Transforming institutions is compatible with occupying them, with questioning them, with trying to design new institutions. A key factor, though, of transformation or substitution of institutions is that major consensus and critical masses are required for changes to happen. There is a need to weave strong and broad alliances to question the status quo: it is a matter of democratic density.
There are many grounds that need being covered before citizen activism can take place. New laws on transparency or accountability are great milestones that enable further political activism. On the other hand, many of these laws are being designed as isolated laws and not as a part of a legal ecosystem.
Some times it’s institutions the ones that make the first steps (e.g. the Basque Government and the budget for 2012). These initiatives are good places that the citizenry can use to build bridges between institutions and social movements.
But while some institutions are trying to be more open, transparent, participative, this does not happen within political parties, whose DNA is just the opposite of the DNA of the movement of the XXIst century: centralized, vertical, often undemocratic and non-participative. We need to deeply transform political parties to their roots.
Top priorities: democratization of internal processes and creation of a culture of ideas (and not of mottos).
Social movements need less self-complaceny and dispersion: it is not about getting there first (and alone), but about getting there all together.
Democracia 4.0 aims at more participation, at understanding participation not as a problem but as a value, as an opportunity. A participation that can be either direct or representative depending on the personal will of the citizen.
A first foundation of Democracia 4.0 is that its technology must guarantee all democratic rights (privacy, security, etc.) and be, at the same time, as transparent as possible. Transparency is also about the workings of the tool, which has to be easy to use so that participation can take place without barriers.
The different powers are not balanced — there is no ‘check and balance’ — and the way to fix this is to distribute power: enabling better ways of watching power, of transparency, of accountability. Distribution of power also breaks with “politics in blocks”, where voting usually is not about specific issues but about sets of issues which cannot be voted individually.
Representative democracy, through intermediation, creates big hubs of power: Internet is a huge disintermediation machine that can end up breaking those big hubs while democratic efficiency and efficacy may not suffer at all. On the other hand, this lack of big powers would also enable vetoing specific laws that are unpopular or plain awful.
We can demonstrate that our political system is not compact and coherent (in Kurt Gödel’s words).
In the Internet matters not what (or who) but how (and where). Though focussing on the how the what gets revaluated.
Vasilis Kostakis The governance of communities based in the commons: laying the foundations of an open source democracy?
The social web has change the way we can communicate and create content. A good side-effect of social media is that participation many times just happens, unconsciously, on the run. This creates several different profiles according to how people approach creation of content: the amateur, the professional, the final user, the white hat and black hat hacker, etc. In this scenario, the amateur plays a key role and constitutes a new “class” as they become the new controllers of the means of production. New economies are created: sharing and aggregation economies, crowdsourcing economies, commons-based economies… What are the consequences of the emergence of these new economies? Is that a good or a bad thing?
Commons-based economies have ways of organization that are different from traditional for-profits, as they foster social dynamics that play a very important role producing value for the public domain. This value is created through peer-production.
If peer-production can create value in the field of information and knowledge, peer-governance can do the same in the field of politics. Unlike centralized power, on peer-production authority is the currency and ‘benevolent dictators’ have arisen to their positions by contributing with their work.
Abundance of intellect + resources + tools = unpredictable outcome. This is a difficult to handle outcome, by the way.
Cooperation + abundance + desktop manufacturing: another way of “manufacturing” an open source democracy.
Discussion
Alberto Lumbreras: how can we enable that representatives can be an option in parallel with direct democracy? How can we avoid that someone votes everything while others do not even notice? Francisco Jurado: the idea is not to create an total substitute, but an alternative to a one and only way to do things. The problem is not the system’s, but how we communicate and deliberate about issues.
Alberto Lumbreras: how can we avoid a commons-based economy from being stopped? Vasilis Kostakis: Commons-based economics is an alternative, but based on capitalism. Thus, it is much constrained by its legal framework. The idea is to go beyond this framework by entering the new mindset taht a digital economy is not based on scarcity or transaction costs.
