FINISHED COPY
NINTH ANNUAL MEETING OF THE
INTERNET GOVERNANCE FORUM 2014
ISTANBUL, TURKEY
"CONNECTING CONTINENTS FOR ENHANCED
MULTI-STAKEHOLDER INTERNET GOVERNANCE"
04 SEPTEMBER 2014
9:00
UNESCO OPEN FORUM – MULTISTAKEHOLDER CONSULTATION
ON UNESCO’S STUDY ON THE INTERNET
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This is the output of the real-time captioning taken during the IGF 2014 Istanbul, Turkey, meetings. 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.
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>> G. ENGIDA: Good morning, everybody. I guess most of us must have had some late nights last night. In any case, thank you all for coming.
We've asked you to join us to discuss the ongoing UNESCO Comprehensive Study on Internet‑related Issues. Some of you may know the background for this. It came as a result of the UNESCO's general conference last year in November, which was triggered by events following the Snowden affair and Member States were not on the same page on what the roles and responsibilities of UNESCO should be in relation to Internet related issues.
Some wanted normative instruments. Some, guidelines, et cetera. But in the end, they have compromised to ask the Secretariat to undertake a Comprehensive Study with as extensive consultation as possible with all the stakeholders, insofar as Internet impacts significantly on what UNESCO does in its mandates as it relates to education, the sciences, both natural and social and human sciences, culture, both tangible and intangible, and more importantly our Sector on communication and information that deals with Freedom of Expression, free flow of information, and ICT related issues in terms of building societies.
We have put out concept notes and we've distributed questionnaires which we strongly encourage you to give us feedback, and we will certainly appreciate that. And this is one of the consultations we're having. We've had a number of consultations in different fora and we'll continue this and this probably will come to an end the when we planning to have an international conference in Paris.
You might want to note the dates, if you could join us. The 3rd and the 4th of March 2015. At which basically we'll discuss the first draft of the report, or the study, that would then feed into the general conference of UNESCO in November 2015 that will be attended by 195 countries.
Should that report be endorsed in one form or another, that will also feed into the event that will be taking place at the UN General Assembly to discuss and review, so there are lots of issues at stake, and we certainly encourage you to give us as much feedback as possible.
So with that general introduction, let me hand over to my two colleagues, Professor Guy and Professor Indrajit leading the study at UNESCO. Guy?
>> G. BERGER: Thank you. Could we have the PowerPoint, please?
>> I. BANAJEE: Very good morning to all of you, and thank you very much for coming and joining us today for this very important consultation meeting on our Comprehensive Study on Internet related issues. I'll run it through a few fundamental concepts and the basis for the study and pass on to my colleague Guy looking for the questionnaire and other details. So what is the scope of the study as mandated by the Member States? It has to cover the issue of access to information and knowledge and as you must have heard in many of the sessions here and the question of access still remains complex, elusive.
The second major issue or topic the study will cover is Freedom of Expression. It's one of UNESCO's core mandates and we have been one of the leading players in this field for many years now third key issue is a issue of privacy. Lots of controversy, lots of debates on this issue. We need to delve into this issue more deeply and try and figure out its various dimensions and how to handle this very complex problem of privacy or breach of it. And last but not least, the ethical challenges in the Information Society. It's kind of an overarching problem because it covers all the other issues, too, and more. And we need to delve into what could be some of the ethical principles on which the Internet could be approached.
And of course possible options for future actions in these fields. Last but not least we have compiled an extensive questionnaire which I'm sure you've seen. It's online. And these questions are going to help us get your feedback, get suggestions, get ideas, and fine tune the study as we go along.
Now, how do we frame such a study dealing with four rather complex issues which have overlaps but are by themselves very significant? You could do a Comprehensive Study just on one of these issues, but we chose because of the mandate given to us by the Member States to cover all the four issues.
We're framing this entire study within the concept of Internet universality, which is based on four key principles. It has to be Human Rights‑based, it has to be open. It has to be accessible to all, accessible in the larger sense of the term including people with disabilities and so on, and of course, it has to be based on multistakeholder partnership engagement. So these four principles will constitute the benchmark, the framework by which we will be addressing all the four issues that I mentioned earlier.
And this way, we think we'll have quite a comprehensive and holistic coverage, at the same time be able to look at overlaps and synergies between issues, synergies between principles, and so on.
Now, if we look at the four issues as well as the options, and we look at how we're going to frame it within the Internet universality concept, we have rights, openness, accessibility, multistakeholder. Within all the four issues there are rights elements, rights aspects so we will have to filter through that. How do rights affect access, expression, Freedom of Expression, privacy and ethics.
Similarly when it comes to multistakeholder engagement, they cut across all the lines, so there, too, it will be I would say a multidisciplinary, a very holistic approach which has to be engaged in order to be able to see how each of the elements of the framing can cut across all the four issues that we're talking about.
So this gives you an idea of how complex the study is likely to be, even within I would say some of the issues themselves, between privacy and Freedom of Expression, there are going to be issues, there are going to be challenges and overlaps and we'll have to sift through all that in order to get a much clearer picture on what the issues are. If you want to take this unpacking a little further you will see that for each of the four issues as well as the options we will have a series of issues which will appear. We hope that the questionnaire will contribute significantly to deciphering these issues and therefore be able to deal with most of the key issues that come under the scope of all of these four key topics we'll deal with in this study.
Now, in terms of questions under each of the four issues we have formulated a series of questions, and we expect to get very comprehensive sets of answers. We've done a series of consultation meetings already with Member States in different fora like the World Summit Information Society, like the IGF here today and many other conferences and events and we are gathering all this information in order to be able to address these questions.
Question one, how do we reinforce the rights to seek and receive information online? This again is becoming a big issue. We know for some years now, the Right to Information Acts have been adopted in several countries. Not really by every one of them. But we hope that this is going to take this entire agenda forward.
What policies can boost open knowledge resources and ‑‑ and we're also, of course, talking about open education resources ‑‑ open access to scientific repositories, digital heritage, which is in dire need of preservation, and once we do preserve this rich digital heritage of the world, then access to these resources will be enabled.
