Centre for Internet and Society

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

The Evolving Cyber Threat and How to Address It

praskrishna — 2013-11-18T10:49:15Z

Larry Clinton, the President and Chief Executive Officer of the Internet Security Alliance will give a talk on cyber threat and how to address the same. The talk will be held at the office of the Centre for Internet and Society in Bangalore on November 22, 2.30 p.m. to 3.30 p.m.

The talk will broadly cover the following:

Using Public-Private Partnerships to Enhance Cyber Security
Ongoing Threat of Cyber-attacks Must be Fought on Both a Technical and Economic Basis
Targeted Education's Critical Role in Cyber security
Combating the Persistent Cyber Security Threat in the Manufacturing Industry / Cyber Security Threats to the Supply Chain
Economics of Cyber Security

Larry Clinton

Larry Clinton is the President and Chief Executive Officer of the Internet Security Alliance (ISA). ISA is a multi-sector trade association with membership from virtually every one of the designated critical industry sectors. The mission of the ISA is to combine advanced technology with economics and public policy to create a sustainable system of cyber security.

Mr. Clinton is regularly called upon to testify before both the U.S. House and Senate. In 2008, ISA published its Cyber Security “Social Contract,” which is both the first and last source cited in the Executive Summary of President Obama’s “Cyberspace Policy Review” (click here for report). This report also cited more than a dozen of ISA’s white papers – far more than any other source. Recently, these ISA documents were also the inspiration for many of the recommendations in the House Republican Cyber Security Task Force Report (click here for report).

Mr. Clinton is known for his ability to take the complicated issues in this space and explain them clearly to a wide range of audiences: professional, policy makers and the general public. He has been featured in mass media such as USA Today, the PBS News Hour, the Morning Show on CBS, Fox News, CNN’s Situation Room, C-SPAN, and CNBC. He has also authored numerous professional journal articles on cyber security. This year he has published articles in the Cutter IT Journal, the Journal of Strategic Security and the Journal of Software Technology (click here for a full list of articles and other ISA news appearances).

The ISA’s pro-market, incentives-based approach to cyber security, rather than regulation, is outlined in its numerous publications, including the ISA Cyber Security Social Contract and Financial Management of Cyber Security series, which were written by the ISA Board of Directors and edited by Mr. Clinton (click here for the full list of ISA Publications).

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/events/evolving-cyber-threat-and-how-to-address-it

Civil society and Internet Governance: practices from Southeast Asia and beyond

praskrishna — 2013-11-19T09:29:44Z

On 21 October, the day before the opening of the 2013 Internet Governance Forum in Indonesia, Hivos’ Southeast Asia Regional Office co-organised a pre-event workshop with ID-CONFIG, “Civil Society and Internet Governance: Multi-Stakeholder Engagement Practices from Southeast Asia and Beyond,” at the Bali Nusa Dua Convention Centre.

Click to read the original published by Hivos on October 31.

Recognising that the IGF has been a global project for the past eight years, the workshop provided a critical perspective to the forum’s impact on local civil society organisations. In the past, the IGF has been criticised for focusing on policy-level IG debates that lack grassroots, on-the-ground applications. Additionally, it is has been challenged to demonstrate the relevance of IG policies for civil society organisations, which frequently have limited understanding of and involvement in the issue.

By drawing empirical case studies from different regions of Asia, the aim of the workshop was to help civil society organisations find a relevant role in IG and explore how IG frameworks with a focus on the role of civil society can be applied in developing regions to uphold the right of citizens to express themselves through the Internet.

Five speakers discussed the intersections between Internet Freedom and Internet Governance: Arthit Suriyawongkul (Thai Netizen Network, Thailand), Shahzad Ahmad (Bytes 4 All, Pakistan), Donny Budhi Utoyo (ICTWatch, Indonesia), Lobsang Gyatso Sither (Tibet Action Institute), and Pranesh Prakash (Center for Internet and Society, India). Attended by approximately 70 participants, the discussions revolved around the varying feasibility of a multi-stakeholder platform in different political contexts.

The speakers represent civil society organisations in vastly different political environments in South Asia, Southeast Asia and East Asia. They all continuously pointed out how emerging democratic movements are often counterbalanced by political power concentrated in existing state institutions. In such state-centric Internet Governance contexts, civil society organisations are often pitted against official censorship and filtering attempts. While speakers from relatively more democratic countries, namely India and Indonesia, showcased examples of how civil society organisations have engaged the government in Internet policy-making, those from Thailand and Pakistan illustrated the need for a strong litigation capacity for public interests in order to defend citizens from state infringement of their rights. At the other end of the spectrum, Gyatso Sither emphasised the importance of safeguarding Tibetan activists in the homeland and in the diaspora from surveillance by the Chinese state, whose latest strategies have included interceptions, targeted malware, and cyber attacks.

Nonetheless, civil society organisations are uniquely placed to engage both government agencies, as providers of regulatory frameworks, and the private sector, as the primary provider of ICT infrastructure, to demand equitable access to the Internet and maintain the freedom to expression online. Through an ideal multi-stakeholder framework, civil society organisations can empower communities by strategically using ICT to uphold transparency and accountability.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/hivos-october-31-2013-civil-society-and-internet-governance-practices-southeast-asia-and-beyond

October 2013 Bulletin

praskrishna — 2014-01-04T04:31:01Z

Our newsletter for the month of October 2013 can be accessed below.

Highlights

The National Resource Kit team is pleased to bring you its research for the states of Delhi, Madhya Pradesh and Arunachal Pradesh, and the Union Territory of Daman and Diu.
The Department of Electronics and Information Technology invited comments on the Framework on the proposed adoption of Open Source Software in E-Governance Systems. CIS gave its feedback.
The Access to Knowledge team in collaboration with the Goa University re-released the Konkani Vishwakosh under Creative Commons License CC-BY-SA-3.0.
Sunil Abraham, Pranesh Prakash and Chinmayi Arun participated in the Internet Governance Forum held in Bali, Indonesia from October 21 to 25. Overall CIS spoke in 7 panels.
In an article on Spy Files, Maria Xynou examines the legality of India’s surveillance technologies and their potential connection to India’s central monitoring system.
A clause-by-clause comments on the Working draft version of the Human DNA Profiling Bill, 2012 was sent to the Ministry of Science and Technology.
CIS started the first Privacy Watch in India. The map includes data on the UID, NPR and CCTNS schemes, installation of CCTV cameras and the use of drones throughout the country.

Accessibility

As part of our project (under a grant from the Hans Foundation) on creating a national resource kit of state-wise laws, policies and programmes on issues relating to persons with disabilities in India, we bring you draft chapters for the states of Madhya Pradesh and Arunachal Pradesh, and the union territory of Daman and Diu. With this we have completed compilation of draft chapters for 24 states and 5 union territories. Feedback and comments are invited from readers for the following chapters:

National Resource Kit

The Daman and Diu Chapter (by Anandhi Viswanathan, October 28, 2013).
The Arunachal Pradesh Chapter (by CLPR, October 29, 2013).
The Madhya Pradesh Chapter (by Anandhi Viswanathan, October 30, 2013).
The Delhi Chapter (by Anandhi Viswanathan, October 31, 2013).

Note: All of these are early drafts and will be reviewed and updated.

Survey (Other Organisation)

Accessibility of Banks and Financial Services Institutions: A Global Survey (posted by Nilofar Ansher, October 20, 2013). G3ict and Scotiabank, requests senior managers, COO / CEOs, Managing Directors, IT Directors, HR Directors, and accessibility professionals from banks and financial services companies to participate.

Blog Entry

Bengali eSpeak Aids in Disaster Management (by Anirudh Sridhar, October 15, 2013).

Access to Knowledge

The Access to Knowledge programme addresses the harms caused to consumers and human rights, and critically examines Open Government Data, Open Access to Scholarly Literature, and Open Access to Law, Open Content, Open Standards, and Free/Libre/Open Source Software. We produced a column in the Economic and Political Weekly, submitted our feedback on Framework on Open Source Software Adoption in E-Governance Systems, and conducted 3 Wikipedia workshops:

Article

The Fight for Digital Sovereignty (by Sunil Abraham, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol-XLVIII No. 42, October 19, 2013).

Blog Entries

Mobile Phone Patents: Prior Art Survey (by Nehaa Chaudhari, October 23, 2013).
Ambiguity in the App Store: Understanding India’s emerging IT sector in light of IP (by Samantha Cassar, October 24, 2013).

Submission

Feedback on the Framework on OSS Adoption in E-Governance Systems (by Nehaa Chaudhari, October 26, 2013). In September, 2013, the DeitY invited comments on the Framework on the proposed adoption of Open Source Software in E-Governance Systems. CIS gave its feedback.

Events Participated In

OSOD 2013: International Workshop on Open Science and Open Data (organised by Indian Statistical Institute, Bangalore, October 7, 2013). Nehaa Chaudhari participated as a panelist and gave a presentation on Government Accessibility and Copyright Conundrum.

National Conference on Opening up by Closing the Circle: Strengthening Open Access in India (co-organised by UNESCO, Central Library, Jawaharlal Nehru University and the Commonwealth Educational Media Centre for Asia, October 21, 2013). Nehaa Chaudhari was a panelist in the discussion on "Why Open Access?". She gave a presentation on 'Pondering Copyright and Recasting Openness'.

Note: The following has been done under grant from the Wikimedia Foundation (http://bit.ly/SPqFOl). As part this project (http://bit.ly/X80ELd), we held 3 Wikipedia workshops in October:

Event Co-organised

Re-release of Konkani Vishwakosh under CC-BY-SA 3.0 (organised by Goa University and CIS-A2K, Goa University Conference Hall, September 26, 2013). Nitika Tandon has blogged about the event.

Events Organised

Workshop on Wikipedia in the Indian Undergraduate Language Classrooms (October 1, 203, Christ University, Bangalore). Dr. U.B. Pavanaja conducted the workshop.
Train the Trainer — Four-day long Residential Programme (October 3 – 6, 2013, CEO Center, Gubbi, Bangalore. CIS-A2K Team conducted the workshop. Seventeen people participated in the event.
Konkani Vishwakosh Digitization (Goa University, October 19-20, 2013). CIS-A2K team conducted the workshop. Thirty-seven people participated in the event.

