office on free expression from issues like intermediary liability in Thailand and India, to even more challenging situations in parts of Southeast Asia.

Finally, to Matthew's intervention from CDT, as Matthew well knows, we are a strong partner of CDT for pushing for greater transparency in the United States, and we see I think very clearly eye to eye on that and so I wanted to clarify Matthew's point. When I said that others are doing it too I thought I made it fairly clear about five or six times in my comments but I'm happy to say it again, I'm not trying to excuse or trivialize in any way the revelations that have come about, about U.S. surveillance but I am making the point that this is not just a U.S. issue. That this is happening everywhere around the world and I think it would be unwise of us to focus solely on the U.S. surveillance programme, and not focus on the very real challenges that are occurring everywhere else around the world.

So that was may point and I thank Matthew for giving me the opportunity to clarify that. And I think as I'm checking my notes, that was it. But someone correct me if I'm wrong.

>> ANNE-RACHEL INNE: Thanks very much, Ross. Next on our panel is Johann.

>> JOHANN HALLENBORG: Okay. Thank you very much. A couple of points from me, as well. There was a question about the powerful tools and resources if that has prompted any change in our society and any legislation. And the answer in my country is: Yes, it certainly has because that has created an all‑new way of looking at this, of course.

And around 10 years ago, discussions intensified in my country on how to find the right legislative framework for this, an area which largely were unregulated before, and so after long negotiations, a draft law was presented. It was thrown out of Parliament, wasn't approved, back to Government. Again the second draft wasn't approved, because of the Parliament felt that the protections for privacy were not good enough.

And the third draft eventually was approved in 2009. This law applies equally to everyone, every citizen. There was a question about not making a difference between different nationalities. It applies equally to Swedes and non‑Swedes. And it includes a fair amount of special mechanisms to protect individuals' privacy. Amongst other things, it includes a special court which takes a decision in every case of signals surveillance.

This law is now being put to the test in the European court of Human Rights. It's being challenged, and we welcome this of course. We welcome to hear if the court in Strasbourg finds it lives up to the standards of the European Convention on Human Rights.

There was a comment on Article 17 of the ICCPR. It is true, it establishes the fundamental right to respect for private life, which is I believe the accurate wording. We believe there may very well be reasons to look at Article 17 and see how we can increase our understanding of how Article 17 should be interpreted.

There are a number of different ways to do that, and we're currently engaging in Geneva and in New York to find ways of promoting the best way forward.

Finally, a few comments were made on the Swedish model. I'm not sure I really know what that would be, but if it refers to the fundamental principles that my Minister outlined last week, we are more than happy to discuss on the basis of those the way to go forward. And indeed, those principles are integrated in our law and in our framework, so in a way, it will ‑‑ I suppose it does represent the Swedish model.

Finally, I am not representing any other country than may own country here on this panel, so I am not in a position to speak on behalf of Council of Europe Member States or European Union Member States when it comes to Edward Snowden. I can just conclude that his Human Rights should be respected, period, regardless of the label that you give him. Thank you very much.

>> ANNE-RACHEL INNE: Thank you, Johann. Joana, you've heard most of the comments. Would you like to say something more?

>> JOANA VARON: I just would like to make some remarks for us to include the comments on Mr. Bollow in this panel report because I believe it's an important Human Rights issue and we're only here debating surveillance because of them. And I'd like to ask Scott and the U.S. Government to give further thoughts about this. That it seems penalties for whistleblowers are getting worse and worse, and I'm not referring only to Snowden.

A person who leaked the information about the war in Iraq is in jail with a 35‑year sentence after remaining for three years without a sentence and according to notes from The Guardian that I quote here, "Manning’s three‑and‑a‑half‑decades jail term is unprecedentedly long for someone convicted of leaking U.S. government documents. Compare, for example, the ten years received by Charles Graner, the most severely punished of those held responsible for the Abu Ghraib torture in Iraq." So the jail is not only talking in Russia.

These people had normal importance for the countries we believe today are being severely punished and in a dilemma between being traitor to a nation and providing openness and important information to the world, I think that most of people here with good faith and will would go for traitor. So that's it.

>> ANNE-RACHEL INNE: Thanks, Joana. So we've heard quite a few things, and I think we're going to give a few seconds to ‑‑ minutes to our commenters to respond. And we're going to start with Ambassador Fonseca. Is the mic around?

>> BENEDICTO FONSECA FILHO: Thank you. And very briefly much has been said and I don't have much to add, just also in reaction to what was proposed and the question that was formulated by Raul Echeberria from LACNIC, I would like to comment that the Swedish model, not the Swedish model, but the points that were raised by your Minister of External Relations at the civil conference really provide a very good basis for our work in regard to the issue of privacy in relation to security, which is of course one of the focus areas and core areas of the speech our President delivered at the United Nations. So we'd be comfortable in working within this framework.

But just to recall that we have proposed and the President has proposed we should aim at having a larger set of principles, and taking into account a huge amount of work that has already been done in that regard within different contexts, it has been mentioned the Council of Europe, we could refer to our OECD so we have a different set of principles but of limited in scope of participation so we are aiming at something of global nature that would encapsulate the core norms and agreed principles that should guide us through.

And just reiterate the invitation and the call for participation in the Brazilian meeting to be held next year. And if you allow me just a very brief comment in regard to this, I was referring before to the kind of misunderstandings that sometimes occur, and the President has termed this meeting as a "Summit," and it must be understood that from the point of view of Government, what we are aiming at is at a very high‑level event that would wishfully be able to make kind of decision that could impact on the work we are doing.

So this is the meaning of saying a "Summit." It should not be interpreted as meaning it's something exclusively for Governments. I think this is the kind of conceptual difference that sometimes must be spelled out. When we say "Summit," we mean a meeting that will be ‑‑ will have authority enough to make decisions. And at the same time, the President clearly also spelled out that she would expect Civil Society, private society, all stakeholders to be represented, and I would dare to say on an equal level as regard any decision‑making process that might be ‑‑ might take place at that point, which we aim of course at some kind of consensus.

So this is just very briefly to reiterate something I said before, and to specify that as we go back, our President is due in the next few days to make an announcement on the basis of everything we heard and the very important inputs we have received and ideas that were presented here. I would not at this point like to anticipate anything the President will say. I think sometimes we like to interpret what she has meant. I think it's as a disciplined civil servant I would prefer the President herself to spell out.

Of course, this will not be a decision or anything made in isolation but fully taking into account the multistakeholder aspect we want. But as the host of the meeting, I think it would be the President's prerogative to decide for example on the Summit aspect or not and this is something we will invite all to be there, and again the announcement to be made in next few days. Thank you very much.

>> JOVAN KURBALIJA: We'll have a few treats if it is possible Nick and Bertrand and we have one comment. We're closing the Plenary Session and the comments, we're wrapping up and if it is of relevance for the wrapping up comments that we will hear.

Please.

>> BERTRAND DE LA CHAPELLE: Thank you, Jovan. I wanted to reaffirm one element that after this panel, it is clear that the answer to excessive surveillance cannot be the proliferation of National frameworks establishing data sovereignty but rather increased oversight and increased due process respect and assessment of the impact of transboundary action or impact assessment for any National measures that has a transboundary action. Thank you.

>> JOVAN KURBALIJA: Nick, please.

>> NICK ASHTON-HART: Thank you also for inviting me to speak in general. One thing that struck me here is that I think we have many different National approaches to surveillance and the protection of individuals in relation to it, but very little have I found published that actually spells out and contrasts the different choices countries have made, and the reasons why they have made them.

I know in Latin America, recent very serious Human Rights violations by security services in living memory have made this issue particularly sensitive in that region, for example, and in Switzerland I know we had a similar scandal in the '90s that has greatly changed the way surveillance is conducted by Switzerland and we've heard a bit about the Swedish protections.

Perhaps it would be useful to have more clarity and be able to compare different systems and understand the choices that they made, and I would say also, the interparliamentary Union in Geneva, the home of the world's Parliaments, perhaps should discuss this issue to see if the world's Parliaments can share information, understand each other better, and perhaps that would help.

>> JOVAN KURBALIJA: Thank you, Nick. We'll have a Chinese colleague, and after that we'll be closing discussion. Otherwise I will be declared persona non grata by the IGF Organising Committee. I just received a letter from Markus. Please.

>> REN YISHENG: Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, for giving me the floor for the second time. I'll be very brief. First of all, I'd like to clarify. This morning we discussed issues on surveillance, so the Chinese Delegation while making the point quoted a well‑known case, but I don't know why the U.S. speaker is so sensitive to our intervention. He's not here. If he's here, he has to explain to us why he's so sensitive to that.

