ICTlogy

Free and secure communication in a multinational context

Moderator: Ben Wagner, European University Institute.

Panelists: Cynthia Wong, Senior Researcher on Internet & Human Rights, Human Rights Watch; Lucy Purdon, ICT Researcher, Institute for Human Rights and Business; Hafiz Rahman Khan, Specialist Head of Unit, Grameenphone Limited; Colin Crowell, Vice President, Global Public Policy, Twitter; Ihab Osman, CEO, Sudatel Telecom Group.

Sovereign states should have not the right to regulate what citizens from other sovereign states can or cannot do on the Internet. It is a matter of sovereignty.

It is interesting to note that the problem from some Western countries may not be the problem of the whole world. For instance, in West Africa, child pornography is surely not the main security problem, but IP monitoring, content surveillance, etc.

For companies that operate worldwide, it is very difficult to know what is the exact issue that is more relevant in a given country. Or indeed, it may be not that difficult, but putting it in context of the whole company strategy and line of action, that may be the most difficult part.

On the other hand, what is “bad” in one country or under a specific culture may not be “bad” in another one.

The problem is not that there are good and bad things, but trying to deal with them in a centralized way. That is filtering. “Filtering” should be brought closer to the citizen, so that this citizen can have their say on what is “good filtering” and what is “bad filtering”.

A thing that Twitter does is not only withholding messages, but making it public that a message has been withheld, also sending a notice to the sender. On the other hand, both Twitter and Google perform transparency exercises where they publish who asked for content removal and why (e.g. under which specific Law).

An issue that has not been raised is what happens when the government controls the telecommunications industry (e.g. the government of Sudan has 21% of the shared of Sudatel Telecom — Ihab Osman argues that the company is independent and that only 2 out of 12 board members come from the government). In any case, sometimes have to follow the law, besides the fact that they are or are not owned by the government.

Sometimes companies take positions — Libya, Egypt — depending on the context: but what is that context? could this be generalized?

Telecoms benefit from traffic, for making data flow. So, there usually is a strong pushback against regulators from telecommunications companies.

Security is now much better than five years ago. The more people use social networking sites, the more they press for them to be open, to act legally, to regard human rights. The more people use social networking sites the more money is to be made, the more important is the medium, and the more money is put for it to work properly, including respecting human rights.

Telecoms have to follow the law, but many times the Law is full of blacks and whites and shades of gray.

Reconciling freedom and security in cyberspace

Moderator: Stephen Sackur, Journalist, Presenter HARDtalk at BBC World News.

Panelists: Ron Deibert, Director at the Canada Centre for Global Security Studies; Leslie Harris, President & CEO, Center for Democracy and Technology; Renata Avila, Global Voices, Guatemala, Ingeniero en Ciencias Informáticas; Cecilia Malmström, European Commissioner for Home Affairs in the Barroso Commission; Elaine Weidman, Vice President Sustainability and CR, Ericsson.

Govenrments are massively using technology for deep and comprehensive surveillance and, when contested, they ban or bar access to technology for the citizens to communicate, organize and have a voice.

There are three main pillars in the development of today’s technology: mobility, broadband and cloud.

Why should we trust corporate players in their commitment to privacy or security? Human rights are a political and moral construct, and only occasionally successful as a legal one. As such, easy to ignore. We have to maintain the same human rights in the digital world as in the physical world. Concerning trust, it is very important because if there is no trust that will affect the bottom line of a company.

Many citizens are concerned by internet security: will they be able to buy online without their money be stolen, will they be able to use social networking sites without their data being used for malicious purposes, etc.

But the problem is the Law or the platform? Because laws on hate speech already exist. The problem is that the Internet has been a game changer and many concepts just scape the boundaries of Law.

When we talk about cybersecurity we tend to call everything cybersecurity, and then begin to propose overreacted “solutions”. We need to have a common understanding of what is and what not cybersecurity, because security is not one single thing. When we talk about security, we need to define what we mean and then to have a sense of proportionality. Hate speech, political liberties, anonymity, etc. are not matters of security.

