FINISHED TRANSCRIPT
EIGHTH INTERNET GOVERNANCE FORUM
BALI
BUILDING BRIDGES – ENHANCING MULTI-STAKEHOLDER COOPERATION FOR GROWTH AND SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT
SESSION NUMBER AND SHORT NAME
23 OCTOBER 2013
11 A.M. – 12:30 P.M.
WORKSHOP 321 AND WORKSHOP 285
STATE SURVEILLANCE ONLINE: WHICH PRINCIPLES AND SAFEGUARDS
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This text is being provided in a rough draft format. Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) is provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings.
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>> ARI KATZ: Good morning. I think we're going to start. I am here on behalf of IREX. I'll be facilitating this session. You probably noticed we only had 30 minutes. This is a flash session. We submitted a full workshop. So we had to modify it. So the way we would like to run this session is around a couple of facts related to woman and the internet. Then we'll open it up for discussion.
I'm joined by three speakers who have experience across the session. Please welcome the country director. Linda Rabtree for international USA and the development of women in the Philippines. We all four of us are here on behalf of Beyond Access. Members around the world, Beyond Access is movement of people and organizations committed to the idea that modern public library power economic and social development.
As we all know, internet is big and it continues to grow each day. However, access to technology and access to the internet is still unequal. Many projects have developed different -- many international organizations have developed different projects centered around bringing more women and girls on-line. And libraries in their own way have been working to bridging the gender divide on the internet. That is why we're here today because we're really interest in this issue.
So I was wondering why is this happening and what can we do in order to connect more woman and girls to the internet? 23% women are on-line than men. Before we can address that, we have to look at the underlying issues of why fewer women have access to internet. I think this might experience this I'm going share is more so in the developing world because that's where I do my work and that's where my experiences come from.
Before we can address a public policy, a framework towards a policy for women and internet, we have to address two issues. Number one, our stereotypes and the traditional roles of women and girls in multiple societies and the rate of women in the developing world. Going to my first point. The traditionally women have seen as doing girls as doing house hold work.
Women are seen more at the home and families as far as seeing an education system do not necessarily engage or encourage women and I.T. or women and technology. So I think when policy makers and international organizations gather together like this over here, what we need to keep in mind is we need to address those issues of how we can change or shift the traditional views and stereotypes of what will the girl and the woman can play in terms of internet and more specifically, the whole technological movement.
You see in most of the world, an average of 50% off of the population and it's more or so less for the women. And if the women are not literate, it's a huge barrier of women's engagement or girls' engagement to internet. So I think literacy rate alongside the movement to I.T., I think those two need to be tackled together. No, once those two issues address access, it's been in our experience and proven across the world that public libraries provide a safe place, a conducive environment for men and women.
I have to stress men and women because of the very fact that men and women have -- it's a safe place for men and women means there's no barrier. For example, our work in Nepal, women don't need to seek the permission of men to go and use the library. It may seem very mundane, but that's a very powerful notion in very conservative societies in Nepal. Women have easy access to internet in libraries, vis-a-vis if they were to go to a cybercafe to get access to internet, internet is normally free. When they come to the library, they're not only faced with the challenge of using internet, but they're guided with the librarian who could help them get used to internet and use internet for their own gain and livelihood? So I'm going to stop here. Those are the three main points I'd like to point out in terms of when we think about women and internet, the two -- the two underlying issues and the fact that libraries can be a very powerful platform to encourage and to facilitate this change or to bring about this movement for women, womens engagement in internet and technology. Thank you.
>> MODERATOR: Tinley, thank you very much. And I guess from access I would like to move toward woman and actual tech industry and tech fields. Angela, it's calculated there will be 700,000 more ICT jobs than people to fill them. But women feel lack of familiarity and comfort with technology. And even in high-income countries, women only take up 20% of ICT specialists. Why is there a lack of women in the tech field and how can we create enabling ICT environment for women and girls.
>> Thank you, Marie, thank you, everyone. I would like to answer this question from, you know, where I come from, which is in the Philippines. In general, that is true. For example, in the Philippines, there's actually a high rate of women have the access to the internet. But, again, there's the same problem that there's not a lot of women go into the ICT field. And it goes the same for sciences and for the engineering field. One of the problems is that well these -- while most girls are not exposed at a younger age and exposed to options and opportunities that they can have and getting a career in ICT.
So based on the work that we've been doing, it's important to realize that it's important to encourage girls while they're still young, perhaps, you know, at the primary and at the secondary school level. So it's basically to create an enabling environment for young girls to explore options and to have this interest in coming to ICTs and related fields of science and engineering. Show in terms of enabling environment, you know, there are, of course, the government needs to come various policies to encourage that and also to maybe involve schools, schools need to involve teachers need to be involved in encouraging girls to go into this field, offering the opportunities to strengthening subjects in science and in technology, strengthening courses in computers. And, you know, for example, the secondary level, we could encourage girls, for example, to learn how to code, you know? And to learn how to develop applications at a younger age and also encourage them to maybe do community projects and do community work, they can apply what they've learned. It can be as easy as girls going to their communities and teaching other girls, for example, how to learn and how to learn using computers.