Secondly, the Human Rights condition situation in China is well known by the Chinese. The Chinese has every right to explain that. Other country has no right to comment on China's Human Rights. The universality of Internet in China, we have almost 600 million netizens in China, much more than the population of the U.S. We have more than 300 millions of users of social media. It's almost the same population of U.S.

Every day, people are posting things on microblogs, blogs. More than 200 million people doing that. Therefore, Chinese also enjoy a full freedom of speech, but any information shall not infringe the society. You have to abide the basic code of conduct, moral conduct, and also you are not allowed to spread any information that will harm National Security. Also, you are not allowed to spread groundless rumors online.

Last but not least, let me say one thing: Every year, U.S. Government publish Human Rights situation or status of more than 200 countries in the world. He recommend us to read that. However, he neglected one thing: The U.S. Government never published Human Rights status report of its own country, but the Chinese Government has done that for the U.S. Government, and for free.

China's state Council's information office publish annual report of U.S. Human Rights status. You're welcome to access. All the information are collected publicly from the U.S. media.

>> JOVAN KURBALIJA: ‑‑ periodical review which is useful mechanism to comparing various situations worldwide when it comes to the Human Rights as what we heard.

We are ‑‑ well, just a half Tweet.

>> ALEX COMNINOS: My name is Alex. I'm from the Internet. It seems people in this room are concerned about eaves dropping so I would just like to point out if you registered online to attend the IGF, you have leaked your personal information including date of birth, ID number or passport number, and residential address, e‑mail address, full name. So defenses against these type of things really do start at home. You can see it on the APC website, APC.org. Thank you kindly. Bye.

>> ANNE-RACHEL INNE: Thank you very much.

>> My name is Juan Carlos. I'm from Brazil. Everyone is still under the perplexity of the size and the rich of American intelligence and many are making decisions in the heart of emotion and it's this that worries me. Decisions that are taken so passionately, decisions under the scenario generally does not so passionate and generally are hurting our hearts. I'm definitely not wanting to give away any right in exchange for security. That's all.

>> JOVAN KURBALIJA: Closing the session with a poem, an artistic expression of overall discussion.

>> ANNE-RACHEL INNE: So what we're going to do right now, I think we're going to have Jovan remained us a little bit some of the points that were raised here in answering if you remember some of the questions that we had that Markus read that the session was also supposed to address.

And I would like to simply say that I think this session is one that is again Building Bridges. This is the start of discussions and I know that I've seen a few Tweets where people are saying we're not satisfied because there aren't really answers. And I don't think anybody expected really that we would have answers here this morning.

But at least conversations have started. You know, the start of a bridge is being built as Ambassador Fonseca said, one of our next meetings will be in Brazil, and that could be a place where at least some general principles could be agreed upon, and then it will be up to all of us to actually just like the other general and global principles that we have, to make sure that we adhere to those. Jovan?

>> JOVAN KURBALIJA: With the risk of confronting Twitter community which is not a wise thing to do, I have to admit that there were quite a few answers and quite a few useful insights. We heard about experiences within Brazil, quite a few suggestions.

There is agreement that there are international rules that cover these issues, and quite a few concrete suggestions how we can implement these rules, through due process checks and balances.

Therefore, I would say that I personally feel quite comfortable with advancement of our discussion, much more than expected before the session. And as you know, these problems are complex and they're so called big problems. You don't have a quick fix. There are many aspects, security, Human Rights, ethical, business that should be addressed. Markus gave us 7 questions at the beginning of the session which were questions posed through the public consultation.

And we answered all of those questions, and even added quite a few more questions. Therefore, we will be having an interesting discussion. And if I can conclude with one point with a famous quote, don't waste a crisis. It seems we're not going to waste this crisis and that at least based on your inputs and panelist inputs, there is a serious determination and responsibility to do something useful for Internet as a whole, and for humanity, first of all to avoid the situation like this one with NSA case, but also to prevent similar situations happening worldwide.

Therefore, there is an opportunity that we shouldn't miss, and I think quite a few players around the world are moving in that direction, to create space, ideas, and proposals that could make Internet even more powerful tool for enabling of the social and economic development worldwide.

Thank you.

>> MARKUS KUMMER: Let me just add a quick word: I think the discussion, A, was certainly very interesting. This is a sensitive issue on top of the agenda. And I think again, the IGF proved its value and its worth, and this kind of discussion clearly is best held in a multistakeholder setting.

And I think it will not be over and we will revisit it at the next IGF. With that, Mr. Chairman, over to you to close the meeting.

>> SETYANTO SANTOSA: Thank you, Markus. Thank you also, Madam Anne‑Rachel and Jovan, for moderating this opening discussion on emerging issues with focusing mainly on approaching the role of security, surveillance, transparency and privacy issues. If I may value this session, it's really the top of the top session of the IGF 2013. If you look at the response from the floor and also they say all the ideas.

As a piece of information that Indonesia also aware of positive impact of Internet as a means of economic development. However, it has become increasingly concerned over the impact of access of information and has demonstrated an interest in increasing its control of offensive online content, particularly pornographic and anti‑Islam online content. The government regulates such content through legal and regulatory framework and through partnership with the ISP, Internet service provider and also the Internet cafe. Meanwhile the telecommunication 99 also prohibit the wire tapping of communication necessary for obtaining evidence for criminal investigation. So ladies and gentlemen, this is my first IGF engagement, with more especially in Bali 2013 from 109 countries so let us wait for our next IGF 2014, wherever it will be held. I think we should come and really I enjoyed this familihood circumstances and it's really a kind of the spirit of multistakeholder cooperation of world community. With a statement I would like to conclude this meeting and again thank you for excellent moderating, and thank you also to our panelists and all participants for this valuable discussion. I hope you enjoy your stay in Bali, Indonesia. For those of you who will leave before the Closing Ceremony, I wish you have a pleasant and safe trip back home.

Please join me to give a big hand to all the panelists and moderators.

[ Applause ]

I return the floor to Mr. Markus Kummer.

>> MARKUS KUMMER: Nothing to add. We resume at 2:30 for the open microphone "Taking Stock" session.

[ End of session ]

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/igf-2013-october-25-taking-stock-emerging-issues

Taking Cognisance of the Deeply Flawed System That Is Aadhaar

praskrishna — 2017-05-19T14:52:58Z

Aadhaar and its many connotations have grown to be among the most burning issues on the Indian fore today, that every citizen aware of their rights should be taking note of.

The article by Shreyashi Roy was published in the Wire on May 10, 2017.

With the leak of 130 million Aadhaar numbers recently coming to light, several activists, lawyers and ordinary citizens are up in arms about what is increasingly being viewed as a government surveillance system. Keeping this in mind, on Tuesday, May 9, Software Freedom Law Centre India (SFLC) hosted an event that brought together a panel to clearly articulate the dangers of Aadhaar and to discuss whether the biometric identification system is capable of being reformed.

SFLC is a donor-supported legal services organisation that calls itself a protector of civil liberties in the digital age.

Titled ‘Revisiting Aadhaar: Law, Tech and Beyond’, the discussion, with several eminent personalities who have in-depth knowledge of Aadhaar and its working, threw light on the various problems that have cropped up with regard to India’s unique identification system. The discussion was moderated by Saikat Datta, policy director at Centre for Internet and Society, which published the report that studied the third-party leaks of Aadhaar numbers and other personal data.

The leaks

The discussion took off from the point of the leaks, with Srinivas Kodali, a panelist and one of the authors of the report, explaining his methodology for the study that proved that the Aadhaar database lacked the security required when dealing with private information of people. He highlighted the fact that during the course of his research, he had noticed several leaks from government websites and notified the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) about the same. Yet, at every step, UIDAI continued to deny and reject the possibility of this happening. Kodali says, however, that he had noticed that the websites that were unknowingly leaking data were, in fact, fixing the leaks after being notified without acknowledging that the leak had happened in the first place. Kodali reiterated at the discussion, as in his report, that a simple tweaking of URL query parameters of the National Social Assistance Programme website could unmask and display private information. Unfortunately, UIDAI cannot be brought to task for unknowingly leaking information because there is no such provision.

He also addressed the question of the conflict of interest that existed in the entire system of building Aadhaar, which was created by developers who later left the UIDAI and built their own private companies, monetising the mine of private information that they were sitting on. Kodali blames UIDAI for this even being allowed, since the developers, though clearly lacking ethics, were in fact, merely volunteers.

The system

One of the glaring issues with the technology behind Aadhaar is that the software is not open source. Anivar Aravind, a panelist, called it “defected by design” and “bound to fail” because not only is the technology completely untested but there are very obvious leaks that are taking place. Moreover, UIDAI does not allow any third-party audits or any other persons to look at the technology. Datta pointed to the fact that this is unheard of in other nations, where software is routinely subjected to penetration testing and hacking experts are called upon to check how secure a database is.