Events Participated In

Re-sourcing Indian Cinema: Humanities Research, New Archives and Collaborative Knowledge Production (organised by the Centre for Contemporary Studies and the Centre for Study of Culture and Society, October 29, 2013). T. Vishnu Vardhan gave a talk on “Let Cinephiles Collaborate: Pleasures and Perils of Indian Film History on Wikipedia”.

Media Coverage

CIS gave its inputs for the following media coverage:

Mangalore: Konkani writers resolve to form all-India forum at JKS conference (Daijiworld, October 1, 2013).
Wikipedia in Indian Languages on Mobile Phones (by Megha Prakash, Sci Dev Net, October 15, 2013).
कोंकणी विश्‍वकोश ‘विकिपीडिया’वर (Navprabha Daily, October 22, 2013). A detailed article about the digitalization of Konkani Vishwakosh.

Internet Governance

CIS is doing a project (under a grant from Privacy International and International Development Research Centre (IDRC)) on conducting research on surveillance and freedom of expression (SAFEGUARDS). So far we have organised seven privacy round-tables and drafted the Privacy (Protection) Bill. This month we bring you clause-by-clause comments on the Human DNA Profiling Bill, 2012, and a map monitoring privacy in India. As part of its project (funded by Citizen Lab, Munk School of Global Affairs, University of Toronto and support from the IDRC) on mapping cyber security actors in South Asia and South East Asia we did an interview with Anja Kovacs on cyber security. With this we have completed a total of 10 video interviews:

Internet Governance Forum

Sunil Abraham, Pranesh Prakash and Chinmayi Arun participated in the Internet Governance Forum held in Bali, Indonesia in the month of October. Overall, CIS spoke in 7 panels:

Charting the Charter: Internet Rights and Principles Online (organised by IRP Coalition, October 22, 2013). Pranesh Prakash was a panelist.
Fair process frameworks for cross-border online spaces (organised by the Internet & Jurisdiction Project, Civil Society of France, Western Europe and Others Group and Internet & Jurisdiction Project, Civil Society of Germany, Western Europe and Others Group, October 22, 2013). Sunil Abraham and Chinmayi Arun were panelists for this workshop.
Removing Barriers to Connectivity: Connecting the Unconnected (organised by Internet Society and ETNO, October 23, 2013). Pranesh Prakash was a panelist.
FOSS: Smart Choice for Developing Countries (organised by TechNation and Open Source Alliance of Central Asia, October 23, 2013). Sunil Abraham spoke on FOSS and IT Growth Policies in South Asia.
Privacy: from regional regulations to global connections? (organised by Internet Society, Bali, October 24, 2013). Sunil Abraham was one of the panelists.
Human rights, freedom of expression and free flow of information on the Internet (a Focus Session on Openness, October 24, 2013). Pranesh Prakash was a speaker at this event.
Taking Stock: Emerging Issues - Internet Surveillance (a session on Internet Surveillance, October 25, 2013). Pranesh Prakash made intervention in this session.
Tweets from Bali IGF 2013: To enable research by those who didn't want to mess around with Twitter's APIs, CIS has made available tweets from the IGF as downloadable .CSV files.

Privacy

Magazine Article

What India can Learn from the Snowden Revelations (by Elonnai Hickok, Yahoo, October 23, 2013). The title of the article was changed in the version published by Yahoo.

Blog Entries

Concerns Regarding DNA Law (by Bhairav Acharya, October 9, 2013): http://bit.ly/1aoxXM9.
Interview with Big Brother Watch on Privacy and Surveillance (by Maria Xynou, October 15, 2013): http://bit.ly/1cRDMbV.
Interview with Bruce Schneier (by Maria Xynou, October 17, 2013): http://bit.ly/GS6oDX.
An Interview with the Tactical Technology Collective (by Maria Xynou, October 18, 2013): http://bit.ly/1i1lVNo.
Interview with Dr. Alexander Dix (by Maria Xynou, October 23, 2013): http://bit.ly/1a7dgtQ.
Open Letter to Members of the European Parliament of the Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs Committee (by Elonnai Hickok, October 23, 2013): http://bit.ly/17eZntz.
An Interview with Jacob Kohnstamm (by Elonnai Hickok, October 25, 2013): http://bit.ly/17NcQmD.
Spy Files 3: WikiLeaks Sheds More Light on the Global Surveillance Industry (by Maria Xynou, October 25, 2013): http://bit.ly/1d6EmjD.

Comments

Re: The Human DNA Profiling Bill, 2012 (by Bhairav Acharya, October 9, 2013). CIS provided clause-by-clause comments on the on the Working Draft version of the Human DNA Profiling Bill: http://bit.ly/17Jpp63.

Announcement

The India Privacy Monitor Map (by Maria Xynou with assistance from Srinivas Atreya, October 9, 2013). CIS has started a first of its kind Privacy Watch in India. The map includes data on the UID, NPR and CCTNS schemes, as well as on the installation of CCTV cameras and the use of drones throughout the country: http://bit.ly/19A5mCZ.

Event Organised

Privacy Round-table, New Delhi (organised by FICCI, DSCI and CIS, FICCI, Federation House, Tansen Marg, New Delhi, October 19, 2013): http://bit.ly/GAsStr.

Event Participated In

'Free Speech and Media in South Asia: Human Rights Concerns in a Globalizing World (organised by the Programme in Comparative Media Law and Policy, Centre for Socio-Legal Studies, University of Oxford, in collaboration with the Centre for Media and Governance, National Law University, Delhi, Oxford University, October 25, 2013). Chinmayi Arun spoke about “Privacy and Surveillance in India” in a panel discussion: http://bit.ly/18bRGi5.

Cyber Security

Laird Brown, a strategic planner and writer with core competencies on brand analysis, public relations and resource management and Purba Sarkar who in the past worked as a strategic advisor in the field of SAP Retail are working in this project:

Part 11: An Interview with Anja Kovacs (October 15, 2013): http://bit.ly/15EAZOE.

Other IG Updates
Event Organised

Mapping Digital Media: Broadcasting, Journalism and Activism in India (co-organised by Alternative Law Forum, Maraa and CIS, Bangalore International Centre, October 27, 2013). Samantha Cassar has blogged about the event: http://bit.ly/17EVtdw. It was covered by the New Indian Express (http://bit.ly/1dGENE6) and Hindu (http://bit.ly/1bcVUIU) on October 28.

Events Participated In

Religious Pluralism and the Tensions between Freedom of Expression and Respect for the 'Other’ (organised by Reset-Dialogues on Civilizations project, in cooperation with Jamia Millia Islamia, India Habitat Centre, New Delhi, October 10, 2013). Chinmayi Arun was a speaker at the session on “Democracy and the Tension between Freedom of Speech and Respect for the Other’s Religion, Culture, Identity, India and Europe”: http://bit.ly/194dtI7.
Fragmentation in a Democracy: The Role of Social Movements and the Media (organised by the Observer Research Foundation, Delhi and Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung, Berlin at Observer Research Foundation, New Delhi, October 16, 2013). Sunil Abraham was a panelist in the session on “Impact of Media, Social Media & Technology on Democracy / Governance”: http://bit.ly/17e3PZ9.
Internet, Mobile & Digital Economy Conference (IMDEC) 2013 (organised by FICCI, in association with the Ministry of Communications & IT, Government of India, New Delhi, October 25, 2013). Sunil Abraham participated as a speaker in the session on "The Internet We Want: A Multistakeholder Approach": http://bit.ly/1b8QHDD.

New and Media Coverage

CIS gave its inputs to the following media coverage:

Decline in web freedom steepest in India: Report (by Javed Anwer, The Times of India, October 3, 2013): http://bit.ly/1cVOJ99.
Google survey: 37% of urban Indian voters are online (by Anuja and Moulishree Srivastava, Livemint, October 8, 2013): http://bit.ly/1gtqqDY.
The quest for genuine clout on the internet (by Karthik Subramanian, October 13, 2013): http://bit.ly/1b8TdKa.
India believes in Complete Freedom of Cyber Space: Kapil Sibal (by Elizabeth Roche, Livemint, October 14, 2013): http://bit.ly/1fZgwd1.
Location Tracking: Why the Govt-Mobile Manufacturer War Won’t End Soon (by Danish Raza, FirstPost, October 15, 2013): http://bit.ly/HkIvF7.
Bouquets & brickbats for Google's new privacy policy (by Indu Nandakumar, Economic Times, October 18, 2013): http://bit.ly/18Rzkqm.
Bali meet to discuss Internet governance issues (by Moulishree Srivastava, October 22, 2013): http://bit.ly/17I4r3M.
Indian politicians yet to tap voters online: CIS’s Abraham (by Venkatesh Upadhyay, Livemint, October 22, 2013): http://bit.ly/17HRV4s.
Beyond the Searchlight (by Debarshi Dasgupta, October 23, 2013): http://bit.ly/17IitlZ.
Nowhere to hide: Govt making your personal details public (by FirstPost editors, FirstPost, October 28, 2013): http://bit.ly/1dGE6KJ.
Your private data may be online, courtesy govt (by Somesh Jha and Surabhi Agarwal, Business Standard, October 29, 2013): http://bit.ly/HpQRMp.
Saving privacy as we knew it (by Somesh Jha and Surabhi Agarwal, Business Standard, October 29, 2013): http://bit.ly/16HNYwu.
E-governance hopes rise as India crosses 1 billion transactions (by J Srikant, Economic Times, October 29, 2013): http://bit.ly/1cnJIKd.