And, of course, schools themselves and universities can have scholarships for -- for girls and young women to go into the ICT field and also in the industries themselves, there needs be more hiring. Once we have this base where we can get the capable women, there needs to be a push to hire more women to go to the ICT field. So basically it really boils down in my experience in really creating and enabling an environment at all levels and also includes giving them -- giving young girls a safe space, for example, for them to learn how to code and then be with other girls and also having mentors and those in the field to encourage them and inspire them.
So we could have venues like these in schools, in places like libraries, and so this would -- you know, if we have a all of these mechanisms that would enable girls at a younger age to really inspire them and pick their interest in going to ICT, eventually, you know, when they grow up, they'll be a working force of women who will be ready to enter into the ICT industry and we'll bridge that gender gap in terms of women working in the ICT industries.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you very much. And I guess Linda, if you kind of could help us summarize, we have talked -- Tinley talked about the reasons why there are fewer women on-line. And Angela talked about what we would to bring more girls into the tech field. Which should be some of the guided principles to keep in mind when you're designing policies around internet and gender?
>> So thanks. I think a few things would be important. One is to not only think about access, to think about going -- going past simple access, and to understand some of the barriers as Tinley was talking about. The girls in making sure that programs are designed to bring equity about rather than just talk about, okay, everyone has access to the internet. It's there. It's at a cafe or a library or it's out there.
I think really thinking about making sure that there are additional supporter FLS women and girls to be able to access internet. And to also think about not only what the local context is and what girls and women want to do on line, but helping them think beyond the traditional ways of -- traditional employment or traditional things to do.
We were speaking yesterday, they were saying in some cases they teach women to go on-line to find cooking recipes or very stereotypical types of activities and I think helping girls and women dream further than that and think about what they could actually do if they do have access to information. So I think quality -- quality is important. It's not just numbers, it's quality and bringing us to local content and making sure there's content being produced by women and girls that's relevant to them and their lives.
I think it's also important that women and girls are participating in the establishing and developing policies. That they're not being developed in places only like this. But that we're really getting down the ground and asking girls and women what their barrier access -- their barriers are to access and what they think could be done in order to improve that whether that's changing local culture, whether that's providing additional opportunities.
So I think, you know, those are the things that I would mention. I think also it's -- it's important that we track and we measure gender disaggregating numbers in terms of who's accessing the internet and trying to find better statistic and better understanding of who has access in big countries rather than looking at the big global numbers, but trying to understand rural versus urban and men versus men and what age they start to access internet and what's really going on with that, so --
>> MODERATOR: Thank you very much. We have about 15 minutes. We wanted this to be an inclusive discussion. So we welcome anyone who wants to ask a questions from our speakers or if you want to make a statement or a comment.
>> Share your own experiences, if you have, in this field?
>> Hello, I'm with the Internet Society. I'm President of the Internet Society in Australia and have had long career as an engineer. And as a mother, I have failed completely to raise the next generation of technical women. I apologize. But I did my best and I think we have to forgive ourselves when that happens because it is important for us to be -- to enable women and girls on-line as much as we possibly can. And if they still do choose careers in other things, as long as they remain technically literate, logical, and participate well and widely in our on-line lives, I think that's very important.
Throughout my career, one stage when I was running a large systems engineering group inside one of the big Telcos in Australia, at one stage I was confronted by a man in operations who said to me, look, we really support what you're doing over there, we really support what you're doing over there in engineering. I said, “What do you think I'm doing?” He said you're running a one-woman affirmative action campaign? This is because in my team of 17, I had five women.
The reason I had five women working for me is when I did my recruitment, people felt safe to send their daughters, their girlfriends, their female friends, their sisters to me for career opportunities. They knew they would be encouraged. They knew they would be supported. They knew they would get reasonable access to training, to, you know, a good working environment, and challenging projects and not be locked down. These are the things that go on.
It came as a big surprise to me that I was running a one-woman affirmative action campaign. I was just doing my network to do recruit. So I encourage others to use the networks to recruit, to create safe places, to make sure that you give the women opportunities in challenging projects and education and the other thing is, too, to allow women to simply to get together occasionally.
If you've got one woman on a team of, you know, ten men, which is not uncommon, then allow women to go and meet with other women in the industry. Having been sort of support groups, women in I.T. groups, I think, are really, really important. Because occasionally you get out of your lab or your exchange or wherever, and feel not alone anymore. Some thoughts?
>> MODERATOR: Thank you very much. I think those are really important thoughts. It goes back to having woman mentors. For the girls so that they are comfortable. Exploring careers in the I.T. field.
>> Thank you. I'm from the Netherlands and I'm a student in international history. I just had a question -- I was studying the empowerment of women, of course. I was wondering how useful it is to talk about women and the internet and maybe -- I thought maybe it might be more useful to talk about women in the education and internet is a support of that. And women in career and divide it to those subjects instead of just talking about women in the internet which is a little bit broad. I've seen how useful the concept is of this. I was just wondering.
>> Yeah? Your point is well-taken and I think that's what we were trying to see in this panel is that you need to have education before you can talk about engaging women into I.T. and the point -- and the thing that we can't get across is when policy makers' framework or put policies together, programs together, you have to keep those two in mind. I think you're right, internet is not an end, it's a means to an end. So why are they encouraging women to be involved in I.T. is that it can be used as a means for something else. Maybe it's in the field of I.T. itself. Maybe it's in the field of economic empowerment to get her business on-line or something or the other. Tore get more access to information. So internet is a means to an end, it's not an end in itself.
