Centre for Internet and Society

Technological Protection Measures in the Copyright (Amendment) Bill, 2010

pranesh — 2012-05-17T16:51:38Z

In this post Pranesh Prakash conducts a legal exegesis of section 65A of the Copyright (Amendment) Bill, 2010, which deals with the stuff that enables 'Digital Rights/Restrictions Management', i.e., Technological Protection Measures. He notes that while the provision avoids some mistakes of the American law, it still poses grave problems to consumers, and that there are many uncertainties in it still.

Technological Protection Measures are sought to be introduced in India via the Copyright (Amendment) Bill, 2010. This should be quite alarming for consumers for reasons that will be explained in a separate blog post on TPMs that will follow shortly.

In this post, I will restrict myself to a legal exegesis of section 65A of the Bill, which talks of "protection of technological measures". (Section 65B, which talks of Right Management Information will, similarly, be tackled in a later blog post.)

First off, this provision is quite unnecessary. There has been no public demand in India for TPMs to be introduced, and the pressure has come mostly from the United States in the form of the annual "Special 301" report prepared by the United States Trade Representative with input coming (often copied verbatim) from the International Intellectual Property Alliance. India is not a signatory to the WIPO Copyright Treaty (WCT) which requires technological protection measures be safeguarded by law. That provision, interestingly, was pushed for by the United States in 1996 when even it did not give legal sanctity to TPMs via its copyright law (which was amended in 2000 by citing the need to comply with the WCT).

TPMs have been roundly criticised, have been shown to be harmful for consumers, creators, and publishers, and there is also evidence that TPMs do not really decrease copyright infringement (but instead, quite perversely through unintended consequences, end up increasing it). Why then would India wish to introduce it?

Leaving that question aside for now, what does the proposed law itself say?

65A. Protection of Technological Measures

    (1) Any person who circumvents an effective technological measure applied for the purpose of protecting any of the rights conferred by this Act, with the intention of infringing such rights, shall be punishable with imprisonment which may extend to two years and shall also be liable to fine.

    (2) Nothing in sub-section (1) shall prevent any person from:

        (a) doing anything referred to therein for a purpose not expressly prohibited by this Act:

          Provided that any person facilitating circumvention by another person of a technological measure for such a purpose shall maintain a complete record of such other person including his name, address and all relevant particulars necessary to identify him and the purpose for which he has been facilitated; or

        (b) doing anything necessary to conduct encryption research using a lawfully obtained encrypted copy; or

        (c) conducting any lawful investigation; or

        (d) doing anything necessary for the purpose of testing the security of a computer system or a computer network with the authorisation of its owner; or

        (e) operator; or [sic]

        (f) doing anything necessary to circumvent technological measures intended for identification or surveillance of a user; or

        (g) taking measures necessary in the interest of national security.

Implications: The Good Part

This provision clearly takes care of two of the major problems with the way TPMs have been implemented by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) in the United States:

In s.65A(1) it aligns the protection offered by TPMs to that offered by copyright law itself (since it has to be "applied for the purpose of protecting any of the rights conferred by this Act"). Thus, presumably, TPMs could not be used to restrict access, only to restrict copying, communication to the public, and that gamut of rights.
In s.65A(1) and 65A(2) it aligns the exceptions granted by copyright law with the exceptions to the TPM provision. Section 65A(1) states that the act of circumvention has to be done "with the intention of infringing ... rights", and s.52(1) clearly states that those exceptions cannot be regarded as infringement of copyright. And s.65A(2)(a) states that circumventing for "a purpose not expressly prohibited by this Act" will be allowed.

A third important difference from the DMCA is that

It does not criminalise the manufacture and distribution of circumvention tools (including code, devices, etc.). (More on this below.)

Implications: The Bad Part

This provision, despite the seeming fair-handed manner in which it has been drafted, still fails to maintain the balance that copyright seeks to promote:

TPM-placers (presumably, just copyright holders, because of point 1. above) have been given the ability to restrict the activities of consumers, but they have not been given any corresponding duties. Thus, copyright holders do not have to do anything to ensure that the Film & Telivision Institute of India professor who wishes to use a video clip from a Blu-Ray disc can actually do so. Or that the blind student who wishes to circumvent TPMs because she has no other way of making it work with her screen reader is actually enabled to take advantage of the leeway the law seeks to provide her through s.52(1)(a) (s.52(1)(zb) is another matter!). Thus, while there are many such exceptions that the law allows for, the technological locks themselves prevent the use of those exceptions. Another way of putting that would be to say:
The Bill presumes that every one has access to all circumvention technology. This is simply not true. In fact, Spanish law (in Article 161 of their law) expressly requires that copyright holders facilitate access to works protected by TPM to beneficiaries of limitations of copyright. Thus, copyright holders who employ TPMs should be required to:
- tell their customers how they can be contacted if the customer wishes to circumvent the TPM for a legitimate purpose
- upon being contacted, aid their customer in making use of their rights / the exceptions and limitations in copyright law
How seriously can you take a Bill that has been introduced in Parliament that includes a provision that states: "Nothing in sub-section (1) shall prevent any person from operator; or" (as s.65A(2)(e), read in its entirety, does)?