We are witnessing a roll-back of checks and balances in democratic nations. Legislation is becoming extreme and, worryingly enough, escaping the control of the citizen. Without democracy on the internet, we cannot use internet for democracy. Language, indeed, has been hardening when related to the Internet: e.g. plain activism has become cyberterrorism.

We have to tell ‘freedom’ from ’emancipation’, which are sometimes synonyms but sometimes are not. The best way to fight cybercrime is to protect human rights and the rule of law. You can’t have security without human rights.

The incorporation of new users to the Internet will mainly come from countries where there are totalitarian regimes, where religion plays a major role. And this will necessarily change the balance of forces or approaches that we now have on the Internet.

Opening: Carl Bildt, Swedish Minister for Foreign Affairs

Broadband and mobile phones have implied a revolution. And the word revolution is intended and literal. The way we live, the way the economy works, have changed forever and radically. Soon 85% of the whole world population will be covered with mobile broadband.

Of course, such a revolutionary power wants to be captured by many countries, so they aim at controlling the Internet. So, we have to stop these governments from controlling the tool for freedom that the Internet is.

The right to freedom of opinion & expression, (Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Art 19) should apply online as well as offline. If there is no freedom of speech, no freedom of gathering, no freedom of access to information, there is no freedom at all.

Thus, we have to help those living in totalitarian countries in their fight for freedom of the Net.

And we have to be not threatened by lack of security because of gains in freedom. Security and freedom are the two sides of the same coin: they do not exclude one another, but they complement each other. Free societies are safe societies, open societies.

Opening session: Internet freedom in the global debate: mapping the state of play

Moderator: Emily Taylor, Consultant, Non-executive Director Oxford Information Labs Ltd, Member of Multistakeholder Advisory Group at UN Internet Governance Forum.

Panelists: Carl Bildt, Swedish Minister for Foreign Affairs; Moez Chakchouk, CEO of the Tunisian Internet Agency; Shahzad Ahmad, Country Director at Bytes for All, Pakistan; Ebele Okobi, Global Director, Human Rights, Yahoo!; Susan Morgan, Executive Director, Global Network Initiative.

Does the United Nations Human Rights Council Resolution on Internet and Human Rights implies any step forward?

The HR convention is a part of a broader pressure for establishing the importance of the issue. Even if it is not binding, it does set a precedent at the world level and is a very good tool for advocacy.

UN resolution on net freedom still needs to translate on the ground, to exit the aisles in Geneva and be put into practice.

How can the resolution be used to enhance connectivity, digital development? What is the connection between freedom and development?

Entrepreneurship is trying to do new things, things that have never been done before; entrepreneurship is about innovation and development comes from it. If there is no freedom to try things, then that is a huge barrier for innovation and entrepreneurship and, hence, development.

Aren’t there more debates around threats, security, barriers, and not on the opportunities of the Internet? Or instead of on the Internet (as something that is broken) why not more debate on those “usual suspects” that are the ones that raise threats and issues on security and barriers to freedom?

What about the role of companies and their responsibility to respect human rights on the Internet? How morally acceptable is e.g. Gamma International selling FinFisher surveillance software to repressive regimes?

Are we really better off in a world where laws are replaced with terms of service and courts are replaced with abuse departments?

There are times when censorship may be a good option for defending (other) Human Rights: e.g. Child Online Protection. But who should exert this “right to censorship”? Should elected governments the ones that should do it or or profit driven companies?

Not only some totalitarian governments limit freedom of expression on the Internet. In many places in Latin America is organized crime the one that limits it by threatening journalists, politicians and activists.

Surveillance does not limit freedom of speech because it is discreet. But, in the long term, surveillance easily leads to self-censorship and therefore can be just as inhibiting as actual Internet limitations.

The fight against surveillance is the fact for freedom from suspicion.

More information:

• Sweden Pushing For Human Rights Online, press release by the Government of Sweden.
• Stockholm Internet Forum: Balancing rights and security, by Kirsty Hughes.

Fundació puntCAT — the organization behind the .cat “country” code top-level domain (ccTLD) — is going through a process of strategic reflection on what should its mission be in the following years. As a part of its Advisory Council, I have been invited to provide my insights. Here comes what could be called my “position paper” on the matter. Some of the ideas have been enriched with the dialogue with other members of the Advisory Council, which actually shared most of my points of view.