>> Hello. From Jordan representing Civil Society. So when I look at I.T. and girls, and I think about Jordan, I think about social exclusion rather than inclusion. We have a lot of potential I.T. leaders in the field. But when you think about it, our case is very similar to other cases when you have a girl amongst ten guys in a certain firm. Having been to beyond conference challenge in the last several days, I can only think of libraries, as a good medium that technology is used, there's a lot of technology needed.
My country, in our situation, the library creates this safe environment for a girl. It is accepted by the girl to go to and work in the library environment as much as it is accepted for her to go to university. Think about the library as a place that we can get girls who come from an I.T. background. They can help get back to the community. They can help with creativity. It's a place for innovation. It's a hub for innovation. And it's a welcoming environment for girls who can be excluded from the work market in places like Jordan. So this is just one comment I'd like though get.
>> Thank you very much. It echoes what Tinley was saying earlier about creating safe places. Be it a library or a community center, be it a school. We just need to ensure that when we talk about policies, there's also a conversation going where those girls will be trained and access internet. Any other thoughts and comments?
>> ARI KATZ: Ari Katz from IREX. You on the panel gave good broad policy considerations to think about in your comments. I I'm wondering if you could each talk about one policy or program or policy you've seen be effective. What's one thing you can take overwhelm that you think is you can replicate, what actually works in bringing girls to the I.T. field? Thank you.
>> Well, share two examples that we've done in the Philippines, first, we work with Intel. This is a program called easy steps which is providing digital literacy. We have a specific program -- a specific program for training on literacy for women. So they take into consideration, for example, the differences for how women and men access the internet. So, for example, you both provided access to the internet using whatever space like a telecenter or a library. Once they go there, once they learn how to use computers and internet, women and men will use -- will have different uses for the technology. So that's being considered there. Another program is the girls that we've always done with IREX is basically that environment, that enabling environment that trains young high schoolgirls on developing their ICT skills at the same time developing their leadership skills as well as skills in coming up with local community programs and projects, whatever they learn from that program, they bring to their communities and they share it with other girls and other members of their village, for example.
I think for me policies that we think as an organization are quite important with the participation of girls and women. The policy is developed, that's coming from the urban center and trying to impact women across the country and how you can engage women in different sectors, girls and designing those policies so they're relevant to their lives rather than relevant to a small segment of people that are more privileged. That would be critical.
A second thing in terms of maybe an implementation policy would be looking at some -- and engaging men also when they tend to be gatekeepers of women's access, making it a policy to really engage and look at how men can be a part of helping women access the internet rather than resisting it.
>> Well, I come from an NGO background. And work -- mainly we work with establishing community library and resource centers as a platform for development. So my -- an example of what we did in order to get to it earlier is in some of the communities that you work in Nepal, India, and Bhutan, and we work in rural communities, our libraries are the only place where these internet connection or sometimes the libraries are the only place for the computers. So we are the first access point for most of these young girls and women.
We bring them in. We give them computer training, we teach them from the very basic of what's the screen, what's a mouse, what is a keyboard, how do you type it? So we're talking about very basics to intermediate, let's say intermediate education level on I.T. so our program is just our libraries have -- and from experience, it's -- they are, again, I tend to keep using the term "safe space," but they really are a safe space, especially for girls and women to come in and get their first experience or their first-hand knowledge on how to use tech, how to get engaged in this whole internet movement. Because 30% of the people living in developing countries that are connected to internet. That's just 31% of the whole world, of the developing world. That means 70% of the people don't have access to internet.
And when you go in this the whole world, there's even more people who don't have access to internet.
>> Any other questions?
>> Hi, I'm from the Netherlands, I'm an MP for the Dutch Labour party. I came on-line in 1998. On-line, we had to train girls. I was just a new when it came to the internet. I had a lot of questions. Especially the safe place. That's what you need.
I came and asked the men a question, they were hahaha, you're stupid. I came to web girls, it's more mature these days. I could ask my question so they helped me and finally I became an assistant administrator. And I'm growing the -- I had the intention to become something technical, but it's always withhold from me, but everybody was latching, you're a woman. Why should you do that?
The safe place everybody needs on-line or off line, that's a good thing to start. Now we are this far. There are more women in ICT now than ever. So -- thank you very much.
We have about two minutes and I wanted to take this two minutes maybe to ask our panelist speakers to give you very much. We have about two minutes and I wanted to take this two minutes maybe to ask our panelist speakers to give one ever. So -- thank you very much. We have about two minutes and I wanted to take this two minutes maybe to ask our panelist speakers to give one thought to governments that are interested in bringing power to more women and girls on-line.
>> I seem to be repeating myself all the time. I think recommendation to policy makers would be don't look at internet in isolation. Look at internet as part of the bigger picture, especially in the developing world. Again, I go back to the developing world because that's where I come from. You have to look at education.
You have to look at infrastructure. You have to look at access, spaces for women and girls can come and access. And also look at the education system, not education has an education, but the education system. Are we encouraging women and girls to be -- to be -- I've been encouraging them to have the option of being more -- more -- creating a career in I.T., so I think those would be my recommendation for policy makers.
