The following are the outputs of the real-time captioning taken during the Tenth Annual Meeting of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) in João Pessoa, Brazil, from 10 to 13 November 2015. 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 event, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.
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>> MODERATOR: Good morning, everybody. We are not starting yet. We are waiting for one of our panelists. I would like to invite everyone that is sitting there to come here to the tables. It will be a conversation between people that are fighting or advancing Internet rights in their country. You do not need to speak if you don't want to, but you are invited to join us.
Good morning, everybody. We are just about to start. Is Anna Masera in the room? No? Okay. I think we'll still go without her.
Please, I would like to invite all of you who are sitting behind there, because we are not many, kindly occupy the seats around here. Don't be afraid. We are not going to ask you questions. Just come and occupy the seats around here.
We would like to start now. Christian will be our timekeeper. We need to be out of here by 10:30.
Thank you very much for honoring our call to this workshop on Internet ‑‑ on promoting local actions to secure Internet rights. The need for definitive rights on the Internet has become increasingly difficult. This brings different tactics across the globe to support legislation and stakeholders' practices. Despite the different degrees of consensus that multiple actors engaged in broad political and technical processes are able to achieve, international dialogue spaces have been growing and gaining more attention.
From the U.N., Human Rights Council, to the IGF, to NETmundial, which took place last year, many initiatives have emerged to respond to increasing threats to defend the freedom of privacy, action, and other human rights on the Internet. However, the Internet Governance process is still opaque in many Developing Countries and public issues are not openly discussed or debated with all stakeholders at the national community levels. All this global mobilization for many this conversation around Internet rights is virtually nonexistent. Bringing national organizations from the globe, we would want to address the question of how these international actions can be helpful to local campaigns to defend and advance rights with a critical approach. We hope that this roundtable will develop into full global efforts and campaigns that are actually making local actions more difficult, or if they can effectively empower and be supportive in advancing Internet rights. We hope to address from the grassroots efforts in this global setting.
We have various speakers. We were hoping to have Anna Masera from the Italian government. She doesn't seem to be here. We have a number of speakers. I will mention their names, but when we get to speaking, we will ask them to just say one or two sentences about what they do with themselves.
We will ask Milan from the University of Amsterdam.
>> STEFANIA MILAN: My name is Stefania Milan from the ICT Action Network. Thank you for putting this together. I just want to share a few points that I have learned in the process of trying to implement Internet rights in my country, Italy, which is not the Internet rights that you are seeing presented here yesterday, for example. It was preceding earlier process that miserably failed, but put in motion that led to the new Internet rights.
Not everything is lost, even when you experience failure. Just some general points and trying to do national work with the international dimension. The first lesson I learned is that process matters and not just the outcome. I'm talking about in particular about documents. So advocacy documents or government documents that they allow us to do other things. They open doors. They can be used in other context, not only for advocacy, but also for education. And process matters not just because sometimes we might not have outcomes. And not to add outcomes to our efforts list, but because the way we do things is possibly as important as the final objective. And by the way, I do think it's like trying to abide to our principles and follow an inclusive approach even when, for example, you have government pressures that force you to operate like I did under time pressures that are not ‑‑ they are not done very well with the process of activism. To engage people, you need, for example, to listen and to engage any time. Governments, for example, don't work very well with time, because they have completely different short‑term goals.
Related to the process matter point is the education and the fact that process can serve as an educational tool in itself, and not just in terms of awareness raising, but the need, for example, or some documents but also because it is an occasion for people and the people meet along the way to interrogate their practices and their users of technology. Ultimately, we can really foster in the process of talking to people listening consulting, for example, if you're on the government side. We can really foster the critical approach to technology usage; in a way, foster also the emergence of Civil Society activity. In our country we have the rights organizations. As such, we have a lot of Civil Society activity. Though no one is specifically devoted to digital rights, we are really behind on that. I don't see any process that tries to create awareness as also an occasion for encouraging people to come together to realize that there is something called, for example, digital rights. And that required much long‑term sustaining engagement that needs ‑‑ that calls for organizing first and action second.
The third point is a norm change. What we are trying to do around this room is to promote a process of norm change, a change of in the way we, like many individuals, other people around us, think about digital rights. Norm change is, by nature, a very slow process. Probably instead of getting discouraged by the slow nature of norm change, we should try to distinguish between long‑ and short‑term goals when we try to advocate for these rights.
Short‑term goals are the more actionable, relatively easy to implement points. The long‑term goals are those that probably we're not going to even see in our lifetime. This sounds a little bit dramatic, and try to calibrate our action strategies to the short‑ and long‑term perspective.