Joan Coscubiela: it should be possible to “use” the insiders of the system to change it from within, but fostering change from the outside. Joan Coscubiela disagrees that unions are as centralized and hierarchical as political parties, but that the problem of unions is that they were created in the industrial society, vertical, corporate, not horizontal and networked. For unions the problem is creating critical mass around common axes. Antoni Gutiérrez-Rubí: it is interesting to see representative democracy as an “administered sovereignty”. In an industrial society, parties and unions worked very well; but what happens in a digital society? How are parties and unions administering our sovereignties? Do political parties and governments really understand the people they are serving?
Ismael Peña-López: in a direct democracy, in a binary world, how do we take into account minorities that will never be able to be represented by a majority? Francisco Jurado: we can design participatory processes that take into account weightings for different opinions, so that the outcome is not a yes or a no, but a shade of grays. Arnau Monterde: indeed, it is not only about voting, but if the whole deliberative process is open and participatory, all these shades of gray can be taken into account in the final outcome. Antoni Gutiérrez-Rubí: agreed, but it is very difficult to carry on a complex debate without polarization and simplification, without echo chambers that do nothing but resonate.
Q: these improvements are ok for parliaments, but what happens with governments? Francisco Jurado: if the government is loyal to the parliament, then there is no problem. Antoni Gutiérrez-Rubí: regarding governments, new ways of democracy can play a major role in accountability.
Share:
Digital culture, networks and distributed politics in the age of the Internet (2012)
Presentation of the 2n day of the Conference: Joan Coscubiela
Most social structures of the industrial society seem inadequate for today’s problems.
On the other hand, in times of change not only aren’t there many solutions, but existing solutions are far from being global or valid for all problems and contexts.
Another big problem is that people that have lived in previous social models usually do not have the keys for transformation.
Can we go forward with a de-constituent process that is followed by a constituent one? How will be build the required consensus? What is exactly the social conflict of the XXIst century? Is it capital? Is it the control of information? Of networks? Is it the control of the economic powers that are beyond the political power? How do we combine short-term solutions to daily problems with long-term, systemic ones?
Round table: From the Arab Spring to the Global Spring. How to think on the global relationships of the new movements in the digital age Chairs: Arnau Monterde (Programme in Communication and Civil Society, UOC/IN3)
#yosoy132 #15m #ows #tahrir have implied more thatn 10 millino tweets in the last year. What is the impact of the whole set? What are the relationships between these movements? What is going to be next in these movements and in the very nature of these movements?
Nizaiá Cassián (UOC); Israel Solorio (Member of YoSoy132 Mexico)
Israel Solorio
The nature of YoSoy132 was quite different form the 15M Indignados, at least in its origins.
The nature of YoSoy132 was quite different from the 15M indignados, at least in its origins. The movement originated in universities to fight poor democracy, but quickly grew outside of the educational environment and thus YoSoy132 International is like the assembly of the circa 70 assemblies that generated after the initial spark of the movement.
Nizaiá Cassián
YoSoy132 is a Mexican students protest that initiates when the PRI (Institutional Revolutionary Party) candidate Enrique Peña Nieto is haunted during a conference at a university because of denyal of human rights violation. After mainstream media minimize the impact on the image of the candidate labelling the students as a “few violent misfits”. The response of the students is a major, decentralized campaign, led by 131 students, stating that they are neither “a few” nor “violent misfits”. The result is that thousands of students support the initiative of the 131 by stating that they agree with them and that they are the 132 student.
This movement has determined the development of the electoral campaign, the way students have been more engaged in politics, etc. It is important to stress the point that the movement did not only address the political parties and politicians, but most especially mainstream media and their lack of neutrality and ethics. The criticism against Mexican media powers was very strong and as part of a demand for more and better democracy.