Digital Humanities

CIS is building research clusters in the field of Digital Humanities. The Digital will be used as a way of unpacking the debates in humanities and social sciences and look at the new frameworks, concepts and ideas that emerge in our engagement with the digital. The clusters aim to produce and document new conversations and debates that shape the contours of Digital Humanities in Asia:

Events Participated In

GFM 2013 (organized by the University of Luneberg, Germany, October 3 – 5, 2013). Dr. Nishant Shah participated in a panel discussion with Wendy Chun, Tom Levine and Geert Lovink, around 'The End of Bibliographies: New Media and Research'. Nishant also participated as a panelist in a panel discussion on 'Open Up: Pragmatism and Politics of Open Access': http://bit.ly/1f9LCOH.
Digitalization of Culture (organized by Leuphana University, Luneberg, October 8, 2013). Dr. Nishant Shah did an introduction keynote to 1600 undergraduate students. A video of the lecture can be accessed here: http://bit.ly/1enWQPv.
RENEW: The 5th International Conference on the Histories of Media Art, Science and Technology (hosted by RIXC Centre for New Media Culture in Riga in partnership with the Art Academy of Latvia, Stockholm School of Economics in Riga and Danube University’s Center for Image Science, October 8 - 11, 2013). Dr. Nishant Shah was a part of the selection committee for the conference and chaired a session on Network Art on October 9: http://bit.ly/17e41aJ.

Blog Entry

A Hitchhikers Guide to the Cyberspace (by Anirudh Sridhar, October 4, 2013): http://bit.ly/1ga8yfH.

Knowledge Repository on Internet Access

CIS in partnership with the Ford Foundation is executing a project to create a knowledge repository on Internet and society. This repository will comprise content targeted primarily at civil society with a view to enabling their informed participation in the Indian Internet and ICT policy space. The repository is available at the Internet Institute website: http://bit.ly/1iQT2UB.

Modules

World Intellectual Property Organisation (by Anirudh Sridhar and Snehashish Ghosh, October 31, 2013). WIPO is a specialized agency of the United Nations which deals with issues related to intellectual property rights throughout the world. Find out more at http://bit.ly/17a8WEk.
An Interview on Internet Governance with Professor Milton Mueller and Jeremy Malcolm (by Anirudh Sridhar, October 31, 2013). Professor Milton Mueller from the Syracuse University School of Information and Jeremy Malcolm, an Information Technology and Intellectual Property Lawyer, spoke about current issues and debates surrounding internet governance: http://bit.ly/17ix3Ro.

About CIS
The Centre for Internet and Society is a non-profit research organization that works on policy issues relating to freedom of expression, privacy, accessibility for persons with disabilities, access to knowledge and IPR reform, and openness (including open government, FOSS, open standards, etc.), and engages in academic research on digital natives and digital humanities.

Follow us elsewhere

Twitter: https://twitter.com/CISA2K

Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/cisa2k

Visit us at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/India_Access_To_Knowledge

E-mail: a2k@cis-india.org

Support Us
Please help us defend consumer / citizen rights on the Internet! Write a cheque in favour of ‘The Centre for Internet and Society’ and mail it to us at No. 194, 2nd ‘C’ Cross, Domlur, 2nd Stage, Bengaluru – 5600 71.

Request for Collaboration:
We invite researchers, practitioners, and theoreticians, both organisationally and as individuals, to collaboratively engage with Internet and society and improve our understanding of this new field. To discuss the research collaborations, write to Sunil Abraham, Executive Director, at sunil@cis-india.org or Nishant Shah, Director – Research, at nishant@cis-india.org. To discuss collaborations on Indic language wikipedia, write to T. Vishnu Vardhan, Programme Director, A2K, at vishnu@cis-india.org

CIS is grateful to its donors, Wikimedia Foundation, Ford Foundation, Privacy International, UK, Hans Foundation and the Kusuma Trust which was founded by Anurag Dikshit and Soma Pujari, philanthropists of Indian origin, for its core funding and support for most of its projects.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/october-2013-bulletin

Panel on Privacy, Surveillance & the UID in the post-Snowden era

praskrishna — 2013-11-26T19:05:54Z

The Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) and the Say No to UID campaign invite you to a discussion on the UID and on the implications of the world's largest biometric data collection scheme in a post-Snowden era. The panel will take place on November 30th at the Institution of Agricultural Technologists in Bangalore.

Probably one of the most important things that we learnt following the Edward Snowden revelations is that our data has value. In fact, what we learnt is that our data has immense value...since it is clearly worth billions of dollars — to say the least.

However, not only does India lack privacy legislation which could safeguard our data from potential abuse, but it is also currently implementing some of the most controversial surveillance schemes in the world, in addition to the world's largest biometric data collection scheme. What's probably more alarming is that such schemes, such as the UID, lack legal backing, as well as public and parliamentary debate!

We aim to change that. As such, the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) and the Say No to UID campaign jointly invite you to attend a panel which will discuss all of these crucial topics.

Schedule of panel:

3.30pm - 4pm: Tea/Coffee/Refreshments & Registration

4pm - 5.30pm: Panel on Privacy, Surveillance & the UID in the post-Snowden era

5.30pm - 6pm: Q&A and Open Discussion

Panelists:

- Dr. Usha Ramanathan: Academic, Jurist and Activist

- K V Narendra: Director of Rezorce Research Foundation

- Vinay Baindur: Researcher on Urban Local Government & Decentralisation

- Maria Xynou: Policy Associate on the Privacy Project at the Centre for Internet & Society

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/events/panel-on-privacy-surveillance-uid-in-the-post-snowden-era

DesiSec: Episode 1 - Film Release and Screening

purba — 2013-12-17T08:13:32Z

The Centre for Internet and Society is pleased to to announce the release of the first documentary film on cybersecurity in India - DesiSec. We hope you can join us for a special screening of the first episode of DesiSec, on 11th December, at CIS!

Early 2013, the Centre for Internet and Society began shooting its first documentary film project. After months of researching and interviewing activists and experts, CIS is thrilled to announce the release of the first documentary film on cybersecurity in India - DesiSec: Cybersecurity and Civi Society in India.

Trailer link: http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/cis-cybersecurity-series-film-trailer

CIS is hosting a special screening of DesiSec: Episode 1 on 11th December, 2013, 6 pm and invites you to this event. The first episode is centered around the issue of privacy and surveillance in cyber space and how it affects Indian society.

We look forward to seeing you there!

RSVP: purba@cis-india.org

Venue: http://osm.org/go/yy4fIjrQL?m=

This work was carried out as part of the Cyber Stewards Network with aid of a grant from the International Development Research Centre, Ottawa, Canada.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/desisec-episode-1-film-release-and-screening

Nullcon Goa Feb 2014 — International Security Conference

praskrishna — 2013-12-13T06:42:48Z

Nullcon (http://nullcon.net) is celebrating its 5th Anniversary with efforts being made to bring key decision makers, thought leaders with an expectation of 500+ participants from the industry and government sector. Nullcon is scheduled from February 12 to 15, 2014 at Bogmallo Beach Resort, Goa, comprising of 2 days of technical trainings, followed by 2days of talks, workshops, exhibition, networking parties and CTFs.

The Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) is one of the sponsors for this event.

The Conference

The nullcon conference is a unique platform for security companies/evangelists to showcase their research and technology. Nullcon hosts Prototype, Exhibition, Trainings, Free Workshops, null Job Fair at the conference. It is an integrated and structured platform which caters to the needs of IT Security industry at large in a comprehensive way.

About Nullcon

Nullcon was founded in 2010 with the idea of providing an integrated platform for exchanging information on the latest attack vectors, zero day vulnerabilities and unknown threats. Our motto - "The neXt security thing!" drives the objective of the conference i.e. to discuss and showcase the future of information security and the next-generation of offensive and defensive security technology. The idea started as a gathering for researchers and organizations to brain storm and demonstrate why the current technology is not sufficient and what should be the focus for the coming years pertaining to information security. In addition to security, one of the section of the conference called Desi Jugaad (Hindi for "Local Hack") is dedicated to hacking where we invite researchers who come up with innovative security/tech/non-tech solutions for solving real life challenges or taking up new initiatives.

Nullcon is managed and marketed by Payatu Technologies. The idea of nullcon emerged out of null - The open security community, a registered not-for-profit society and the largest active security community in India with over 8 chapters in major cities - Bangalore, Mumbai, Chennai, Pune, Hyderabad, Mysore, Trivandrum and Delhi. As a tribute to the community nullcon funds null to further null's cause and supports all of its initiatives. If you are interested in knowing how null can help your organization and would like to contribute to null, please get in touch with null team at info@null.co.in

Dates:
Training: February 12 - 13, 2014
Conference: February 14-15, 2014
Registation: http://nullcon.net/website/register.php
Keynotes:

Jeff Moss, VP & CSO - ICANN, Founder - Defcon/Blackhat
Dr. Kiran Bedi, Ex-IPS (Police)

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/events/nullcon-goa-2014-intl-security-conference

Pranesh Prakash elected as Asia-Pacific Representative to the Executive Committee of NonCommercial Users Constituency

praskrishna — 2014-01-06T02:50:52Z

Pranesh Prakash has been elected as the Asia-Pacific representative to the executive committee of the NonCommercial Users Constituency (NCUC) (part of the Non-Commercial Stakeholders Group, which is in turn part of the Generic Names Supporting Organization, which is in turn part of ICANN).

More information about the NCUC including how to join can be found at http://www.ncuc.org/

Background & Mission Statement:
The purpose of the NonCommercial Users Constituency (NCUC) is to represent, through its elected representatives and its interest groups, the interests and concerns of non-commercial registrants and non-commercial Internet users of generic Top-level Domains (gTLDs).

It provides a voice and representation in ICANN processes to: non-profit organizations that serve non-commercial interests; nonprofit services such as education, philanthropies, consumer protection, community organizing, promotion of the arts, public interest policy advocacy, children's welfare, religion, scientific research, and human rights; public interest software concerns; families or individuals who register domain names for noncommercial personal use; and Internet users who are primarily concerned with the noncommercial, public interest aspects of domain name policy.

