Freedom on the Net (FOTN) report analyses how are rights respected on the Internet, especially right of communications, privacy, etc. Questions asked:
Internet and new media dominating flow of news and information
What techniques do governments use to control and censor online content
What are the main threats
What are the positive trends
The methodology examines the level of internet and ICT freedom through a set of 19 questions and 90 subquestions, organized into three baskets:
* Obstacles to Access—including governmental efforts to block specific applications or technologies; infrastructural and economic barriers to access; and legal and ownership control over internet and mobile phone access providers.
* Limits on Content—including filtering and blocking of websites; other forms of censorship and self-censorship; manipulation of content; the diversity of online news media; and usage of digital media for social and political activism.
* Violations of User Rights—including legal protections and restrictions on online activity; surveillance and other privacy violations; and repercussions for online activity, such as prosecution, imprisonment, physical attacks, and other forms of harassment.
Negative trends
11 of the 15 countries censored content; 7 of the 15 countries blocked web 2.0 applications; there are also restrictions on infrastructures (speed restriction or broadband restriction, total access restriction, etc.)
In low-income countries, there are infrastructure and economic constrains, but, in general, economic issues are barriers that are overcome in low-income countries when a benefit can be made from ICTs.
Censorship is not always related to political or social content. We find significant lack of transparency in censorship procedures, including in some democracies. There is a wide range of techniques for blocking and/or removing content.
Censorship is being outsourced in some countries, the government hiring companies to run censorship or surveillance procedures themselves.
In many cases, it is ‘offline’ regulation, or general regulation the one that has an impact in online activity, like general media legislation against online activities, etc. This is leadind, in some cases, to “libel tourism”, where people have they web servers e.g. in the UK to put legal responsibility for posting or hosting content in a more democratic jurisdiction.
Of course, we find too extra-elgal repercussions, with detentions, intimidation, torture and extra-legal harassment and violence in general against “dissidents”. This also includes DDoS attacks, hacking, etc.
Positive trends
In general, there is more Internet freedom than press freedom, though the gap might be narrowing.
“Sneakernets” to avoid being monitored or scanned when being an activist on the Internet. Bloggers, though sometimes pushed-back because of threats, are increasingly creative in their usage of the Internet to have their voices heard.
Future trends:
more access to the Internet because of the mobile web and smartphones;
globalization and spread of Internet will not necessarily lead to greater freedom;
web 2.0 leading to Authoritarianism 2.0
foresight and creativity needed from more open countries to establish policies to protect free expression on new tecnologies.
Discussion
Albert Batlle: how is it that the UK scores worse in Freedom on the Net than Freedom of the Press. A: It might be because of “libel tourism”. Maybe because of that, maybe because of other issues, the reality is that it is easier in the UK to close a website than a newspaper, etc. All in all, it all highlights that though related, these are freedoms that can be taken independently.
Jordi Vilanova: what about the US and other western countries? A: Summing up, surveillance and even censorship are much more paramount that what would look like at first sight.
Mònica Vilasau: how do we tell censorship from e.g. fighting against copyright violation? A: It is always difficult to tell. It is nevertheless true that any kind of legal activity against online activity (legitimate or not) has chilling effects in the whole ecosystem.
Ismael Peña-López: the Wikileaks affair seems to have found a solution in a data haven in Iceland. Are data havens the solution to censorship? Will data havens allow people to act illegally under the flag of freedom? A: The problem with data havens, as with other barrier circumvention tools like TOR, is that they can be used both in good and evil ways. Nevertheless, it seems like, as now, there are more good uses than illegal ones, and way more need to enable transparency and to help democracy advocates rather than focus on prosecuting some illegal activities.
Notes from the Workshop on Youth Participation, organized by the Diputació de Barcelona, and held in Barcelona (Spain), on June 11th, 2010. See here the first part of these notes.
The second session was led by Ivan Serrano and myself, and presenting some preliminary results of a small research project we are both taking part in, along with other members of the GADE research group.
The goal of the session was to make a brief introduction to some web 2.0 tools and applications, and see how they had been put into practice in some localities. Our approach was neither to remain in the theoretical level nor to focus on the tool, but, on the contrary, to see what tools fit better in what participation purposes and goals.