This brings me to my fourth point, which is that we probably should have realistic, and, therefore, dynamic as opposed to dogmatic approach to alliances. Alliances can be of different kinds. I come ‑‑ if you would like an ecological background that has over the years to be very suspicious of both governments and the private sector. But what I've discovered actually in practice on the field is that the private sector was very often I could use the private sector as leverage against the government. Funny enough, I was working for the government back then, but I was trying to advance something that was much more progressive than what my mandate or the expectations that they had of me said.
So I've probably learned in the process to forget this dogmatic classification and go from much more dynamic geography of building alliances and building alliances which are very much ad hoc and based on needs on whatever we know of these people. At the same time, of course, never losing the approach to conflict with suspicion, which I think is ultimately fairly healthy.
Then the fifth point is ‑‑ well, on the interaction more specifically on the global ‑‑ the international, if you want, versus the national. In the literature and most academics like to also learn from what other people have written, there is something which is called the boomerang effect. When your opportunities are close, there is no chance to operate and you're allowed to advance your goals resort to the international. By exhorting international pressure, you can have some effect on your national local level. It's using the international as leverage.
We just started. Oh, whatever, and so in a way, again, having this dynamic versus the international. This can be problematic ultimately. Then, of course, the last point, which is quite obvious, if you want, learn from best practices. A lot has already been done in our field, and we should be probably better at taking some time, reading, translating as well, because a lot has been done in national context. Very often we don't have the time and luxury to engage in translation in order to spread our ideas. But a lot has already been done; therefore, we should really try not to reinvent the wheel all the time.
What are the barriers in trying to advance national work using international? To start with, at the national level very often there is lack of interest. The lack of interest does not only ‑‑ not only amongst the obvious enemies, which sometimes are institutions, but also amongst the people that we would like to protect, if you want, like to encourage to protect themselves mostly. That's why at the beginning I said the process matters, not just the outcome. We should really see ‑‑ in order to counteract this lack of interest, we should try to reach out and in a variety of ways and foster ‑‑ create a need for the rights that we want to defend.
Then, of course, there's the government. Not only because sometimes we operate from within the opposition, but also because sometimes governments try to reinvent the wheel. They try to put their little flag and come with something completely new, ignoring that many people over the years have been already doing work in exactly the same field and work that can be leveraged and can't take into account to improve it probably. There is always room for improvement, but that's an approach that is probably as detrimental as the oppositional ‑‑ the presence of opposition.
Another barrier that we have is that knowledge. There is plenty of knowledge of information, best practices out there, is often not action ready. I say it as an academic, being aware that often we engage in writing up things in a very nice way, but only writing it up for academics. So how can we ‑‑ not just academics, but in general everyone around this room make sure that knowledge is translated into action ready that does not force people to read tons of paper to distill one point that might be interested in there. People on the field don't have the luxury of doing that.
The other barrier is time. Well, when we ‑‑ as activists, we are trying also to change policymaking. We should really be like surfers waiting for the big wave. This comes from the literature. I really like it as an image. Pretty obvious, if you want. It's very much a question of rhythm. If you take many of these international processes, they are very lengthy. The IGF happens once a year. In between not much happens. So when had you work at the national level, you're confronted with the time pressure and with rhythm that is completely different, must faster. We don't have the time to wait for the international to come together and help us.
Well, this is a barrier that counteract the alliances are, of course, one of them, and building alliances when we are together at the international levels that can be done, mobilized when we are back home as one of the solutions to that.
Finally, a critical point on this national/international interaction, going international can backfire. It can backfire in a variety of ways. It can make, for example, governments or our people in a way to feel ‑‑ to perceive international as an imposition. We are not the ones with the solution in any case. There are best practices we can learn from, but ultimately a practice of mutual learning. Things are needed and they are to be done in a certain way.
Trying to counteract that, to make sure that we do not impose or make the Internet imposition is one point, and then the other is that international might be sometimes too detached from the national perspectives. This is also a barrier that we have to somehow deal with. These are my points for reflection. Thank you.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you very much, Stefania. You raised quite a number of important points. And I think I was struck by the fact that having been involved and continuing to be involved in Civil Society, that process matters and how we engage, and the fact that we need to engage in time and give alliances that can help our work. So I'm hoping that there will be many questions when we come to question time for you.
We will now move on to our next speaker. I think we were expecting to have her as the first speaker. We are glad that you could join us, Anna. I know the printer ‑‑ there were issues when we came this morning. So we are glad you are here. Anna Masera. I hope I'm pronouncing it right, is from the Italian Parliament. You'll probably tell us just one thing that you do and then proceed with the presentation. Thank you.