Chair
William Drake, U. Zurich, Switzerland

Executive Committee (Europe)
Stefania Milan, Tilburg University, the Netherlands

Executive Committee (Africa)
Grace Githaiga, Kenya ICT Action Network

Executive Committee (Asia and the Pacific)
Pranesh Prakash, Centre for Internet and Society, India

Executive Committee (North America)
Roy Balleste, St. Thomas University, USA

Executive Committee (Latin America)
Carlos Affonso Pereira de Souza, Rio de Janeiro Institute for Technology of Society

The election results were as under:

Total Ballots Cast (including duplicates): 146
Ballots Counted (excluding duplicates): 124
Voters Who Haven't Voted: 84

Chair
1: 155 votes: William Drake
2: 22 votes: Abstain

Executive Committee (Europe)
3: 152 votes: Stefania Milan
4: 21 votes: Abstain

Executive Committee (Africa)
5: 37 votes: Hago Dafalla
6: 106 votes: Grace Githaiga
7: 34 votes: Abstain

Executive Committee (Asia and the Pacific)
8: 43 votes: Peter Green (aka Zuan Zhang)
9: 17 votes: Imran Ahmed Shah
10: 38 votes: Walid Al-Saqaf
11: 62 votes: Pranesh Prakash
12: 33 votes: Abstain

Executive Committee (North America)
13: 145 votes: Roy Balleste
14: 32 votes: Abstain

Executive Committee (Latin America)
15:149 votes: Carlos Affonso Pereira de Souza
16: 24 votes: Abstain

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/icann-december-24-2013-pranesh-prakash-elected-as-asia-pacific-representative-to-executive-committee-of-nuc

Big Brother is watching you

chinmayi — 2014-01-06T09:31:22Z

India has no requirements of transparency whether in the form of disclosing the quantum of interception or in the form of notification to people whose communication was intercepted.

The article by Chinmayi Arun was published in the Hindu on January 3, 2014.

The Gujarat telephone tapping controversy is just one of many kinds of abuse that surveillance systems enable. If a relatively primitive surveillance system can be misused so flagrantly despite safeguards that the government claims are adequate, imagine what is to come with the Central Monitoring System (CMS) and Netra in place.

News reports indicate Netra — a “NEtwork TRaffic Analysis system” — will intercept and examine communication over the Internet for keywords like “attack,” “bomb,” “blast” or “kill.” While phone tapping and the CMS monitor specific targets, Netra is vast and indiscriminate. It appears to be the Indian government’s first attempt at mass surveillance rather than surveillance of predetermined targets. It will scan tweets, status updates, emails, chat transcripts and even voice traffic over the Internet (including from platforms like Skype and Google Talk) in addition to scanning blogs and more public parts of the Internet. Whistle-blower Edward Snowden said of mass-surveillance dragnets that “they were never about terrorism: they’re about economic spying, social control, and diplomatic manipulation. They’re about power.”

So far, our jurisprudence has dealt with only targeted surveillance; and even that in a woefully inadequate manner. This article discusses the slow evolution of the right to privacy in India, highlighting the context and manner in which it is protected. It then discusses international jurisprudence to demonstrate how the right to privacy might be protected more effectively.

Privacy and the Constitution

A proposal to include the right to privacy in the Constitution was rejected by the Constituent Assembly with very little debate. Separately, a proposal to give citizens an explicit fundamental right against unreasonable governmental search and seizure was also put before the Constituent Assembly. This proposal was supported by Dr. B.R. Ambedkar. If accepted, it would have included within our Constitution the principles from which the United States derives its protection against state surveillance. However, the proposed amendment was rejected by the Constituent Assembly.

Fortunately, the Supreme Court has gradually been reading the right to privacy into the fundamental rights explicitly listed in the Constitution. After its initial reluctance to affirm the right to privacy in the 1954 case of M.P. Sharma vs. Satish Chandra, the court came around to the view that other rights and liberties guaranteed in the Constitution would be seriously affected if the right to privacy was not protected. In Kharak Singh vs. The State of U.P., the court recognised “the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects” and declared that their right against unreasonable searches and seizures was not to be violated. The right to privacy here was conceived around the home, and unauthorised intrusions into homes were seen as interference with the right to personal liberty.

If the Kharak Singh judgment was progressive in its recognition of the right to privacy, it was conservative about the circumstances in which the right applies. The majority of judges held that shadowing a person could not be seen to interfere with that person’s liberty. Dissenting with the majority, Justice Subba Rao maintained that broad surveillance powers put innocent citizens at risk, and that the right to privacy is an integral part of personal liberty. He recognised that when a person is shadowed, her movements will be constricted, and will certainly not be free movements. His dissenting judgment showed remarkable foresight and his reasoning is consistent with what is now a universally acknowledged principle that there is a “chilling effect” on expression and action when people think that they are being watched.

The right to privacy as defined by the Supreme Court now extends beyond government intrusion into private homes. After Govind vs. State of M.P., and Dist. Registrar and Collector of Hyderabad vs. Canara Bank, this right is seen to protect persons and not places. Any inroads into this right for surveillance of communication must be for permissible reasons and according to just, fair and reasonable procedure. State action in violation of this procedure is open to a constitutional challenge.

Our meagre procedural safeguards against phone tapping were introduced in PUCL vs. Union of India (1997) after the Supreme Court was confronted with extensive, undocumented phone tapping by the government. The apex court found itself compelled to lay down what it saw as bare minimum safeguards, consisting mostly of proper record-keeping and internal executive oversight by senior officers such as the home secretary, the cabinet secretary, the law secretary and the telecommunications secretary. These safeguards are of little use since they are opaque and rely solely on members of the executive to review surveillance requests.

Right and safeguards

There is a difference between targeted surveillance in which reasons have to be given for surveillance of particular people, and the mass-surveillance which Netra sets up. The question of mass surveillance and its attendant safeguards has been considered by the European Court of Human Rights in Liberty and Others vs. the United Kingdom. Drawing upon its own past jurisprudence, the European Court insisted on reasonable procedural safeguards. It stated quite clearly that there are significant risks of arbitrariness when executive power is exercised in secret and that the law should be sufficiently clear to give citizens an adequate indication of the circumstances in which interception might take place. Additionally, the extent of discretion conferred and the manner of its exercise must be clear enough to protect individuals from arbitrary interference. The principles laid down by the European Court in relation to phone-tapping also require that the nature of the offences which may give rise to an interception order, the procedure to be followed for examining, using and storing the data obtained, the precautions to be taken when communicating the data to other parties, and the circumstances in which recordings may or must be erased or the tapes destroyed be made clear.

Opaque and ineffective

Our safeguards apply only to targeted surveillance, and require written requests to be provided and reviewed before telephone tapping or Internet interception is carried out. CMS makes the process of tapping more prone to misuse by the state, by making it even more opaque: if the state can intercept communication directly, without making requests to a private telecommunication service provider, then it is one less layer of scrutiny through which the abuse of power can reach the public. There is no one to ask whether the requisite paperwork is in place or to notice a dramatic increase in interception requests.

India has no requirements of transparency whether in the form of disclosing the quantum of interception taking place each year, or in the form of subsequent notification to people whose communication was intercepted. It does not even have external oversight in the form of an independent regulatory body or the judiciary to ensure that no abuse of surveillance systems takes place. Given these structural flaws, the Amit Shah controversy is just the beginning of what is to come. Unfettered mass surveillance does not bode well for democracy.

(Chinmayi Arun is research director, Centre for Communication Governance, National Law University, Delhi, and fellow, Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore.)

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/the-hindu-january-3-2014-chinmayi-arun-big-brother-is-watching-you

CIS Cybersecurity Series (Part 13) - Pranesh Prakash

purba — 2014-01-20T06:20:44Z

CIS interviews Pranesh Prakash, lawyer and policy director with Centre for Internet and Society, as part of the Cybersecurity Series.

"When it comes to things cyber we completely lose our sense of proportion. While killing someone by negligence only attracts two years of punishment, saying something that people can define "offensive" attracts even more under 66A of the Information Technology Act. Something that can be a nuisance, under the Criminal Laws, can attract up to six months punishment, whereas under the IT act, it is up to three years..." - Pranesh Prakash, lawyer and policy director, Centre for Internet and Society

Centre for Internet and Society presents its thirteenth installment of the CIS Cybersecurity Series.

The CIS Cybersecurity Series seeks to address hotly debated aspects of cybersecurity and hopes to encourage wider public discourse around the topic.

Pranesh is a Policy Director with the Centre, and is a graduate of the National Law School of India University, Bangalore, with a degree in Arts and Law.

This work was carried out as part of the Cyber Stewards Network with aid of a grant from the International Development Research Centre, Ottawa, Canada.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/cis-cybersecurity-series-part-13-pranesh-prakash

UK’s Interception of Communications Commissioner — A Model of Accountability

joe — 2014-07-24T06:08:53Z

The United Kingdom maintains sophisticated electronic surveillance operations through a number of government agencies, ranging from military intelligence organizations to police departments to tax collection agencies. However, all of this surveillance is governed by one set of national laws outlining specifically what surveillance agencies can and cannot do.

The primary law that governs government investigations is the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000, abbreviated as RIPA 2000.

To ensure that this law is being followed and surveillance operations in the United Kingdom are not conducted illegally, the RIPA 2000 Part I establishes an Interception of Communications Commissioner, who is tasked with inspecting the surveillance operations, assessing their legality, and compiling an annual report to for the Prime Minister.

On April 8, 2014 the current Commissioner, Rt Hon. Sir Anthony May, laid the 2013 annual report before the House of Commons and the Scottish Parliament. In its introduction, the report notes that it is responding to concerns raised as a result of Edward Snowden’s actions, especially misuse of powers by intelligence agencies and invasion of privacy. The report also acknowledges that the laws governing surveillance, and particularly RIPA 2000, are difficult for the average citizen to understand, so the report includes a narrative outline of relevant provisions in an attempt to make the legislation clear and accessible. However, the report points out that while the Commissioner had complete access to any documents or investigative records necessary to construct the report, the Commissioner was unable to publish surveillance details indiscriminately, due to confidentiality concerns in a report being issued to the public. (It is worth noting here that though the Commissioner is one man, he has an entire agency working under him, so it is possible that he himself did not do or write all of that the report attributes to him). As a whole, the report outlines a series of thorough audits of surveillance operations, and reveals that the overwhelming majority of surveillance in the UK is conducted entirely legally, and that the small minority of incorrectly conducted surveillance appears to be unintentional. Looking beyond the borders of the United Kingdom, the report represents a powerful model of a government initiative to ensure transparency in surveillance efforts across the globe.