The need for a transversal, independent institution to foster the Information Society

There are two main issues to be raised about the nature of an institution that has in their mission fostering the Information Society.

The first one is that it has to have a transversal, multidisciplinary approach to the topic. This is rarely found in governments, where such an institution is placed in the organizational chart of a another vertical institution, that is, a given ministry or department. In practice, this means that if the institution is e.g. the Ministry of Industry, the approach when fostering the Information Society will definitely be biased towards infrastructures and the ICT/telecommunications industry — which is the most common example indeed. A solution to this problem is placing our institution that fosters the Information Society up in the department/ministry/cabinet/secretariat of the President or similar. This will work only under two premises: (1) there is no coalition of different parties within the government, so that the government is not split in practice in sub-governments among parties; (2) there are no different factions within the party in the government that fight among them for power — this will rarely happen if ever. Another solution is placing our institution outside of the Government and in hands of the civil society.

The second aspect is that this institution has to be independent. Some of the reasons have already been stated above: only an independent institution can provide advice to policy-makers in matters of Health, Education or Democratic Quality without the risks of being interpreted as a party issue (and not a technical one). But independent does not only means in political terms, but economic ones. A major strength that some institutions of this kind have — like Fundació puntCAT or ICANN itself — is that they have revenues that sustain their activity besides the political colour in the government or the interests of the lobbies.

Functions of an institution to foster the Information Society

There are two sides of the same coin when talking about the functions that can be carried on by institutions to foster the Information Society.

On the one hand, these institutions can provide services in order to assure economic (and political) independence and sustainability. Of course these services will be related with the institution’s mission (e.g. managing a ccTLD). This is the “revenue” side of the institution, especially if it is independent as we defined it before. On the other hand — and this is the point that I would like to stress —, these institutions have an “expenditure” side which focuses on policy-making, on lobbying. Both sides are complementary and essential.

Concerning the part of policy-making and lobbying, I think it is worth mentioning that it is the demand side what is of more concern, especially where a good amount of infrastructures have already been deployed, thus shifting from push to pull strategies.

In this demand-side, pull-strategy approach, there are three issues that are worth being mentioned, and in this specific order:

1. Measuring and analysing the state of development of the Information Society. That is, knowing what is happening and, even more important, why. So, it is not only about the raw measurement and putting data in rows in a table, but putting it in context with other socio-economic indicators, infer the causes of this state of development, its consequences, comparing it with other social or economic realities, etc. Most of the times, data on ICTs come in a much aggregated and sector-centred manner: there is a need to disaggregate, contextualize and characterize these data so that they become knowledge.
2. Provide policy advice on what should be done, in what fields, with what priorities, and adjusting to the available resources. And not only providing advice, but also pointing at the ways to monitor the evolution and measure the impact of applying such policies, what results could be expected and, again, why. Providing policy advice can be made in a lot of ways. The usual one is reports or white papers. But consultancy (which can be pro-bono, of course) and lobbying should also be included in the agenda. And, of course, advice can be provided at different levels: at the state/government level, or at the organization (e.g. SMEs) or individual levels.
3. Directly setting up and carrying on programmes for the development of the Information Society. In other words, designing programmes and executing projects in the field of e-Health, ICT and education, electronic and open government, etc. These programmes and projects, of course, should be very much in line of the two previous points: heavily relying on the evidence raised in the measuring and analysis part, and putting in practice what the policy-advice stage suggested. Deploying protocols and procedures, measuring tools and indicators for monitoring would be the nicest way to close the (virtuous) circle of intervention.

It goes without saying that, in a Network Society, it is not expected that an institution will (a) directly perform all of the aforementioned tasks or functions and (b) do it on its own. I believe there is an opportunity for a new institutional design, more based on enabling that on leading, more based on networking and partnering rather than on competing. I would expect of an institution designed to foster the Information Society to be the visible core of a network of professionals, scholars and policy-makers that work towards the same goal. And the main role of this institution would just be generating the sufficient resources to create, maintain and fuel this network.