Uncertainties

As mentioned above, the provisions are not all that clear regarding manufacture and distribution of circumvention tools. Thus, the proviso to s.65A(2)(a) deserves a closer reading. What is clear is that there are no penalties mentioned for manufacture or dissemination of TPMs, and that only those who circumvent are penalised in 65A(1), and not those who produce the circumvention devices. However:

On "shall maintain" and penalties

In the proviso to s.65B(2)(a), there is an imperative ("shall maintain") requiring "any person facilitating circumvention" to keep records. It is unclear what the implications of not maintaining such records are.

The obvious one is that the exemption contained in s.65(1)(a) will not apply if one were facilitated without the facilitator keeping records. Thus, under this interpretation, there is no independent legal (albeit penalty-less) obligation on facilitators. This interpretation runs into the problem that if this was the intention, then the drafters would have written "Provided that any person facilitating circumvention ... for such a purpose maintain/maintained a complete record ...". Instead, shall maintain is used, and an independent legal obligation seems, thus, to be implied. But can a proviso create an independent legal obligation? And is there any way a penalty could possibly be attached to violation of this proviso despite it not coming within 65A(1)?

On "facilitating" and remoteness

The next question is who all can be said to "facilitate", and how remote can the connection be? Is the coder who broke the circumvention a facilitator? The distributor/trafficker? The website which provided you the software? Or is it (as is more likely) a more direct "the friend who sat at your computer and installed the circumvention software" / "the technician who unlocked your DVD player for you while installing it in your house"?

While such a record-keeping requirement is observable by people those who very directly help you (the last two examples above), it would be more difficult to do so the further up you get on the chain of remoteness. Importantly, such record-keeping is absolutely not possible in decentralized distribution models (such as those employed by most free/open source software), and could seriously harm fair and legitimate circumvention.

More uncertainties

It is slightly unclear which exception the bypassing of Sony's dangerous "Rootkit" copy protection technology would fall under if I wish to get rid of it simply because it makes my computer vulnerable to malicious attacks (and not to exercise one of the exceptions under s.52(1)). Will such circumvention come under s.65A(2)(a)? Because it does not quite fall under any of the others, including s.65(2)(b) or (f).

On "purpose" as a criterion in 65A(2)(a)

A last point, which is somewhat of an aside is that 65A(2)(a) states:

Nothing in sub-section (1) shall prevent any person from doing anything referred to therein for a purpose not expressly prohibited by this Act.

There's something curious about the wording, since the Copyright Act generally does not prohibit any acts based on purposes (i.e., the prohibitions by ss.14 r/w s.51 are not based on why someone reproduces, etc., but on the act of reproduction). In fact, it allows acts based on purposes (via s.52(1)). The correct way of reading 65A(2)(a) might then be:

Nothing in sub-section (1) shall prevent any person from doing anything referred to therein for a purpose expressly allowed by this Act.

But that might make it slightly redundant as s.65A(1) covers that by having the requirement of the circumvention being done "with the intention of infringing such right" (since the s.52(1) exceptions are clearly stated as not being infringements of the rights granted under the Act).

Conclusion

It would be interesting to note how leading copyright lawyers understand this provision, and we will be tracking such opinions. But it is clear that TPMs, as a private, non-human enforcement of copyright law, are harmful and that we should not introduce them in India. And we should be especially wary of doing so without introducing additional safeguards, such as duties on copyright holder to aid access to TPM'ed works for legitimate purposes, and remove burdensome record-keeping provisions.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/tpm-copyright-amendment

Technical Alternative to Encrypted Media Extensions

gupta — 2016-10-20T00:16:05Z

This post is an analysis of the various technical alternatives to EME (encyrpted media extensions) that have emerged from the discussions at the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). These alternatives and the proposed EME specification along six dimensions are examined.

Introduction

Encrypted Media Extensions (EME) are a draft specification^{^[1]} to standardize digital rights management (DRM) for audio and video at the browser level. The specification has been very controversial in the software community since it was first drafted in 2012. It was proposed by content providers and streaming service operators to ensure that content delivered to legitimate users is inaccessible to pirates. However, the proposed solution raised salient questions about interoperability, privacy, accessibility and implementation in Free and Open Source (FOSS) software.

Several parties have, over the course of the discussion at W3C, proposed several alternate technical alternatives. This report aims to analyze these alternatives and the proposed EME specification along six dimensions; technical copy protection, legal copy protection, interoperability/entry barriers for browsers, privacy, accessibility, and user security.

Aims of the Specification

Make it technically hard for a malicious user to pirate a particular media

Have sufficient legal barriers to deter infringement

At the same time:

Ensure interoperability and make sure there are no entry barriers for new browsers
Protect privacy of users
Make sure the system doesn’t bring about security vulnerability
Maintain accessibility for a person with disabilities

Metrics of Comparison

Technological Copy Protection

During the transfer of video content from the web server of the content provide to the user, there are multiple points where a malicious entity can capture the copyrighted content.