Anupam Saraph, another panelist and future designer, illuminated the creation of the Aadhaar database, pointing out that this is a system less about identification and more about verification. All of the verification, moreover, has been done by private parties, making the database itself suspect and leaving everyone’s private information loose at the time of enrolment. In addition, Aadhaar was meant for all residents and not just citizens. But now there is a mix of both, creating confusion in many aspects. Saraph also brought up how one rogue agency with access to all this information could pose an actual national security threat, unlike all the requests for information on breaches that the government keeps pointing fingers at. Referring to Nandan Nilekani’s statement about Aadhaar not being like AIDS, Saraph pointed out that it was exactly like it because much like the body, which cannot distinguish between an invasion and itself, the Aadhaar system is not being able to distinguish between aliens and citizens and has begun denying the latter benefits.

The Supreme Court has declared time and again that Aadhaar cannot be made mandatory, but the government continues to – in complete disregard of the apex court’s judgment – insist on Aadhaar for a multitude of schemes. More and more schemes are being made unavailable without the existence of an Aadhaar number as the government continues to function in a complete lack of cognisance of the fact that the poor are losing out on something as basic as their food because of a number. Prasanna S., an advocate and a panelist, called it a “voluntary but mandatory” system that is becoming an evidence collection mechanism. Moreover, everything is connected through this one number, making many options like financial fraud, selective treatment of citizens and other horrors possible. The collection of all this information is not dangerous, screams the government. Maybe not in the hands of this one. But what of the next? What of rogues?

The legal aspect

One of the panelists was Shyam Divan, a senior advocate of the Supreme Court, who has represented petitioners fighting against Aadhaar. Divan spoke about how along with a group of advocates he has been trying to get the apex court to rule on the issue but has been met with long queues before a ruling can be procured. He addressed the right to privacy aspect of the system and the recent declaration that the citizen does not have the absolute right to the body. He emphasised that the government cannot own the body and that for a free and democratic society, a limited government, instead of an all-knowing and all-seeing government, is essential. Unfortunately for India, there is no express right to privacy in the constitution, but that does not mean that rights can be taken away in exchange for a fingerprint. It is the government’s duty to respect privacy. For him, Aadhaar has become an instrument of oppression and exclusion, a point that Prasanna also agreed with, calling it a “systematic attack on consent”.

There is complete agreement that there has been a railroading of consent in this entire matter if Aadhaar being passed forcibly through the Lok Sabha as a money bill is anything to go by. If parliament’s consent can be disregarded in that fashion, what is an ordinary citizen to do in the face of this complete imbalance of power in the state’s hand?

Usha Ramanathan, a legal researcher and a long-time critic of Aadhaar, spoke about how India has turned into a state where there are more restrictions than fundamental rights, rather than the other way around. She related how there was no clarity at the beginning of Aadhaar of how it would be a card or a number and was never a government project in the first place. This is a private sector ambition that the government has jumped on board with, without considering that the private sector does not concern itself with civil liberties. As other panelists also pointed out, the private sector cannot and will not protect public interest. This is the job of the government, especially in an age of digitisation. But Aadhaar compromises the ability of the state to stand up for its citizens.

With June 30 approaching fast, many of those who have so far abstained from enrolling in the system are considering giving up their rebellion and going like sheep to get themselves registered in the database. In the words of Divan, they will have to “volunteer compulsorily for an Aadhaar”. The government is probably counting on this. Turning to the Supreme Court has been of no help, although a verdict can be hoped for in a couple of weeks. But what can we do if they rule for the government?

Some of the panelists are on board with the idea of a civil disobedience movement, a kind of a rebellion against Aadhaar. Some suggested thinking of out-of-the-box ways to register one’s protest and dissent against what is clearly becoming the architecture of a surveillance state. Saraph was particularly vehement about the need to completely destroy the Aadhaar database – “shred it”.

What all the panelists emphasised repeatedly was that there can be no improvements to a system that is so deeply flawed and that has had so many “teething problems” that are making millions suffer. The main takeaway from the discussion was that Aadhaar must see a speedy demise because it cannot be saved and cannot persist in its current state.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/the-wire-may-10-2017-shreyashi-roy-taking-cognisance-of-the-deeply-flawed-system-that-is-aadhaar

Take-away from the I&J Project Workshop at the UN Internet Governance Forum 2015

praskrishna — 2015-11-30T14:09:57Z

The Internet & Jurisdiction Project organized the workshop “Transnational due process: A case study in multi-stakeholder cooperation” at the Internet Governance Forum convened by the United Nations on November 13, 2015.

This was published on Internet & Jurisdiction website.

The 4-day conference convened over 2000 high-level participants from states, major global Internet companies, technical Internet operators, international organizations, civil society groups and academia.

Video

The workshop organized by the I&J Project discussed how to address the tension between the cross-border nature of the Internet and a patchwork of national jurisdictions by enabling multi-stakeholder cooperation. Sunil Abraham, the Director of CIS India, stressed the limits of traditional modes of inter-state legal cooperation on the Internet:

The MLAT system is completely broken […] both from the demand side and also from the supply side.

The US Cyber Coordinator of the State Department, Christopher Painter, stated the need to streamline procedures of Mutual Legal Assistance Treaties, but also highlighted the importance of pursuing in parallel more innovative approaches, such as the Internet & Jurisdiction process:

MLATS are not always the right answer. There are other answers between law enforcement channels in terms of joint investigations and there are also creative solutions that might take some of the burden off that MLAT process and I think that those are worthy of exploration.

Representing the Canadian ccTLD .ca, Mark Bull reflected upon how to develop such solutions to maintain the global nature of the Internet.

We are talking about incredibly complex issues here and I believe that complexity necessitates a multi-stakeholder process to identify solutions. And that is what I think the beauty of the Internet & Jurisdiction Project is. And it’s why because of the multi-stakeholder structure, that’s why we believe it is the best and the most effective form for discussing issues this complex.

Panelist Eileen Donahoe, the Director of Global Affairs at Human Rights Watch applauded the progress the Internet & Jurisdiction process made since 2012:

Let me say that the work of the I&J Project has been relentless and it is really important. This is one of the most complex spaces in Internet governance

The jurisdiction topic has become one of the most pressing Internet governance challenges, as I&J Project Director and Co-Founder Bertrand de La Chapelle pointed out:

There is a real element of urgency. The jurisdiction issue is at the core of many Internet governance problems. And it has been said in many workshops here in the IGF, but also outside of it. The problem is really getting worse. The jurisdiction problem is probably one of the biggest threats to the fabric of the Internet as we know it.

The objective of the workshop was to gather participants in the global Internet & Jurisdiction process from different stakeholder groups to report on progress and achievements. Furthermore, the workshop deepened the understanding of how to address jurisdictional tensions around the Internet and establish innovative legal cooperation mechanisms to prevent its fragmentation along national territorial boundaries.Council of Europe’s Elvana Thaci reminded participants of the importance to develop harmonized procedures across borders, as

Harmonization of substance is very difficult because the understanding of unlawfulness of content is very diverse.

Facebook’s Head of Policy Development, Matt Perault, talked about the need for appropriate procedures:

I am here because I believe the I&J Project is devoted to figuring out how to think about mechanisms for a race to the top on the issue of jurisdiction.

The pioneering Internet & Jurisdiction process has engaged more than 100 key entities around the world, creating a unique neutral space to build trust and catalyze operational solutions. As Will Hudson, Google’s Senior Advisor for International Policy, said:

We need to find solutions that work for all parties. It is one of the great strengths of the I&J Project, that it is looking at this challenge head on. We need to do things in this multi-stakeholder manner, and talk as a community because everyone has a stake in this and we cannot do this alone.

Participants

ANNE CARBLANC, Head of Division, Directorate for Science, Technology and Industry, OECD
BYRON HOLLAND, President and CEO, CIRA (Canadian ccTLD)
CHRISTOPHER PAINTER, Coordinator for Cyber Issues, US Department of State
EILEEN DONAHOE, Director Global Affairs, Human Rights Watch
EVANA THACI, Administrator, Council of Europe
MATT PERAULT, Head of Policy Development, Facebook
SUNIL ABRAHAM, Executive Director, CIS India
WILL HUDSEN, Senior Advisor for International Policy, Google

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/take-away-from-the-i-j-project-workshop-at-the-un-internet-governance-forum-2015

Take charge of Facebook

praskrishna — 2011-06-06T08:16:19Z

Want to take control of your data and the way you use your Facebook account? Then try these tricks, writes Shweta Taneja.

When Tejas Pande, a 23-year-old Bangalore-based information technology professional, heard about a workshop called Facebook Resistances at the Centre for Internet and Society (www.cis-india.org) in the city, he signed up without thinking twice. "I spend almost 10 hours every day logged in to my Facebook account. Its fixed rituals were getting to me. So I wanted to find out how I can take more control of my account and make it more personal."