How can accessibility be facilitated through greater progress and social inclusion online and local content and language? Several sessions here dealt with the question of accessibility, as well as the question of multilingualism, and linguistic and cultural diversity in cyberspace. We have a binding instrument in this particular area and I think this will be an extremely important question we must address in the study and last but not least how can media information literacy one of UNESCO's major programmes now, be integrated in education so as to empower multistakeholder participation online?
I think a lot of the issues, a lot of the challenges that we face today, are largely due to lack of awareness, lack of ignorance ‑‑ due to ignorance, and these can be to a great extent addressed by a comprehensive approach towards media information literacy. With that now I pass you on to my colleague.
>> G. BERGER: So the second topic we have to look at is Freedom of Expression. And again, we looked at the rights aspect, the openness aspect, the accessibility aspect, and the multistakeholder aspect. So the rights question first. We just started to say: What are the current and emerging challenges to Freedom of Expression? I won't go into that. We have our speakers who shortly will give us some insight into those. Particularly as regards rights, we are interested in this question of how our laws that relate to offline impact on the online.
Is there any special protection that's needed for digital expression? That, by the way, is also dealing with the issue of everyone speaks about the mantra of permissionless innovation. Are you talking about permissionless speech on the Internet? Or what about the trend whereby people are being licensed in certain countries now to express themselves on the Internet?
The third topic which goes to the openness side is so what kind of policies can actually assist the openness of Freedom of Expression so you don't have monopolies, that you have maximum pluralism? And what happens also to keep it an open environment whereby sources of journalists don't feel chilled or intimidated to come forward and speak, given the whole digital footprints that are left when people communicate digitally?
The fourth thing is: What literacies again we come back to the media and information literacy but particularly, how do we deal with this question of violations of freedom of speech online, such as hate speech, and how do we define that hate speech? And how do we encourage users to respond to this and understand it and deal with the kind of trolls and so on? Because there is an issue that goes way beyond law and legal capacity to deal with, with hate speech. It's a question of user empowerment, also. It's a question of conscious speech and so on.
And then the multistakeholder issue. This is a huge and complex area. More and more intermediary companies are organising some kind of self‑regulation about what decisions they should make when they are approached by individuals or Governments or other companies to interfere with content or to give up user data. So to what extent is multistakeholder participation in the self‑regulation system an issue to look at going ahead?
So moving on to the third topic we have to look at the privacy. Again we have the rights, openness, accessibility, multistakeholder participation, ROAM. So the rights side of the privacy is: How do we strengthen the respect for privacy on the Internet? A related question is: If you want your right to privacy to be respected to what extent do you have a subsidiary entitlement to encryption and anonymity? And what's the connection between those two? And what's the connection between those two and privacy?
Openness, this is a distinct issue but it's very interesting. Everybody's calling for more and more transparency, more and more open data, open Government partnerships for example but how do you balance that transparency with privacy? What are the issues around anonymization of data? The fourth thing on the accessibility, how can privacy and media information literacy deal so that people feel able and safe to participate online and don't feel intimidated? So what kinds of things can respect privacy and dealing with issues like cyberstalking. We're dealing with issues about your basic literacy, about what kinds of discourse you use, protocols and so on, on the Internet. And the last thing is what kind of multistakeholder arrangements could help balance privacy and other rights, the rights to reputation, the right to safety? These are obviously the huge debates around National Security versus privacy and so on so what kind of multistakeholder involvement could be there?
You may know that the General Assembly has called for every Government to review its intelligence operations to see if they are sufficiently transparent and have independent oversight. Well, to what extent is multistakeholder participation possible, desirable, important in the oversight of intelligence operations as a way to get a good balancing of the rights?
If you remember our Internet universality there's four pillars. The first pillar was the R, the rights, and the last quadrant was the M so if you balance rights, how can you use multistakeholderism to the inform a good balancing of your rights?
So those are the first three sections, and I give you back to my colleague.
>> I. BANAJEE: In fact in recent years, many of the most vibrant I will say debates around the Internet have been discussing the importance of ethical issues. They're no longer technical issues only, they're no longer political issues only. There are a whole large set of ethical questions which arise when discussing the Internet.
So our approach is to find out: How can ethical principles based on human rights advance all the four principles on which the Internet universality concept is based? Namely accessibility, openness and multistakeholder participation on the Internet. And this of course is a very complex domain. UNESCO has done significant work in the past, including the preparation of a code of ethics on the Internet, which was developed under the Information for All programme several years ago, and that document still exists. But new elements, new issues have come up and we need to address them as we go along.
What ethical frameworks or processes could inform an access and open use of the net? Again here even with relation to access issues, openness issues, there are lots of ethical challenges and dilemmas which need to be addressed. And we hope we would get concrete feedback from all of you and our other constituencies in order to be able to address these complex issues and then we come to the question of accessibility, whether you look at very specific groups of marginalized people or accessibility in general.
There are great ethical considerations that crop up, and need to be discussed so in what way can ethical and social inclusion dimensions enhance accessibility? I think for far too long accessibility has been limited to very technical concept related to connectivity, but that's not it. Today there are far more complex issues revolving around. And the question of accessibility which need to be addressed.
And how can ethical sensitivity inform multistakeholder involvement in law regulation and other decision‑making processes relating to the Internet? And here, too, you'll see that as my colleague Guy mentioned earlier, that even this whole multistakeholder debate, multistakeholder approach, there are different issues which will require different partners of the multistakeholder group to be more or less involved, and here, too, there will be a lot of ethical sensitivity as to who takes the lead in what specific dimension of the operation of the Internet.
We come to some broader issues. We need to also examine what are the existing frameworks in each of these fields of study. There's a lot of work which has been done so we need to perform a rather comprehensive scan of what has been accomplished, and extract perhaps the best elements, the best inputs from those. The whole question of cross‑jurisdictional issues which impact Freedom of Expression, privacy and other aspects of the Internet and how do we deal with these? Again this we anticipate is going to be an extremely challenging task but at least if we get some light on current issues, I think that will be a step forward.
Intersections, I mentioned this before, between Freedom of Expression and privacy, access and ethics and so on. And normative or empirical responses which are sought. Then I'll pass you back to my colleague Guy.