>> ANNA MASERA: Hello. Thank you, and sorry for being late. I'm the spokesperson for the Italian Parliament. I'm a journalist, actually, and I've been working at the Italian Parliament as a press officer for the past two years with the objective of digitalizing in the parliament and bringing it to social media.
The other thing that I've been able to accomplish is I convinced a group of MPs to ‑‑ not just me convincing them, but I facilitated a conversation of MPs, who are very digital, Italian parliamentary representatives in the parliament who are very digital, and to convince the president of the parliament to accept the idea of making a committee of study on Internet rights, digital rights. The idea in Italy has been going on for about ten years. Professor Stefania was himself an MP and has huge political experience, and he is a professor of law and has experience in this. He was very close to the Brazilian ‑‑ to the culture of minister of Brazil.
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-- the Declaration of Human Rights. It's not a bill. Even if we call it a Bill of Rights. Bill of Rights is just a hashtag, but really it's a declaration of rights, a declaration of principles. It was voted last week at the Italian Parliament and the government accepted it, so the whole parliament, but the government also accepted this, and they voted on it. And so this is going to be a declaration of rights that we'll stand and help eventually legislatures in the future. When they write laws regarding digital issues, they would have to balance the rights, make sure that rights are not being stepped on.
We're talking about rights that you all know about. I'm just telling you the titles of them, but you all know them. The first one, of course, is Recognition and Promotion of all Rights that have been recognized so far has to be recognized also in the digital sphere. The second article is the Right to Internet Access and the Right to Access Against Digital Divide. The third one is the Right to Online Knowledge and Education.
Without knowledge and knowing how the Internet works, it's not just a right to know how to code, but the right to know the culture, the digital culture, and know how to deal with the Internet and how to also protect yourself, but also how to make your rights be heard if you want to be in control of your own data. You have to know how everything works and how to defend yourself.
Article 4 is Net Neutrality, the right to nondiscrimination. Article 5 is protection of personal data. Article 6 is the right to information self‑determination. Article 7 is viability of electronic devices and domiciles. Article 8 is automated processing. Article 9 is on the right to own identity.
Automated processing is the right that no act of judicial or administrative order or decision that could significantly impact the private sphere of individuals may be based solely on the automated processing of personal data and taking in order to establish the profile or personality of the data subject. Because this is a time where we are ‑‑ we are ‑‑ we are forced to ‑‑ we live by the law of the algorithm. So we are not in control. It's the algorithm that is in control of us. So we should have that kind of awareness.
Article 9 is the right to one's identity. Every person has the right to representation of his or her identity on the Internet. Article 10 is the protection of anonymity. Anonymity is a right. And the Article 11 is the very controversial right to be forgotten. It says clearly that the right to be forgotten cannot restrict the freedom of search and the right of the public to be found, which are necessary conditions for the faction of the democratic society
Article 12 is the right and safeguard of people on platforms. Digital platforms are required to behave with integrity and fairness in dealing with users, suppliers, and competitors. Facebook, Google, all the platforms that we use, but even I'm talking about platforms like Uber, Airbnb, those platforms.
Article 13 is Internet security, and 14 is Internet Governance. These were accepted and voted by the parliament. We have declared these principles and described them really well. It's very well balanced and it's very clear and being taught in universities now, but the problem is implementing declarations of rights; otherwise, it's wishful thinking and the territory, how we live, doesn't change because people don't know about this. First of all, this won't happen. If the government said it would abide by this.
Then you have to check with the ministries and then you have to enforce it in terms of sometimes it seems very abstract and difficult to imagine that this would happen. I'm less pessimistic than many of my colleagues in Italy. Italy is actually doing a lot of this already.
In terms of Net Neutrality, next week the Italian Parliament is voting on a nondiscrimination bill. We're going to have a bill on Net Neutrality in Italy. It will be a lot stronger than the European Parliament passed. The European Parliament passed a bill that is not at all for real Net Neutrality. They are zero‑rating, which is not Net Neutrality. Next week in Italy the bill is going to be stronger Net Neutrality that we protect fair competition and nondiscrimination.
Regarding access, the right to access, we have ‑‑ the Italian government is passing broadband ‑‑ a huge broadband plan. It's going to be presented that the European Commission and to develop broadband over Italy. That's been a huge conquest, because we've been lagging behind compared to other European countries in terms of broadband. It's not very spread out. 50 percent of Italians are not on plan.