We classify the technical strength of a DRM system depending on the point in transition where the capture can take place. Assuming the server is itself secure, the first point where the adversary can capture the media is during the transition from the server to the user’s device. Preventing such kind of interception is a standard problem and is in solved by the use of HTTPS. After the media stream reaches the device of the intended user, she can capture the before it is played on the media software. For example, in case of images or text, the user can usually save the media without the need of any special software or specialized technique. So the next step from content providers side is build restrictions in the software playing the media. The usual way to do this is by making sure that the media can be played only on certain software which doesn’t allow the user to copy the media. The software restrictions can be implemented using arbitrary codecs, scrambling or encryption. Technical restrictions at software level are always prone to be captured by screen capturing softwares, and hardware emulators which appears as output devices to media software but are used to save the media instead. To prevent capturing at software level there exists technologies such as HDCP^{^[2]} which protects the media during its transition from the media software to the output device. Although such technologies are also fallible to a user holding a video camera in front of the monitor. This weakness of the DRM systems is known as Analog Hole.

Technological Copy Protection is:

High: Infringer needs specialized hardware to capture the copyrighted content.
Medium: Infringer needs specialized Software to capture the copyrighted content
Low: Infringer needs only commonly available software and hardware to capture the copyrighted content

Copy Protection (Legal)

Jurisdictions across the world have laws which make it illegal to circumvent technological protections methods for the protections of Copyright. The most famous of them is the Section 1201 of the United States Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). For content providers who wish to use TPMs to prevent piracy of their copyrighted work, these laws provide additional layers of protection. DMCA disallows circumventing a technical measure which effectively control access to copyrighted work, also it disallows the “manufacture, import, offer to the public, provide, or otherwise traffic in any technology, product, service, device, component” which is primarily designed to circumvent a DRM. .^{^[3]}

Legal protection against infringement is high in DRM system if:

High: Circumventing the DRM and creating tools to enable that is illegal unconditionally
Medium: Circumventing the DRM and creating tools to enable that is illegal depending the intent and circumstances
Low: Circumventing the DRM and creating tools to enable that is legal.

Security

DRM systems have been criticized for leaving users’ devices vulnerable.

Security of a user using the DRM system is:

High: The system don’t require any elevated permissions
Medium: The system only requires elevated software permissions
Low: The system requires both elevated hardware or software permission

Privacy

Privacy of user using the DRM systems is:

High: The system doesn’t collect minimal information
Medium: The system only collects non personally identifiable information
Low: The system collects personally identifiable information

Accessibility

DRM systems can turn out to be problematic for providing accessibility for disabled persons. In case of video service can be made accessible by providing access to closed captions for a video and by modifying the stream to make it accessible to color blind people. However, a DRM system could present unnecessary barriers for people trying to provide accessibility solutions. There can be technical barrier in the process of handling the video stream

W3C Technical Architecture Group (TAG) suggested following guidelines to maintain accessibility in Encrypted Media Extensions:^{^[4]}

ensuring that media content may be redirected to certain system services
ensuring that every piece of digital content is available in its original form (for example, subtitles are not blended into video, etc)
ensuring that standard operations (adjusting contrast, using third-party subtitles or audio-stream) may be applied to restricted media
ensuring that restricted media from different sources provided by different EME systems (for example, video from one source and sign-language interpretation of that video from another source) may be used simultaneously

We say accessibility in a DRM system is:

High: If all the of the guidelines are met
Medium: If two more points in the guideline are met
Low: If less than points of the guideline are met

Interoperability

Interoperability of any system is important to keep the entry barriers low for a new producer to enter the market. Interoperability of a DRM system for browsers is:

High: The full spec is available for implementation on royalty free basis
Medium: The full spec is not available, but can be implemented through reverse engineering without legal barriers.
Low: Third parties may restrict new browsers from implementing the spec through legal means.

Specifications

EME Specification

EME specification only defines the javascript component of the system and the large component called Content Decryption Module(CDM) is left undefined. The CDM can be hardware based using technologies like HDCP, which prevents screen capture. The CDM can be software based and can return the decrypted video to the browser to render, or it can use its own media stream and render it by itself. Most of the CDMs in use are proprietary but there can exist CDMs which are fully specified and are open source. The implications for copy protection, privacy, accessibility and security depends on the CDM used. Interoperability of EME spec is very low because there are not only technical barriers due lack of full specification but also legal barriers as browsers may need to get into a contract with the dominant CDM providers to add support for their CDM.

Obfuscation (Arbitrary Codec)

Charles Pritchard pointed out the HTML5 video specification is codec agnostic, hence the content providers can stream the media using an arbitrary codec which only supported by the media provider.^{^[5]} So even if the user captures the video stream it cannot be pirated without reverse engineering the codec. Although reverse engineering is usually allowed by DRM laws hence the legal protection is low.^{^[6]} Since the codec support is provided through OS, there is no need to modify the browser and the system can be supported by any browser without any technical or legal barriers.