Evgeny Morozov is visiting Barcelona to promote the Spanish translation of The Net Delusion. The Dark Side of Internet Freedom and to introduce his upcoming book To Save Everything, Click Here: The Folly of Technological Solutionism. The US Consulate in Barcelona offered a breakfast with the press and scholars which I happily attended.

The event began with a short keynote by Evgeny Morozov followed by a brief discussion with the attendants.

Evgeny Morozov: How to control new digital intermediaries?

The story that is pictured in The Net Delusion. The Dark Side of Internet Freedom begins in 2006 and the use that advocacy organizations do of social networking sites. Despite some minor effects, it is due acknowledging that online work had not much of an impact. The power was using the same tools of activists to counter-fight protests and protesters. And, indeed, social networking sites (SNS) were being used to haunt, find and punish activists in a sort of a cat & mouse game.

With this side-effect in mind, it is quite surprising that so many people in the “West” are so enthusiastic about ICTs and SNS in particular for advocacy or dissidence if it does not seem to be working. Maybe, people are too confident on the power of media. But he Internet works differently from the Fourth Estate. More access to information, more tools to diffuse a message should work, as it did in the past. But it does not.

Besides, people on the Internet are not engaging, but increasingly getting distracted. How can the online be linked with the offline? How can the online be linked to the on-the-ground activism and protesting? Because the thing is that online protests or demonstrations are not harmful, while offline are. Non-representative or extra-institutional politics simply do not work.

With the Internet one can circumvent political parties, but who cares? How can one translate that into impact? It is just escaping politics. People should move into politics, now being smarter, more resilient, instead of escaping from them.

All the aforementioned especially applies to Eastern regions. What would happen if the Internet could be applied to solving problems in western liberal democracies?

The problem is that new intermediaries know too much about someone that they can affect or tamper one’s process of getting informed, of deliberating, engaging, etc. (e.g. Google Now). Google builds the present almost anywhere (e.g. Google Glass). What Silicon Valley is trying to fix that is actually a feature and not a bug. Silicon Valley is fixing a problem or is developing a solution looking for a problem?

Discussion

Albert Montagut: Isn’t there a need for new intermediaries? Evgeny Morozov: Predictive policing can work with big data and the appropriate algorithm. But how is this algorithm working or being designed? We do not know. Thus, we need access to code. We need to democratize the process, introducing accountability in the design without hampering private interests. And with the Internet of Things, it will not any more be about the Internet, but about the real world. Offline and online does not apply any more.

Jorge Salcedo: What about the economies of network? What about the change of values (e.g. privacy) that is taking place? Evgeny Morozov: Let us take the example of self-tracking and the quantified-self. There are reasons to use these technologies for personal usage but, at the same time, there can be interests in e.g. car or health insurance companies to access the collected data and be able to calculate probabilities on accidents or diseases. Then, we find there are incentives so that people forget about privacy. Indeed, there are times where the user cannot avoid doing “bad” things, e.g. eating junk food because you cannot afford better food. Should these people be penalized twice, for being poor and for eating what they can afford to eat? The problem with most these things is that one is not free to opt out, so people end up into adverse decisions or moral hazard.

Josep Ibáñez: The lack of awareness of people, can we include that in education? On the other hand, Silicon Valley goes faster than governments, boosted by the smell of profit. How can we gain that power back? Evgeny Morozov: To educate we need a coherent position on some topics, which we do not have. We need to make aware the consequences of technology use during use itself. We must not hide the consequences of the use of technology.

Luis Ángel Fernández Hermana: The Internet is not one single thing, but several things together, and still evolving. We have to learn to operate in a new and evolving territory that is the Internet. Can this be done or the sequences of transitions are impossible to track/learn? Can we create “knowledge networks” that allow people to act online and offline too? Evgeny Morozov: The “Internet” as an entity I believe it not. One thing is the physical network, and another one is the different “Internets” that we use as concepts to explain different things. Many things are beyond the mere “Internet” (e.g. 3D printing) but are systematically attached to this catch-all concept. We have to go beyond this stage of believing that “everything” is the “Internet” and that there is an online world in opposition to the offline world.