The other governmental plan that's going on, I shouldn't be advocating the government, because I'm here and we have separate roles. I'm here to tell you what Italy is doing. The digital school initiative in Italy has been launched. It's a huge education initiative. In terms of digital culture, it includes Internet Bill of Rights. In the initiative they wrote that they are going to bring the Internet Bill of Rights in schools and people will have to learn about these rights. It's like civil education will be part of it. They are teaching how to code in Italian schools as mandatory, just like learning languages. It's going to be ‑‑ time is over.
In terms of privacy, we have a huge authority. Yesterday the authority ruled they cannot collect data of nonusers. The things ‑‑ this is an incredible moment for rights to be actually considered. Italians are really facing everyday novelties on this and huge debates on this.
People think if you put rules on the Internet that means it will hamper innovation. It will demonstrate that's not true. It's like saying in the local, as far as you're telling me about the fact that you asked me to say how it impacts the local, it's like the environment. In it will lay ‑‑ small industries used to dump oil in the neighborhoods because they didn't have any kind of ecological ideas. Now its citizens are aware that dumping oil is not good. They are controlling the environment and make sure nobody does that anymore. Or the ozone layer, how people are buying refrigerators that are more ecological, the same with the Internet. The more awareness that citizens have in the territory about their rights in terms of digital rights, the more they will actually be aware of the risks of platforms that hamper their rights. I guess since now the time is over, if we have any time, we'll talk about it later
>> MODERATOR: Thank you, Anna, for the presentation. I'm sure we will have more time to engage on what was accepted by the Italian Parliament. So I'll now move on to Aida. I know you're ready. I cannot pronounce your second name.
>> AIDA MAHMUTOVIC: Aida Mahmutovic from Bosnia. I work for One World Platform, which is the only Civil Society organization in Bosnia dealing with human rights and Internet. I work for Women's and Internet Rights Program.
So regarding the project that we were collaborating with APC after our first face‑to‑face meeting and all preparations that we had, we came back to the country very excited to do the project, but not everything was as we expected it to be. We started with doing a lot of translating, as mentioned before, that it was very important to kind of bring voices from the world from what's happening, so we did a lot of translations of cases of violation of digital rights and best practice cases which was part of raising awareness and perceiving them as such in the country.
We also collaborated with two very popular bloggers from our country who were drawing parallels between what is happening around the world and what was or is right now happening in our country. But still, it was not perceived as a violation of human Internet rights.
Then we went into organizing the popular working groups, hoping that we will have present different stakeholders, including representatives from our governments and private sector. But yet again, we had a lot of activists, other human rights Civil Society organizations, etc. So somehow everything was just staying between us and not much ‑‑ there was not many things that we could change without the participation of other stakeholders.
So we kind of decided to take a little bit of a different approach, which was to engage with important intergovernmental organizations such as Council of Europe or representative of media office from Vienna, and regard their support. We got huge support from APC, and even ICANN. So very soon we started receiving phone calls and invitations from our government and private sector wanting to engage, wanting to collaborate with us as much as possible.
So this was very interesting, because they kind of wanted to be in the spotlight with all these worldwide organizations, if you wish. So this is actually how we organized our first IGF. There was 109 participants from all different stakeholders. It was also almost 50/50 gender balanced. So what was really ‑‑ the first time what happened was that we had a lot of activists who were able to say out loud what was happening to them, which many of these cases we have never heard about, about writing just a simple post on Facebook during what we had, and within two hours they were taken by the police and things like that.
They were able to ask for the first time people from the government. Some of them had no idea when was happening or at least they said so. So after that, and again, talking with Council of Europe and OEC Freedom of Media, they agreed to continue collaborating with us. This maybe seems to you this was very little thing, but it was a huge win for us.
Thank you.
>> MODERATOR: Thanks so much, Aida. We'll just try to move faster. Next we have Esa Mohasma from the Jordan Open Source Association. So welcome.
>> ESA MOHASMA: Thank you. I'm Esa from Jordan. I'm working on Jordan Open Source Association. We are trying to promote open source philosophy. Not just software, but open data, open source hardware as well. Basically my organization, together with other Civil Society organizations and people interested in Internet rights, we worked this year into drafting and launching a charter of digital rights in Jordan. As an idea is very similar to the Italian one, but the context and the way we actually work is totally different. I really want to focus on this point. We have to be sure that any action to promote Internet rights should be thought out on the local level. It should be localized and made in order to be more related to the local context of each country.