Israel Solorio
There is a deeper digital divide in Mexico than in Spain. In Mexico the usual way to diffuse (alternative) political messages is the bridageo, consisting in delivering leaflets in the underground or the streets. But YoSoy132 somewhat brought into the spotlight the power of social networking sites, and how they could bridge the Net and the street.
Indeed, having an influence on the communication agenda was always one of the main goals of the movement.
The movement YoSoy132 acknowledges the great wealth that the 15M movement generated by documenting procedures, sharing tools and opening their source code, analysing how people communicate and got engaged, etc. The 15M still is a good reference to be able to know the pace of things.
And the other way round: all movements feedback one each other, as “Rodea Televisa” was an inspiration to “Rodea el Congreso”.
If power goes global, let’s globalize the resistance.
A similar analysis with Occupy Wall Street and the pepper spray incident also shows that what people talk about and what media show is closely related, but unlike what used to happen in the past, it is interesting to see that social networking sites are beginning to condition what ends up in the front page of newspapers.
The relationship and mutual feedback between social media and traditional media is increasing, many times creating “transmedia” pieces of news that are originated in one platform and then is transposed to the other one, creating a dialogue across platforms and actors.
The Occupy movement generated around it a group of researchers and communicators that focused on gathering and curating content about the movement, in order to record what happened, diffused it, and, above all, analyse it, like #OccupyData NYC or Occupy Research.
Main things learnt: activists have learn new ways to mobilize and, more important, to communicate. Many citizens have seen new movements (and Occupy specifically) as new and fresh ways of engagement and of changing the typical political discourse. The movement has also acted as a bridge between collectives (immigrants, unions, etc.) that usually did not work together and that now are part of a same network, [added after numeroteca’s comment] though this bridging was not broadly achieved.
The Arab Spring really is a regional phenomenon, not a collection of isolated/national unrests. There really is a collective conscience that transcends the boundaries of countries. The increase in the number of blogs since 2004 in the Arab World is exponential: from just some dozens to literally hundreds of thousands, many of them speaking one to each other about human rights and civil liberties. Of course, every country has its own revolution (or transition in some of thems), but the collective sense prevails.
In the case of Egypt, even if now in a political transition, the revolution is still going on: there still are protests, there still are victims, there still are struggles to speak and be heard. There is a symbiosis between the fights in the streets and the fights that happen online: the street and the online world are not separate worlds. Indeed, one of the acknowledged flaws of the revolution in Morocco is that it has not succeeded in taking the streets.
On the other hand, despite the fact that all the Arab revolutions are part of a bigger network and share a lot of knowledge (tactics, tools, etc.) there still is the feeling that a closer relationship and collaboration could take place. Added to that, the different regimes are also fighting back the movements on the Net too. And, still, one of the problems to be informed of what a network does is being part of the network.
Kazeeboon’s channel on YouTube shares footage taken on the streets on protests and human rights violations. But these footage is taken “outside” of the Internet and shown in the streets, on walls, on the ground or even on people so that everybody (with or without Internet access) can see what has been taped.
Share:
Digital culture, networks and distributed politics in the age of the Internet (2012)
Round table: The defence of the Network, hacktivism and other contributions to the source code of the new movements Chairs: Cristina Cullell (Universitat Jaume I)
Technological infrastrucures have changed the landscape of participation and activism. There also is a new hacker ethic or hacker culture that promotes sharing, decentralization, openness, etc. Hacking is not based on an expectation of profits, but on personal pleasure or realization, on prestige and recognition: hacking is better understood in a gift-economy rather than a traditional capitalist economy.
Hacking requires net neutrality and an open network to be able to realize its full potential. But is it the Network a common good or a private service? Depending of how the Internet is understood, different ethics apply and different ethics clash one with each other.
Can hacking provide a new framework that is able to design (alternative) solutions for the economic and political crisis?
How is the Internet born? It’s not the outcome of some amateurs, but the outcome of scholars, scholars trying the get the best of their powerful but underused infrastructures (regardless of the fact that they were directly or indirectly financed with military funding). And, in a scholarly way, technology, research, designs and results are openly shared.