>> G. BERGER: We're almost at the end of our side of things just to say we're asking questions on options particularly for UNESCO's mandate. What role does UNESCO play particularly on these issues vis‑a‑vis other organisations in the UN system? What's our relationship to stakeholders outside the UN system? We're asking questions about our internal priorities at UNESCO. UNESCO has priorities, gender equality in Africa, so this study should inform our work in those areas. The post 2015 development agenda developing the Sustainable Development Goals. Small island development states and the decade for cultures. This is an enormous study, and we have to come with answers that hopefully will take knowledge forward and produce a sweet spot, a sweet spot where Member States can find value in what is proposed and agree on it. We're not going to try to come with stuff that is just too contested to be of any value. We will try and identify those key issues where UNESCO can make progress and where Member States can also make progress in terms of the issues raised in this whole study. So quickly the timetable right now we're doing these consultations. Thank you everybody for being here.
As the Deputy Director‑General mentioned, this is a very important conference, because this is not an academic study just for the sake of science. It goes straight into policy making, and it will affect other processes that are ongoing such as the WSIS review, even could influence the future of IGF.
We'll do a progress report. We'll have then the study finalized and finally we'll have this report in November 2015. As you may know, in December 2015, the future of WSIS will be decided at the General Assembly.
So we really encourage people to please use this opportunity to help us do the best study possible that can really make a difference. Your input will really enrich the kind of answers that we can come up with. That's the URL but you can Google also. Not only Google, other search engines, as well.
But we want your responses. The deadline is the end of November. So that sort of ends our part of the presentation. So now we get into the more new stuff I think, trying to hear from experts from around the world what views they have.
I want to also thank our colleague Xianhong, who organised this whole thing. I sometimes forget to thank her for her work but she identified and briefed and recruited our experts and she's also taking notes so the very discussion here will be one of the inputs into the study, so this is not just a talk shop here.
We've asked our experts to address two questions. I hope we can get through each of them, because we have a number of experts. Let me introduce them quickly so I won't introduce them later and we'll go through them person by person.
So on my right is Silvia Grundmann, who works for the Council of Europe in Strasbourg. She's Head of the Media Division of Information Society Department of Directorate General Human Rights and Rule of Law. Then Carl Wettermark. Is he here, Carl?
Then we have Marianne Franklin, Professor of Global Media & Politics at Goldsmiths College, and she's very active in Civil Society issues, particularly around the Internet, the IGF's Dynamic Coalition on Internet Principles and Freedoms.
Then we have, so that's Marianne Franklin. If you could just wave. Then we have Ceren Unal over here in what color do you call your top?
[ Off microphone ]
She's an Ankara University, and very interested in these issues. Teaches in Internet law and civil law.
Nigel Hickson sitting on her right is Vice President for intergovernmental organisations engagement at ICANN.
Pedro Less Andrade on the left over there is Director for Government affairs and Public Policy for Latin America at Google.
And Lillian Nalwoga is President of The Internet Society Uganda chapter, and works closely with CIPESA, the collaboration on international ICT Policy in Eastern and Southern Africa. Sorry, Avri Doria I think needs no introduction. She was the Chair of the ICANN non‑stakeholder commercial group activity, and is an expert in all these issues, and a member of the faculty of International Summit schools on Internet Governance.
I think we could proceed to asking our speakers to speak so we'll try and go through this fairly systematically. Hopefully we'll have some remote participation. Can the remote Moderator, thank you very much for your assistance. But can you wave if there are remote participants? Because from this age and this distance it's a bit difficult to see if you just put your ‑‑
Let me pass it to the Deputy Director‑General. They can discuss one by one. So first is Pedro.
>> G. ENGIDA: What can be done to reinforce the rights to seek and receive information in the online environment. Very broad question. And limited time.
>> P.L. ANDRADE: I'm going to focus only on one issue, and in fact, I link this question to other two, so if you don't mind, I will address all together 1, 7, and 15. So the other two questions are: How can legislation in a diverse range of fields which impact on the Internet respect Freedom of Expression in line with international standards?
And what kinds of arrangements can help to safeguard the exercise of privacy in relation to other rights?
So the topic that I picked to address these rich questions altogether is right to be forgotten. And I think that, you know, in connection with the first question, we need to bring balance to the discussions around right to be forgotten online, which they present serious challenges for the operation of search engines, as key tools to seek and receive information. But also we think that an unbalanced approach will undermine the principles set forth a long time ago in many countries, and they are building right now in others on the limitation of liability of Internet intermediaries, which has been one of the key policies that helped the Information Society to flourish.
We are seeing scenarios of abuse that could lead to censorship for example in this regard. We all know about a recent judicial decision on the European Union about the scope of the European directive under the protection and this is the balance, the balance between privacy protection and Freedom of Expression and access to information.
There are ‑‑ this person has at some point justified broader attempts outside the European Union not only to remove links to content that might result inconvenient or outdated, but also to remove the content itself from social networks or websites. So we are seeing a broader approach in ‑‑ particularly in Latin America where I'm working.
So these are the ‑‑ and that without a judicial order. This is basically removing content without having a judicial order, and I'm putting the intermediaries in the role of the judges. So how can this ‑‑ going to this second question: How can legislation can address this? I think that a good exercise will be to implement the principles set forth in the Joint Declaration of Freedom of Expression and the Internet. This was signed by the Rapporteurs of expression for the OIS, the UN, also the Rapporteurs working on Freedom of Expression in Europe and in Africa.
And there are many countries already adopting them in their own legislation. We have the latest example with Mexico, that basically took the principles as guidance for the reform of their Constitution in terms of free expression and the Internet.
And lastly, when we ask ourselves what kind of arrangements can help to safeguard the exercise of privacy in relation to other rights, the important thing to keep in mind here is that given the interconnected nature of the Internet, nowadays few things could happen in isolated, so basically, we need this balanced approach to find the best solutions that are also the less restrictive ones to the rest of the rights.
So when we talk about issues related to privacy, we need to find those solutions that are the least restrictive ones to the rest of the rights that could be involved as Freedom of Expression or access to information. So that will be all.
>> G. ENGIDA: Thank you, Pedro. I must admit, I've got incredible difficulty trying to understand what it means to be the right to be forgotten. I guess lawyers will spend a lot of time trying to decipher that. I prefer that we've adopted the right to be forgiven, not forgotten. But that's an issue for another day.