So in our example, since we don't have a very, let's say, clear and dire democratic process like Italy, for example. So what we did is that we basically grouped different organizations and NGOs that were promoting Internet rights and Internet freedom, together with, let's say, other people interested in that. So we had lawyers. We had journalists, media organizations. We also tried to basically group them with government agencies and all ministries in the Jordanian government in order to basically try to find what were the main priorities in regards of Internet rights in Jordan.
So what we discovered, for example, is that privacy, surveillance, and freedom of experience were the most important thing. At the same time, I want to say that in order to see what are basically the difference between the local level and the international one or the global one. We found, for example, that there were no demands from the Civil Society on any Net Neutrality, for example, issue. Since we basically discovered that already laws in Jordan and my country that protects Net Neutrality.
So another thing that, basically, we also discovered during the process is that applying activities are very important. Basically doing activities on the ground, talking with people face to face are an essential and critical part of any Internet‑related projects. So even if a project could be somehow just related to the Internet on the digital sphere, is really important to basically meet everyone on the ground and to basically have very fruitful discussions with them. There is another important point. Our organization is basically technically speaking had a very technical background. So one of our challenges was basically to have, let's say, the technical community and our organization be more, let's say, more interested in human rights on the Internet. And at the same level to have the human rights organization, the traditional one, more interested into the Internet. So basically we did a set of activities and trainings and workshops just to raise awareness of both sides.
So this was very useful. Basically we were able to build a stronger, let's say, network or coalition of people that wanted to defend the Internet. Basically, the main outcome that we got is we have now a charter of digital rights. It's more like a set of principles. It's not really a law, and we are planning to basically promote it to the members of the parliament in our country.
I'm pretty sure that the importance of localization and making things more relevant to the local context is something important, not just for my country. I'm pretty sure if you are already working on other similar projects for countries, you're facing the same issue. So we have to basically to have a look at the global, let's say, Internet rights movement and initiatives, but at the same time we should have basically initiatives that are very more contextualized and more localized. I'm pretty sure that me, myself, and other partners that we had in this project would be very happy to share what we actually discovered from our project. What basically you already are working on your own countries and within your projects.
So it would be very great if we can share this kind of knowledge and if you can help each other in order to make the Internet more free and to basically respect the users of the Internet and their rights. Thanks.
>> MODERATOR: Thanks, Esa. I think that point that you have raised about the challenge of getting the technical community interested in human rights in the Internet is not just a challenge of Jordan. I think most of us, especially from the Developing Countries, are doing that.
Thanks. I know we will have questions for you. Next we would like to invite Nica Dumlao from the Foundation for Media Alternatives. I hope I have pronounced it correct. Say something about yourself, one sentence, before you proceed.
>> Thank you. I'm Nica from Foundation for Media Alternatives. I handle the Internet rights program.
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>> NICA DUMLAO: ‑‑ reach out to other Civil Society organizations who are also interested in Internet rights. For example, we have, like, using the Internet, but not really aware of human rights. So what we did was we needed to tap the youth organizations to be able to help us in trying to mainstream Internet rights in their campuses, as well as the software freedom advocates in the Philippines and startups. So we have, like ‑‑ I don't know the statistics. We have startups, not just in metro Manila, which is the capital, but other urban areas. We were able to tap and are very much onboard on Internet rights advocacy in the Philippines.
What else should I share? Right now it's ‑‑ we're happy to be able to have strong relationship with our organization given the expanding constituency that they have. They're actually interested in going to the IGF, to be able to know more about IGF and also to cultivate a national ‑‑ to have a national IGF in the Philippines. Unfortunately, they won't be able to come because of so many things happening in their office, but yeah. I think we're very much happy. We just also launched Philippine Declaration on Internet Rights and Principles. We have, like, 29 organizations and more. Actually, it's ‑‑ the organizations who are supporting the declaration is really diverse. And we hope to be able to use this as a platform to for the next elections. We are going to have an election in 2016. We want to be able to ensure that Internet rights issues are going to be included in the debate. So there
>> MODERATOR: Thank you very much for your interventions, and for that update on what you are doing. I would now like to invite Lucas Teixeira from coding rights.
>> LUCAS TEIXEIRA: Hi. Good morning. I'm Lucas Teixeira. I work at Coding Rights, which is an organization. Born in Brazil, but global. We are a tank that works on the human rights in the digital world and tries to bridge the gap between the policy people and technical community. Our main project is it goes like antisurveillance workshop in which we do real workshops with activists, journalists, and also lawyers, to protect their communications and for them to understand how the Internet works and how their communications can be intercepted or localized.