But little by little, and fostered by private investors, infrastructure and its open outcomes are increasingly privatised and released with different licenses that allow different uses and “ownerships”. One of these licenses is the GPL, that uses the hegemonic rules and practices to fight them back.
The GPL and the way of working around the GNU not only provided new outcomes (i.e. an operating system) but also new ways of working, of collaborating, of distributing tasks.
Most of the developments that run the Internet or that run over the Internet are built upon this new way of working, and based on two main pillars:
Low consensus: maximum consensus cannot be achieved; thus, practicality and the lowest common denominator is what applies.
Running code: things are built upon practice, what is to be applied is what is been worked on, what is being actually coded and run.
This way of working both fits the basic needs of a project and also that dissension can be redirected by means of forking a specific initiative or project. Forking (usually) does not mean splitting a project but actually multiplying it.
[Txarlie implicitly recalls in software what in social movements is called as ‘do-ocracy’: activism by doing, not by representation.] The parallelism between free software and (new) (hack)activism is that decisions are taken in a decentralized way, there is no-one (but many people) deciding what initiative or project is being developed and carried on. In this sense, the 15M works as a free software project and the 25S as a fork of the initial 15M project.
The big difference between the 15M movement (aka Indignados) and the Anti-globalization or Alter-globalization movement is having a strong link with the media corporations, so that the message can get out of the insiders, that outsiders to the movement can connect, be informed, understand or interpret the message, resend it, remix it, etc.
When communication media try to explain the phenomenon of “AcampadaSol” (camps in the Spanish squares), they usually forget the whole landscape and context that leads towards Sol: AcampadaSol is not an isolated event, but the outcome of many micro-events and initiatives that had taken place before. A good explanation of the movement is Ciberactivismo: Las nuevas revoluciones de las multitudes conectadas, by Mario Tascón and Yolanda Quintana.
We need to reflect on the new ways of activism and understand their new role and the role of the Net. And this is an urgent need if citizen movements want to fight back the attacks of governments and corporations to these new ways of activism.
Hacking, new activisms, hacktivisms, etc. came up with new ways to circumvent or to hack the law and were able to raise improved ways of participation and protest. In reaction, legislative bodies are changing the law to prevent such circumvention, most of the times attacking not only new practices but the very core of some human and political rights such a freedom of expression or the right of assembly.
Activists need to set up new tools to circumvent the anti-circumvention laws. Society needs no new elites, but distributed and decentralized power. Society needs more hackers, but not technology hackers, but “society” hackers.
Discussion
Francisco Jurado: Why hacktivism? Why going against the system and not contributing to it? Txarlie: The traditional creators of content, of information, of knowledge (e.g. the academia) are no more able to be the only engines that empower the society. So, it is not exactly a matter of going against something or someone, but contributing to the work of the institutions… despite they wanting it or not. Carlos Sánchez Almeida: sometimes, though, some things need to be fought as they directly attack some human rights or some tools that enable the practice of some humand rights (e.g. P2P technologies).
Marga Padilla: what is the difference between activism P2P and activism Free Culture / Creative Commons? P2P is more based on protocols, on sharing initiatives, and Free Culture / Creative Commons activism is more based on creating more content, more information, and sharing and diffusing it.
Q: What exactly is the Internet? Does the definition determines what is cyberactivism? Txarlie: Internet is a network of computers. The problem is that over this network there are sub-networks that often isolate themselves from the rest of networks. So, when we talk about the Internet we should talk at both levels: the physical network and the logical or social sub-networks that coexist within. Almeida: Internet is a constitution written by hackers, and the Internet is a neutral network: a neutral network lets all bytes flow equally.