>> I think I would say something similar. For me, the goal is communication, and it's access to opportunities. In some contexts right now, internet is not available to offer girls and women that. We shouldn't think about internet in helping girls access information, communicate their thoughts and opinions, no matter what channel.
The internet is an increasingly important channel because more information and services, more engagement is happening there. But we need to make sure we're connecting it with offline opportunities where we can make sure that we're including all girls and women as we work towards wider internet access. We need to make sure we're not leaving out and only focusing on internet.
>> Well, maybe all things being equal, just for example if your policies are encouraging more women in terms of providing them education and literacy and also policies and access to internet, maybe the next step for governments in really fine tuning the policies is really to not look at the equity issue.
For example, if there's access to provide for both men and women, how should policies also look at the differences in how women and men use the technology? For whatever purpose that they want. So that's one. The policy level. And maybe a recommendation that's specific, for example. If you'd like to encourage more women to go to the I.T., engineering, and science fields, again, start them young. In school maybe with families and parents encourage the girls to go into the fields and maybe one recommendation I would give for a school is maybe the primary or the secondary school level, start teaching girls how to code.
>> Just one last plug. I forgot that already -- use libraries as the platform to get this conversation going, to get this program going. Because there are 230,000 libraries -- 230,000 libraries around the world. These are resources that are there. That you can easily use without having to spend more resources on setup.
>> I would like to thank the panelists. Thank you for your participation. This is an interesting discussion. For those of you interested in learning more about how currently the community centers and libraries are working towards bridging the digital divide, there are a lot of handouts here. Feel free to come and grab them. Thank you very much.
[ Applause ]
>> MODERATOR: So this is going to be a feat if we succeed in having every single person on this panel speak. Who thinks we can do it? Oh, no, it's just me. So basically this session is designed as a strategy session, more of a next steps discussion as opposed to a pronouncement of position discussion. So we had the most extraordinary selection of people here from government -- maybe people from government can raise their hands. The M.O.S. as well as the government? From the corporate sector?
So we have Google, Mozilla, and ISP association of Europe. From Civil Society? So we have APC, we have FGV, we have CDT, and -- and an NGO from Venezuela. So this discussion is actually looking at I think perhaps one of the most important issues at the IGF today, which is how do we actually ensure the application of human rights to communication surveillance?
A number of organizations including my own access, accessnow.ORG and the electronic frontier foundation and privacy international have put together the principles called the international principles on the application of human rights to communication surveillance. We have 280-odd Civil Society organizations around the world who have signed up to these principles.
And they look at a whole range of different principles which we think need to be applied to the communication surveillance regime. Looking at issues like legality, like legitimate aim, like necessity, proportionality, and transparency. And what I've asked each of the panelists here to do, the strategists here do, is to talk about the next steps in the application of these principles to the real world.
Doesn't necessarily mean that they need to talk about all of the principles, but it does mean that some of the principles are more applicable to others. But for instance, for governance, it's the process, the confidential authority, etc. For the ISP association it's about network integrity. For the Civil Society groups, it's about transparency. These principles are designed for states. And I'm going to hand over to Johan from the Swedish government to talk about the Swedish government's approach to these principles. We saw some very interesting developments in Seoul last week. The foreign minister of Sweden. So Johan, over to you. And if you can just keep it short, we'll move it down the line.
>> My name is Johan. I work in the Foreign Ministry in the International Law Department in the Human Rights section. Much of that is related to freedom of expression on the internet. Let me start by saying we really appreciate the initiative of developing the principles. We think it's really important that Civil Society comes together and develops a joint -- a joint strategy and so we really welcome this initiative and we're quite amazed to see the amount of organizations that have come to support the necessary and proportionate initiative. There's clearly a need for a response and to increase our understanding of how human rights can apply in the on-line environment. That includes also the right to privacy, of course.
So our response to this initiative was to actually analyze it in light of our own law. We have different laws regarding surveillance for law enforcement purposes and for intelligence gathering. And these are the -- these are the very important distinction between the two in our legislation. So what we did was to analyze the principles in accordance with our law and we did this at the request of our minister, actually. He was very aware of this initiative and he requested us to do this analysis. We did, not just the ministry of foreign affairs, but in collaboration, of course, with justice and defense and enterprise and whatnot. But we're a very small government, so it's easily done.
Anyway, so why was this important to us? I think we are at the juncture now in time when it's probably more important than ever not to distance government from Civil Society. It's very important for us to remain a dialogue with Civil Society. So this is -- this is the basic reason for us to do this, to show that we're sincere and that we want to continue the dialogue with Civil Society on these issues.
In my country, we had a huge debate on surveillance five years ago. At that time, the government decided to create a new legislation for the first time to legislate around intelligence gathering for signals intelligence. In my country, that was the first time. After a very long and heated debate where the draft law was thrown out to parliament three times, I believe, and reworked and redrafted, the law was eventually passed. So what we see now is the international debate on the same issues we had five years ago.
In response to the analysis and response to the necessary proportionate initiative was to firstly arrange two meetings with Civil Society. One during the human rights counseling session in Geneva. This is late August. And then a second meeting -- hi, how are you? Then a second meeting in New York in the opening of the General Assembly where we adopted the drafters of the principles, access EFF and others to discuss with us and other governments what these principles meant.