Tools and applications
So, the first distinction I made was to tell tools (a way to do things, e.g. a blog) from applications (the different incarnations of tools, e.g. WordPress, Blogger, Typepad…). This distinction is relevant because we might find better applications for a specific use/tool than the most popular ones. Thus why focussing on the concept, not the service.
Directionality, quantitative: one-to-one, one-to-many, many to many.
Competences: basic, advanced, expert.
Platform: phone, Internet, both.
Though I believe the Platform will be deprecated because of the increasing pervasiveness of smartphones, that render it quite irrelevant.
Concerning applications, the main classification types are:
Kind of tool.
Cost: free, freemium, payment.
Hosting: installation, online service, both.
Mashable: open API or similar.
The latter a last-minute addition and that might well explain part of the success of the most popular tools, as mashability enables ubiquity of the tool, thus making possible to bridge all the tools one is using.
Slides 6 & 7 show a simplified matrix where the above mentioned categories are crossed:
Cases
Ivan went on with the applied cases, among others the following:
He ended up with some preliminary conclusions that came after the analysis of the preceding (and many other) participation initiatives. They seemed to be gathered in two groups and with different aims and characteristics:
Initiatives aimed at community building, characterized by being open, relational, fostering engagement, using free tools and aiming at a networked participation.
Policy oriented initiatives, characterized by being more formal (or formalized), focussing at decision-taking and representation, using own platforms and more “traditional” participation means.
Though all what we presented in this session is still in a draft stage, we believe that some interesting insights come from the e-participation experiences on the purposes-tools relationship. All in all, hi-engagement approaches demand more participatory and horizontal tools, and more top-down or traditional ones also demand traditional 1.0 tools. The error being, of course, first choosing the coolest 2.0 tool and then forcing the institution or the process to (against nature) adapt to the tool.
Notes from the Workshop on Youth Participation, organized by the Diputació de Barcelona, and held in Barcelona (Spain), on June 11th, 2010. See here the second part of these notes.
I had the luck to attend the fourth and last session of the Workshop on youth participation in youth policies — participated by local administration officers to explore new ways to engage the youth in public affairs —, this one focused on the role of ICTs in youth participation.
The session had three parts: a first one consisting in a brainstorm of challenges and opportunities, a second one on tools an case analysis, and a third one on proposals, unreported because it looked very much like the first part, but rephrased.
The first part, excellently facilitated by Manel Ruiz i Victor Garcia from INDIC, was based on Edward de Bono‘s Six Thinking Hats, where you perform a brainstorm of ideas under a specific approach (“wearing a hat”) and repeat it for all different approaches (we actually only did it for four “hats”). These approaches or colour hats are:
White: objective data, raw information. No feelings, no interpretation.
Yellow: optimism, positive thinking.
Black: what can go wrong. Caution, critical assessment.
Red: emotions, feelings, intuitions.
Green: possibilities, possible alternatives, creativeness.
These are the ideas, almost raw, unsorted, that came out of this session:
White: objective data.
How many people have access to ICTs.
How many public access points and usage level.
How many people have a computer at home.
How many hours connected.
Cost of access to ICT.
Have a mobile phone? What age do people begin to have a mobile phone?
Can connect to the Internet through mobile phone?
Main tools used and by age, gender, origin, income, education, etc.
Main uses: get information, to communicate amongst themselves…
Where people connect to the Internet and whether they do it alone or accompanied by others.
At what time: what hour, what day(s).
What is the legal framework in the use of these technologies, privacy, security, etc.
Possibilities (features) of a specific tool.
Digital competences: what is the level of digital competences of the user, and the level required by each tool.
Value given to each tool by the user.
Number and variety of tools, providers, costs of acquisition and/or customization, etc.
Entry barriers: ease to set up an account, time cost of access, etc.
ICT usage at schools.
Political framework: prone to foster ICTs and online participation or not.
Yellow: positive aspects.
Engage more people.
Higher outreach.
Positive regional spillovers, work in different geographic ranges.