Q: Why hacktivism is many times not proud of its own actions? Why anonymity? Why not “full” civil disobedience instead of a rough approximation to civil disobedience? Txarlie: this is not a decision that an individual can take, but that the whole collective have to agree upon. And, at the moment, it seems like collective action on the Net is easier to do this way. It is not a matter of shyness or hiding, but a matter of efficacy (or so perceived efficacy). Almeida: we should differentiate hiding and anonymity or “not full” civil disobedience, from unfair laws and how these turn some legal actions into illegal ones. But, of course, civil disobedience has its consequences and hacktivism has to acknowledge them.
Ismael Peña-López: are we fostering hacktivism or rather cracktivism? If a hacker is someone inside the system and a cracker someone trying to (violently) enter it, are we really trying to change the system from within or to crack it? Where are politicians and parties and NGOs and other institutions in this hacktivism or activism from within? Or is it rather cracktivism? Txarlie: most cracking is useful for hacking, so sometimes there is a need for a prior cracking that enables the hacking that follows. Some institutions need to be cracked first so that then the insiders can hack it from within. Almeida: the best insider is the one that hacks and builds bridges with the outsiders. But this hacker-insider has to assume that they will often fall into civil disobedience and acknowledge the consequences… which they usually don’t. We do not want a switch of elites, but a transformation of the system.
Q: is it fair to use private tools (e.g. Facebook) for hacktivism? Almeida: it is fair because it is the best way to contaminate the system without the system being able to disable it. On the other hand, there is not a single tool for hacktivism, but a toolbox, with several tools to be used at different times and scenarios.
Q: what are the technological and economic requisites of hacktivism? Almeida: activism has to fight against the monopolies of power: economic and political power. This means that (1) activism will never fight in equal conditions but (2) activism does need some economic and political resources (armies march on their stomachs, Napoleon). It is very important, though, that these resources are transparent and accountable.
Q: the new constitutions that have to be written, shouldn’t they focus more on the procedures and protocols rather than on “content”? Txarlie: opening procedures and protocols is crucial in activism. But content is also important: if there is nothing “constituted” before a “destitution” process, the outcome of such process can be a worst situation than the former. Almeida: more than protocols and content, decision-making has to be very agile, transparent and executive. This is the way to keep constitutions simple but effective. And this includes a good judicial power, efficient, independent, legitimated.
Share:
Digital culture, networks and distributed politics in the age of the Internet (2012)
In recent years there have been social movements that address the lack of representativeness and legitimacy of their politicians and governments. Institutions have been emptied of content.
It is not that democracy has ceased to be “democratic”, but many citizens believe so, which is a serious issue. And that is why many citizens look for alternative and more effective ways of participation.
So, what we are witnessing is not a minor protest, but a new pattern of behaviour that leads to change. Change of institutions and forms of institutionalization that should lead to new ways of decision-making that affects people’s lives. It is not (only) about building a new future, but about fixing our present. And it is not (only) about finding new ways of participation, but about designing new democracies.
We should be able to tell the difference between the actual mobilizations that imply occupations, fights with the police and some times some violence, from the ideas that boost these mobilizations. There of course is much debate and disagreement around the way mobilizations take place, but the consensus arises when the debate focus on the reasons and foundations of the mobilizations.
What forms of activism and mobilization in the public space can be carried on so that they affect the public agenda, real politics and decision-making? And this is the field of experimentation that we are witnessing. And what happens when the red line of violence is trespassed, as it implies the death-sentence of the movement.
This is what is at stake and it is very likely to intensify until it finds a solution.
Round table: From wikileaks to the Global Spring. Logics of the Internet in collective action Chairs: Arnau Monterde
Protests in the Internet have their own specificities, fights in the Internet work, if not different, with their own rules of the game.
So, what is the Internet? What is the cyberspace? In his Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, John Perry Barlow defines it as a free non-physical space where physical violence cannot be enforced, where the rules of a material world do not apply any more. Despite the romantic approach of the declaration, it is absolutely true that the cyberspace, or the Internet, does imply many challenges to law and governance as we know them. This feature of an disembodied space implies:
The Internet can be experienced in many ways depending on the interests that drive action on the Net, interests that are often opposed. Ambiguity is, thus, the very nature of the Internet.