HTTPS and JS encryption

Tab Atkins proposed using JS encryption using browser and <video> element^{^[7]}. Since the technique requires the a malicious user to implement the full <video> spec to decrypt the video, the scheme provides moderate technical copy protection.

Encryption using video tag

According to David Singer encrypted video can be played through the existing <video> tags where the content file says its content-ID and is marked as protected, someone who has the DRM to play the content installed and has brought the keys to play it can watch the video.^{^[8]} As a concrete example he talked about protected .m4p audio files from iTunes library, which plays just fine on Safari.^{^[9]}

Plugin System (Flash)

Existing plugin system, mainly Flash is be used to as a technical measure to prevent copyright infringement. It is more interoperable than EME because any browser with a correct implementation of NPAPI can provide support for Flash^{^[10]}.

Technical Alternative	Copy Protection Technical	Interoperability	Copy Protection Legal	Accessibility	Privacy	Security
Obfuscation (Arbitrary Codec)	Medium	High	Low	Depends on Implementation Details	High	High
Encryption using video tag	Medium to High^{^[11]}	Medium	High	Depends on Implementation Details	Depends on Implementation Details	Depends on Implementation Details
HTTPS and JS decryption	Medium	High	High	Depends on Implementation Details	High^{^[12]}	High
EME	Depends on CDM^{^[13]}	Low	High	Depends on CDM	Depends on CDM	Depends on CDM
Plugin (Flash)	High^{^[14]}	Medium	Medium	Medium^{^[15]}	Low^{^[16]}	Low

^{^[1]}Encrypted Media Extensions W3C Candidate Recommendation https://www.w3.org/TR/encrypted-media/. For a general overview see https://hsivonen.fi/eme/

^{^[2]} HDCP Whitepaper, https://web.archive.org/web/20080920191718/http://www.digital-cp.com/files/documents/04A897FD-FEF1-0EEE-CDBB649127F79525/HDCP_deciphered_070808.pdf

^{^[3]} Section 1201, US Digital Millennium Copyright Act

^{^[4]} https://github.com/w3ctag/eme/blob/master/EME%20Proposal.md#accessibility-1

^{^[5]} https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2012Feb/0328.html

^{^[6]} Section 1201, Digital Millennium Copyright Act

^{^[7]} https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2012Feb/0456.html

^{^[8]} https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2012Feb/0422.html

^{^[9]} https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2012Feb/0433.html

^{^[10]} https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2012Feb/0427.html

^{^[11]} Using HDCP is possible with compatible hardware

^{^[12]} The implementation itself doesn’t require additional cookies

^{^[13]} The Spec allows CDMs which do not act as DRM, but the content providers may not support them.

^{^[14]} Adobe’s new Flash DRM comes with selective output control

http://arstechnica.com/business/2010/05/adobes-new-flash-drm-comes-with-selective-output-control

^{^[15]} Flash Player provides some accessibility functionalities https://www.adobe.com/accessibility/products/flash/captions.html

^{^[16]} Soltani, Ashkan and Canty, Shannon and Mayo, Quentin and Thomas, Lauren and Hoofnagle, Chris Jay, Flash Cookies and Privacy (August 10, 2009). Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1446862 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1446862

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/technical-alternative-to-encrypted-media-extensions

Tech transformation: how agriculture is being redefined through digital innovation and startups

Admin — 2018-07-06T15:39:53Z

At a recent YES Bank panel and digital startup competition, it was evident that India’s digital boom was lending the Indian startup ecosystem a distinctly agri-flavour.

The blog post was published in Your Story on June 29, 2018. CIS was mentioned in the report.

The convergence of mobile networks, broadband internet, cloud platforms, IoT, AI and open data is helping transform one of the world’s oldest professions. This is of great significance as agriculture and related sectors like dairy production form the backbone of the Indian workforce. Today, tradition is merging with technology as the IT services sector is helping open up new opportunities for both seasoned and emerging entrepreneurs.

New fronts are opening up across the sector from organic farming and hydroponics to drones and agri apps. Startups are also playing a key role in transforming agriculture, which accounts for half of India’s workforce, but only about 13 percent of its GDP.

Entrepreneurship trends

An interesting trend to watch for is the rise of the number of agri-entrepreneurs, many of whom have no background in agriculture. There is more interest now in this sector compared to even five or ten years ago. Another indicator is the number of agri-tech competitions, awards and investors that are emerging. India’s demographic dividend is also attracting more youth segments to the agricultural sector, with cross-fertilisation across states, economic sectors, and scientific fields.

The challenges seem formidable, but need to be acknowledged and tackled. Thousands of farmers commit suicide each year due to debt problems, as documented by the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB). This is a sad reality in states such as Maharashtra, Odisha, Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh, Karnataka, Punjab, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, and others.

Many issues being tackled by startups relate to productivity and distribution, according to Sahil Kini, Vice President, Aspada Investment. There are large yield gaps in Indian farming as compared to its global counterparts, due to inadequacies in domains ranging from farm inputs and equipment to farming practices and retail connects. Multiple intermediaries, poor refrigeration during transportation, small farm sizes, and lack of fairness in financial stakeholders are other challenges.