The workshop, which was conducted by Marc Stumpel, a new media researcher and privacy advocate from Amsterdam, the Netherlands, had the same concerns. Stumpel’s workshop, which has travelled across the world from Barcelona and Berlin to Bangalore, is a research initiative that looks at changing the rules and functionality of Facebook. "We want to change your experience of the site and make it more personal," he says, adding, “We also want you to safeguard your privacy in the Facebook world." All this, he says, is possible through add-ons to your Internet browser. “People just need to know what these cracks are."

With more than 600 million active users, Facebook has become prone to attacks from hackers. Problems such as identity theft and malicious bot messages or status update worms are becoming common. Other than that, privacy concerns which have wracked Facebook since its inception continue to be controversial despite the "controls" it now offers.

The main reason for this is that the social networking mammoth keeps on pushing new features or changes constantly and rapidly, even before we can understand the ones that already exist. "Most often we don’t get a chance to opt in to new features, and can only opt out if they get our attention," explains Stumpel. This leads to a loss of control over personal data and what Facebook can do with it.

To prevent this, it’s necessary to keep going back to those account settings and make full use of whatever control Facebook offers at any point. Here are some of the latest ways you can protect your online identity.

Log out of multiple sessions

How many times have you logged into Facebook from an Internet café or a friend’s mobile phone and forgotten to log out? Every time you do that, even though you close the browsing window or application at the end, Facebook keeps your session open, making you vulnerable to mischief. Now you can log into your account and see a list of active sessions with their details, which include the login time, device name, the approximate location of the login based on IP address, and browser and operating system. If some of them are unauthorized or you are unaware of these activities, shut them immediately and reset your password.

Take control now: In your Facebook account, go to Account > Account Settings > Account Security > Account Activity > Also Active. Facebook lists all your active, open browsers in the Also Active list. Click on End Activity on the unwanted ones. You can also take control of which gadgets you log on from with the Login Approvals feature that comes under Account Security. This feature lets you put a code alert, which can then be SMSed to your mobile phone as soon as you log in from an unrecognized computer. This will alert you in case there’s been a login from a source you don’t know about.

Avoid the unwanted photo tag

Did a friend just put your drunk as hell photograph, wearing a "I hate my boss" T-shirt and making an obscene gesture, online? And did your boss and wife see it and blast you for irresponsibility? Other than the embarrassment, you may get into trouble at home or at work because of friends tagging inane photographs they clicked somewhere you don’t remember.If it’s not photographs, it’s minor irritants such as social or festive messages that you unexpectedly get tagged in. Avoid such irritants with a simple click.

Take control now: Go to Account > Privacy Settings > Sharing on Facebook. Click on ‘Customize settings’. In the page that pops up, choose in each option who can see and comment on things you share, things on your Wall and things you’re tagged in.

Secure your account

Hacking is increasingly a problem on Facebook. The reason is that on most of the networks, Facebook (unlike email clients) works on an unsecured connection (http) and not a secure one (https). Now the social networking site gives you an option to choose a secure site for logging and browsing. You can also choose one-time passwords when logging into Facebook from a public connection.

Take control now: Go to Account > Account Settings> Account Security > Secure Browsing. Tick on Browse Facebook on a Secure Connection (https) whenever possible. In case you are using a public computer, take the option of Facebook One-time Passwords. Text "OTP" to 32665 on your mobile phone and you will get a new one-time password which expires within 20 minutes.

Stop Facebook from haunting you online

Baffled when your Facebook profile image pops up every time you are reading a news site or a travel website online asking you to "Like" a news or review since another friend from Facebook does? Or surprised when you are browsing a travel website and your friends’ photographs pop up suddenly, saying they have been there and "Recommend" a hotel or site? Facebook has partnered with some websites to, as it delicately puts it, "provide you with great, personalized experiences the moment you arrive, such as immediately playing the music you like or displaying friends’ reviews”. Basically if you are logged in to Facebook, these sites can take information from your account and display it and also tell you which of your friends have visited that particular city earlier. If you wish to stop Facebook from haunting you everywhere you go online on your browser, act now.

Take control now: To block a third party, go to Account > Privacy Settings > Apps and Websites> Instant Personalization. Deselect Enable Instant Personalization to stop getting these subtle suggestions from Facebook.

Cut off the ads

A Facebook friend, Mr-I-Like-Everything, "Likes" yet another page and it pops up as a suggestion on the right side of your profile. If you have been on Facebook long enough, chances are one of the "Sponsored" pages has been shoved under your nose at least once. These little ad blurbs which keep popping up on the right-hand side corner, or underneath your apps on the left side of your page, are a mix of advertisements as well as Facebook’s way of further profiling you. Facebook calls them “Suggestions” that add to your social personality, but they are just ads. The good news is that you can now block these permanently.

Take control now: What you need is an ad-blocking add-on for your browser. The best in the market is GreaseMonkey, which works as an add-on for Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, Opera and Internet Explorer. Run it and you will be able to customize the way your Facebook page is displayed or behaves by using small bits of JavaScript. On your browser, go to Tools > Add-ons > GreaseMonkey. Click install. Once the basic add-on is installed, it will direct you to http://userscripts.org, which is an open-source, online space for free scripts that can be installed into GreaseMonkey. Find Remove All Facebook Ads in the list and install it. Google Chrome has a basic extension which is called Hide Facebook Ads, which effectively blocks the ads on your Facebook page.

Customize your Facebook page

Bored to death with the classic Facebook blue and white? There’s help at hand to see your Facebook page in a new, stylized version.

Take control now: Download and install an add-on called Stylish in Mozilla Firefox. Then go to Userstyles.org and choose a theme you want to install. Click on Load Into Stylish. Once the theme is successfully loaded, choose it from a small icon on the right corner and activate the theme. Refresh and enjoy the new look.

Block unwanted applications

How does an application you haven’t given access to know your birth date? The answer is your friends. Even though your settings might be sealed and set, you are vulnerable if your friends don’t care who’s accessing their information—and most of them don’t. Applications on Facebook can harvest not only a person’s birth of date or city of residence, but also that of their friends. As Facebook writes, the applications "may access any information you have made visible to Everyone as well as your publicly available information". Publicly available information "includes your Name, Profile Picture, Gender, Current City, Networks, Friend List, and Pages". Facebook offers a way for you to control what your friends can share about you with these applications. It’s a well-hidden section under Accounts called Facebook Ads.

Take control now: To check which applications are using what from your profile, go to Account > Privacy Settings > Apps and Websites. Block any of the apps you haven’t used for a couple of months and don’t remember when you gave access to. Cut down the information accessible to other applications through your friends by unmarking under "Info accessible through your friends". If you don’t want the "suggestions" that Facebook makes about the pages that your friends "Like", go to Account > Account Settings > Facebook Ads. Choose "No one" for both “Ads shown by third Parties" as well as "Ads and friends".

Remove yourself from Facebook & Google Search

Now you can avoid unwanted attention from generic Google and Facebook name searches with a simple privacy setting to turn off your public visibility.

Take control now: Go to Account > Privacy Settings > Connecting on Facebook. Click on View Settings and under it, and in the options under "Search for you on Facebook", select Friends or Friends of Friends.

Add a dislike button

Tired of no option but to "Like" comments, links and silly photos on Facebook? Now you can install a Dislike button to show your hatred of everything inane that people put on your wall.

Take control now: The Dislike button comes with an add-on called Facebook Dislike 1.2.3 by Thomas Moquet. It works on both Google Chrome and Firefox. Remember that you are the only one who will see that button. For your friends to see what you dislike, they need to install it too.

Illustration by Raajan/Mint

Write to us at businessoflife@livemint.com

This article first appeared in the Business of Life, Mint. The copyright of this article rests with Mint and no part of can be reproduced without prior permission. Please log on to http://www.livemint.com/articles/2011/05/24210434/Take-charge-of-Facebook.html.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/take-charge-of-facebook

TACTIS Symposium 2014

praskrishna — 2014-02-04T07:32:01Z

Tata Consultancy organized the TACTIS Symposium at TCS Siruseri, Chennai on January 28 and 29, 2014. Sunil Abraham participated in the event and gave the key note address.

Click to download the event brochure here

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/data-privacy-day-chenna-2014

Tactical Tech's ONO Party!

praskrishna — 2011-04-04T07:19:47Z

Tactical Tech has made friends with ONO Robot , a friendly Robot Guide and the star of four animated shorts of a series called Survival in the Digital Age, and we'd like to invite you to watch the series with us at our ONO Party.