If a device can work in many ways and its not physical, it cannot be controlled. The Internet, and the messages that go through it, cannot be controlled.
Last, a very specific thing about the Internet is that we have its code, we know how it works.
What is then at stake is (1) how to control access to this virtual space and, as a consequence, (2) how to control access to virtual goods that are not scarce, that can be freely and costlessly distributed and replicated.
The case of Wikileaks
Wikileaks presents a paradigmatic case of ways to attack the freedom of speech in the Internet, taken as a separate space from “reality”: while Wikileaks was haunted all along cyberspace (attacking their hosting services, their domain names, etc.), newspapers publishing Wikileaks’ documents were not attacked. Why was that so? Was Wikileaks more dangerous on the Net that on paper? Or was it because of the nature of the Internet?
One of the explanations is that while newspapers are usually national and politically-biased, Wikileaks acted internationally, with no political-bias, attacking the core of governments without a political agenda behind (did not want to substitute a government by another, which would have been understood as “fair”), it provided raw data and not just interpreted or mediated information.
Wikileaks is an unfinished device, it needs a solidarity network that “completes” what Wikileaks is providing. Wikileaks contributes to the commons by resigning control. All other nodes in the network acknowledge that Wikileaks is providing wealth to the network, which is good in itself (despite agreement or disagreement on what is specifically providing). Providing content, networking, wealth, is of most value in a network. And it is that value that was attacked.
On the other hand, the Internet is still seen as a lawless space, where the rules and law of the “real world” somewhat do not apply. Freedom of speech, the right to have a name or a website, etc. can be more easily attacked on the Net that on the flesh-and-bones world.
The cyberactivism kit
Deep professional and technological knowledge.
Capability to react quickly.
Deliberate ambiguity, confusion, comfortability with chaos.
Decentralized information &mash; vs. centralized traditional independent news sources.
The case of Anonymous
Anonymous — a non-organization, with an undefined political goal — can be understood as the reply of the lack of (or violation of) human rights on the Internet. If governments and firms act illegally or a-legally on the Net, Anonymous will do tantamount from the approach of the citizen.
Anonymous can also be understood as the result of the clash of two different rights: the freedom of speech, the freedom to access culture, and copyright.
Anonymous adds to the cyberactivism kit:
Citizen politics with generic and plain English words
Aim of anonymization, in the sense of unselfishness.
Laura Pérez Altable (UPF) Informative flows during the Arab Spring: the case of Tunis
Some examples of digital networks of communication helping social movements:
Castells labels the Zapatist Movement (1994) as the first informational guerilla: it used international media intensively to both diffuse their message and also to organize themselves around the message.
The Battle of Seattle (1999) used for the first time the blog to organize and also diffuse their message.
Iran lived unrests in 2009 against the election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad where Twitter was broadly used as a tool to organize the protests.
The Arab Spring (2010–), which witnessed how the message was co-built and co-broadcasted by citizens and corporate media.
Others: Occuppy Wall Street, YoSoy132, etc.
Sampedro (Opinión pública y democracia deliberativa. Medios, sondeos y urnas. Istmo, Madrid, 2000) states that there are two different public spheres: the central one, where politics and media act, and outer or periferic public spheres that is where citizens act.
The traditional scheme of a political sphere that affects media that affect the public sphere is intercepted by a new actor: the digital networks of communication. These networks intercept the message especially between media and the public sphere, but actually affect all levels and actors in the scheme. With the appearance of the new actor, both the Agenda-Setting Theory and the Gate-Keeping Theory are altered and have to be explained from scratch, now including the new actor. Media are transformed: from being gatekeepers that filter information they turn into gatewatchers that make it visible.
Citizens hack local media and the official discourse of the government by aiming at international media and the international civil society.