So there were two of these meeting, one in Geneva, one in New York. And last week, minister Belt presented the result of where we stand at the moment. And basically what we can approve of or what we can accept now are seven of these principles, more or less as they stand. And we have -- we can -- we can see that the -- some of the principles goes -- they go beyond what our current law prescribes.
So for us, it's a matter of creating a new -- a new kind of dialogue. We want to deepen the dialogue with Civil Society. We're open with what we can accept at this -- at this point in time. We're willing to discuss further. And this will remain a priority to us.
We think the 13 principles is a good -- it's a good foundation to start from. We have explained what -- what we currently are able to accept or adhere to and we're quite willing to continue this discussion. It will remain important to us. We are here this week to promote it. To say that this is important to us. But this is also just sort of the -- the beginning of the continuation. Thanks.
>> Thanks, Johan. The question from the Civil Society is what about the other six principles. I think thanks for being open for the discussion of how Swedish law at some point might be able to comply with those principles and what changes need to be made to ensure there's compliance across the full spectrum.
At the same time, this is the first time we've had a government actually, committee, to the necessary proportion of principles. And it's a great first step. Let me move to Emma. Because the principles are also part of your framework as well. And I wanted to hear what your next steps are there, particularly the ranking of governments against the principles or the tighter principles that are contained in this document.
>> Emma: Sure, I think one of the -- as we said, the opportunity these principles present for governments and Civil Society to help evaluate where existing national law stands against you know as measured up to the principles, I think there are a couple of venues and avenues for doing that, including I know the web we want initiative has announced there's going to be a micro granting process to help fund Civil Society organizations in different countries around the world to do the kind of work of, you know, of doing a really thorough evaluation of what national -- different national surveillance regimes are and how they stack up against these principles.
>> Okay, great. Malcolm, can I turn to you? Give us a sense of what the ISP association is doing to ensure that human rights are applied to the surveillance regime? As best you can? I mean we know this is a relatively new topic. But ISPs are an extremely important part of the ecosystem.
There's a principles in here, number ten, which talks about the integrity of the network. And there are many requests from governments as people know, not just the American government, but others to install back doors to the system, to ensure they had access, even pervasive and unwarranted access to the network so --
>> Okay, yeah. You left me here because I'm from the European ISP association. But, you know, these aren't going to be my personal comments. These are going to be my personal comments. I tell myself I wasn't going to come here and talk about surveillance all week. And you talked me into this and I guess everybody else is, so why not. This is a very interesting document. It helps to advance the discussion. Because from the ISP's point of view, remember, we're economic actors.
We're businesses that are subject to the law. And what we're discussing here is public policy and legal requirements. We don't get to say what we don't like that, we're not going to do it. You get to say you don't like that, please don't do it to them, meaning us. So we like to comply with the legal components.
In Europe, there isn't -- it's mainly a national matter. There is a -- P directive that is a pan European law that requires the retention of certain kinds of communications data. But other than that, interception requirements and the provisions for the access to retain communications data are a national matter. And so to that extent, my knowledge really lies in my home countries in the European levels. Looking at these principles, I mean I think it's -- (lost audio) so sort of between two schools on this.
We have obligations to government, and we have obligations to our customers and our users. And, you know, we want to see that there's a balanced outcome. But we recognized there are legitimate needs for surveillance as well as legitimate concerns about surveillance and certainly concerns about it being taken too far.
You ask me to speak specifically -- (lost audio) and a key area for the net work operators. I must say that of all of the documents, one of the things that stands out in here for me as being actually not really implementable as written precisely is the statement, not compel service providers for the systems. There's going to be a kind of a capability. There is going to be such capabilities, sets out for requirements for them like he galty implicitly recognizes there will be some capability. So we're in the place of having to deliver on that when those requirements are met.
And we're going to need technical systems to be able to deliver that. And that will require building in the capability to be able to conduct certain kinds of surveillance when -- when the -- when there's a law, when there's a law that's right and when these particular requirements are met. So to that extent, I don't think anything in particular could be translated to action. What I think you're getting at is the idea that it shouldn't be a general and all pervasive system.
>> That's right.
>> I think let's say that.
>> What this document is trying to do is put in place in instances where it's required and it's proportionate and legal, that the user and their privacy is not going to be infringed upon.
>> But we know that the argument from those that are supporting a current and greater level of surveillance, let me put this as delicately as nationally attributed here as possible. Is that we need to collect what's available. That's the directive in Europe, never mind the recent events.
>> I think that's the argument there. If you think that is not something that should be done, fine. But you still need to build in systems to even retrieve it on -- collect information on an individualized basis.
>> So one thing that will be useful for you is access is in the process of putting together an implementation guide on these principles that will give greater clarity as to how all of the players in the space are able to implement. In the interest of time, I might move to based on what you said which is about the relationship you have with the user to Shawna sitting next to you in, APC because much of your model relies on trust, we're seeing a we're seeing trust is up here. That's bad for the business model as well as for human rights.