We also do policy briefings. We publish news and policy about surveillance privacy. We also publish a periodical newsletter. We try to make a community of people from academia, but also journalists, lawyers, artists, to have conversations about these issues that involve all the stakeholders.
It is small, but vibrant community. We have been with this project for two years now. This year our main works besides the workshops was working with policy in Brazil. We have Marco da Civil, and we have a public consultation that which everyone could give ‑‑ could have a voice and say what they thought about this ‑‑ but we also hold a series of strategic meetings with Civil Society in Brazil for us to all be at the same level regarding the conversation and also for us to make consensus about what we are ‑‑ we were going to put on the public consultation. It is not available yet, but there is another consultation on the draft bill that happened. We also hold those meetings for this consultation.
Instead of free forum conversations, these on the draft bill of data protection, you could comment on specific paragraphs of the law. And then afterwards, at the end of October, they made a new version of the draft bill in which we very much succeeded. We made a page showing the differences between those two versions, which is also in another tab. The browser would show exactly what changed in the law. Comparing these to our document that we opened a pad for putting our collaborations at these meetings, and comparing them we see that around 80% of our contributions were integrated into the new version, published two policy briefings, one about data brokers and the other one about data limitation regarding what the draft bill said about it, what it protected, and what were its flaws. They were very much accepted. We regard it as a success.
This year was ‑‑ there was ‑‑ Duma was elected again. Instead of having the acceptance of the populations, she is in a bad position right now because there is a right wing shift ‑‑ shift in the Congress. She went to the U.N. and asks for the more oversight on surveillance. This was ‑‑ this was the ‑‑ this opened a way for the approval of Marco da Civil, and it protected rights against laws. There is a law which is like a spy bill which is almost passing in Congress and we have to, like, be extinguishing these fires. But we are also working with our community.
We have a Twitter in which we do campaigns. We try to bring people into the conversation, and it's working also. With this community we also are bringing them to our platform for writing news. We are almost publishing our 12th edition of our newsletter, which now beyond Brazil, we also focus on the entire Latin America. We write in both Portuguese and in Spanish. If you want to know more, you can access it, our Twitter is ‑‑ our organization Twitter is Coding Rights. You can sign up for our newsletter; see what we wrote at the last one. We had a special newsletter ‑‑
>> MODERATOR: Could I please ask you to just finish.
>> Wrap up? Okay. Thank you. Thank you for your attention.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you. Thank you, Lucas.
In the interest of time, because we still want to have a session where people can ask one or two questions, I would like to ask Riva Jalipa from Kenya to make an intervention, maximum two minutes, followed by Salua from Tunisia, maximum two minutes. Please try to make it four minutes or four minutes amongst the three of you. Thank you.
>> Here we go. So let's start with this. I have a task for you, but that will come after my first minute. So technology is not neutral. Implementation and management of technology is not neutral. The policies that we make and develop are only worth as much as their implementation. So principles in design in accountability are key. So in order to break these concepts down, we did a project aimed at access and lack of access in Kenya and Tunisia, and also partially in the UK. Censorship and access have both technical policy and user issues and aspects. Of course, it's an issue of freedom of expression. That explains the interest of Article 19 in this.
So Article 19 worked together with the open rights group to develop a tool to detect censorship. This is my ask to you. This software is now available as free and open source software. You can get it from the website censorship.exposed.
With a very easy plus and a raspberry pie, you can measure censorship in our country. It is what we have done and created a campaign in Tunisia and Kenya. Riva will talk about.
>> In Tunisia, we didn't do any on the groundwork on digital. Of course this doesn't mean that do digital work in Tunisia. We did, but based on the expertise of Article 19, based on the international standards of freedom of expression and information, ICT policies and legal analysis of legal framework of the Internet.
We were able to talk to stakeholders in Tunisia, all of them, including government technical community, academia, and Civil Society organization.
And I think that to put them together to work on Internet rights is feasible and is realizable in Tunisia. We need just to build trust and put them together to talk and analyze the context and analyze the challenges and the needs.
What we have is ‑‑ what we have done is creating a local equation different from freedom of Internet or access to Internet, and all the aspects related to access. This coalition is the ISOC chapter of the Tunisia chapter. What we will do in addition to the tools introduced by Neil, we will invest in this coalition. We will develop a joint action plan for this coalition for two reasons. The first one is to work on digital rights in Tunisia. The second one is to work in Tunisia and locally, persons who will be able to exchange with the international fora. Thank you.