So let me ask Nigel to deal with the kind of mechanisms we need to develop for policies and common standards for open license of educational resources and scientific repositories and for the long‑term preservation of digital heritage. Nigel, take it away.
I was told that is really ‑‑ no?
Okay, well, we've now volunteered Avri. Please.
>> G. ENGIDA: So then we continue with access.
>> G. BERGER: Let's go to Avri on access.
>> G. ENGIDA: We seem to be having a logistics problem. The next question is how can greater progress be made as regards inclusive strategies for women and girls, as well as marginalized and disabled persons?
>> A. DORIA: Thank you, Avri Doria speaking. And, yeah, the right to be forgiven is important, and I'll probably need to be forgiven. So in looking at that one, it almost looks like an impossible problem, because even in places where a legislation could be built, we've had discussions for decades on inclusion, on mainstreaming, whether it's of women, marginalized population. I work with the LGBTQI community, and the abuse that that community gets, the disabled.
Even if you legislate ‑‑ and in fact some people legislate against these groups, so I guess a first step would be to help stop legislation against various populations, which we see, whether it's a minority population that's discriminated against, you know. Then there's enabling legislations that are probably needed.
But I don't put a whole lot of faith in legislation, because legislation is something that you can force through, but then what's to say that that legislation will be honoured, that legislation will be upheld, or that the population itself won't go beyond that? And so, in fact, I think the real problem comes down to: How do you change mindsets on a lot of those? How do you ‑‑ you know, in order to make progress?
We've seen situations, they get better. For example, even when digital technology is brought into communities, it's often put into all‑male spaces. Even when people can gain access to technology, access to that technology, if not filtered on, is used as a semaphore to notify authorities. This happens in women's issues, in radical women's issues, especially in some of the sexual freedom issues. It happens with LGBTQI issues, in countries where it is illegal to be gay, you end up going for information on how to survive being gay. You end up notifying others that, here's somebody to go harass.
So when I look at how that can be done, the mind set of populations, the mindset, and that's something that I think UNESCO is well placed to do, and that's something that is done through media. We have seen, in the commercial environment, how good programmes of ‑‑ can convince people, can change mindsets. Very often, legislation to prohibit something doesn't work, but media campaigns that use all of the media modes from Internet to television to radio to print that basically constantly give an image of, you know, women's equality, of education for girls, of the equality of minority populations, of enabling technologies for the disabled, that those campaigns do eventually. We've seen that a media campaign can turn a population to hate. But we've also seen that a media population can enable.
So in terms of that, yes, we need legislation to really enforce the equality that we find in Human Rights declarations but we more than the legislation, we need media campaigns to basically really focus on changing the mindset of people so that they can be enabled to gain access, to be included. Thanks.
>> G. ENGIDA: Thank you, Avri. Definitely most of us will agree with you, that legislation alone is not enough, and we really need to work all of us in different paths and different roles to change mindsets. We only have to remember that it was in 1948 we had the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and including Article 19 on Freedom of Expression. 66 years down the line we're still struggling to get that right respected. So that tells you that legislation alone is not enough, and we need to change minds and that's why UNESCO clearly says that wars are made in the minds of men and it's in the minds of men that the defense of peace must be constructed. And that equally applies to many aspects of rights issues.
>> A. DORIA: And if I can add, and the minds of women, as well.
>> G. BERGER: Nigel, sorry.
>> N. HICKSON: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Nigel Hickson. I wanted to say a few words on A.1. while we're on the access to information, along with my colleague for Google. I won't talk about right to be forgotten, but I just wanted to reference something which I think is important here in relation to access to ‑‑ access to information, the right to receive information in the online environment. I think this is of salute crucial importance and I think it's ‑‑ of absolute crucial importance. And I think it's something we take for granted. We have discussions over net neutrality. We have discussions about access to information in terms of people who might prevent people from having information, and no doubt we can touch on that, because those are very important issues, as well.
But I just wanted to refer to the importance of, if you like, the non‑fragmented Internet, and in ICANN we have a responsibility, as you know, to maintain ‑‑ as you know to maintain an interoperable and a universal and open Domain Name System and an open, universal and a single Domain Name system I think is very important when we look at access to information because if we end up with a fragmented Domain Name System then the ability of people to access information can be greatly diminished.
And although I'm not suggesting that overnight we're going to go to a fragmented Domain Name System what I am suggesting is that we have to be very wary in our international negotiations that we enact the best policies and whether that ends up in legislation of course is a completely different aspect but we need to enact policies that is going to keep the Internet open, but also going to keep the Internet non‑fragmented.
And if we look at some of the discussions that took place back at the WCIT, some of the proposals that might be put forward to the Plenipotentiary conference in a couple months time or even a month's time in Buson, in Korea, proposals from different Member States, if we look at some of the proposals that indeed were put forward during the WSIS preparatory process and might be discussed at the WSIS High Level Meeting at the UN General Assembly in 2015, then I think we have to take these issues very seriously in terms of the policies, in terms of the legislation that National states enact. We have to pay a lot of attention to that we only have one Domain Name System that we have a truly unified Internet and that we don't have a fragmented situation where people are going to find it very difficult to access information. Thank you.
>> G. BERGER: Thank you. So now we're moving into the next batch of questions and to hear what our experts have to say. That was access, right to be forgotten and what that means for access and gender and sexuality issues. Access and Domain Names and access. Now we're moving into Freedom of Expression.
Silvia Grundmann, you're going to help us answer a couple of these questions combined, so we won't repeat all the questions. You give us all the answers.
>> S. GRUNDMANN: Thank you very much, Guy, but whether I can give all the answers and right now here, that's another question.
In terms of right to access, I would just like to recall that the European Court for Human Rights in the case of Yildirim against Turkey has stressed that the right of access to the Internet is fundamental for the right to freedom of expression, so that we have the link, and that shows you also where we as the Council of Europe are coming from. So we have the Court's case law that we will feed into the study.
But then also, the standard‑setting that's being done in the Committee of Ministers, with the help of the work of the respective Steering Committee that I'm the Secretary to. That's the CDMSI, the Committee on Media and Information Society and there has been a lot of standard setting, but we're now also on track of looking more into implementation, and then implementation gaps. So that is the general line we will take to feed into this study.