Immediacy on response.
Break the institutional barrier.
Continuous participation.
Anytime participation and bottom-up initiated.
Get more information about the citizen though data mining from participation tools.
Plural participation: more people from more strata.
Tools that highly motivate the youth, approach youth channels and ways, “speak in their language”.
Information through participation.
Generate a multicultural platform, a virtual community of youngsters.
Alternative channels, complementary to other channels.
Stable channel of communication.
Returns of scale.
Easy to update information, cost-effective error correction
Generate a culture of participation, of engagement, which can lead to a culture of accountability and transparency.
Enables networking.
Black: what can go wrong.
Lack of knowledge of how tools work, or even that they exist.
Difficult to catch-up with changes.
Information overload, participation proposals overload.
Time consuming.
Crowding out effect.
Loss of non-verbal language.
Who owns personal data? Who is monitoring the conversations?
Security and privacy hazards. Lack of awareness on a wrong use of ICTs.
Banal participation.
Participation rich in debate but leads to no conclusion or decision.
Poor netiquette, impunity, cyberbulling.
Digital divide: only those who have access and can use the tools can participate. And as access and usage depends on socio-economic status, participation is biased.
Serendipitous participation: face-to-face participation makes it easier to know other initiatives or people by chance (e.g. when visiting the civic centre).
Adjust expectations of the tool to what can actually be achieved with it.
Mediated communication, not direct.
That people that “should not participate” actually participate (non-identified people, not relevant to your proposal, etc).
Notes from the research seminar e-Administration and Transparency: the diffusion of public information on the Internet, by Enrico Carloni, held at the Open University of Catalonia, Barcelona, Spain, on May 27th, 2010.
e-Administration and Transparency: the diffusion of public information on the Internet Enrico Carloni
Public administration as a glass house, where people can look through it and peek on the inside. In Italy, public transparency is a constitutional value, though it is not referred in this terms but using: impartiality, responsibility, democratic principles, politic responsibility or accountability. All these principles require transparency and that all citizens are knowledgeable of what the government is doing.
But, traditionally, in Italy, the de facto rule was secrecy. It is in 1990 that transparency is added in a reform of the Law that regulated the public administration. The right to transparency is strengthened in 2005 in the Italian Law for Digital Administration. In 2009, the ‘Brunetta’ Law regulates the publication of information on the Internet, including transparency as publicity online, instead of right of access to information, which was what was stated in 1990. Right of access vs. publicity online are quite different rights.
Right of access (law of 1990) required a “motivated” request, disclose direct interest, etc. In the end, this requisites implied an “access without transparency”, and the right of access was more of a monitoring device rather than a principle in itself.
In 2005, the law for Digital Administration (or Codice dell’amministrazione digitale) requires that transparency is guaranteed as a principle in itself, forcing a shift from right of access to publicity.
The new law uses an old device — open data and transparency of public information — that had been set up for efficiency purposes, and adds a new use for that old device: public information for transparency. This will, with time, be applied in the Operazione Trasparenza.
Advantages of the new model
Absence of mediation, any capable citizen can individually access all the information (Orsi Battaglini).
Increase and ease of availability, abandonment of the request-and-wait-for-a-response approach (Herz, 2009).
Possibility of new products, creation of new knowledge, really in line of transparency 2.0.
Risks of the new model
It is a system too weak in front of digital divides and knowledge divides in general.
Privacy hazards, from the glass house to the glass official.
Messy rooms: against maximum transparency, maximum opacity: the area of public information is fully open, but very limited.
Information overload
Biases of accountability, where transparency is used instrumentally: massive information on non-significant information, propaganda, etc.
Discussion
Blanca Torrubia: What are the limits of public information publicity? Who sets the rules of publicity? Who decides what is to become public information? A: The Law is very clear about that.
Ana Delgado: What happens if the information that is made available is wrong and this damages the citizen’s interests? A: This situation follows the usual legal paths of damages to third parties.
Ignasi Beltran: Is there a system to penalize misbehaviours? A: A way to penalize misbehaviours, by law, is firstly to penalize the responsible of that information. Another one is to assume the responsibilities that come from a lack of information (e.g. a citizen cannot be fined if they did not something that was not properly published). Citizens can also denounce misbehaviours and ask them to be corrected.