>> RIVA JALIPA: Thank you. The context in Kenya has become very critical for freedom of expression online, because the last two years has seen a clamp down in the space. In a media there have been enhanced penalties for journalists, media houses, and NGOs have been listed as terrorists. If the media is a leveller of communication, it becomes a more critical space for all other organizations are being clamped down on.
The project we did with APC is ascertain where there was privacy online. This isn't to say that there are not other online undermining the authority of a public office, and the use of the telecommunication system. So the context in which we work in is one where there were problematic laws either for being vague or archaic or selectively applied, and one also in which national security are being used to justify limitation of civil liberties.
We hope ‑‑ we are glad that we have this baseline, so that in the next two years, when the elections are coming, we can see whether this context has changed. In addition to that, it's not only what's happening online, but I think the larger picture where the independence and policy making in ICT affairs is being increasingly merged. Other than national security and the institutional legal frameworks being threatened, because national security and all the other reasons I mentioned before, that's the context in which we're living, and the reason for which we need to continue to promote Internet freedoms and the freedom of expression online in particular. Can I talk more?
>> MODERATOR: Thank you so much. At least I think you've been able to condense your words in very short. So lastly, we are going to have ‑‑ we have Jeong Mooho from South Korea. The floor is yours.
>> JEONG MOOHO: Thank you. Good morning. My name is Jeong Mooho from South Korea. As an activist, I fear international norm debate or legal framework of other countries influence very much on national right policy. But it's not always positive, but often has negative impact and sometimes without those kinds of international norm or legal framework, we are struggling to make our own legal system to protect the human rights.
One of those areas is about communication surveillance. Last year there was an instant that private messages of a person through the most popular messenger in South Korea, was seized and searched by investigative agency. The target of the investigative agency was accused of illegal demonstration. But he's not the only victim of those surveillance. Private messages of 2,368 of users who had been in the same chatting room with him, was also provided to the investigative agency. So in the case all users, other than the victim, other than target, could not know that their communication messages were provided to the investigating agency. So in this case there are many users. Is it fair other than the target be provided to the investigative agency? And considering the huge range of communication undercurrent communication technology, how much you allow this kind of investigation method.
So it was very hard to find about the international norm or certain border to protect users communication privacy. Of course, we agree that user's communication right has to be protected, but there is not ‑‑ I think there is not yet some concrete mode to protect the communication secret.
Korean Civil Society organizations together developed the proposal to amend our current Communication Secret Act this year and proposed it to the national assembly. But I think this is not ‑‑ the proposal we make could be used to discuss the global or international border to protect the communications secret, but anyway, we need to ‑‑ this is an emerging issues and I think we need to make global norms to and communication secret, but it should be protect users' privacy. Otherwise, it will have negative impact to nations.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you very much for keeping it short. We have less than ‑‑ we have about nine minutes for questions. Could we just see if we have a question? Please, we'll start this and come this way. Say your name and attribute yourself at least.
>> AUDIENCE: I'm from Finland. I got more ‑‑ it's more of two comments than questions, really. The other one is we are just about to start a project in Finland where we are going to install Tor in the libraries. I think that's something that local people can do locally to have better access to all over the Internet. We are also making it look less dangerous if we're making it happen through the libraries. Libraries are pretty much on board with us there.
The other comment was there was some talk about affecting politicians. And I think one way of doing that would be to work with your national pirates, because at least the very minimum they can do is to keep these issues afloat and they will make the bigger parties in your country to feel more, like forced, to raise those issues as well and to have their opinion about it. That's all.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you. More questions? Well, either the speakers were too clear that there are no questions, but this is good. So we'll give this opportunity to the speakers to respond. And, Parminder, you have a question? Do you want to ask now or after they respond? Please ask now and then I will ask the speakers to respond.
I'm also told somebody from Google ‑‑ where is it? Yeah, if you want to make some quick interventions, we will give you that chance.
>> PARMINDER SINGH: Two kinds of comments. If it ‑‑ kind of affected the way the people who have talked about the rights and campaigns in the countries. They can respond. But I think the two issues in which the rights struggle in this area are different from what we have seen traditionally in different areas. First of all, it's very important to go and see what's happened in the traditional rights areas. One main important difference is that in most of those areas they were strong‑felt social needs over long periods which then got made into rights. So there was a long time, long period of action society feeling those things. And then it became rights. And in this part, in this case, it's not so. A lot of it is instruction. And I'm completely for making those normative documents. Not that I'm against it, but that cleared some challenges, which should be kept in mind.