Agri-tech startups

Today, the agri-tech sector is witnessing a number of startups in India disrupting everything from organic farming and equipment rentals to connected supply chains and cloud-based analytics. The startups in this report showcase the diversity in the sector, followed by an analysis of the broader ecosystem. Some cover pricing of produce, others include equipment marketplaces; still others cover digital workflow and smart supply chains.

Farms2Fork offers farmers water monitoring solutions that ensure better productivity by reducing water wastage. The solution includes IoT wireless soil sensors, AI support, and real-time analytics. While earlier agri-tech solutions were based on batch processing of data, Farms2Fork operates on real-time data.

Agribolo, founded in 2015, is a farming services platform spanning activities such as information dissemination, quality input procurement, market linkages, irrigation facilities and farming equipment. The franchise network, launched in Rajasthan, uses the aggregator model to connect farmers to experts, development institutions, financial services, and training institutes.

AgroWave, founded by an IIT Delhi alumna in 2017, aims to optimise agriculture supply chain using research, analytics, and technology. Demand and supply analytics connect farmers in Panipat, Sonipat, Harpur, and Rajasthan to caterers, retail shops, restaurants, and canteens.

Truce, founded by an IIT Bombay alumnus, is a B2B web and mobile platform that directly connects farmers and suppliers to wholesalers and retailers. The app is available in Hindi, English, Marathi and Gujarati, and enables tracking quotes and orders.

Farm Again has converted 2,500 acres of land into organic farms, along with tech tools to trace the product’s origin, when sold in outlets such as Reliance Retail, Big Bazaar, and More. IoT devices are used to monitor and record moisture content and soil conditions, with pipes for water and fertiliser inputs.

Crofarm, a Delhi-headquarted agri-supply chain startup founded in 2016, buys fresh produce directly from farmers and supplies them to online and offline retailers. It supplies nearly 8-10 tonnes of fruits and vegetables from its two distribution centres in Delhi NCR, and connects 100 retailers to more than 5,000 farmers.

Aibono improves farm yields by using AI on a cluster of parameters like weather and soil condition. The testing and measurement services indicate parameters such as crop stress, along with recommendations on the right fertiliser mix to be used based on the soil condition.

Gold Farm, founded in 2012, helps farmers book farm equipment such as solar-powered pumps in districts of Karnataka and Tamil Nadu. Beneficiaries have included over 25,000 farmers on ground, who tap the services of 250 booking agents and over 500 tractor owners connected via a mobile app. The equipment is also tracked with IoT devices, resulting in rich data sets for analysis and forecasting.

Earthy Tales, founded in NCR in 2016, works with farmers across 11 states to provide chemical-free fruits, vegetables, groceries, and dairy products. These include snacks, jams, preserves, and pickles, provided direct to consumers. Other services include mentoring for farmers and farm cooperatives.

ONganic Foods works with small farmers to boost their organic produce. Based on contract farming, it identifies higher-priced grains and spices and gives quality inputs to farmers to increase their yield. It connects farmers to various government schemes as well as e-commerce platforms such as Amazon and Spencer’s Retail.

Oxen Farm Solutions offers agricultural equipment on rent using a ‘Farming as a Service’ (FaaS) model. The platform connects farmers, farm equipment manufacturers, and government schemes. Access to such machinery can boost farm productivity in an affordable manner. The company operates in Punjab, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, and Odisha, and connects to corporates such as PepsiCo and Yes Bank.

Farmizen is a mobile-based platform that lets users grow vegetables and fruits on mini-farms, and monitor the process of growing food on a real-time basis. Located in the outskirts of Bengaluru, users get pictures and live videos of their farm plots. The startup also provides recommendations based on real-time inputs from the field as well as pre-defined schedules for over 50 different types of crops.

Harvesting, founded by in 2016, has offices in California and Bengaluru, and offers smart farming solutions based on analytics and AI. It also uses farmer profiles to build creditworthiness profiles for financial organisations. The idea is to provide both increased farm productivity and better financial services.

SatSure uses IoT and Big Data to provide financial security to farmers, via its 15-year database of satellite images. It makes recommendations clustering techniques for farmers to get an estimate of the total agriculture production, and provides this data to agri-insurance companies as well.

Organic Thelawala enables a transparent pricing mechanism so that the consumer knows the price of the produce as well as how much of the selling price actually goes to the farmer. It is s assisting 13,000 farmers to switch to organic farming, thereby, creating a positive impact on bio-diversity, soil contamination, water, and air pollution. Further, by providing free thelas (pushcart), the team promotes micro-entrepreneurship among pushcart vendors and farmers.

Earth Food, based in Pune, provides chemical-free produce at market price. It has collaborated with Reliance Fresh and Nature Fresh. It uses a healthy mix of traditional methods and innovation to keep pollution and wastage to a minimum, thereby benefitting both consumers and the environment.

Jayalaxmi Agrotech, founded by alumni of IIMB and VEC helps farmers minimise crop loss and improve productivity via its many crop- specific mobile applications in local languages that provide timely information on agriculture and animal husbandry.