Discussion
Q: People on the Internet may not suffer violence in it, but they definitely do outside of it because of their virtual actions. So, it is just partially true that there is no violence in cyberspace. How can this be counteracted? What is disobedience in cyberspace? Marga Padilla: the best way to perform disobedience is by hacking, that is, not going against the law on a straightforward manner, but circumventing it or even using it for one’s own purposes.
Eduard Aibar: The decentralized structure of the Internet is it true or just an illusion? How can the Egyptian government shut the Internet down in a matter of hours? A: While it may be physically possible to shut down the Internet, alternatives to connect to the Net were possible. On the other hand, the social and economical impact of shutting down the Internet implied that shutting it down was not sustainable in the medium-term. Marga Padilla: the best way to avoid Internet shut-downs is the ability to have a plan B by creating mirrors, for which both knowledge and the physical layer are required. Any social movement should have a hacker in their lines: hacking should be in each and every political or citizen agenda.
Share:
Digital culture, networks and distributed politics in the age of the Internet (2012)
The proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Internet, Law & Politics (IDP 2012): Challenges and Opportunities of Online Entertainment. will be free for download in the following days on this page.
Content, besides some minor editing, has followed the originals, so the reader will find both articles in Spanish or English.
To cite this works use, please, any of the following references:
Cerrillo i Martínez, A., Peguera, M., Peña-López, I., Pifarré de Moner, M.J., & Vilasau Solana, M. (coords.) (2012). Retos y oportunidades del entretenimiento en línea. Actas del VIII Congreso Internacional, Internet, Derecho y Política. Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, Barcelona 9-10 Julio, 2012. Barcelona: UOC-Huygens Editorial.
Cerrillo i Martínez, A., Peguera, M., Peña-López, I., Pifarré de Moner, M.J., & Vilasau Solana, M. (coords.) (2012). Challenges and Opportunities of Online Entertainment. Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Internet, Law & Politics. Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, Barcelona 9-10 July, 2012. Barcelona: UOC-Huygens Editorial.
Panel on Privacy On Line Chairs: José Luis Piñar Mañas. Professor of Administrative Law. Vice-Chancellor of International Relations at CEU San-Pablo University (Madrid). Former Director, Spanish Data Protection Authority..
Antonio Troncoso Reigada. Professor of Constitutional Law. Former Director, Data Protection Authority of the Region of Madrid.
The Internet has a huge potential for participation, especially social media. Freedom of expression has found a perfect platform on the Internet. Thus, minors have not to have their access to the Internet or social networking sites forbidden.
The proliferation of barriers for data protection is creating too many problems for the evolution of the Internet: we need a harmonization of law, not only within the EU but worldwide. Especially now that cloud computing is becoming mainstream.
The regulation framework in the EU is becoming better, but there is a certain lack of democracy, a lack of political and public debate on the issue.
Esther Mitjans. Professor of Constitutional Law, University of Barcelona. Director of the Catalan Data Protection Authority.
In the Internet age, privacy is a very important matter, present everywhere. There is a need for risk management, as these are new territories with new practices that bring with them plenty of risks and hazards. Behaviours of people cause not only risks upon themselves but also upon third parties. Data protection is about the crossroads of all these risks and practices. And we do not have to forget that the Internet does not believe in boundaries, borders and frontiers.
María González, Head of Legal for Spain, Portugal & Greece at Google.
The problem of short-term regulation can affect innovation, economic growth and the evolution of the Internet as a communication (not only business) platform.
Concerning cookies, the industry is now trying to decide what is the best design for opting-in concerning tracing cookies, and that the user is empowered with the control of their own data and privacy.
Regulation has to be based on transparency: all practices related to data protection, public, private and corporate have to be transparent and accountable.
The “physical” location of data is totally irrelevant when they are constantly replicated and transferred. Thus, what matters is demanding liability and responsibility to the firm, but not that these data are kept on a closed box in a specific territory or jurisdiction.