Ismael Peña-López: I think there is great consensus that the Internet has brought empowerment to the citizenry. But maybe we forgot a little bit about governance. Indeed, what the 15M Spanish Indignados movement seemed to show was that we were really behind in terms of governance, that the globalization and ICTs had put it up and away from the common citizen. In a sense, we could speak of a trade-off between empowerment and governance the more digital is a society. How can we balance this? How can we regain access to governance with the tools of empowerment? Evgeny Morozov: this is “the” question: how to improve governance with ICTs. But it is different to overarch technology from an improved government because technology works very different and one cannot regulate everything. We have to get empirical, not “macro-theoretical”.

Round table: From movements to constitutions. How to think in a networked and open source constitutional process
Chairs: Tomás Herreros

Is it true that citizens (Spaniards, Greeks, etc.) are lab rats upon which we can play socio-economic experiments?

What has been the role of the European Union before the economic and financial crisis?

There is only an exit to the crisis with a commons-based economy, a new way to understand politics and participation, etc.

These movements are based on self-communication and higher rates of participation. And the difference between activists and non-activists are blurring, as participation comes naturally with being informed, providing and opinion and getting in touch with one’s peers.

With this changing times, what is the role of traditional politics?

Rubén Martínez Dalmau (Professor in Constitutional LAw, Universidad de Valencia)

There are concepts like “separation of powers” or “administration of sovereignty” that should be addressed carefully. So, before asking how to do things, we should above all ask ourselves why some things should — or should not — be done.

Why a constituent process?

Because, historically, constitutive democracy is an emancipatory process: it has provided more rights to the citizens than never before. Modern constitutions introduce the concept of the sovereignty of the people, which becomes very important in order to control power and its management.

Although modern constitutions have improved empowerment and have evolved (positively) along the years, there still are some glitches that need being fixed: many times, constitutions are nominal (state principles) but are not normative (and thus require a deployment of further regulation). A good example of that is health, housing, etc. though they are mentioned as rights in many constitutions, they do not count as such if they are not reflected in positive laws (as it often happens). Consequence? Parts of the constitution are not applied.

Another glitch is the difference between constituent power and constituted power. Constitutions are the manifestation of regenerative powers. But if representatives do not change their behaviours according to (new) constitutions, the constituent and regenerative power becomes but reproductive power. The glitch of the glitch is when representatives (the constituted power) are the ones that change or write the constitutions (the constituent power). This is a total contradiction in the very core of the concept of a constitution.

Thus, there is a need to break (1) the nominal parts of the constitutions and (2) the hope or mirage that constitutions can be changed by the people but actually only constituted powers can do it. We need not fight for a reform of the constitution, but for a rupture.

The qualitative leap between the 15M and the 25S is putting the stakes on the constituent power as the basis of a rupture against the constituted power — very much like many Latin American constitutions that were reformed or rewritten in the nineties.

The constituent process is not the only exit, but it might be the best one. On the other hand, the constituent power is a power that many times needs fighting the constituted power; thus, many times the legitimacy of the constituent process begins with a clash of powers. There is a need for a transitional process that will not be “the” transition, but a real transition time that links the preceding constitution with the following one, where consensus have to be reached, and based on a deep democratic maturity.

Emmanuel Rodríguez (Observatorio Metropolitano de Madrid)

There are many political institutions that instead of disclosing democracy, they actually close it: only some specific actors are acknowledged as such and the rest of actors is set aside of the democratic process. Besides representative institutions closing democracy, mainstream media have lately proven unable to channel the public opinion. Same with labour union, that have shifted towards representing only a specific part of the workers. Last, but not least, the economic power, whose jurisdiction has escaped the area of influence of all other powers.

[here comes a thorough explanation of the growing power of international finance, getting much bigger than any country’s GDP] The defence of economic and finance powers has become a political priority, with the Maastricht Treaty as the most significant “constituent” example.

Summing up, while the economy is fully integrated at the European level, politics (or civil rights) are not so. Until a total parallelism is achieved, full democracy within Europe will be an illusion.