The Role of the Commissioner

The report begins in the first person, by outlining the role of the Commissioner. May’s role, he writes, is primarily to audit the interception of data, both to satisfy his own curiosity and to prepare a report for the Prime Minister. Thus, his primary responsibility is to review the lawfulness of surveillance actions, and to that end, his organization possesses considerable investigative powers. He is also tasked with ensuring that prisons are legally administrated, though he makes this duty an afterthought in his report.

Everyone associated with surveillance or interception in the government must disclose whatever the commissioner asks for. In short, he seems well equipped to carry out his work. The Commissioner has a budget of £1,101,000, almost all of which, £948,000 is dedicated to staff salaries.

The report directly addresses questions about the Commissioner’s ability to carry out his duties. Does the Commissioner have full access to whatever materials or data it needs to conduct its investigations, the report asks, and it answers bluntly, yes. It is likely, the report concludes, that the Commissioner also has sufficient resources to adequately carry out his duties. Yes, the Commissioner is fully independent from other government interests; the commissioner answers his own question. Finally, the report asks if the Commissioner should be more open in his reports to the public about surveillance, and he responds that the sensitivity of the material prohibits him from disclosing more, but that the report adequately addresses public concern regardless. There is a degree to which this question and answer routine seems self-congratulatory, but it is good to see that the Commissioner is considering these questions as he carries out his duties.

Interception of Communications

The report first goes into detail about the Commissioner’s audits of communications interception operations, where interception means wiretapping or reading the actual content of text messages, emails, or other communications, as opposed to the metadata associated with communications, such as timestamps and numbers contacted. In this section, the report outlines the steps necessary to conduct an interception, outlining that an interception requires a warrant, and only a Secretary of State (one of five officials) can authorize an interception warrant. Moreover, the only people who can apply for such warrants are the directors of various intelligence, police, and revenue agencies. In practice, the Secretaries of State have senior staff that read warrant applications and present those they deem worthy to the Secretary for his or her signature, as their personal signature is required for authorization.

For a warrant to be granted, it must meet a number of criteria. First, interception warrants must be necessary in the interests of national security, to prevent or detect serious crime, or to safeguard economic wellbeing of the UK. Additionally, a warrant can be granted if it is necessary for similar reasons in other countries with mutual assistance agreements with the UK. Warrants must be proportionate to the ends sought. Finally, interception warrants for communications inside the UK must specify either a person or a location where the interception will take place. Warrants for communications outside of the UK require no such specificity.

In 2013, 2760 interception warrants were authorized, 19% fewer warrants than in 2012. The Commissioner inspected 26 different agencies and examined 600 different warrants throughout 2013. He gave inspected agencies a report on his findings after each inspection, so they could see whether or not they were following the law. He concluded that the agencies that undertake interception “do so lawfully, conscientiously, effectively, and in our national interest.” Thus, all warrants adequately meet the application and authorization requirements outlined in RIPA 2000.

Communications Data

The report goes on to discuss communications data collection, where communications data refers to metadata–not the content of the communications itself, but data associated with it, such as call durations, or a list of email recipients. The Commissioner explains that metadata is easier to obtain than an interception warrant. Designated officials in their respective surveillance organization read and grant metadata warrant applications, instead of one of the Secretaries of State who could grant interception warrants. Additionally, the requirements for a metadata warrant are looser than for interception warrants. Metadata warrants must still be necessary, but necessary for a broader range of causes, ranging from collecting taxes, protecting public health, or for any purpose specified by a Secretary of State.

The relative ease of obtaining a metadata warrant is consistent with a higher number of warrants approved. In 2013, 514,608 metadata warrants were authorized, down from 570,135 in 2012. Local law enforcement applied for 87.5% of those warrants while intelligence agencies accounted for 11.5%. Only a small minority of requests was sent from the revenue office or other departments.

The purposes of these warrants were similarly concentrated. 76.9% of metadata warrants were issued for prevention or detection of crime. Protecting national security justified 11.4% of warrants and another 11.4% of warrants were issued to prevent death or injury. 0.2% of warrants were to identify people who had died or otherwise couldn’t identify themselves, 0.11% of warrants were issued to protect the economic wellbeing of the United Kingdom, and 0.02% of warrants were associated with tax collection. The Commissioner identified less than 0.01% of warrants as being issued in a miscarriage of justice, a very low proportion.

The Commissioner inspected metadata surveillance efforts, conducting 75 inspections in 2013, and classified the practices of those operations inspected as good, fair or poor. 4% of operations had poor practices. He noticed two primary errors. The first was that data was occasionally requested on an incorrect communications address, and the second was that he could not verify that some metadata was not being stored past its useful lifetime. May highlighted that RIPA 2000 does not give concrete lengths for which data should be stored, as Section 15(3) states only that data must be deleted “as soon as there are no longer grounds for retaining it as necessary for any of the authorized purposes.” He noted that he was only concerned because some metadata was being stored for longer periods than associated interception data. As May put it, “I have yet to satisfy myself fully that some of these periods are justified and in those cases I required the agencies to shorten their retention periods or, if not, provide me with more persuasive reasons.” The Commissioner seems determined that this practice will either be eliminated or better justified to him in the near future.

Indian Applications

The United Kingdom’s Interception of Communications Commissioner has similar powers to the Indian Privacy Commissioner suggested by the Report of the Group of Experts on Privacy. Similar to the United Kingdom, it is recommended that a Privacy Commissioner in India have investigative powers in the execution of its charter, and that the Privacy Commissioner represent citizen interests, ensuring that data controllers are in line with the stipulated regulations. The Report also broadly states that “with respect to interception/access, audio & video recordings, the use of personal identifiers, and the use of bodily or genetic material, the Commissioner may exercise broad oversight functions.” In this way, the Report touches upon the need for oversight of surveillance, and suggests that this responsibility may be undertaken by the Privacy Commissioner, but does not clearly place this responsibility with the Privacy Commissioner. This raises the question of if India should adopt a similar model to the United Kingdom – and create a privacy commissioner – responsible primarily for overseeing and enforcing data protection standards, and a separate surveillance commissioner – responsible for overseeing and enforcing standards relating to surveillance measures. When evaluating the different approaches there are a number of considerations that should be kept in mind:

Law enforcement and security agencies are the exception to a number of data protection standards including access and disclosure.
There is a higher level of ‘sensitivity’ around issues relating to surveillance than data protection and each needs to be handled differently.
The ‘competence’ required to deliberate on issues related to data protection is different then the ‘competence’ required deliberating on issues related to surveillance.

Additionally, this raises the question of whether India needs a separate regulation governing data protection and a separate regulation governing surveillance.

Allegations of Wrongdoing

It is worth noting that though May describes surveillance operations conducted in compliance with the law, many other organizations have accused the UK government of abusing their powers and spying on citizens and internet users in illegal ways. The GCHQ, the government’s communications surveillance center has come under particular fire. The organization has been accused indiscriminate spying and introducing malware into citizen’s computers, among other things. Led by the NGO Privacy International, internet service providers around the world have recently lodged complaints against the GCHQ, alleging that it uses malicious software to break into their networks. Many of these complaints are based on the information brought to light in Edward Snowden’s document leaks. Privacy International alleges that malware distributed by GCHQ enables access to any stored content, logging keystrokes and “the covert and unauthorized photography or recording of the user and those around him,” which they claim is similar to physically searching through someone’s house unbeknownst to them and without permission. They also accuse GCHQ malware of leaving devices open to attacks by others, such as identity thieves.

Snowden’s files also indicate a high level of collaboration between GCHQ and the NSA. According to the Guardian, which analyzed and reported on many of the Snowden files, the NSA has in past years paid GCHQ to conduct surveillance operations through the US program called Prism. Leaked documents report that the British intelligence agency used Prism to generate 197 intelligence reports in the year to May 2012. Prism is not mentioned at all in the Interception of Communications Commissioner’s report. In fact, while the report’s introduction explains that it will attempt to address details revealed in Snowden’s leaked documents, very little of what those documents indicate is later referenced in the report. May ignores the plethora of accusations of GCHQ wrongdoing.

Thus, while May’s tone appears genuine and sincere, the details of his report do little to dispel fears of widespread surveillance. It is unclear whether May is being totally forthcoming in his report, especially when he devotes so little energy to directly responding to concerns raised by Snowden’s leaks.

Conclusion

May wrapped up his report with some reflections on the state of surveillance in the United Kingdom. He concluded that RIPA 2000 protects consumers in an internet age, though small incursions are imaginable, and especially lauds the law for it’s technological neutrality. That is, RIPA 2000 is a strong law because it deals with surveillance in general and not with any specific technologies like telephones or Facebook, use of which changes over time. The Commissioner also was satisfied that powers were not being misused in the United Kingdom. He reported that there have been a small number of unintentional errors, he noted, and some confusion about the duration of data retention. However, any data storage mistakes seemed to stem from an unspecific law.

Despite May’s report of surveillance run by the books, other UK groups have accused GCHQ, the government’s communications surveillance center, of indiscriminate spying and introducing malware into citizen’s computers. Privacy International has submitted a claim arguing that a litany of malware is employed by the GCHQ to log detailed personal data such as keystrokes. The fact that May’s report does little to disprove these claims casts the Commissioner in an uncertain light. It is unclear whether surveillance is being conducted illegally or, as the report suggests, all surveillance of citizens is being conducted as authorized.

Still, the concept of a transparency report and audit of a nation’s surveillance initiatives report is a step towards government accountability done right, and should serve as a model for enforcement methods in other nations. May’s practice of giving feedback to the organizations he inspects allows them to improve, and the public report he releases serves as a deterrent to illegal surveillance activity. The Interception of Communications Commissioner–provided he reports truthfully and accurately–is what gives the safeguards built into the UK’s interception regime strength and accountability. In other nations looking to establish privacy protections, a similar role would make their surveillance provisions balanced with safeguards and accountability to ensure that the citizens fundamental rights–including the right to privacy–are not compromised.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/uk-interception-of-communications-commissioner-a-model-of-accountability

Rethinking Privacy: The Link between Florida v. Jardines and the Surveillance of Nature Films

praskrishna — 2014-07-28T05:51:48Z

Bhairav Acharya gave a talk on "Rethinking Privacy" at an event organized by the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras (IIT-M) on July 11, 2014.