Ismael Peña-López: What does publicity exactly mean: open data or information? First hand raw data, or elaborated second hand information? A: Italy is in its transition from open information to open data. Traditionally, it was about opening documents, as the document was both content and container. The logic of the document and the logic of the data went together. And the inertia is still to high, so the logic of date is superseded by the logic of the document. As some new laws are designed with the logic of data, there are some pressures to push ahead the transition from document to data.
David Martínez: Has there been a constitutional evolution about the concept of transparency? Has it been more formally recognized as a right in itself? How do we monitor impartiality in public transparency? A: There has not been a change in the Constitution or the like, but there have been court rulings that have strengthened the new nature of the concept of transparency. But transparency still is not a principle in itself, but an enabler or an instrument to reach other principles (e.g. transparency for accountability).
Mònica Vilasau: How to monitor privacy? And how to cope with the trade-off between privacy and access? A: Access usually prevails on privacy. But the citizen can perform any “treatment” on their data. Some data, nevertheless, are private and cannot be published unless they are anonymised. On the other hand, if some public data are used to harm privacy of third parties, this can be treated as a law infringement, as it is like a non-consented use of private data.
Agustí Cerrillo: Does the CAD allows for an increased efficiency in public administration? What relevant information does get to the citizen? Wouldn’t it be better to keep the right of access, which allows for asking for further information, instead of right of publicity, which just provides public information on specific issues? A: Efficiency of the act, efficiency of the Administration, efficiency of a more transparent administration. The more the knowledge about the procedures of the public sector, the more likely to achieve higher levels of efficiency.
What will be the content of the EDem Conference 2020?
Find below the video and, after, short answers to the previous questions:
5 Words to eDemocracy?
eDemocracy is not about making democracy “electronic” (i.e. to use digital devices to perform our usual democratic participation), but how Information and Communication Technologies have transformed democratic institutions — mainly parties and governments — and what will be the role of such institutions and the role of the citizens because of the introduction of these ICTs, digital content, and the Information Society as a whole.
The future of eDemocracy in a nutshell?
The future of eDemocracy is about how to mainstream Democracy in people’s lives. It is usually said that (a) people are not interested in politics and/or that (b) people have other problems more important than democratic participation.
I think that we should be able to “embed” democratic participation in people’s daily lives so that participating (being informed, deliberation, voting, etc.) could be part of your daily “routines”, mainstreamed in your daily activity.
A simplistic though illustrative example of this mainstreaming — helped by ICTs and out of the democratic arena — is what Amazon does with your online behaviour and recommendations: you do not need to take any especial activity besides buying to build your profile upon which Amazon recommends books for you. Is that possible in political preferences?
Your favourite eDemocracy project?
One eDemocracy project that I know of and that I really like is Parlament 2.0, the Parliament 2.0 initiative by the Catalan Parliament led by its president Ernest Benach himself, a project that opens up the whole activity of the Parliament and really enables and fosters citizen participation.
President Ernest Benach wrote a book about this project and other “politics 2.0” reflections: #Política 2.0.
Prospects and risks of eDemocracy?
The main risks are, of course, the digital divide in all its senses (physical access, digital competences, etc.).
Besides the digital divide, we have to rethink political institutions… without necessarily destroying or ignoring or circumventing them.
What will be the content of the EDem Conference 2020?
Did we succeed in transforming political institutions and how?
Did we manage in how to mainstream democratic participation in everyone’s daily life?
During the 250 years of our industrial society, capital owners (capitalists) have been the ones that have ruled the world, the ones that are in power.
Our democratic system is shaped according to this industrial society and its power relationships.
In the upcoming knowledge society, the ones that will be able to manage cleverly knowledge by means of digital tools (digerati) are likely to have a higher share or power in all the aspects of life, especially the government (goverati).
We need to work to make access to knowledge as widespread as possible — access to infrastructures, digital competences, effective usage — so to avoid replacing the existing plutocracy with a new e-aristocracy.
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