Gramophone, based in Indore, is a platform that combines both advisory and sale of inputs under a single roof. Farmers can access mentors for help with everything from crop selection to land productivity and more.

Triton Foodworks, based in Delhi, is a hydroponics startup growing fruits and vegetables. It has reportedly set up more than 2 lakh sq ft of hydroponic farms across three locations in India, and produces more than 700 tons of fruits and vegetables each year.

vDrone, based in Bengaluru, uses drones and thermal imaging to increase yield. It analyses areas of the farm that need attention, and helps the farmer cater to these needs. Parameters include soil, cropping pattern, and use of fertilisers.

Ninjacart, based in Bengaluru, enables retailers and merchants to source fruits and vegetables directly from farmers without resorting to middlemen. It connects 2,500 farmers and handles 14,000 tons of fruits and vegetables, accounting for revenue of around Rs 4 crore every month.

BigHaat, based in Bengaluru, is an online agro e-store for farmers that lets them buy seeds, crop protection nutrients and solutions, and agro instruments. Last-mile connectivity is enabled via logistics partners like India Post and Ship Rocket. The footprint spans 50,000 farmers across 20 states.

Ravgo is an agri-equipment rental marketplace based on the model of the sharing economy. It is solving the farm mechanisation problem among India farmers who cannot afford to buy the farm machinery. The target market is currently small farmers based in Punjab.

Kisanmade, launched in Moradabad, UP is an e-commerce platform set up in Moradabad to empower farmers by eliminating the intermediary between the farmer and the consumer. It also aims to increase the farmer’s income and decrease the kitchen’s expense by 10-15 percent.

FlyBird Innovations, founded in Bengaluru, uses sensors in the soil to detect moisture content and control irrigation in farms across South India. The information is used to optimise irrigation practices, improve crop yield, and save water, time, and labour. It claims 25-30 percent savings of water and improvement of crop yield by 10-15 percent.

Kamal Kisan reduces labour costs with innovative agri-equipment, with reported savings of up to 50 percent. Tools include sugarcane planters, versatile mulch layers, bed makers, vegetable handy planters, and power weeders.

farMart connects farmers who own machinery with those who need it but don’t have access to it. Large farmers put underutilised agri-machinery up for rent on the farMart platform, and are connected to farmers who need such machinery; they can then book it via app or call centre. The database includes 300 villages and 1,500 farmers.

AgroStar, a Pune-based m-commerce startup, sells agricultural inputs directly to farmers. The platform can be accessed online or giving the company’s 1800 number a missed call. Products are sourced from national and multinational brands, and include seeds and nutrients.

CropIn leverages GIS and data science to deliver a range of services apps to farmers and other players in the agri chain. It feeds real-time data and advice on practices related to a range of crops.

Other notable agri startups are NubeSol (soil fertility maps) and Sree Sai Aerotech Innovations (drones for monitoring crop health). Some industry players are also leveraging the platform model – such as Trringo, launched in 2016 by India’s largest tractor maker company, Mahindra and Mahindra. The franchisee network enables farmers to access tractors at an affordable price. Over 100,000 farmers have signed up, from West and South India.

There are also international players in the Indian agri market, such as PEAT. The German startup is working with 30,000 farmers across India to help mitigate crop damage. It identifies patterns of plant diseases, pests, or nutrient deficiencies via crop images.

Ecosystem

The broader agri startup ecosystem includes a number of think tanks, research labs, incubators and accelerators. For example, ONganic is supported by the Technology Development Board, Government of India and Ministry of Small and Medium Enterprise and incubated at the Indian Institute of Management, Kolkata.

Goa has an agri-focused incubator called Centre for Innovation and Business Acceleration (CIBA). TiE Bangalore and NUMA have held startup showcases in collaboration with Villgro, featuring agri-entrepreneurs.

At the recent YES Bank Transformation Series (YBTS) speakers and panelists included Ramanathan Ramanan, Mission Director, Atal Innovation Mission, NITI Aayog; Raju Kapoor, Head, Corporate Affairs, Dow AgroSciences India; Hemendra Mathur, Venture Partner, Bharat Innovations; Nitin Puri, Senior President, Food and Agribusiness Strategic Advisory and Research, YES Bank; and Amardeep Sibia, CEO, SatSure.

At the 2017 edition of YBTS three agri-tech winners were awarded out of 15 finalists. Winners included teams from IIM Shillong (Rs 5 lakh for a smart soil sensor proposal), IIM Bangalore (Rs 3 lakh for a solar-powered drip technology proposal), and ISB Hyderabad (Rs 2 lakh for IoT-based SIM-enabled farm data sensors).

The Government of India is also catalysing agri- entrepreneurship with programmes like the Agri-Udaan Accelerator and the Agri Grand Challenge. Government-backed funding agencies like the Credit Guarantee Fund Trust for Micro and Small Enterprises (CGTMSE) is incentivising banks to lend at highly affordable rates to startups.

Incubators in this space include Villgro, a-IDEA, ABI-ICRISAT, Startup Oasis, IIMC Innovation Park, IIT Kanpur SIIC, KIIT TBI, and CIIE, IIMA. They provide mentorship and connects to farmer cooperatives, NGOs, channel partners, and individual farmers in some cases.