In a 2010 article in Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies, Brett Mills proposed that animals have a right to privacy and that wildlife documentaries, specifically BBC's Nature's Great Events (2009), invaded this right without an examination of animal conservation ethics. In the 2013 Florida v. Jardines decision, the Supreme Court of the United States re-examined the constitutional validity of 'dog sniff laws' that permitted police animals to enter the threshold of private property to conduct 'minimally invasive warant-less searches' and 'Terry stops'; this was the latest in a long line of Fourth Amendment cases that examine the ethics of conserving and protecting public order. I attempt to draw links between the two scenarios that highlight the dissonance between sociological and jurisprudential constructions of privacy.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/rethinking-privacy

Information Influx Conference

praskrishna — 2014-07-28T06:31:40Z

Malavika Jayaram was a speaker at the event organized by the Institute for Information Law, University of Amsterdam from July 2 to 4, 2014.

Click to read the full details here.

When IViR set up its research 25 years ago, the digital transition was just starting to gather speed. Since then, our societies have been undergoing enormous changes in the modes of expression, organization and (re)use of information. Traditional roles of producers, intermediaries, users and governments blur and are recast. Information is the central building block of market economies. New ways of creating, disseminating and using it impact the workings of democracy, of science and education, creativity and culture.

Information Influx will bridge disciplines, regions and institutional perspectives to confront the major challenges of developing the rules that govern the expression, organization and re(use) of information in our society – as the central aspects of IViR’s Research Programme.

Wednesday 2 July

13.00 – 16.30

Information Influx Young Scholars Competition:

13.00 – 15.00

Welcome by Prof. Mireille van Eechoud & Dr. L. Guibault

Catherine Doldirina (Joint Research Centre EC) – Open data and Earth observations: the case of opening access to and use of EO through the Global Earth Observation System of Systems
Comments by Prof. Mark Perry

Jenny Metzdorf (University of Luxembourg) – The implementation of the Audiovisual Media Services Directive by national regulatory authorities – National reponses to regulatory challenges
Comments by Dr. Tarlach McGonagle

Harry Halpin (MIT/W3C) – No Safe Haven: The Storage of Data Secrets
Comments by Dr. Philippe Aigrain

15.00 – 15.15
Refreshments break

15.15 – 16.30

Ellen Wauters (ICRI – University of Leuven) – Social Networking Sites’ Terms of Use: addressing imbalances in the user-provider relationship through ex ante and ex post mechanisms
Comments by Dr. Chantal Mak

Nicolo Zingales (Tilburg University) – Virtues and perils of anonymity: should intermediaries bear the burden?
Comments by Prof. Joel Reidenberg

Closing remarks

17.00 – 18.30

Information Influx public opening:

Welcome Louise Gunning-Schepers (University of Amsterdam), Edgar du Perron (University of Amsterdam) and Bernt Hugenholtz (Institute for Information Law)
Keynote – Degrees of Freedom: Sketches of a political theory for an age of deep uncertainty and persistent imperfection – prof. Yochai Benkler (Harvard Law School)
Young Scholars Award ceremony
Speech by Neelie Kroes (Vice-President of the European Commission) – Our Single Market is Crying out for Copyright Reform!

19.00 – 22.00

IViR 25th birthday soirée – by invitation

Thursday 3 July

9.00 – 10.00

Keynote – Governance, Function and Form – prof. Deirdre Mulligan (University of California, Berkeley)

As data and technology to wield it become pervasive, privacy protection must take new forms. Traditional models of governance centered on state actors, and human oversight do not scale to today’s challenges. Drawing from several research projects Mulligan suggests that focusing on roles and functions, rather than traditional forms and actors, can assist us in leveraging the potential of a range of human and technical actors towards privacy’s protection.

10.30 – 12.30

Parallel sessions:

12.30 – 13.45

Lunch

13.45 – 14.30

Julian Oliver & Danja Vasiliev

14.30 – 16.30

Parallel sessions:

17.00 – 18.00

Keynote – Copyright as Innovation Policy – Fred von Lohmann (Google)

Copyright has historically been concerned with encouraging commercial cultural production. Thanks to digital technology, however, copyright law today finds itself called upon to take on additional unfamiliar roles, including fostering technological innovation and encouraging amateur creative expression. The talk will suggest some ways that copyright can successfully grow into these new roles.

19.00 – 22.00

Conference Dinner

Friday 4 July

9.00 – 10.00

Keynote – Datafication, dataism and dataveillance – prof. José van Dijck (University of Amsterdam)

The popularization of datafication as a neutral paradigm is carried by a widespread belief and supported by institutional guardians of trust. That notion of trust becomes problematic when it leads to dataveillance by a number of institutions that handle people’s (meta)data. The interlocking of government, business, and academia in the adaptation of this ideology (“dataism”) prompts us to look more critically at the entire ecosystem of connective media.

10.30 – 12.30
Parallel sessions:

12.30 – 14.00

Buffet Lunch, plus: Brown bag lunch with Rob Frieden – Net Neutrality: One step beyond

14.00 – 15.00

Keynote – Intellectual Property: Two Pasts and A Future – prof. James Boyle (Duke Law School)

Twenty years from now, will our children look up from their digital devices and ask “Daddy, did anyone ever own a book”? In his keynote speech, James Boyle will trace the past lives of intellectual property, the battles fought, the technologies regulated. Can we find hints of the future in the battles of our past? Boyle’s answer is yes, and that answer should give us pause.

15.30 – 17.30

Parallel sessions:

17.30 – 18.30

Farewell drinks

Parallel sessions

Rights in the mix

Among amateur and professional creators alike there is a manifest need to not only share but also remix existing works. The panel discusses how adequately open content licensing systems support these needs. It also looks to how well this licensing system fits in the wider legal framework.

prof. Séverine Dusollier (University of Namur) (moderator)
Paul Keller (Kennisland)
prof. Daniel Gervais (Vanderbilt Law School)
prof. Volker Grassmuck (Lüneburg University)

Behavioural targeting – If you cannot control it, ban it?

The discussion about the potential pitfalls of behavioural targeting practices and the problems it may create for users and user rights continues in full force. The growing evidence of the ineffectiveness of the existing informed-consent-approach to regulation can no longer be ignored. Is it time for the regulator to move to more drastic means and ban certain behavioural targeting practices, and if so, which practices?

prof. Chris Hoofnagle (University of California, Berkeley) (moderator)
prof. Neil Richards (Washington University)
Frederik Borgesius (Institute for Information Law)
prof. Joseph Turow (University of Pennsylvania)
prof. Mireille Hildebrandt (University of Nijmegen)
dr. Tal Zarsky (University of Haifa)

Tomorrow’s news: bright, mutualized and open?

As public debate becomes more diversified, crowded, interactive, noisy and technology-dependent than ever before, what survival strategies are being devised for the news as we know it? Are existing expressive and communicative rights, and related duties and responsibilities, fit-for-purpose in increasingly digitized and networked democratic societies? Will tomorrow’s news still be worth tuning into?

dr. Tarlach McGonagle (Institute for Information Law) (moderator)
dr. Susanne Nikoltchev (European Audiovisual Observatory)
Aidan White (Ethical Journalism Network)
dr. Luís Santos (University of Minho)
dr. Eugenia Siapera (Dublin City University)
Gillian Phillips (The Guardian)

Filtering away infringement: copyright, injunctions and the role of ISPs

Can technology solve the problem of intermediary liability for online copyright infringement? If so, should technology be allowed to determine law? This panel shall focus on the issue of injunctions imposed on online intermediaries to force them to adopt measures that filter or block copyright infringements by third parties on their websites.

prof. Bernt Hugenholtz (Institute for Information Law) (moderator)
prof. Dirk Visser (University of Leiden)
Remy Chavannes (Brinkhof)
Fred von Lohmann (Google)
Sir Richard Arnold (High Court UK)
prof. Niva Elkin-Koren (University of Haifa)
prof. Reto Hilty (Max Planck Institute)

Mass-digitization and the conundrum of online access

Cultural heritage institutions face difficulties providing online access to digitized materials in their collections. This session examines a number of pressing issues, taking a trans-Atlantic perspective. When does digitization in public-private partnerships pose a threat to access to public domain materials? What ways are there to manage rights clearance of copyrighted materials and deal with territoriality?

prof. Martin Senftleben (VU University Amsterdam) (moderator)
prof. Pamela Samuelson (University of California, Berkeley)
dr. Elisabeth Niggemann (Deutsche Nationalbibliothek)
prof. Martin Kretschmer (Glasgow University)

The algorithmic public: towards a normative framework for automated media

In the online media, decisions about what users get to see (or not to see) are increasingly automated, through the use of smart algorithms and extensive data about users’ preferences and online behaviour. This raises a number of fundamental questions about freedom of expression, editorial integrity and user autonomy. Leading thinkers will debate algorithmic decision-making in online media and explore the contours of a much needed normative framework for automated media.

prof. Natali Helberger (Institute for Information Law) (moderator)
dr. Joris van Hoboken (New York University)
prof. Wolfgang Schulz (Hans-Bredow-Institut)
prof. Niva Elkin-Koren (University of Haifa)
dr. Bernhard Rieder (University of Amsterdam)

Accountability and the public sector data push

Initiatives to make governments more ‘transparent’ abound. Freedom of information laws are reconfigured to push out ever more information to citizens and businesses. Promises of benefits abound too: better accountability and increased participation, as well as efficiency gains and new business opportunities. Can and should the next generation of freedom of information laws serve both political-democratic objectives and economic ones?

prof. Mireille van Eechoud (Institute for Information Law) (moderator)
Chris Taggart (Open Corporates)
Helen Darbishire (Access Info)
prof. Deirdre Curtin (University of Amsterdam)
dr. Ben Worthy (Birkbeck University College London)
Jonathan Gray (Open Knowledge Foundation / University of London)

A new governance model for communications security?

Today, the vulnerable state of electronic communications security dominates headlines across the globe, while money and power increasingly permeate the policy arena. 2013 has seen no less than five sweeping legislative initiatives in the E.U., while the U.S. seems to trust in the market to deliver. Amidst these diverging approaches, how should communications security be regulated?