>> I'm from APC, the associate of progressive communications. It's interesting what you say about trust. A group of us is in Geneva in the human rights council in September. We met with some Presidents and the feedback they gave was they felt there was a trust broken and there was a need to rebuild. Some of the work that APC is doing is working within the Universal periodic review process at the Human Rights Council and asking for the recommendations to be made to a variety of states to ensure that interception legislation does adhere to these 13 principles. So, for example, this week Nigeria is being reviewed as part of the period call review and we made steps to make sure their legislative session is making a way that it's proportionately lined in these princes. And part of it is we very much rely on other states to be made in the recommendations. We can't be making them directly in Civil Societies. It's essential that Civil Societies and states can work together it's all protecting the human --
>> If I can jump in here, one of the purposes is to see linkages and the point here is in the Civil Society there's a need for a state actor to support the principles at human rights council and the UPI process and you can have that part in the country here.
>> Working in Sweden in terms of making the recommendations, they've been extremely supportive. It's great to hear you're taking on the principles in moving forward in that way.
>> Definitely.
>> Let's hear from Chris Riley. I would be great to hear the steps that Mozilla is taking, particularly given the issue about the collection of data and also the relationship that you have with your 600 million odd users.
>> So I can definitely handle the second half better than the first half. I wanted to jump in here. I flagged for the mic because trust was going to be the theme that I was going to talk about too. Trust is the highest -- it's sort of the thing that's on our radar screen right now in the wake of all of this. And one of the things that we've gotten and sensed and sort of heard from the hundreds of millions of users in the broader Mozilla community is that the surveillance revolutions in the United States in particular have had a really harmful effect on trust.
And it's definitely our perception that that harm is going to have a significant negative impact on the internet's ability to support economic growth and democratic engagement and all of that good stuff. That's why I'm happy to sit here and talk about this. That goes to Mozilla's position to promote opportunity on the web. That's why Mozilla has engaged in do not track and transparency efforts in the side and it's been active in that debate to try to preserve that trust in this evolving world about aggressive technological changes and scary things that happened that most users don't have insight into you. And I think we're in a world now where code is not generally sufficient as a response. Mozilla's first reaction to this kind of world is taken from the silicon valley world. And saying to some degree we can. Only to a certain degree we can through complicated political industry engagements and there's a lot that goes into it. All the more true in this world that coding is not going get all the way around it. So I'm glad to see these principles. I'm glad to see they're framed in states holistically, but the reaction as I've been paying a lot of attention. I think a lot of the principles go to addressing the trust problem is really what we're all trying to figure out how to work to.
As far as what Mozilla is doing, Mozilla doesn't have large quantities of data on the users. That's not part of the business model at this point in time. So not a whole lot in the engineering level. It's very important to Mozilla because we're a community based and community organization to think about this and talk about how they get back to the environment with the healthier trust relationship among the people in this space.
>> It's interesting that you raise the issue around code. Because some people say that like fire the lawyers because the lawyers are going to find exceptions. And hire the engineers because the solution is actually a tech one. I'm of the opinion, of course, partly having worked on this with air fare and privacy international that there's actually a juror response that's required in the sense that we need a strong policy framework in order to ensure that surveillance is not taking place in a way that's not taking place all over the world. And we need to ensure that we have a tech response as well. Many of the products are coming out aren't secure and some governments, as we know, are actually requesting or hacking products and code in order to be able to gain access. So really looking for sort of a response is key.
>> I would agree with that before I pass the mic off, as a computer scientist and lawyer, I see the role of both of those parts and they have to play together in the space. Kudos on the law and the side. We have to work on that side too.
>> If you can pass the mic to the left, that would be great. Part of the organizing group for this event. This is the first person we heard from an intergovernmental body. And we'll be great to hear from your perspective what the next steps are in human rights compliance.
>> Thank you. We're happy to be here for our perspective. And everything regarding the surveillance, we are really having -- we just had a hot debate on this during the Executive Board Conference. We are demanded by our member states to reflect more on what can be done in the international level as well.
Basically that's the international standards is existing as we have human rights continue to be a function and to a place for strong conditions that whenever there's a limitation of rights to be taken to confine them exactly for a legitimate purpose. We see a legitimate process. And also, of course, that government here of the bearers of promoting and protecting human rights. And in the context, just private sectors, our companies enterprises as well, Civil Societies, individuals, also had a responsibility to respect the human rights which is very important for us to note also in spirit and stakeholder framework.
Now we are trying to explore and promote a more general, more inclusive framework internet Universality that will address human rights based Internet Governance and together with other principles integral to Internet Governance, such as openness, which not only means technical standards openness, but it means business and marketing and economic openness which is also very crucial to protect the human rights. The accessibility, the capacity, and the stakeholder viewer in the process. We'll have a workshop of folks down there on Friday morning. You can look at more there. I stop here.
>> Thank you very much. Thanks for raising the issue of the private sector. And its responsibility to respect human rights. The framework that sets out the three pillars. Going to get you to hand the mic over from Marco from Google. It would be great to hear from you. Obviously there's been implications of Google participating in prism and many of the other NSA spying initiatives. It would be great to hear from you as to what kind of steps Google are taking. What's been the response? How do you use a responder to the allegations? And proactively and practically pushing back on this.