I would also like to say that we very warmly welcome the study for its comprehensive approach, and it is really a very big task. We all can only benefit from it. And the rights based approach of course is crucial here. Now, more concretely, I would like to touch on question number 6, tying a bit into 7, and then also 8. Now, challenges, I think there are very many challenges for us. In my particular field at the moment, we focus on safety of journalists. For us, this is currently the biggest challenge.
Why? Because the topic has been out there since the beginning of journalism. We have the controversies there about journalists, what is a journalist in the digital age?
We prefer now to talk about journalists and other media actors, but as it might be well aware to you, we have Member States that prefer a much narrower definition, and we'll have to work on that.
Therefore, I think UNESCO is too modest here, and they have not even mentioned their work on digital safety for journalists, so I think the work of UNESCO is very much here coherent, and I'm very happy for that, and we can very much benefit all of us.
So safety of journalists, the biggest challenge there, I see a link there, also, to the topic of surveillance, the stifling effect of it, the sources protection, and when we look into that, we have to look into the international standards. Are they sufficient enough? What else can we do there to arrive at a better protection?
Finally, the need for specific protection of freedom of expression on the Internet. I would like to mention defamation laws there. The defamation laws in most countries, in all countries that I know of, have been made for offline situations, and I think we need to look into that, whether they fit for the online age, and maybe we want to also think about some models, maybe even a model law there.
We have commissioned a study also on blocking and filtering. I should mention that, but whether we will have sufficient results to feed in within the deadline we mains to be seen, but we are also looking into that. I mentioned surveillance, and we have a big chapter on privacy. I won't be able to go into details here, but we'll feed into that, also. Thank you.
>> G. BERGER: Thank you so much. In fact that's a good segue to the third field, which is privacy. And we have Ceren and then Lillian and Pedro, maybe we can come back to you at the end, because you did indicate you have something to say in that field, but just to make sure we can get to every speaker.
So, Ceren, would you like to go first on answering what is your view of one or two of the questions.
>> C. UNAL: I personally picked the relationship between privacy, anonymity, and encryption, as I thought it was very relevant these days. Privacy is without any doubt protected legally in every other jurisdiction in various forms, but it's legal protection and everybody has consensus that people should have the right to privacy. Anonymity there's no such consensus whether it's an absolute right, people's right to remain anonymous, but it's still important for people speaking up their minds, and also, it's crucial for freedom of expression, especially in oppressive societies and questionable democracies, as it's quite important.
So in the last couple of years, I think all around the world we've been witnessing a struggle between Governments and individual users, especially when they're trying to bypass the biggest right to privacy, which is surveillance and filtering, so while individual users are trying to bypass surveillance and filtering, they use privacy enhancing tools, supported by encryption technologies.
So this is a fact that we all know, and some of us try it and experienced, but what if ‑‑ my "Star Wars" language ‑‑ the Government strike back, and let's say in a fictional country far, far away, while the users are trying to bypass a ban, the Government puts pressure on the ISP so that altered DNS servers were being intercepted by ISPs? So how are you going to address that? That's I think the most crucial thing we need here, is transparency and accountability, but these standards should be applied to all the actors involved: The Governments, the intermediaries, state agencies.
So how are we going to regulate these things? Do we ever have to regulate these things? It's also overregulation is also another risk, because when you have too strict, too rigid rules that allow no flexibility when it comes to technological developments and other kinds of changes so a case by case analysis is crucial. So when we're looking at the future, what do we want? I think the whole concept of universality is quite nice or the transformation from the Internet of Things to universality and are we going to strive for a user centric rights based Internet or Government state centric Internet and how the ecosystem will survive. How are we going to ‑‑ the first year in law school, it's all the professors tell us, the law is all about balancing the interests of the parties involved.
So how are we going to address it? I think we're going to see it over time, and I also, I'd like to start a discussion about the impact of big data, how it's going to shape the world, whether if it's really the capital of the 21st century so how will it shape industry? How will it shape the regulation? How will it shape liability issues?
So one fits for all approach for ISPs, so all access providers are equal, but how about all intermediaries? They are all subject to a one fits for all approach liability regime, but how will big data impact the whole industry and the whole Internet ecosystem? So I think that's all for now.
>> G. BERGER: Thank you so much. That helps us deepen the privacy field. And we certainly hope at UNESCO you will write up your thoughts and send them in as a submission.
>> C. UNAL: Yeah, sure.
>> G. BERGER: So Lillian, also on privacy.
>> L. NALWOGA: Thank you, guy. Lillian from Uganda. I think some of the ‑‑ I have two questions on privacy. How can security of persons be enhanced and how can media and information literacy be developed to assist individuals to protect their privacy? And I think somehow some of these have been touched by her, and also Avri mentioned some few aspects about media and information literacy.
However, in terms of protecting security of personal data, I think to me, I see two aspects. This study comes at a time when it's truly necessary to know what are people doing? And we have people who are just excited to get on the Internet, you know? They don't know how far they can go. They're just excited to get on the Internet.
And in the age of social media where new applications, new innovations are just coming up, I think the most important thing is about awareness creation, you know? And we've seen cases I think I will not just say in my country or, say, in Africa. I think it's a global thing. People are not aware that the Internet is a global thing. Once you're on the Internet, you've opened up your entire life to everyone, because there's no jurisdiction.
So issues of creating awareness of what the impact of Internet could be, leading to your personal life, is interesting, is something that should be taken on. And we are seeing nowadays, we do run campaigns on how to promote freedom of expression online, and the key message we tell especially the youth who get so much excited about Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, is: Employers nowadays are going on to, you know, doing social search on you, and they see stuff that may impact you, so stuff like that, personal data, in the era of all sorts of crimes, is important.
But also, awareness in terms of digital safety. How to be safe is something that should be looked into and it's not just ‑‑ it's a global thing.
On question number 2, still how can the media or information literacy be developed to assist individuals to protect their privacy? I think Avri mentioned something about media campaigns. We've seen the media being a root cause of so many problems. I think I was just reading in terms of there's this celebrity, I'm forgetting her name, Jennifer something, whose pictures leaked on the ‑‑ via ‑‑ on the Internet, and the media just enhanced, you know, that. It just like blasted it out.