Axel Arnbak (Institute for Information Law) (moderator)
prof. Deirdre Mulligan (University of California, Berkeley)
prof. Ian Brown (Oxford University)
prof. Michel van Eeten (Delft university of technology)
Amelia Andersdotter (European Parliament)
Ashkan Soltani (independent researcher)

Global information flows and the nation state

Information flows contest the physical spaces in which the nation state has been deemed a sovereign for almost five centuries. This tension dominates nearly all areas of information law, from data protection and IP enforcement to mass surveillance by national intelligence agencies. This session reflects on the broader challenges that territoriality presents for information law today.

prof. Urs Gasser (Harvard) (moderator)
prof. Joel Reidenberg (Fordham Law School)
prof. Graeme Dinwoodie (Oxford University)
Malavika Jayaram (Harvard)
Hielke Hijmans (Vrije Universiteit Brussel)

United in diversity – the future of the public mission

Digital technologies and the information economy create fascinating new opportunities but also pose fundamental challenges to the fulfilment of the public mission of the media, public archives and libraries alike. This panel is a step towards establishing a dialogue between the three institutions: to explore the congruence between their missions, and their responses to critical issues such as technological convergence, the changing habits of users, the growing abundance of content and their relationship to new information intermediaries, such as search engines, social networks or content platforms.

prof. Natali Helberger (Institute for Information Law) (moderator)
prof. Klaus Schönbach (University of Vienna)
prof. Frank Huysmans (University of Amsterdam)
prof. Egbert Dommering (Institute for Information Law)
Maarten Brinkerink (Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision)
Richard Burnley (European Broadcasting Union)

Legalizing file-sharing: an idea whose time has come – or gone?

Alternative compensation systems are designed to legalize and monetize online copyright restricted acts of distributing and consuming content. Empirical evidence shows that end-users strongly support paying flat-rate fees for the ability to legally download and share content. So what prevents us from introducing such schemes? The group of experts convened debates the future of alternative compensation systems in light of current legal, business and technology trends.

prof. Bernt Hugenholtz (Institute for Information Law) (moderator)
prof. Neil Netanel (University of California, Los Angeles)
prof. Alexander Peukert (University of Frankfurt)
dr. Philippe Aigrain (Quadrature du Net)
prof. Séverine Dusollier (University of Namur)

Assembly (Information influx)

Taking legal cases and controversies involving intellectual property, art collective Agency composes a growing list of “Things” that resist the split between “nature” and “culture”, a split that intellectual property relies upon. From the list of over a 1,000 Things, Agency calls forth Thing 002094, the copyright controversy Être et Avoir, to jointly speculate upon. The purpose is less to re-enact the judgment and more to prolong hesitation.

Agency
Severine Dusollier
Wilco Kalff
Sanne Rovers
Margot van de Linde
Arnisa Zeqo

Big brother is back

The debate about the pervasive surveillance of the online environment is roaring. Considering what we know now, what better metaphor is there than to conclude that we live in the world of Big Brother? This session will bring together leading thinkers and doers related to power and control in the communication environment, who will provide critical input on the way we think and speak about information freedom and control. Should we aspire to tame Big Brother or should we think differently about the problem?

Axel Arnbak (Institute for Information Law) (moderator)
dr. Joris van Hoboken (New York University) (moderator)
John McGrath (National Theatre of Wales)
dr. Seda Gürses (New York University)
Hans de Zwart (Bits of Freedom)

Who owns the World Cup? The case for and against property rights in sports events

Sports have important economic, social and cultural dimensions. What is the optimal form of legal protection of sports events considering the public-private nature of sports? The focus of debate will be on football because of its major relevance in Europe in terms of diffusion, commercial exploitation, and social impact; but we can expect many insights to hold true for other sports as well.

prof. Bernt Hugenholtz (Institute for Information Law) (moderator)
prof. Lionel Bently (University of Cambridge)
prof. Dirk Voorhoof (Ghent University)
prof. Peter Jaszi (American University Washington)
prof. Graeme Dinwoodie (Oxford University)
prof. Egbert Dommering (Institute for Information Law)
prof. Alan Bairner (Loughborough University)

Associated events

Invitation only:
Wednesday 2 July: Big Breakfast with Joseph Turow & Tal Zarksy – Ethical, normative, social and cultural implications of profiling & targeting in an era of big data – towards a research agenda, Institute for Information Law (IViR) & Amsterdam School of Communication Research (ASCoR), East India House, room E0.02, 09.00-12.00 a.m.

Public event:

Friday 4 July: Lecture James Boyle & Marjan Hammersma about cultural heritage and the public domain
More information and registration at:
Cultural heritage institutions as guardians of public domain works in the digital environment, Rijksmuseum & Kennisland in cooperation with IViR, Rijksmuseum Auditorium, 18.00-20.00 p.m.

About IViR

The Institute for Information Law (IViR) is a centre of excellence in academic research which consistently seeks to further our understanding of how legal norms reflect and shape the creation, dissemination and use of information in our societies. That is the ambition at the heart of the many research initiatives IVIR has undertaken since its foundation in 1989. The urgency of taking an interdisciplinary and international approach has only grown in the past decades. It is crucial if we want to understand and evaluate the rapidly evolving complex and myriad legal norms that govern information relations in markets, in social and in political spaces. With over 30 researchers, teachers and support staff based in our offices in the historic centre of Amsterdam, we have the critical mass to broach key regulatory challenges of today’s information society.

Our focus on information relations deliberately cuts across traditional boundaries in legal scholarship. We bring together insights from constitutional law, human rights, public administration, intellectual property, contract and property law, and competition law. Our functional approach enables fruitful collaboration with experts from an array of academic disciplines, in information and communications technology, economics, media studies, political science and the arts.

Continuing a long Dutch tradition of openness towards the world, our work has a strong international orientation. It shows in the topics we study, the strong global network of affiliations we have in academia and the wonderful dynamic mix of upcoming and experienced researchers from all over Europe and beyond that make up IViR.

With each consecutive research programme we prioritize legal developments that fascinate us, and translate them into a variety of research projects. This includes doctoral research, research for policymakers at national, European and international level, and projects funded through national and European research grant programmes. Our current research programme and an overview of research projects can be found here. Doctoral dissertations, journal articles, books, case comments, studies, reports, lectures, debates, workshops, conferences and summer schools are the staple means of communicating what we do. Browse our publications here.

Media reports and conference outputs will be posted on the IViR website

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/information-influx-conference

ICT Awareness Program for Myanmar Parliamentarians in Yangon

praskrishna — 2014-07-29T09:37:26Z

Myanmar ICT for Development Organization-MIDO conducted ICT policy training for multi- party parliamentarian representatives in Yangon on July 26 and 27, 2014. Sunil Abraham presented on Innovation Ecosystem and Thinking about Internet Regulation.

Sunil's Presentations

Schedule

Day 1	Topic	Resource Person
0930-1030	What is the significance of ICTs to legislators?	Rohan Samarajiva (RS)
1030-1115	Stories from the field: What do poor people do with ICTs?	Helani Galpaya (HG)
1115-1145	Break
1145-1245	Legislation, policies, plans, strategies, regulation	RS
1245-1330	Modalities of making and implementing ICT policy	RS and HG
1330-1430	Lunch	Videos
1430-1530	What is independent regulation? Why is it needed for sector growth	RS
1530-1600	Break
1600-1700	Panel discussion: How social media can be used in public life	Sunil Abraham (SA), RS & Charitha Herath (CH)
Day 2
930-1030	Regulation of online speech	Nay Phone Latt (NPL)
1030-1100	Break
1100-1200	How to think about Internet policy	SA; counterpoint by CH
1200-1300	Hope in the heart and money in the pocket: Results of effective policy	RS
1300-1400	Lunch	Videos

We plan to have simultaneous interpretation. There will be time for discussion within each session.

Brief descriptions of sessions

What is the significance of ICTs to legislators?

Rohan Samarajiva

This is the introduction, wherein we bring out the economic, social and political significance of ICTs. Why legislators should pay attention to the subject.

Stories from the field: What do poor people do with ICTs?

Helani Galpaya

Here we present the findings of how the poor use ICTs, using demand-side data (both quant and quality) from Myanmar and countries in similar circumstances.

Legislation, policies, plans, strategies, regulation

In this session, a former policy advisor/regulator will present a perspective on the important distinctions between legislation, policies, plans, strategies, and regulation.

Modalities of making and implementing ICT policy

RS and HG

Here we will delve into the practical details of making policy and of implementing policy, using examples.

What is independent regulation? Why is it needed for sector growth

Progress in electronic connectivity is the foundation that will reduce the frictions in the Myanmar economy, create jobs and exports and enable social, political and economic innovations. This requires massive investments, most of which will be private and most of which will come from outside the country. What legislators need to know about creating an environment that will attract and retain foreign investment in a globalized economy will be discussed.

How social media can be used in public life

Sunil Abraham, RS and Charitha Herath

In the panel discussion, SA will pose questions to a policy advisor who has used social media in a political campaign and a social media savvy current government official.

How to think about Internet policy

SA; counterpoint by CH

A leading advocate of enlightened Internet policy, Sunil Abraham of the Center for Internet and Society in Bangalore, India, will present his ideas, highlighting the international dimension of Internet policy. CH will share his perspectives as a serving government official.

Regulation of online speech

Nay Phone Latt

Here, Myanmar’s leading blogger and founder of MIDO will discuss the current concerns with legislation that seeks to control online speech.

Hope in the heart and money in the pocket: Results of effective policy

Results of effective policy implementation will be discussed with reference to specific country experiences.

Resource persons

Rohan Samarajiva, PhD, (program director) 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). In this capacity, he established the Telecom Regulatory Commission of Sri Lanka; conducted the first public hearing and public notice proceedings; successfully concluded a license-violation proceeding; and laid the foundation for a competitive market. He was also 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).