Indigram Labs Foundation (ILF), supported by Department of Science and Technology via the National Science and Technology Entrepreneurship Development Board, Government of India, is a technology-based incubator founded in 2015 to promote creativity and innovation in agriculture, renewable energy, and rural healthcare industry. Its host organisation is Indian Society of Agribusiness Professionals (ISAP).

ISAP has set up more than 1,800 agri-based ventures through its Agri-Clinics and Agri-Business Centres (ACABC) programme and has around 50 agri-business experts in various verticals who help in mentoring incubates, according to Manisha Acharya, CEO, Indigram Labs Foundation.

It has graduated 18 startups, such as New Leaf Dynamic Technologies(refrigeration system powered by farm waste), Intello Labs (AI-based deep-tech solution for crop inspection and agricultural products grading), Sainhun Ventures(honey by-products), Nutrelis Agro Foods (organic groceries, beverages), and Innosapiens Agro Technologies (phenomics device for pre-detection of pests).

Indigram takes an equity of up to 5 percent in the startup. In the long run, agri incubators need support in areas like trained manpower, pilot testing costs, rural outreach, and patent advisory services, according to Acharya.

International Crops Research Institute for Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) hosted an agri-business investors camp in Hyderabad on June 12. The camp addressed three themes: agri-technology, agri-engineering and food processing.

IIM Ahmedabad’s technology business incubator, Centre for Innovation Incubation and Entrepreneurship (CIIE), has launched a food and agri-business accelerator in partnership with a-IDEA, the business incubator at Indian Council of Agricultural Research’s (ICAR) National Academy of Agricultural Research Management (NAARM). Top teams are provided seed investment of up to Rs 30 lakhs each. CIIE also has a sustainability focused fund called Infuse Ventures.

Funding

Recent reports have tracked the investment line-up for Agricx Lab (Ankur Capital, CIIE), Agrostar (IDG Ventures, Aavishkaar Venture Management), Agrowave (Daffodil Software), Airwood (StartupXseed Ventures), Arya Collateral (Aspada), Farm Taaza (Epsilon Venture Partners), Farmizen (Venture Highway), FarmLink (Pioneering Ventures, Syngenta), Gobasco (Matrix Partners India), KisanHub (Notion Capital, IQ Capital, Calibrate Management), KrishiHub (INVENT accelerator, Villgro Innovation Fund), NinjaCart (Trifecta Ventures), RML AgTech (IvyCap Ventures), Utkal Tubers (CapAleph Indian Millennium SME Fund, Zephyr Peacock India), and VillFarm (Unitus Seed Fund, Rianta Capital).

Crofarm has received funding from angels such as Rajan Anandan (MD, Google India) and Jitendra Gupta (MD, PayU India). Gold Farm raised funds from Infuse Venture and the Mahindra Group. Truce was funded by 3one4capital, Beenext, FreeCharge founders, Snapdeal founders and Anupam Mittal, CEO, People Group. CropIn, raised funds from Ankur Capital; Agrostar received investments from Aavishkar. Other active agri-focused funds include Omnivore Partners and Rural Agri Ventures; Germany development agency GIZ has also roped in international partners for further cooperation.

Among Indian states, Karnataka formalised an agri-startup fund in 2017 through K-BITS with a corpus of Rs 10 crore, with an additional Rs 8 crore planned for 21 agri-startups this year. A centre of excellence for agriculture is also planned, where startups will work with farmers.

Other government initiatives, according to Sahil Kini of Aspada Investment include Agricultural Debt Waiver and Debt Relief Scheme, 2008; and Money Lending (Regulation) Act, 2008.

Entrepreneur tips

A number of mentor panels and pitch jurors have offered guidance for agri-entrepreneurs. These include, for example, the importance of customer immersion. Here are some of the tips they have shared.

On-the-ground realities in emerging economies are shifting rapidly, and founders should have a finger on the pulse of effective trends and aspirations.
Disciplines like design thinking offer useful and actionable frameworks.
Metrics should be holistic and include activity, business, and social impacts. There should be one or two key success metrics for primary focus, and the rest should be supporting or complementary metrics. This helps founders monitor their progress and assists investors in assessing the long-term viability of the venture.
Founders should build a well-rounded team, with a mix of engineering, design, and social science backgrounds. Sometimes founders get too carried away with the technology; having a holistic mix in the core team will help contextualise the offerings, use and impact.
India’s social problems call for bold and ambitious innovators who can tackle challenges at scale. The social cost of failure is high for social enterprises (as compared to merely pivoting an app design); hence collaborative partnerships are important.
Social entrepreneurs should learn how to work with partners who are not social enterprises. They should be clear about their offerings, values, and philosophy. Partnerships are an art and a science. Partners should be picked carefully, and the relationship should evolve over time.
Founders will frequently need to pitch to funders, investors, partners, regulators, customers, and employees. The pitch should focus less on product features and more on problem resolution. Techniques like storytelling are effective here.
Founders should enumerate the range of risks involved, eg. regulatory and lack of ecosystem trust. Secondary impacts should also be assessed, since some risks are more indirect than others.