>> Thank you for the invitation to the workshop. Let me make a step back. We weren't part of the process which is bringing to us the principle. We believe this is the right way forward, you know, to have a multistakeholder, again, this on how to find the balance between the respective fundamental rights and the need to achieve security for all of us. I want to be very practical. Two of the principles that I think are very important about the due process of law and the one about transparency, we're taking steps that we believe are going to go to the direction of the -- of historically different.
They trust the user to watch our services and show our commitment -- strong commitment, in order to protect the user from any kind of surveillance, including government surveillance. So the first step in relation to the transparency, we're the first to include the national security in that effort. Because we believed since the beginning that no gap should be left in the transparency in relation and request that we'll have enforcement in governance forum and any illegal activities to our services.
We are challenging the fees in court in order to include the information about NSA in our transparency record and as you can imagine it's not easy too for an American company to achieve more transparency. But we believe that is the right way forward. In relation to the process of law, because, again, the balance has to be taken into consideration. We believe that the process is broken and something needs to be done in order to create the right process and procedures in order to allow law enforcement across the world to have the information that they need in order to -- to fight against the crime and the right process is the one that is -- that is designed by existing illegal procedure.
So is it too long, is it too cumbersome? Is it not effective? We need to leave the alibi to the governance in order to get around the system. We believe it's a way forward. It's an opportunity together to try to achieve the right -- the right approach in taking consideration of the different -- so these are two examples of complete steps that we're taking the direction of restoring trust and creating the right environment of collaboration with all of the interested parties you know to move on them.
>> So people who don't know that MLAT is the mutual legal assistant treaties that define or meant to define the transfer of information largely for law enforcement between countries. As we know, on the internet, there are no borders, but jurisdictionally, there is. So the treaties are designed to transfer data. But they are definitely broken.
I mean the principle is right, but in reality, it's very difficult, think, for governments and companies to have a process in which is efficient and also up rights respecting -- I underline the rights respecting. Otherwise, they join a treaty together which is not defined by the rule of law or due process. Let's move to Brazil. There's big movements afoot in the big Internet Governance Forum, specifically in the result of surveillance. We've seen that the Brazilian President made a speech in the General Assembly. Now we're seeing a new initiative in April of next year.
How is the Brazilian Civil Society responding to this issue? Yeah? So in Brazil as far as we know there's no revelations, we are in a different position than Civil Society from the U.S. because for us it's more interesting to push the principles to develop governance in countries because the distinction of the countries that doing surveillance and are being surveilled, we are the ones being surveilled. That's why the other strong reactions from the President. And this announcement of the summit is very important for the opportunity to bring those principles and debate in -- in international and try to push for -- for other countries to adopt it. And it has been said by different people that the goals of the meeting to be held next year, probably April or May are to debate principles and then to debate the institutional framework for Internet Governance and the decision making processes.
So I see that as a very important opportunity for us to move forward with the principles. It's also very important that companies from those countries and other I.T. companies and ISPs support those because on the other hand, why don't we have a solution, Brazil is taking actions like nationalization of data centers. And that could change a bit, the business models that Google and other big companies have. So -- I think I'll stop here.
>> That's great. And I just want to pick up as you hand the microphone over to Moez from Tunisia who works with the Tunisian internet association but probably here in a personal capacity.
>> Not an organization, an agency. A former agency.
>> Just to pick up, I mean there's many interesting things you said, John. I'm interest in the point about the fact that the Brazilians are being surveyed. Is it true that all FWOFTs are actually surveying their people and just to -- Moaz -- but also you were silting next to her. But it's important to know that one of the points to make, and I think Shannon referenced this as well, that this is not just a question of the NSA. There's surveillance, regimes being established in every single country as we speak. Tens, dozens of legislation are being created across the world?
>> Sure. Let me start by saying -- it's an agency, unfortunately. And that was abuse by the government for many years, but the former -- the former revolution. It was an agency that surveys equipment. And it is not obliged to do so. There is nothing in our laws in our regulation that says that ITI has to do anything or monitor or censor or nothing.
It's like something de facto done by the regime, the former regime. So after the revolution, it was pretty tricky. We could stop everything and nothing in the law would say that. But we were really concerned because it was somehow complicated for us to move forward. If you stop everything, that means that the company or the agency let me say, it's a company that would be abolished. The company is not like that. We tried to stop censorship.
So a lot of voices come in and say, okay, the ITI is nothing. We don't need this company. And we tried to work with many partners to explain what was the role of this company? So let me back to the surveillance thing, we tried to get this balance in the country, because there is a lot of requests coming to IGI, asking us to help the call about some crimes. The laws -- the laws didn't change after the revolution. We're still applying them.
So it's a relation for sure. We need to clarify the role of this company, but at the same time, you need to -- you need to change the laws in Tunisia. Especially about information and there's a lot of things we need to -- we have a lot of concern on that ATI is clear. We have to have something inside the government saying we cannot have surveillance in a company that's for development.
ITI is for development. We are promoting content development. We founded the exchange point and we tried to make things in the other way. So the government is more sensitive about this and say, okay, these security issues shouldn't be inside the ITI. And this is why I moved with the government and with this. Can I make a suggestion. Otherwise people in Brazil are not going to like me anymore.
>> This is live streamed. If anybody needs to clarify their comment, they should.