Sunil Abraham is the Executive Director of Bangalore based research organization, the Centre for Internet and Society. He founded Mahiti in 1998, a company committed to creating high impact technology and communications solutions. Today, Mahiti employs more than 50 engineers. Sunil continues to serve on the board. Sunil was elected an Ashoka fellow in 1999 to 'explore the democratic potential of the Internet' and was also granted a Sarai FLOSS fellowship in 2003. Between June 2004 and June 2007, Sunil also managed the International Open Source Network, a project of United Nations Development Programme's Asia-Pacific Development Information Programme serving 42 countries in the Asia-Pacific region.

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.

Charitha Herath has served as Secretary, Ministry of Mass Media and Information in the Government of Sri Lanka since 2012. Prior to his present appointment, he was the Chairman of the Central Environment Authority. Currently on secondment for national services from his permanent academic position as a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Philosophy and Psychology at the University of Peradeniya in Sri Lanka, he continues to work on his academic research, specializing in governments and politics in Asia, ethnic studies, cultural psychology, social and political philosophy, with his main focus on political psychology. More detail at http://charithaherath.wordpress.com/about-2/

Nay Phone Latt is the Co-founder and Executive Director of Myanmar ICT Development Organization (MIDO). He graduated from Yangon Technological University with a civil engineering degree in 2004. He co-founded the Myanmar Blogger Society in 2007. Award winner of PEN Barbara Goldsmith Award and RFS’s Cyber Dissidents Award. Former Political Prisoner. CEC Member of Myanmar Journalists Association(MJA) Chief Editor of ThanLwinAinMat Online Magazine (www.thanlwin.com). Member of Board of Directors of House of Media & Entertainment (HOME).

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/ict-awareness-program-for-myanmar-parliamentarians-yangon

We the goondas

praskrishna — 2014-08-04T15:06:18Z

You can now be arrested in Karnataka even before you commit an offence under the IT Act. You could be in jail under the Goonda Act even if not guilty under the Indian Copyright Act. If govt thinks you are planning to send a 'lascivious' photo to a WhatsApp group, or forwarding a copyrighted song, you can be arrested.

The article by Shyam Prasad was published in the Bangalore Mirror on August 4, 2014. Sunil Abraham gave his inputs.

Have a smartphone? Run for cover. Bizarre as this might sound, the cops are going to come after you if you so much as forward a song to a friend. Forget actually doing it, any plans to do so could land you in serious trouble too. You could be labelled a 'goonda' in the eyes of the State and find yourself behind bars.

In a completely unfathomable move, Karnataka has brought most offences under the Information Technology Act, 2000, and Indian Copyright Act, 1957, under the ambit of the Goonda Act. Until now, people with a history of offences like bootlegging, drug offences and immoral trafficking could be taken into preventive custody. But the government, in its enthusiasm, while adding acid attackers and sexual predators to the law, has also added 'digital offenders'. While it was thought to be against audio and video pirates, Bangalore Mirror has found it could be directed at all those who frequent FB, Twitter and the online world, posting casual comments and reactions to events unfolding around them.

So if you are planning a digital 'offence' — which could be an innocuous opinion like the young girls' in Mumbai after the bandh declared on Bal Thackeray's death — that could attract the provisions of the Information Technology Act. You can even be taken into preventive custody like a 'goonda'. Even those given exceptions under the Indian Copyright Act can find themselves in jail for a year without being presented before a magistrate. Technically, if you are even planning to forward 'lascivious' memes and images to a WhatsApp group or forwarding a song or 'copyrighted' PDF book, you can be punished under the Goondas Act.

The law-makers clearly did not dwell much on the implications while bringing the majority of the populace within the ambit of this law. On July 28, the Karnataka Legislature passed (it took barely a minute from tabling to voice vote), 'The Karnataka Prevention of Dangerous Activities of Bootleggers, Drug-offenders, Gamblers, Goondas, Immoral Traffic Offenders, Slum-grabbers and Video or Audio Pirates, (Amendment) Bill, 2014'. The amendment adds, "Acid attackers, Depradator of Environment, Digital Offenders, Money Launderers and Sexual Predators", to the title. In common parlance, this law is known as the 'Goonda Act'.

The move has come as a shock to the legal community which has slammed it, terming it an attempt by the state to usurp central powers. The government had earlier included 'piracy' under the Goonda Act. But it was applicable only to those pirating film DVDs. Now, this will include books, film songs, music, software or anything big corporates and multinationals claim they have copyright on.

Sunil Abraham, executive director, Centre for Internet and Society, is left in no doubt that the new law is "a terrible thing". "It is a sad development. It is not just bringing the provisions of the IT Act, but also the Copyright Act, that will hurt the common man," he said.

'Digital Offenders' means "any person who knowingly or deliberately violates, for commercial purposes, any copyright law in relation to any book, music, film, software, artistic or scientific work and also includes any person who illegally enters through the identity of another user and illegally uses any computer or digital network for pecuniary gain for himself or any other person or commits any of the offences specified under sections 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74 and 75 of the Information Technology Act, 2000."

Section 67 of the IT Act will be the most dangerous for the common man with a smartphone in hand now. The section, "Publishing of information which is obscene in electronic form," includes "any material which is lascivious or appeal to the prurient interest." This could have a very broad interpretation.

Advocate Nagendra Naik says, "The Goonda Act provides for preventive arrest. In the Information Technology Act and The Copyright Act, you have to commit the offence to be arrested. But here, you can be taken into preventive custody even before you commit the said offences. In normal arrests, you can straightaway apply for bail. But under the Goonda Act, you cannot. There is a long process of review and you will be in custody at least till then. The third impact is, you can have a history sheet started against you by the police. Technically, your slips on WhatsApp will attract the Goonda Act against you."

Supreme Court advocate KV Dhananjay said the Goonda Act is a draconian piece of legislation and it necessarily mocks at the institution of courts and lawyers. "After the passage of the various amendments to the Goonda Act, Karnataka now looks like a mini North Korea where police mood swings will decide whether the ordinary citizen has any right at all," he said.

Advocate Shyam Sundar, says, "What if your smartphone has a list of repeated material sent out over days or weeks. Most people do not even know if their phones are affected by viruses which could be sending out such material. Another example is of Facebook. There are so many FB pages with pornographic content. If someone who has subscribed to such a page sends you a friend request and you accept it, that content will surface on your page. It will have a history of repetition. The amendment clearly opens up huge problems for the common people. There is no doubt of the law being grossly misused and the amendment to include provisions of the IT Act has been done without application of mind. What is lascivious appeal in the first place? A porn star has been made a film star in India. Is this not lust? Are there enough filters in place to secure your smartphone from online abuse?"

The new law will in all probability create more corruption than anything else, say experts. Dhananjay says, "Until last week, police postings in Bangalore and other bigger cities were selling for tens of lakhs. Thanks to these amendments, some postings that enforce the Goonda Act will now sell for a couple of crores. The public will not feel safe due to this draconian legislation. Those who enforce the Goonda Act, however, will become richer through corruption, thanks to the fear created by these new amendments."

One year in jail for the innocent too

Sunil Abraham gives two examples by which the amended Goonda Act will become a ruthless piece of legislation. "If I publish an image of a naked body as part of a scientific article about the human body, is it obscene or not? It will not be obscene and, if I am arrested under the IT Act, I will be produced before the magistrate within 24 hours and can explain it to him. But now, I will be arrested under the Goonda Act and need not be produced before a magistrate for 90 days. It can be extended to one year. So for one year, I will be in jail even if I have not committed any wrong. Another example pertains to bringing offences under the Copyright Act under the Goonda Act. In the Copyright Act, there is an exception for reporting, research, educational and people with disability. A visually impaired person, for example, can, without paying royalty, convert a book into another format like Braille or audio and share it with another visually impaired person on a non-profit basis. But if he is arrested under Goonda Act, he will be in jail for one year, even before he does it."

HAVE THEY READ STATUTE?
Supreme Court advocate KV Dhananjay says, "The definition of a 'digital offender' is simply laughable. I do not think that whoever asked the state government to include 'digital offence' under the Goonda Act has carefully read the Constitution of India. Under the Constitution, both copyright and telecommunications are exclusive central subjects. This means that states simply cannot make any law on these subjects." Dhananjay gives the example of payment of income tax. "You know already that only the central government can demand and collect your income taxes. Can any state government say that it will create a new law to punish its resident who defaults in payment of income tax? You would simply laugh at any such law. This new definition of 'digital offender' is no less amusing. Offences under the Information Technology Act, 2000, are exclusively punishable by the central government only. State governments have no power to say that an Act shall become an offence when it does not even have the power to regulate such an Act."

CRIMINAL LAW EXPERTS SAY
Senior designate advocate, MT Nanaiah: "This law will be too harsh. There are MLAs who do not know the meaning of cyber crime. We (advocates) will be kept busy at the cost of innocent people because of this step. It provides for arresting anyone who would allegedly be planning to do something. Finding him guilty or otherwise comes later. What happens if your phone is lost or somebody sends something from your phone without your knowledge? For the first few years, innocents will go to jail. Then the courts will probably intervene and call for modifying what is at best a bad law. A similar situation arose with Section 498(A) of IPC and Sections 3 and 4 of Dowry Prohibition Act. It was misused to such an extent that courts had to step in." Senior designate advocate and former State Public Prosecutor HS Chandramouli : "Even social legislations have been misused. And, in this case, most people are illiterate about what cyber crime is. It is mostly teenagers and college students who will feel the heat. These are the people who mostly forward material considered obscene. It is necessary to educate people through discussions, workshops in the bar associations, law college and with experts. The amendment has been passed in the Legislature without discussion, which is a tragedy. At least now, before it is gazetted, people should be warned about what is being brought into the Goonda Act. I do not know how fair adding 'digital offenders' in the Goonda Act will be to the public, but the chances of misuse are more. There are no riders or prosecution for misuse. And how many policemen know about cyber crimes? During the infamous 'kidney' case (where people were cheated and their kidneys removed) many policemen did not know the difference between kidneys and testicles."

ONE YEAR IN JAIL WITHOUT CHANCE OF BAIL FOR..

Forwarding a song from your phone
Forwarding an e-book from your email
A nude photo which the govt thinks is obscene
Any software that a company says it owns
A movie which a company says it has copyright on

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/bangalore-mirror-shyam-prasad-august-4-2014-we-the-goondas