Activists and independent journalists don't often realise that the information and communications technologies they use can compromise their security and have implications for privacy, freedom of expression and access to information. As an organisation working at the meeting point of advocacy and technology, Tactical Tech finds these issues essential to anyone using technologies to facilitate and strengthen their advocacy work. To raise awareness about the digital traces we leave behind Survival in the Digital Age aims to engage activists to better understand the information and communications technologies they use, so that they can make more informed decisions about the risks they may face.

We're going to be showing the four shorts over party games, snacks and drinks at our ONO Party so do join us on Thursday, March 3rd

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/events/CIS-tacticaltechONO

T20 Mumbai 2017: Dialogue on the Emerging World Economy

praskrishna — 2017-02-27T15:04:05Z

Gateway House, Indian Council on Global Relations organized a dialogue on emerging world economy in Mumbai on 13 and 14 February 2017. Elonnai Hickok participated in the event.

The G20 is the premier multilateral platform for global economic and financial issues. It has a rotating presidency, and this year, Germany is the president of the G20. In that role, it is hosting a number of meetings with government officials (G20), business leaders (B20) and experts from think tanks (T20).

The T20 is an official sub-forum of the G20 process, responsible for contributing ideas and research to the G20 on global economic issues.

Think-20 (T20) was first initiated by the Mexican presidency in 2012 and continued by subsequent G20 presidencies. It serves as an “ideas bank” for the G20 by organizing the analysis of global think tanks and high-level experts on relevant international economic issues. Think-20 recommendations are synthesized in policy briefs and presented to G20 working groups, ministerial committees and leaders summits to help the G20 deliver concrete policy measures.

The Kiel Institute for the World Economy and German Development Institute have been appointed by the German government as coordinators for the think tank activities for the year. The institutes hosted the T20 kick-off meeting on December 1-2, 2016 in Berlin with experts from more than 80 countries., and are scheduled to host the first-ever T20 Africa conference on February 1-3, 2017 and eventually the T20 Summit on May 29-31, 2017.

Gateway House has hosted T20 meetings during the 2015 Turkish presidency and during the 2016 Chinese presidency of the G20. The meetings brought together experts from think tanks working international economic governance and foreign economic policy issues, business leaders and relevant government officials from India and the G20 countries to Mumbai. For Gateway House, the meetings were the outcome of the focus on geoeconomics and on-going research on international economic relations and global financial architecture.

At G20 2017, Germany has announced Resilience, Sustainability and Responsibility as its core vision. This will cover global issues such as financial market regulation, fin-tech, trade and investment, digitization, healthcare, migration and agriculture. This meeting in Mumbai is an important indicator of intellectual partnership between German and Indian think tanks and an opportunity to bring up new ideas and deliver concrete policy suggestions that can help Germany achieve its vision for G20 in 2017.

For more info click here

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/t-20-mumbai-2017

T20 Germany and Beyond: Digital Economy

praskrishna — 2017-06-06T15:25:46Z

Elonnai Hickok participated in a round-table discussion organized by GIZ and EPF in Berlin from May 29 to 30, 2017.

The Think20 (T20) is a network of research institutes and think tanks from the G20 countries. The T20 provides research-based policy advice to the G20, facilitates interaction among its members and the policy community, and communicates with the broader public about issues of global importance. Click to read more

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/t20-germany-and-beyond-digital-economy

Symposium on India’s Cyber Strategy

Admin — 2018-10-02T06:02:59Z

CIS organised a Symposium on India’s Cyber Strategy.

The event saw a total of around 30 participants from industry, academia, law/policy, media, and civil society, and had a panel comprised of Asoke Mukerji, Madhulika Srikumar, and Parminder Jeet Singh.

Presentations

India’s Strategic Interests in the Norms Setting Process in Cyberspace (Presentation by Ambassador Asoke Kumar Mukerji, Former Permanent Representative of India to the United Nations)
The Potential for the Normative Regulation of Cyberspace (Presentation by Arindrajit Basu)

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/events/symposium-on-india2019s-cyber-strategy

Symposium on Human Rights and the Internet in India

praskrishna — 2015-02-07T00:50:00Z

On January 17, 2015 the Center for Communication Governance at National Law University, Delhi in collaboration with the UNESCO Chair on Freedom of Communication and Information at the University of Hamburg hosted a pubic symposium on “Human Rights and Internet in India” as a Network of Centers (NoC) regional event. Bhairav Acharya was a panelist.

See the concept note here.

The event convened a diverse group of collaborators working on issues of Privacy, Surveillance, Data Protection, Freedom of Expression and Intermediary Liability in India, the surrounding region, and internationally.

Agenda | Saturday, January 17 | Public Symposium

Opening words
Prof. (Dr.) Ranbir Singh, Vice Chancellor, National Law University, Delhi
Prof. (Dr.) Wolfgang Schulz, Director, Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet & Society

17:45 – 19:00 Panel I: Surveillance & Databases: Experiences & Privacy
The panel will explore how surveillance in India might become more consistent with international human rights standards and Indian constitutional values. It will also discuss the consequences of ubiquitous database programs for citizens’ human rights. This will include comparative perspectives around similar problems and a discussion of privacy-compatible practices in other countries.

Panelists:
Dr. Usha Ramanathan, Independent Law Researcher

Mr. Bhairav Acharya, Lawyer, Supreme Court of India and Adviser Centre for Internet & Society, Bangalore

Mr. Saikat Datta, Editor (National Security), Hindustan Times

Professor KS Park, Former Commissioner, Korea Communications Standards Commission and Professor, Korea University Law School

19:00 – 20:15 Panel II: Unpacking the Intermediary Liability Debate in India
The panel will focus on the legal framework governing Internet platforms in India, especially with regard to online content and its implications for rights of the citizens. It has been argued that the current legal framework creates incentives for online intermediaries to take down content even when no substantive notice or legitimate reasons have been offered. The panel will consider the debate around intermediary liability in India in light of the ongoing litigation at the Supreme Court. It will reflect on the international experience with intermediary liability legislation and discuss how to ensure that laws support an innovative and competitive environment for intermediaries, while ensuring that they prioritize the preservation of their users’ human rights.

Panelists:
Dr. Joris van Hoboken, Fellow, Information Law Institute at NYU School of Law

Professor (Dr.) Wolfgang Schulz, Director, Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet & Society (HIIG)

Mr. Raman Jit Singh Chima, Lawyer

Chinmayi Arun and Sarvjeet Singh, Centre for Communication Governance at National Law University, Delhi

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/symposium-on-human-rights-and-internet-in-india

Symposium on Data Privacy and Citizen's Rights

Admin — 2018-09-18T15:18:37Z

Shweta Mohandas was a panelist at the Symposium on Data Privacy and Citizen's Rights on September 9, 2018. The Symposium was organised by the Tech Law Forum of NALSAR University of Law, Hyderabad.

Concept Note

The National Academy of Legal Studies and Research (NALSAR) University of Law, Hyderabad is organising a Symposium on DATA PRIVACY AND CITIZEN’S RIGHTS to provide multiple stakeholders one platform to discuss and deliberate on the BN Srikrishna Committee Report and Draft Bill.

The Committee headed by Retd. Justice BN Srikrishna released its Report and Draft Bill on the 27th of July, 2018. It comes at a time when there is increasing discussion about the individual privacy and surveillance by both private organisations and state authorities. Especially in light of the 9-judge Puttaswamy judgment affirming the Fundamental Right to Privacy, there was a need to concretise the right in the form of a statute. The Bill proposes an elaborate data protection framework by utilising concepts such as anonymisation, pseudonymisation, data localisation, guardian data fiduciary, among others. While the Bill has been lauded for providing a data protection framework largely similar to the one proposed by civil society, there are several areas of concern with the Bill such as the amendments suggested to the RTI Act, the impact of the Bill on Free Speech and the lack of substantial provisions regarding surveillance. There has been further criticism that the discussions regarding these issues have been conducted in silos, with little to no dialogue taking place between the various stakeholders and experts in the field.

We believe that there is a need to provide a common forum for these stakeholders to interact with each other in providing suggestions that are representative in nature and nuanced in their expression.

Themes

Privacy and Free Speech This interaction aims to examine the juxtaposition of the constitutional right to free speech and the now constitutionally affirmed right to privacy. Will a new data protection law impact the publication of leaked documents or sting operations like the Radia tapes or Tehelka’s ‘Operation Westend’? If so, how can journalists mitigate the risk of getting sued for breach of privacy? While the jurisprudence concerning the right to privacy is in its most nascent state, it becomes important for us to explore its contours in light of already established constitutional guarantees.

Right to Information and Right to Privacy How does the right to privacy impact the right to information? The guarantee of these two rights arise from diametrically opposite ideologies, in that privacy aims to shield from the public domain information and data concerning individuals and institutions while the right to information aims to promote transparency and disclosure of information held by the state. However, the question remains, is the existence of these two rights necessarily mutually exclusive? Will a new data protection law make it difficult to promote transparency under the Right to Information Act? Is there is a possibility of a clash between the Information Commissions and the proposed Data Protection Authority? This panel would analyze the co-existence and competitive nature of these two rights in the context of the Indian legal space.