So I think media needs to be told how to protect individuals in terms of ‑‑ I mean, in times when such information leaks, how can the media work around just protecting individuals in terms of in violations on the Internet, not just them splashing out, further reinforcing the other person's privacy.
And I think still the issue of capacity building, probably they don't know anything about Internet rights or Internet freedoms. They don't understand the concept so it's one of those things that I think needs to be taken into play. I'll end at that. Thanks.
>> G. BERGER: Thank you so much. So that was very illuminating. Please write it down and send it to us. So let's have Marianne, who's going to speak on the ethics field, the ethics topic. And then afterwards, I suggest we pause, we get some comments from the floor and then we have a last quick round here. Marianne, ethics.
>> M. FRANKLIN: Hi, thanks very much. In that Section I'm looking at Question 21. Just so that people in the room know which question that is, could someone read it out? I've got my text up here.
>> G. BERGER: The question is: What conceptual frameworks or processes of inquiry could serve to analyze, assess, and thereby inform choices that confront stakeholders in the new social uses and applications of information and knowledge.
>> M. FRANKLIN: Thank you. So I'm going to put on my academic hat here because this is what pays my wages and allows me to get to these things. I would like to advocate a much more multidisciplinary approach to the sort of research that we are doing. What I admire about these 30 questions is while it's extraordinarily wide ranging and daunting to consider in one sitting, they do bring into the picture that there are many, many ways to actually research what is going on. We're looking at everyday life. We're looking at people getting excited about making contact with new people, finding news sources they never had before and what we lack at least in the sitting is to understand there's an enormous amount of ethnographic research based on longitudinal studies that gets very, very close to communities, groups of users, individuals, particularly in parts of the world that are going online.
And this has been happening right from day one, right from the first day that the World Wide Web in the 1990s was available in a very open access form. Things have changed a lot but my first research was looking at young people going online to talk about sport, love, friendship. But very quickly realizing this was a space in which they could have political discussions, sensitive discussions about sexuality, about family life, and about what democracy was in their country, in parts of the world controlled by very authoritarian non‑Democratic Governments. We forget how powerful that space is online and we need to get research in here in this particular space in which we're meeting that actually deals with the granular and the most diverse ways in which people really do use the Internet.
Quantitative indicators are very important. Survey work is very important. But we need to get to the stories and the narratives and the deep experiences of what people are saying. Why, for instance, they want to be in a chat room that is password protected, and why that chat room for them is extremely important, that it protects their anonymity from prying family members if they're coming to terms with their sexuality, if they're having issues with bullying.
We also want to think about the sorts of things people are making. The Internet is a meaning‑making space, how people actually discuss what the world is to them. It's also the access point more and more for people to get to the world, so there's plenty of research out there from anthropology departments, media and communications departments, that are multimethod, meaning they use quantitative work, but they also get down close and of course the sort of work I do so I'm very fond of it, speak to people, watch what people do with their permission. This is observation with consent, and ask ourselves as researchers: What are we seeing here? That detail, that nitty gritty stuff, if we can get that into our discussions here and get away from this always the survey level, we can link that survey information with the really individual group and community uses of any form of Internet media, we will start to see different ways to design it, different ways to access it, and we will understand the many myriad uses to which the Internet is put that is far more than terrorism, far more than child pornography, far more than criminal activities.
I would like us to see how the research shows the joyful, exciting ways in which people are making sense of the world in which they live. And it's happening, the research is out there so this is my chance to make a plug for multidisciplinary, multilevel, and multimethod approaches to the work we need to understand what we're doing here. Thank you.
>> G. BERGER: Thanks, Marianne. You can see a Professor says more research is needed so her answer to the questions is: We need more research, which is very important, because this study should also set an agenda for more research exactly along those lines but if you have some of that research already, please ‑‑
>> M. FRANKLIN: Yes, I just want to say not just more. We always want more research, but to get into this conversation an enormous amount of research is already out there.
>> G. BERGER: Thank you so much. Anybody else like to comment on the points made, on other questions, or thoughts that you think would enhance the study? Could you introduce yourselves when you speak? One, two, three, four. And then we'll come back. Please keep it quite short.
>> Thank you. Andre Bazuk, Ukraine noncommercial user constituents. I have two questions to the team, first of all the concept of universality, one of my issues is the openness of Internet and you mentioned open knowledge, open exchange of expression, openness related to privacy, open users of the Internet but you don't mention open Internet concept based on architecture principles of Internet openness. I mean Internet principle was linked to network neutrality and nondiscrimination principles related to the use by how you're going to address such issue. And the second question related to international law issues because universality means universality in approaches. At current stage we can see universality at international level related to standards, related to freedom of expression, privacy, protection, hate speech in different jurisdictions. In the inter‑American system and the Council of Europe approaches are very different in related to hate, related to commercial speech, political speech protection, protection of personal data in private sector, such issues like hate speech and defamation of religion and so on.
How your study could address differences in such fields. Thank you for your response.
>> C. RADSCH: Thanks. My name is Courtney Radsch from the Community to Protect Journalists. As someone who worked on a very complicated study like this I have a couple of questions. How are you going to get into the details? Are you going to be allowed to discuss specific case examples, specific countries, or region? Is it going to be a Regional approach? I think this kind of builds on the previous question but to what extent are you going to get at different approaches? Is the goal to have an ‑‑ to have a recommendation at the end? Or just to provide a picture of how that looks?
Also, on the concept of the ethics dimension of multistakeholderism, to what extent will that look at the often vast gap between what states say or sign onto in Resolutions or normative frameworks, and then the actual implementation and actions taken on the ground? Or for that matter companies potentially the same way. And to what extent will that then result in some sort of, you know, recommendation in terms of bridging that gap? Or in terms of how to have a multistakeholder approach where those ethical dimensions are actually considered?
And then the last dimension I think is to make sure, to make this paper relevant because it's going to take some time to get this concept developed. It's a very complicated one. To what extent will you look to the future, such as the Internet of Things, as we discussed at the express freedom dimensions of Internet Governance panel looking at how some of these things might be translated in the future, surveillance, not only translated in the future but also then you mentioned in the last slide the interconnectedness of various aspects. So the combination of things like data retention, right to privacy, surveillance, and tracking, and then the implications of that and really maybe trying to look forward so that it's not just looking backwards.