>> So, yeah. Being surveilled and surveilling is what I meant is the focus isn't NSA and of course Brazil is to be coming a market to surveillance dues. To have it go ahead and all of the process going on. But internally, we don't even have the protection. Internally we are focusing on bringing this bill forward and --
>> I think it's safe to walk down the street now.
>> Yeah.
>> In Brazil.
>> Okay.
>> So literally, I think we're going to make it. From ISOP, would you like to have a reflection on some of the issues here. And, again, the next steps you are taking. Moaz, it's great to hear from you. I don't know if people in the audience recognize how important a role particularly in this emerging democracy is launching a so-called Aaron spring to be there actively pushing back upon old laws that require and demand surveillance and censorship. So thank you for being here and making those comments.
>> I'm from the ambassador's program in ISOC. I work for Espasia politico. We like to talk about the importance of combatting surveillance in the world. As our experience in Venezuela, we have been a lot of -- we have had a lot of attacks from the government to the people, especially to human rights defenders, journalist, and people who criticize the government, political parties.
They have been attacked by the government with a hacking into their accounts, G mail accounts, facebook, and twitter accounts. They get the private information of the human right defenders and publish it in the TV channel of the government, for example. Or the government creates a blog that would hold the personal pictures or the personal information of the people as a way to ridicule these people. So it is very a very dangerous situation which is affecting us a lot. So we have to attack it.
>> Okay. And now finally from the council of Europe, I might.
>> Okay. I'm Mattias on one side, on the other side, I'm working for a long time the council of Europe as an international expert. I'm a freedom of expression up expert in the national and European council level. But I wanted to underline and I mean for many of you, it's obvious. But I think it has to be underlined one more time that states cannot ensure that individuals are able to make and receive information or express themselves without respecting protection of their rights to privacy.
So both rights are closely linked. This is, I think, also one thing I really want to recommend already in the council of Europe, we have structures, meanwhile, where we're both without the protection people, surveillance people, and freedom of expression people closely work together. The council of Europe now is completely doing, of course, Civil Society as has said this organization is the oldest, broadest European institution that catered to human rights and the rule of law throughout the territory of 47 countries.
Civil Society asked the council of Europe to take some steps. I just want to inform you in June, 2013, so in just a month ago, there was a the declaration of the rights from tracking and technology and is signed by 47 governments. And I think a look at principles and also at this political -- some call it soft law, but this law in the international sense that binding law but law, it goes along. It might be interesting human rights more and more goes in the direction that it takes up these standard settings and says this is the kind of European agreement. And so the non-binding law also becomes part of a lot of cases. Just two more information for the council of Europe -- in the parliamentary assembly, there is actually a discussion, a motion of some members of the parliamentary assembly from 6 August, 2013.
6 August 2013 that the Secretary General under article 52 can do so-called inquiry with member-states. They completely ask them what they do and what's -- if there were any breeches and so on. And it's still going on. It's still to be discussed. And last, not least, we will have the minister's conference and information society on 8 November in Belgrade with, again, 47 member states represented there and there is the absolute invitation to the society to work close together with representatives in council of Europe as an intergovernmental institution dedicated to human rights and the rule of law.
>> Thank you -- thank you very much. Is there one final comment here?
>> Thanks. And I just wanted to talk a little bit on in terms of advocacy around reform and national surveillance practices. I wanted to point to the opportunity to use the principles and taking different elements of the principles like transparency, like the need for public oversight, and, you know, accessible access to courts to actually review surveillance practices to take the principles as a kind of organizing documents and see if you can get an agreement, not among Civil Society organizations and also among companies, investment groups and the like.
CDT and access and Google and Mozilla all were part of a coalition that put together a letter to U.S. congress advocating for transparency reform following up a little bit on what Mozilla have been mentioning. And using that opportunity to show that, you know, these are principles that are not just coming out of nowhere, they're things that multiple stakeholder groups are important and use that as a way to make an argument to congress.
Then looking at the human rights level, there are things like human rights committee is reviewing states' compliance under the ICCPR, the U.S. was supposed to be delayed until October. That's been delayed until march, 2014. But these are kind of opportunities taken to the international venues where discussions of how the human rights principles are being implemented and a document like the principles and people's understanding and discussion around them can be used as an organizing rule not just from companies in the U.S. but try to pull together the Civil Society from around the world to say we have this understanding of what it should be.
>> Thanks, Emma. I have to cut you off there. One chair which is empty here. Does anyone have a guess who should be sitting here? Law enforcement -- there's nobody from law enforcement here and this whole discussion which is extremely important and all of these actors who are being so determined in many different ways, to ensure the application of human rights. I need to talk directly to law enforcement. They're the people that need to be in this room and hear the issues. The importance of them.
I want to finish off in the remaining 30 seconds with the first paragraph of the preamble of the principles. It goes something like this -- privacy is a fundamental human right and it's central to the maintenance of democratic societies. It's essential to human dignity and reinforces other rights such as freedom of expression and recognized under human rights laws.
Activities to restrict the rights of privacy can only be justified when they're prescribed by law. And necessary for legitimate aim and are proportionate to the aim pursued. So thank you very much for coming. There's copies of the principles here and thanks for co-organizing the panel.
[ Applause ]
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