Surveillance - As we move towards a form of governance that is increasingly capable of surveilling individual movements and actions, it becomes extremely necessary for us to understand the nature of surveillance. Can data privacy be compromised for surveillance that may be necessary for increased safety in our physical and virtual living spaces? Are there any provisions that protects data in cases of it becoming exploitable? What is the interaction of international statutes (like ICCPR) and the latest Indian statute in terms of its recognition of necessity of surveillance in contrast to the necessity of protection of data.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/symposium-on-data-privacy-and-citizens-rights

Syllabus: “Policy and regulation conducive to rapid ICT sector growth in Myanmar: An introductory course”

praskrishna — 2013-10-24T03:56:31Z

A five-day course is being offered by LIRNEasia in collaboration with Myanmar ICT Development Organization, with support from the Open Society Foundation and the International Development Research Centre of Canada in Myanmar from September 28 to October 5, 2013.

Sunil Abraham will be supporting Prof. Samarajiva on the last optional day of this course in Yangon. Read about the Introductory course on “Policy and regulation conducive to rapid ICT sector growth in Myanmar”

Goal

To enable members of Myanmar civil-society groups (including academics and those from the media) to marshal available research and evidence for effective participation in policy and regulatory processes, thereby improving policy processes and helping achieve the government’s objective of providing ICT access to all.

Outcomes

The objective of the course is to produce discerning and knowledgeable consumers of research who are able to engage in an informed manner in ICT policy and regulatory processes in Myanmar. The course will benefit those working in government and operators as well.

At the end of the course attendees will:

Have an understanding of telecom policy and regulatory processes
Be able to find and assess relevant research & evidence
Be able to summarize the research in a coherent and comprehensive manner
Have the necessary tools to improve their communication skills

- Have some understanding of how media functions and how to effectively interact with media

Assignments

Participants will be formed into teams on Day1. Each group will work on an assignment that addresses both substantive and procedural aspects of law, policy and regulation. Teams will be assigned topic areas that are being developed into regulations under the new Act. They will have to make presentations on what the desirable provisions should be. We will emphasize the procedural aspects as well as the substantive. Disciplined and focused team presentations, preferably using slides, are required.

It is necessary to use the Internet for the assignments. All who have laptops are encouraged to bring them. Arrangements will be made for Internet connectivity at the hotel.

Tentative topic areas

Licensing and authorization regulations
Essential facilities and anti-competitive practices
Universal service policy
Price and quality regulation
Independence of regulatory agency

Course schedule

	Day 1 (September 28)	Day 2 (September 29)	Day 3 (September 30)	Day4 (October 1)	Day 5 (October 2) (optional)
09:00-10:30	S1 Introduction to course: What have been the results of reform & rationale for regulation. Rohan Samarajiva (RS)	S5 Regulatory legitimacy, including procedural legitimacy (RS)	S10 Challenges of monitoring complex license commitments (HG)	S14 How does the Internet work? (TBA)	S16 Internet governance The big picture. Sunil Abraham (SA)
10:30-11:00	Break	Break	Break	Break
11:00-12:00	S2 Interrogating supply-side indicators & research based on them. Helani Galpaya (HG)	S6 Current status of telecom law and policy in Myanmar (RS)	S11 How evidence is used in policy & regulation (panel discussion, KS, RS	S15 The art of media interaction (RS)	S17 Economic & technical interface with telecom industry (RS)
12:00-13:00	S3 Finding information on the web. Roshanthi Lucas Gunaratne (RLG)	S7 Presenting evidence in slides & written submissions (HG)	S12 Essential facilities and anti-competitive practices (RS)	A3 Mock public hearing (RS & panel)	S18 How Internet is governed within India (SA)
13:00-14:00	Lunch	Lunch	Lunch	Lunch
14:00-15:00	A1 Group formation; Assignment explained (HG and RLG)	S8 Licensing and authorization (RS)	A2 Midpoint check on assignment/group work (HG and RLG)	A4 Mock public hearing & critique (RS & panel)	S19 Content regulation (TBA)
15:00-15:30	Break	Break	Break
15:30-17:00	S4 Demand-side research (RS)	S9 Price and quality regulation (RS & HG)	S13 Universal service subsidies: Theory & practice (RS & KS)	Reflection on the course	S20 Surveillance & privacy (SA & RS)
17:00	Group work	Group work	Group work
19:00	Welcome dinner Speaker: TBA

Faculty

Sunil Abraham is the Executive Director of CIS. He is also a social entrepreneur and Free Software advocate. He founded Mahiti in 1998 which aims to reduce the cost and complexity of Information and Communication Technology for the Voluntary Sector by using Free Software. Today, Mahiti employs more than 50 engineers and Sunil continues to serve on the board as a board member. Sunil was elected an Ashoka fellow in 1999 to 'explore the democratic potential of the Internet' and was granted a Sarai FLOSS fellowship in 2003. Between June 2004 and June 2007, he managed the International Open Source Network, a project of the UNDP's Asia-Pacific Development Information Programme serving 42 countries in the Asia-Pacific region. Between September 2007 and June 2008, he also managed ENRAP, an electronic network of International Fund for Agricultural Development projects in the Asia-Pacific facilitated and co-funded by International Development Research Centre, Canada.

Helani Galpaya is LIRNEasia’s Chief Executive Officer. Helani leads LIRNEasia’s 2012-2014 IDRC funded research on improving customer life cycle management practices in the delivery of electricity and e-government services using ICTs. She recently completed an assessment of how the poor in Bangladesh and Sri Lanka use telecenters to access government services. For UNCTAD and GTZ she authored a report on how government procurement practices can be used to promote a country’s ICT sector and for the World Bank/InfoDev Broadband Toolkit, a report on broadband strategies in Sri Lanka. She has been an invited speaker at various international forums on topics ranging from m-Government to ICT indicators to communicating research to policy makers. Prior to LIRNEasia, Helani worked at the ICT Agency of Sri Lanka, implementing the World-Bank funded e-Sri Lanka initiative. Prior to her return to Sri Lanka, she worked in the United States at Booz & Co., Marengo Research, Citibank, and Merrill Lynch. Helani holds a Masters in Technology and Policy from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and a Bachelor’s in Computer Science from Mount Holyoke College, USA.

Roshanthi Lucas Gunaratne is a Research Manager at LIRNEasia and is currently managing the Ford Foundation Funded project on Giving Broadband Access to the Poor in India. She is also contributing to the IDRC Customer Lifecycle Management Practices Project by conducting research on customer lifecycle management practices in telecommunication sector in Bangladesh. Before joining LIRNEasia, Roshanthi worked at the Global Fund to fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, Geneva, Switzerland as a Strategic Information Officer. She contributed to the process of defining the Global Fund Key Performance Indicators, and also worked on improving the performance measurements of their grants. Prior to that, she worked as a telecom project manager at Dialog Telecom, and Suntel Ltd in Sri Lanka. As Suntel she managed the design and implementation of corporate customer projects. She holds a MBA from the Judge Business School, University of Cambridge, UK and a BSc. Eng (Hons) specializing in Electronics and Telecommunication from the University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka.

Rajat Kathuria, PhD

Rohan Samarajiva, PhD, is founding Chair of LIRNEasia, an ICT policy and regulation think tank active across emerging Asian and Pacific economies. He was Team Leader at the Sri Lanka Ministry for Economic Reform, Science and Technology (2002-04) responsible for infrastructure reforms, including participation in the design of the USD 83 million e-Sri Lanka Initiative. He was Director General of Telecommunications in Sri Lanka (1998-99), a founder director of the ICT Agency of Sri Lanka (2003-05), Honorary Professor at the University of Moratuwa in Sri Lanka (2003-04), Visiting Professor of Economics of Infrastructures at the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands (2000-03) and Associate Professor of Communication and Public Policy at the Ohio State University in the US (1987-2000). Dr. Samarajiva was also Policy Advisor to the Ministry of Post and Telecom in Bangladesh (2007-09).