>> G. BERGER: Walid.
>> Okay, thank you very much. I am Pascal. I'm from Bangladesh. I am a person with disabilities. I am a disabled person. I would like to give one information and one question. You'll be very glad to know for the first time in the history of Bangladesh all the primary school textbooks we have in the DAISY standard. It is in unicode, digital Braille, full text for multimedia books and makes available to the National content repository, Government run website so anyone from anywhere can access the books. So this is like once supported by Prime Minister office and UNDB and it is a joint initiative. This is like what I'm trying to say, people with disabilities is an issue in the Internet Governance and ICT, Internet communication technology. Access is biggest barrier for us. We don't have any high quality text to speech. That's why our book production is very expensive. We need to use the human voice. And also it is, there is no open source or good‑quality Braille transcription software in our region.
So that's why we need to work to get that to find out the solutions, how we can ensure the accessible information for people with disabilities. This is a mandate of even Convention of Rights of Persons with Disabilities and UN should be more active especially in developing countries. In our country we're seeing sometime UN agencies are a little lacking in disability issues so I think we can send a message to the country level UN agencies that they should include the people with disabilities in any development. Thank you very much.
>> G. BERGER: Thank you, great. Walid.
>> W. AL‑SAQAF: I'm from Walid Al‑Saqaf from Yemen, and teaching in Sweden communications at the Orebro University. As an academic I've looked into the survey and realized how long it is to fill it out. I've been trying to find time to do it right now with those thoughts. But apparently it was too long.
The idea behind the survey may have been, in my opinion, more constructive had it had more optional let's say multiple‑choice options, apart from the open‑ended questions, because I understand from a methodological point of view you cannot always use a quantitative data analysis in these cases which is oftentimes more convenient in such a very short time. So I'm not sure how we'll be able to manage the data.
Nonetheless, many of the questions are extremely relevant and one of them that caught my attention was what would you do in terms of educational standards? And one interesting experience that I personally had coming from Yemen where I studied until secondary class, and then moving on to other countries and now in Sweden, I've come to understand that some countries have developed quite ahead, like Sweden, the Nordic countries and the U.S. and so forth, so they also have a very well established educational let's say standard, where libraries share information and educational institutes already have a digital infrastructure.
So instead of trying to reinvent the wheel there may be a very strong reason to adapt ‑‑ adopt those ideas in many other countries, perhaps transitional countries first and then developing countries. It would not be possible immediately to my great assistant like that to Yemen let's say or some other countries but there could be a means of converting the knowledge, the know‑hows so that the local environment could work their way bottom‑up.
So that's one approach that I would see very reasonable. Another important aspect is when it comes to privacy and freedom of expression, we've oftentimes confused the two notions and think that we can't have one without the other. But there are cases where you can actually have both. Recently in Yemen, we had the Internet Governance meetings so we introduced new methodologies in which we could actually protect individual privacy as well as promote freedom of expression within that context so working bottom‑up perhaps is the best way to understand Regional needs, international needs and then moving upwards.
>> G. BERGER: Thank you. So please send that submission in. I think we will respond at the end briefly to some of the questions, but some of our experts can also respond, but they had a second question now. We have basically 10 minutes. So I'm going to ask our experts ‑‑ any remote participation? No? Okay.
Going to ask our experts to take 2 minutes, maybe 3, to give their second bat, maybe address some of these things and Indrajit and I will sum up. So let's go in the order that we spoke.
That's probably best. Pedro, you were the first.
>> P.L. ANDRADE: Well, I addressed these three questions altogether so I'm going to make a short comment that has to do with the last question in terms of what kind of arrangements can help this to safeguard the privacy in relation to other rights and I think the big problem right now in connection with what I addressed at the beginning, the right to be forgotten that we are confusing information with personal data. And I cannot agree more with what Silvia said about the lack of good framework an updated framework for defamation in the online world because what we are seeing now is that the legal institutions for privacy and the protections are used to address the concern on defamation which they are completely different legal institutions and shouldn't be mixed.
But we are saying that in particular the right to be forgotten, so this is my contribution.
>> G. BERGER: Who came after you? It was Avri.
>> A. DORIA: Thank you. In terms of listening, and I'm very glad that in terms of the access to the blind was actually added, because it was definitely something that I had left out in terms of the need to provide the enabling ability to use the Internet for the blind. So I'm very glad that that was brought in.
I also very much acknowledge what Lillian said, that the media and the Internet, as such, basically is two‑edged and can be ‑‑ and that's basically what always brings me back to this mindset issue, because as long as we have populations and we have Governments that are intent on not helping, not enabling, and actually disabling, we ‑‑ it doesn't matter what tools we build. So it helps, and in fact though I think the most important tools we build are often the circumvention tools so that the people that can't gain access because it's filtered or because it's monitored can actually get around those things, and that's another thing that I should have mentioned.
I don't know whether that's within UNESCO's area to encourage the distribution and the use and the education in how to use circumvention tools to be able to have freedom of expression, to be able to have, you know, the ability to associate on the network without it turning into something dangerous to do.
But if indeed that is within UNESCO's purview to sort of encourage and assist in the development and distribution of those circumvention tools, that is perhaps one way to actually help while waiting for the mindset to change. One thing about the length of the questionnaire: Work on it offline, and then cut and paste your answers in. It helps. It allows you to go away, come back. I'm still working on mine.
But basically, I suggest that as a method as opposed to trying to do it in one sitting.
>> G. BERGER: As my colleague Indrajit says we don't expect everybody to have an answer to every question so please take those questions where you really think you've got a unique contribution to make. We're not doing an opinion survey. It's not ‑‑
>> G. ENGIDA: We're not testing your knowledge either.
>> G. BERGER: So please if you feel intimidated by all 30 questions that's completely understandable. But we don't expect everybody to just be selective and give us depth, and we will have to ‑‑ we have the big chore then to, well, exciting, to actually take all the stuff and say: How can we make sense of it?
