ICTlogy

Unconference. Cyberactvism: Caught between love and hate?

Moderator: Vilhelm Konnander.

In Egypt: have treats on digital activists increased after the Arab Spring? Threats have increased, but also has the number of users of social networking sites (Twitter, Facebook). And not only are there more users, but they are active users that look for and share information and news. The bad thing is that now the government is also on Twitter or Facebook and can monitor and track who said what, when and to whom.

In Ethiopia: all media are owned by the government. So, social networking sites are the only place where the citizens can get some information not controlled by the government. The problem is now that the government aims at controlling the Internet too. All the websites that are critical with the government are automatically blocked. The government also uses spyware to monitor their citizens.

In Iran: before 2009, bloggers got arrested, there was some censorship and blocking. After 2009, people began to use Twitter and Facebook and share photos and videos. So, now the Internet is a target to be controlled. The government is working now for a national/halal/Islamic Internet by replacing third parties’ solutions by their own (their own Twitter, their own Facebook, etc.).

In Russia: Russia is very afraid of revolutions (Georgia, Ukraine, etc.) so it wants to control the Internet to avoid further revolutions. Just like in times of the Soviet Union, “dissidents” are targeted, identified (online and offline) to “deactivate” them.

We have not to misunderstand freedom of expression and the freedom to risk your like by speaking out. There might be freedom of expression and not “freedom after expression”.

Is it possible to get funding for cyberactivism? From abroad? Is it a good thing or is it harmful?

In Ethiopia is very difficult to get funding from outside, but it is very much needed: for reaching out, for expanding one’s networks, to scale up training and skills of volunteers/bloggers, etc.

A problem that most activists face in Egypt — and elsewhere — is that as they are not constituted and registered as a formal ONG, it is very difficult to (a) get funding and, in case they got it, (b) manage money the “appropriate” way, as a normal institution would (with accounting books, budgets, and so on).

Should we encourage some actions, or some donations… or does that put people in danger? Or will that hamper or worsen the relationships between governments and NGOs and make development cooperation more difficult because of bad diplomatic relationships?

For any major change to happen, steps have to be taken slow but taken sure.

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.

Professors Linda Castañeda and Jordi Adell have just published the book Entornos personales de aprendizaje: claves para el ecosistema educativo en red (Personal Learning Environments: keys for the networked educational ecosystem), the most comprehensive work to date on Personal Learning Environments in Spanish language and, arguably, one of the most comprehensive too in any language.

This book is a tremendous (and, in my acknowledgedly biased opinion, succeeded) effort to produce a definition, a compilation of research approaches (pedagogical, technological, sociological…), framework of application and applied examples of what we understand by personal learning environments or PLEs.

The editors of the book asked me to contribute with a chapter — The research-teaching PLE: learning as teaching — which aimed at reflecting the use of the PLE in the intersection of research and teaching. In other words, how most scholars and teachers of all kinds could understand the PLE (a) beyond a tool for their students (i.e. for themselves), and (b) beyond the classroom. If I was to summarize my chapter in just one short sentence I’d say that the PLE becomes meaningful for the teacher when we understand the teacher as a learner too.

Part of the content of my chapter overlaps with what I dealt with in Heavy switchers in translearning: From formal teaching to ubiquitous learning. But, as I have pointed at, the book chapter (which was written first) has a more practical, hands-on, do-it-yourself approach, while the article definitely has a more academic flavour. And, of course, the former is in Spanish and the later in English.

The presentation of the book is terrific with a very cool website. Besides the printed edition, the book can be downloaded (as a whole, by sections and by chapters) and can be reused thanks to its BY-NC-ND 3.0 Creative Commons license.

My gratitude to Linda and Jordi goes “beyond usual” as they really encouraged me in putting together all my stuff on this topic, which ended up in the chapter and the aforementioned article. Many thanks for that!

Downloads

Chapter 6:
Peña-López, I. (2013). El PLE de investigación-docencia: el aprendizaje como enseñanza. In Castañeda, L. & Adell, J. (Eds.) (2013). Entornos Personales de Aprendizaje: claves para el ecosistema educativo en red. Capítulo 6, 93-110. Alcoy: Marfil.

Full book:
Castañeda, L. & Adell, J. (Eds.) (2013). Entornos Personales de Aprendizaje: claves para el ecosistema educativo en red. Alcoy: Marfil.

After a long collaborative process of several months, the book Ciudadania y ONG (Citizenry and Nonprofits) has just seen the light. This has been a very interesting exercise of co-coordination along with Imanol Zubero, Carlos Giménez and Enrique Arnanz.

For the making of the book, the website CiudadaniayONG.org was used in two steps:

1. A delimited survey open to everyone, to copse the main topics around the three axes that we had predefined:
   intergenerational relationships, transforming participation, and digital citizenry.
2. An open forum, where the main conclusions of the survey were discussed and complemented with many insights.

In each step documents were produced to provide the appropriate context for the coming reflection.

Besides being part of the whole process, I concentrated in the third axis, that is, digital citizenry, and what did it mean for participation, volunteering and nonprofits in general entering the new era of the Information Society.

I am deeply grateful to the promoters of the book, Fundación Esplai, and, of course, to the rest of the coordinators. Scholars have fewer occasions to collaborate with people outside the Academia and higher pressure not to: being part of the book was keeping a wire attached to the power that boosts citizen movements. Besides the later, some of the many people that helped in making the book a reality are Carles Barba, María Jesús, José Maria Pérez, Maria Jesús Manovel, Elvira Aliaga, Virginia Pareja, Cesk Gasulla, Josechu Ferreras, Jorge Hermida, Carles Campuzano, Luis M. López Aranguren, Consuelo Crespo and Rafael Rodríguez.

The book has been published in Spanish and translated into Catalan.

Downloads:

Peña-López, I., Zubero, I., Giménez, C. & Arnanz, E. (Coords.) (2013). Ciudadanía y ONG. El nuevo papel del Tercer Sector ante el cambio de época..

Peña-López, I., Zubero, I., Giménez, C. & Arnanz, E. (Coords.) (2013). Ciutadania i ONG. El nou paper del Tercer Sector davant el canvi d’època..