Koesmarihati Sugondo

Resource Material

infodev, ICT regulation toolkit. http://www.ictregulationtoolkit.org/en/Index.html

infoDev. Broadband strategies toolkit. http://broadbandtoolkit.org/en/toolkit/contents

infoDev (2011). Tenth anniversary telecom regulation handbook. http://www.infodev.org/En/Publication.1057.html

ITU (2011). The role of ICT in advancing growth in least developed countries: Trends, challenges and opportunities. Geneva: ITU. http://www.itu.int/ITU-D/ldc/turkey/docs/The_Role_of_ICT_in_Advancing_Growth_in_LDCs_Trends_Challenges_and_Opportunities.pdf

Samarajiva, Rohan (2000). The role of competition in institutional reform of telecommunications: Lessons from Sri Lanka, Telecommunications Policy, 24(8/9): 699-717. http://www.comunica.org/samarajiva.html

Samarajiva, Rohan (2002). Why regulate?, chapter 2 of Effective regulation: Trends in Telecommunication Reform 2002. Geneva: International Telecommunication Union.

Samarajiva, Rohan (2006). Preconditions for effective deployment of wireless technologies for development in the Asia-Pacific, Information Technology and International Development, 3(2): 57-71. http://itidjournal.org/itid/article/view/224/94

Samarajiva, Rohan & Zainudeen, Ayesha (2008). ICT infrastructure in emerging Asia: Policy and regulatory roadblocks, New Delhi & Ottawa: Sage & IDRC http://www.idrc.ca/en/ev-117916-201-1-DO_TOPIC.html

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/policy-and-regulation-conducive-to-rapid-ict-growth-in-myanmar

Sweden 'must raise its net freedom profile'

praskrishna — 2013-07-02T09:57:51Z

While promoting internet freedom is a policy priority for Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt, Sweden's efforts remain largely unknown, according a new report that concludes Sweden needs to do more to raise its global profile as a leader on the issue.

The article by David Landes was published in "The Local" on May 30, 2013. Pranesh Prakash is quoted.

Last week, Bildt and his colleagues at Sweden's Ministry of Foreign Affairs welcomed hundreds of delegates to the Stockholm Internet Forum to discuss what Sweden considers one of the "great global issues of the future".

"Our aim is clear: to create an international, inclusive platform for constructive discussions on the importance of internet freedom for development," Bildt told conference attendees in Stockholm last week.

"We will work to connect the unconnected to an open, secure internet that drives innovation and growth, and that contributes to better democracy and the enjoyment of free speech."

But while Bildt's message was clear to everyone in the audience in Stockholm, a report released on Wednesday suggested that Sweden has so far failed to adequately explain its commitment to internet freedom to a wider audience.

"Sweden does a lot right already, but we are too unknown. We're a small player. So we need to work with others to raise our profile," United Minds analyst Paul Alacron, one of the authors of the report, told The Local.

The report, Freedom and Development on the Internet, was published by the Swedish Institute, together with the United Minds opinion research firm, and is designed to give a qualitative view of internet freedom in six countries, as well as insights into Sweden's perceived importance for the issue.

In-depth interviews with 18 internet experts and activists in Russia, Pakistan, India, China, the United States, and Egypt revealed that there is a demand for Sweden's expertise on internet freedom, but that awareness of what Sweden has to offer is limited.

"If you ask a regular Chinese, most would probably think that the United States is the best role model [for internet freedom]. Most Chinese don't know anything about Sweden," one Chinese blogger is quoted as saying in the report.

Meanwhile, Pranesh Prakash from the Centre for Internet and Society in India, said Sweden could better leverage its strong reputation to help promote internet freedom.

"If the Americans push an issue, many go against it simply because they're behind it. If Sweden takes up the same proposal, the chances are greater that the debate will be about the proposal itself," he said in the report.

According to report co-author Javeria Rizvi Kabani of the Swedish Institute, Sweden has kept a low profile in part due to safety considerations for activists who have participated in exchange programmes organized by the Swedish Institute.

"The safety of those in the of human rights defenders and net activist networks we've created over the last few years and who have visited Sweden always comes first. So we've focused on that rather than Sweden's profile on these issues," she told The Local.

The low-profile approach is nothing new for Sweden, she added.

"We have been very strong in recent years in foreign aid and supporting the process of democratization around the world, but unlike other countries, we haven't put 'brand Sweden' next to that work," Rizvi Kabani explained.

While Sweden is generally recognized as a country that promotes transparency and the freedom of information, the report revealed that the ongoing case involving Sweden's attempts to extradite WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has dented some people's belief that Sweden is committed to internet freedom.

"The trial of Julian Assange makes Sweden's relationship with the issue of internet freedom complicated," Egyptian journalist Nasry Esmat said in the report.

"I'm aware that the accusations against Assange pertain to something completely different, but that makes Sweden appear like a country that doesn't support WikiLeaks."

The report also pointed to a "troublesome development" in some countries whereby regimes are trying to exert more control over the internet and the spread of information.

According to Alacron, such developments, while concerning, are simply one more argument for why Sweden needs to raise its profile as a staunch supporter of internet freedom.

"Sweden has an important role to play. That's very clear," he said.

"Knowledge and understanding about Sweden may be rather low, but at the same time there are high expectations for what Sweden can do. The conditions are ripe, therefore, for Sweden to play an even more important role in these issues."

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/the-local-may-30-2013-sweden-must-raise-its-net-freedom-profile

Sustainable Smart Cities India Conference 2015, Bangalore

vanya — 2015-09-21T02:24:19Z

Nispana Innovative Platforms organized a Sustainable Smart Cities India Conference 2015, in Bangalore on 3rd and 4th September, 2015. The event saw participation from people across various sectors including Government Representatives from Ministries, Municipalities, Regulatory Authorities, as well as Project Management Companies, Engineers, Architects, Consultants, Handpicked Technology Solution Providers and Researchers. National and International experts and stakeholders were also present to discuss the opportunities and challenges in creating smart and responsible cities as well as citizens, and creating a roadmap for converting the smart cities vision into a reality that is best suited for India.

The objective of the conference was to discuss the meaning of a smart city, the promises made, the challenges and possible solutions for implementation of ideas by transforming Indian Cities towards a Sustainable and Smart Future.

Smart Cities Mission

Considering the pace of rapid urbanization in India, it has been estimated that the urban population would rise by more than 400 million people by the year 2050[1] and would contribute nearly 75% to India’s GDP by the year 2030. It has been realized that to foster such growth, well planned cities are of utmost importance. For this, the Indian government has come up with a Smart Cities initiative to drive economic growth and improve the quality of life of people by enabling local area development and harnessing technology, especially technology that leads to Smart outcomes.

Initially, the Mission aims to cover 100 cities across the countries (which have been shortlisted on the basis of a Smart Cities Proposal prepared by every city) and its duration will be five years (FY2015-16 to FY2019-20). The Mission may be continued thereafter in the light of an evaluation to be done by the Ministry of Urban Development (MoUD) and incorporating the learnings into the Mission. This initiative aims to focus on area-based development in the form of redevelopment, or developing new areas (Greenfield) to accommodate the growing urban population and ensure comprehensive planning to improve quality of life, create employment and enhance incomes for all, especially the poor and the disadvantaged.[2]

What is being done?

The Smart City Mission will be operated as a Centrally Sponsored Scheme (CSS) and the Central Government proposes to give financial support to the Mission to the extent of Rs. 48,000 crores over five years i.e. on an average Rs. 100 crore per city per year.The Government has come up with 2 missions:Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation (AMRUT) and Smart Cities Mission for the purpose of achieving urban transformation.The vision is to preserve India’s traditional architecture, culture & ethnicity while implementing modern technology to make cities livable, use resources in a sustainable manner and create an inclusive environment. Additionally, Foreign Direct Investment regulations have been relaxed to invite foreign capital and help into the Smart City Mission.

What is a Smart City?

Over the two-day conference, various speakers shared a common sentiment that the Governments’ mission does not clearly define what encompasses the idea of a Smart City. There is no universally accepted definition of a Smart City and its conceptualization varies from city to city and country to country.

A global consensus on the idea of a smart city is a city which is livable, sustainable and inclusive. Hence, it would mean a city which has mobility, healthcare, smart infrastructure, smart people, traffic maintenance, efficient waste resource management, etc.

Also, there is a global debate at United Nations regarding developmental goals. One of these goals is gender equality which is very important for the smart city initiative. According to this, a smart city must be such where the women have a life free from violence, must be made to participate and are economically empowered.

Promises

The promises of the Smart City mission include:

Make a sustainable future, reduce carbon footprint, adequate water supply, assured electricity supply, proper sanitation, including solid waste management, efficient urban mobility and public transport, affordable housing especially for the poor, robust IT connectivity and digitalization, good governance, especially e-Governance and citizen participation, sustainable environment, safety and security of citizens, particularly women, children and the elderly, and health and education.

The vision is to preserve country’s traditional architecture, culture & ethnicity while implementing modern technology. It was discussed how the Smart City Mission is currently attracting global investment, will create new job opportunities, improve communications and infrastructure, decrease pollution and ultimately improve the quality of living.

Challenges

The main challenges for implementation of these objectives are with respect to housing, dealing

with existing cities and adopting the idea of retro-fitting.