Second, related thing is that rights are not an easy area. We tend to take it with the rights and everybody will adopt it, the very strong social powers. If rights got implemented in the manner, even the Italian, absolutely great set of rights, disrupt both the state's model of keeping control and the new economy's basic model. The Italian Bill of Rights ‑‑ and if it is fully implemented, I know what it means to the new economy. It means a new model of new economy altogether, current with the Internet works will be difficult to carry on.
What I'm saying these are hugely powerful areas of rights, not something that some normative things which you accept and adopt altogether. These were just two observations. We are also working in India trying to do these things. That should come from the failed experiences, try to connect it to the failed experiences of the people in this area. Second, understand that it means structure changes and we should be ready to deal with that. In this light, if any of the panelists are wanting to respond, I'm happy to hear that.
>> MODERATOR: In the interest of time, let's start from Parminder coming this way. Just respond. If you have no response. I was just going to ask, because we don't have enough time. We just ask as final. I noticed Stephania does have a response. All right. Go.
>> STEPHANIA MILAN: I would like to respond to you, because the question is very interesting. Of course, it gives me the opportunity to make my ‑‑ to express my opinion on this. I think it's true that if we applied these Internet rights to the economy right now, the new economy right now and to the global economy, really, because we are talking about a world of globalization. Everybody is saying globalization means you have to be able to innovate without any rules. That's not ‑‑ we can choose what kind of globalization we want. So I don't think we have to forsake rights and rules because globalization needs fast lanes. There is no rules, and it's like the far west, where everybody can grab and the stronger wins and the weaker, okay, it's free competition. The weak ones lose their rights. The conquest of rights over the centuries have been crazy and it's difficult to imagine where that's not valid anymore.
I make an example of journalists in other parts of the economy, but in journalism, I don't know how many of you know it happens in Italy, but I'm sure it happens elsewhere journalists are paid a certain amount of rights conquered over the years, union, they have an amount of time that they work and an amount of time ‑‑ amount of money they get paid for a certain amount of words they write, for example. With the Internet, all these rules, of course, are finished. Digital journalists works 24 hours, he's nonstop, and gets paid nothing, because digital lowered pay. So I'm not saying they have to be paid the same as before, but what I'm saying is the new situation implies that we have to reconsider the economy of journalism. And you cannot pay three Euros for an article, because it's online. If it's on paper, it gets paid 100 Euros. If it's online, it gets paid 3 Euros. That's too little. Maybe a hundred was too much, but 3 Euros is too little. That's a basic thing everybody understands. You don't need to understand the right to Net Neutrality, nondiscrimination for that. Do you understand? That's a very basic right that everybody understands. So if you explain to people that what digital does, it any part of the economy you look, everything has changed. You think that those words don't need any application of human rights. Otherwise innovation is hampered. Then we are going to be like in the 1984 where we are completely slaves. I remember that book Net Slaves, slaves of a new economy and a new power that's given to the corporations and to the governments. The reason we have Internet Governance forums like this is because we want multi‑stakeholderisms is because citizens have to become aware of how they have to be able to survive in this new world, which is a wonderful new world, which gives wonderful opportunities to the people who have not access to culture, because digital is wonderful in many ways. But there's also the other side of it. So I think the road of public institutions is to foster innovation, to foster digitalization, but also to defend human rights, defend the poor. I mean, why should ‑‑ time is over.
Why should a disabled person be granted ‑‑ why should hotels ‑‑ let's put it this way, another example. Hotels are forced, thanks to rights for disabled people, hotels have to provide care for them in the rooms, to get in and everything. With Airbnb, you don't have to do that. So all disabled people in the world are not free to use Airbnb in the same way, because they are not access to the apartments that are cheaper and cuter and nicer to travel. It's very difficult to take care of this problem. So society at all local levels and also other parts of the economy have to think of that and have to find solutions.
>> MODERATOR: I think you have responded to what the two questions had aimed to achieve. Unless there is any anything that would like to respond. I would like to bring this to a close.
>> I think Parminder is very right in reasserting that we do not understand completely yet what rights online mean. We have the statement in a General Assembly that human rights online should be protected as human rights offline. But what this exactly means is yet to be seen. That can only be found out when we all look at the architecture, look at the laws, look at the market, and also look at the users. And it is not one place where we can fix this, but we all have a part to play. That is what we are hopefully trying to do with all these local actions.
>> MODERATOR: Great. So I would like to bring this session to a close. I would like to thank you for participating and even if we didn't have enough time, you have noted the panelists and will be able to engage them. As you have tea, you can have a bilateral. Thank you very much.
(Applause)
(Adjourned)