Okay, but we'll respond a bit more to those other questions later. Silvia?
>> S. GRUNDMANN: Thank you very much. I would like to make a brief comment on the hate speech online issue that has been mentioned here by several speakers, or by also notably our participants. And, yes, we at the Council of Europe treat hate speech online very seriously. We have a campaign on that, and yet we are well aware of the difficulties when it comes to the definition, and when it comes to the possibility of using also this argument against Freedom of Expression.
So I think we need to look more into that, and I would hope that the input being given here through this very valuable work of UNESCO could help us further. And also, if we look into that, we see there the link between hate speech generally speaking and then hate crime. So this is where we are coming from, and if we have ‑‑ can benefit from your work there, that would also be very much appreciated, but as I said, we'll feed into that. Thank you very much.
>> G. BERGER: Ceren?
>> C. UNAL: I'm just going to say a few words about ethics and how it's a very important component for Internet Governance I think in general and how it's overlooked. It's partially our fault as lawyers because it's a really huge element. For example starting from your example Jennifer, Jennifer Lawrence I think, yeah, Jennifer Lawrence so there's some serious ethical concerns on the journalists. Of course, whether we can call these websites as journalism websites.
So I remember the Resolution of the Council of Europe on the right to privacy issues right after the death of Princess of Wales I think in 1998, I think. I think. So it set some standards for tabloid journalism, as well. So you cannot harass people online. So these documents are also useful.
And also there's some ethical standards should be implemented by the users, as well. So they publish it but you don't necessarily have to agree with them. It's like for all actors involved, ethical standards are quite important, and my second question was, the intersection between the freedom of expression, privacy, ethics, openness. Of course, there are some intersections in the study.
I think in general, ethics should be definitely as an important part of the questionnaire, and yeah, there are going to be intersections but these are necessary intersections, I think. Thank you.
>> G. BERGER: Thanks. I'll come to Nigel at the end because he said he'd answer one of the last questions. Next we have Lillian.
>> L. NALWOGA: I think the one thing that I've been thinking of that I can ‑‑ sorry? Yeah. We have 3 minutes, so I'll say in one minute. I think it's about digital literacy skills, because if you look at, say, the media, there are underlying issues, Internet related issues, that they need to address. The issue of ethics, then understanding the technologies, and then knowing how to address the new ‑‑ the new challenges or opportunities the Internet presents.
But then also the individual users, it comes in terms of context. We are still kind of getting people to connect to the Internet, back in the developing countries. Whereas in the developed countries people are connected so the context also I think is something that probably will come out in the study if you're to get responses from across the globe.
And then you also look at digital defenders, you know? I think that is sort of global. You have Human Rights defenders. You have people who are looking at children and women, you have people who are looking at LGBT. The context should be coming out where the only digital literacy skills in order to address the new challenges or opportunities, whatever issues that are coming out of the Internet. And of course, the policymakers.
For us in developing countries, I would say Africa, we have this cut and paste. One policy, you sit down and you analyze a policy, say. In East Africa you find it's a cut and paste from one country to another. It's not actually addressing what is at hand. So all this needs to be ‑‑ needs to come out and I'm sure it will come out in your findings. Thanks.
>> G. BERGER: I certainly hope so. Marianne?
>> M. FRANKLIN: I have two minutes. I'm addressing question 24 about our frameworks. This is my moment to talk about the Charter of Human Rights and principles for the Internet, as an already existing framework to discuss both the ethics, the empirical and political issues at hand. The Charter now in Turkish, in English and also Arabic, Spanish and German, includes clauses on freedom of expression, privacy, access. It has talked about surveillance before that became a hot topic. It is dealing with hate speech, perhaps in ways that lawyers might want to discuss.
And it's actually articulating the key empirical areas of inquiry that the study wants to touch upon, and how our everyday lives, political processes and ways of earning a living have all shifted online whether we like it or not, and we need a framework.
Others are calling for global Magna Carta of digital rights. I would say we already have one. We've had one four years. It's about to start a review. Please join us in our meeting and workshop this afternoon at 4:30 and the anonymity workshop online which follows the session. And I believe fervently in this Charter, not because it's perfect but because it is doable and it's being implemented, and I call on all of you to consider it and give us some feedback, but also there are other good statements at stake. Thank you.
>> G. BERGER: Marianne, I call on you to submit the Charter, please, to this review. Nigel can you take one minute please?
>> N. HICKSON: I'll be very quick. It's very difficult to follow Marianne. Absolutely whatever she says is right. We shouldn't endlessly reinvent things that have been invented.
All I wanted to say in respect actually to 28, UNESCO's role, what is UNESCO's role? I think we see from this the breadth of this questionnaire, which has been brought up. This questionnaire is very wide ranging. We see the breadth of UNESCO's role, and in terms of the evolution of the IG, the Internet Governance ecosystem which is something we've been talking about both at the IGF and ICANN and NETmundial, et cetera, et cetera, where I see UNESCO playing an absolutely pivotal role because we've got ‑‑ we have meetings. We have if you like, we have mechanisms to discuss technical issues, like ICANN or ISOC or the ITU to discuss infrastructure issues and technical issues.
Where we lack sometimes, and we have the Council of Europe but with all ‑‑ and the Council of Europe does this fantastic job, but it is Council of Europe, and although it's wider than just Europe, it doesn't have the breadth that the UNESCO should reach. So I think there is, as this questionnaire proves, a real role for UNESCO in coordinating some of this in some sort of multistakeholder Forum, in some sort of process, not just a conference every two or three years, but some ongoing commitment.
And I know you need a check to do that, so here is the ‑‑ oh, sorry. But I know it's a resource issue but I think they're well placed.
>> G. BERGER: Thank you so much. I think we do need to end it there. I know we haven't answered some of the questions from people on the floor but I suggest we take that offline or after the session. I think Bangladesh, my colleague Indrajit is very interested ‑‑ okay. Courtney, you and I can speak and the man from Ukraine, please let's pick that up afterwards.
So thank you so much. Thanks to our experts. Can we give them a round of applause?
[ Applause ]
And thanks also to my colleague Xianhong.
[ End of session ]
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This is the output of the real-time captioning taken during the IGF 2014 Istanbul, Turkey, meetings. 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.
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