Also, another challenge is that of eradicating urban poverty, controlling environment degradation, formulating a fool-proof plan, proper waste management mechanism, widening roads but not at the cost of pedestrians and cyclist and building cities which are inclusive and cater to the needs of women, children and disabled people.

Some of the top challenges will include devising a fool-proof plan to develop smart cities, meaningful public-private partnership, increasing the renewable energy, water supply, effective waste management, traffic management, meeting power demand, urban mobility, ICT connectivity, e-governance, etc., while preparing for new threats that can emerge with implementation of these new technologies.

What needs to be done?

The following suggestions were made by the experts to successfully implement government’s vision of creating successful smart cities in India.

Focus on the 4 P’s: Public-Private-People Partnership since people very much form a part of the cities.
Integration of organizations, government bodies, and the citizens. The Government can opt for a sentiment analysis.
Active participation by state governments since Land is a state subject under the Constitution. There must be a detailed framework to monitor the progress and the responsibilities must be clearly demarcated.
Detailed plans, policies and guidelines
Strengthen big data initiatives
Resource maximization
Make citizens smart by informing them and creating awareness
Need for competent people to run the projects
Visionary leadership
Create flexible and shared spaces for community development.

National/International case studies

Several national and international case studies were discussed to list down practical challenges to enable the selected Indian cities learn from their mistakes or include successful schemes in their planning from its inception.

Amsterdam Smart City: It is said to be a global village which was transformed into a smart city by involving the people. They took views of the citizens to make the plan a success. The role of big data and open data was highly emphasized. Also, it was suggested that there must be alignment with respect to responsibilities with the central, state and district government to avoid overlap of functions. The city adopted smart grid integration to make intelligent infrastructure and subsidized initiatives to make the city livable.
GIFT City, Gujarat: This is an ICT based sustainable city which is a Greenfield development. It is strategically situated. One of the major features of the City is a utility tunnel for providing repair services and the top of the tunnel can be utilized as a walking/jogging track. The city has smart fire safety measures, wide roads to control traffic, smart regulations.
TEL AVIV Smart City, Israel: It has been named as the Mediterranean cool city with young and free spirted people. The city comprises of creative class with 3 T’s-talent, technology and tolerance. The city welcomes startups and focuses on G2G, G2C and C2C initiatives by adopting technologically equipped initiatives for effective governance and community building programmes.

Participation

The event saw participation from people across various sectors including Government Representatives of Ministries, Municipalities, Regulatory Authorities, as well as Project Management Companies, Engineers, Architects, Consultants, Handpicked Technology Solution Providers and Researchers.

Foundation for Futuristic Cities: The conference saw participation from this think tank based out of Hyderabad working on establishing vibrant smart cities for a vibrant India. They are currently working on developing a "Smart City Protocol" for Indian cities collaborating with Technology, Government and Corporate partners by making a framework for Smart Cities, Big Data and predictive analytics for safe cities, City Sentiment Analysis, Situation Awareness Tools and mobile Apps for better city life by way of Hackathons and Devthons.
Centre for SMART cities, Bangalore: This is a research organization which aims to address the challenge of collaborating and sharing knowledge, resources and best practices that exist both in the private sector and governments/municipal bodies in a usable form and format.
BDP – India (Studio Leader – Urbanism): The Organization is based out of Delhi and is involved in providing services relating to master planning, urbanism, design and landscape design. The team includes interior designers, engineers, urbanists, sustainability experts, lighting designers, etc. The vision is to help build and create high quality, effective and inspiring built spaces.
UN Women: It is a United Nations Organization working on gender equality, women empowerment and elimination of discrimination. They strive to strengthen rights of women by working with women, men, feminists, women’s networks, governments, local authorities and civil society to create national strategies to advance gender equality in line with national and international priorities. The UN negotiated the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development in August 2015 (which would be formally adopted by World leaders in September 2015) and it feature 17 sustainable development goals, one of them being achievement of gender equality and empowerment of all women and girls.
Elematic India Pvt. Ltd.: The Company is a leading supplier of precast concrete technology worldwide providing smart solutions for concrete buildings to help enable build smart cities with safe infrastructure.

Conclusion

The event discussed in great detail about what a smart city would look like in a country like India where every city has different demographics, needs and resources.

The Participants had a mutual understanding that a city is not gauged by its length and width, but by the broadness of its vision and height of its dream. The initiative of creating smart cities would echo across the country as a whole and would not be limited to the urban centers. Hence, the plan must be inclusive in implementation and right from its inception, the people and their needs must be given due consideration to make it a success. The issue of the road ahead was resonating in the minds of many, as to how would this exactly happen. Hence, the first step, as was suggested by the experts, was to involve the citizens by primarily informing them, taking their suggestions and planning the project for every city accordingly. While focusing on cities which would be made better by human ingenuity and technology, along with building mechanism for housing, commerce, transportation and utilities, it must not be forgotten that technology is timely, but culture is timeless. The cities must not be faceless and community space must be built with walkable spaces with smart utilization of limited resources. Also, it must be ensured that the cities do not cater to the needs of the elite and skilled population, but also the less privileged community. Adequate urban mapping must be done to ensure placement for community facilities, such as restrooms, trash bins, and information kiosks.

A story shared from personal experience by an expert Architect in building Green infrastructure was highly instrumental in setting the tone of the conference and is bound to stay with many of the participants. The son of the Architect, a small child from Baroda left his father speechless when he questioned him about the absence of butterflies from the Big City of Mumbai since he used to play with butterflies every morning in his hometown in Gujarat. The incident was genuinely thought provoking and left every architect, government representative and engineer thinking that before they step on to build a smart cities with technologically equipped infrastructure and utilities - can we, as a country, come together and ensure to build a smart city with butterflies? Can we pay equal attention to sustainability, environment and requirements of a community in the smart city that is envisioned by the Government to make the city livable and inclusive?

Questions that I, as a participant, am left with are:

Building a Greenfield project is comparatively easier than upgrading the existing cities into Smart ones, which requires planning and optimum utilization of resources. The role of local bodies needs to be strengthened which would primarily require skilled workforce, beginning from planning to execution. Therefore, what must be done to make the current cities “Smarter” and how encourage and fund ordinary citizens to redefine and prioritize local needs?
The conference touched upon the need for a well-planned policy framework to govern the smart cities; however, what was missing was a discussion on the kind of policies that would be required for every city to ensure governance and monitor the operations. Chalking out well thought of urban policies is the first step towards implementation of the Project and requires deliberation in this regard.
The Government plans seem to cater to the needs of a handful of sections of the society and must focus on safety of women, chalk out initiatives to build basic utilities like public toilets, plan the infrastructure keeping in mind the disabled individuals, etc.

This is of paramount importance since it is necessary for the Government to consider who would be the potential inhabitants of these future smart cities and what would be their particular needs. Before the cities are made better by use of technology, there is a requirement of more toilets as a basic utility. Thus, instead of focusing on technological advancement as the sole foundation to make lives of the people easy, the cities must have provision of utilities which are accessible to develop livable smart cities. Hence, what measures would the Government and other bodies involved in the plan take to ensure that the urban enclaves would not oversee the under privileged class?

Another issue that went unnoticed during the two-day event was pertaining to the Fundamental Rights of individuals within the city. For example, the right of privacy, right to access services and utilities, right to security, etc. These basic rights must be given due recognition by the smart city developers to uphold the spirit of these internationally accepted Human Rights principles. Therefore, it is important to ask how these future cities are going to address the rights of its people in the cities?

Apart from plans of working on waste management, another important factor that must not be overlooked is sustainability in terms of maximization of the available resources in the best possible ways and techniques to be adopted to stop the fast paced degradation of the environment.

The conference could suggest more solutions to adopt measures like rain water harvesting, better sewage management in the existing cities.

Also, the importance of big data in building the smart cities was emphasized by many experts. However, the question of regulation of data being generated and released was not talked about. Use of big data analytics involves massive streaming of data which required regulation and control over its use and generation to ensure such information is not misutilised in any way. In such a scenario, how would these cities regulate and govern big data techniques to make the infrastructure and utilities technologically efficient on one hand, but also to use the large data sets in a monitored fashion on the other?

An answer to these crucial issues and questions would have brought about a lot of clarity in minds of all the officials, planners and the potential residents of the Smart Cities in India.

[1] 2014 revision of the World Urbanization Prospects, United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, July 2014, Available at : http://www.un.org/en/development/desa/publications/2014-revision-world-urbanization-prospects.html

[2] Smart Cities, Mission Statement and Guidelines, Ministry of Urban Development, Government of India, June 2015, Available at : http://smartcities.gov.in/writereaddata/SmartCityGuidelines.pdf

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/sustainable-smart-cities-india-conference-2015-bangalore