The road ahead

This is a great time to integrate different domains of knowledge and skills in agri-innovation. In addition to fresh farm produce, there are lucrative opportunities in processed products such as pickles, papads, chutneys, and murabbas. This calls for effective post-harvest management infrastructure such as storage, preservation, cold chain and refrigerated transportation.

New models such as the FaaS model can lead to more sustainable paths to profitability. The platform model can leverage data analytics to identify emerging business trends and opportunities and thus attract more venture capital, according to a report published by Bain and Company in partnership with Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad. Such models are also getting significant corporate backing, such as Trringo by Mahindra and Mahindra for tractor rentals and John Deere (with EM3 Agri Services) for harvester fleets.

Smartphones powered by affordable mobile broadband networks are helping improve workflow of farms and dairies. This opens the door to new pay-per-use business models and innovation stacks, connecting the farm to the fridge and fork. Banks and financial organisations also need to step up to the challenge and offer more creative models of financing for farmers, entrepreneurs, incubators, and accelerators.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has announced a target for farmers’ incomes to be doubled by 2022, India’s 75th year of Independence. Schemes like the government’s Startup Agri India scheme, the Digi Gaon (Digital Village) initiative, and Bharat Net project can all work together towards making this a reality. Initiatives like agri-hackathons can also bring together aspiring entrepreneurs from diverse sectors.

However, there are certain challenges:
Pricing decisions should be made more transparent and less politically driven (particularly before elections), with sufficient market validity and testing. This includes setting the price of onions and sugar, and promising ‘free’ electricity for farmers.
Increased promotion and adoption of open data are other trends to watch for. An open data ecosystem can grow India’s GDP by $22 billion by 2020, according to report by YES Bank and the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY). India’s Open Government Data (OGD) platform can step up to this challenge.
The Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) is pushing for these initiatives to reach ordinary people and marginalised communities. Other sources of data include rural internet kiosks, community e-centres, and online agricultural systems.
Agri-tech entrepreneurs can go beyond incremental change to truly effect exponential change, and transform the agricultural sector while also giving back to society. Successful agri-preneurs in India can also take their innovations global.

The agricultural sector is now shedding its rustic persona to emerge as a trendy space to be in. Inclusive, sustainable, and scalable solutions are the way ahead.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/your-story-june-29-2018-tech-transformation-agriculture-redefined-digital-innovation-startups

Tech for the blind: How app developers can help end the ‘disturbing touchscreen trend’

praskrishna — 2016-10-10T12:46:15Z

At their introduction, touchscreens was so refreshing and how we had rushed to get those touch devices. Meanwhile, there was a separate world that came crashing down with the advent of touch enabled phones. Just like me, I’m sure not many may have thought how touchscreens almost ended the messaging ability of visually impaired. Now, with services moving from phone calls to online (services and apps), it’s getting more difficult.

The article by Naina Khedekar was published in First Post on October 10, 2016.

We met Nirmita Narasimhan, a Policy Director at The Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) in Bengaluru, who has been instrumental in putting in place policies such as the copyright to benefit visually impaired. Nirmita is visually impaired herself, but that didn’t stop her from completing her law from Delhi University, and alongside she also completed her MA, M.Phil and PHD. While she is not writing policies or engaged in her passion for classical singing, she is busy playing a full time mom to two sons. But, it wasn’t easy, as back in 1995, when she was planning to pursue higher studies there weren’t many digital resources, and the ones like JAWS carried an outrageous price tag of $1000!

Lack of digital resources and struggle to study

Nirmita grew up in Delhi and it was at the age of nine that she started developing the vision problem. Her vision kept deteriorating and as a student in a mainstream school, she struggled with studies. Her parents had to read out everything to her; and there was also a stage when she used to enlarge everything and photocopy it. But, she finished her 10th and 12th grades with the help of a writer, and without any resources for electronics or digital books.

She then went on to learn German. However, soon realised that a translator cannot be dependent on someone else to read and look at the dictionary at all times. “You can’t have a career as a translator or interpreter if you need someone who knows German to constantly sit beside you and read to you all the time,” she explained. So, that put an end to her German sojourn.

She then decided to study law, and says, probably was one of the only students to have passed without reading a single book from the library. She relied on notes and had to choose 5-6 questions as each answer needed a lot of reading. She completed law from Delhi University and simultaneously pursued per passion for music.

It was after that reality dawned when no one was ready to offer her a job. After knocking all doors, from top firms to single advocates, she found it very difficult. She then started working for a blind advocate, but it wasn’t real work and she wasn’t getting paid for it. She later moved to Bengaluru, and after some research work with a law firm, she joined CIS.

“CIS was a turning point. So, all the problems that I faced are the ones I want to fix, she said.

Introduction to software that could read out to users

It was in her final year of studies around 2001, when a neighbour pointed out an article that spoke about a new software that reads out to users at the National association for the blind. Nirmita said the software was called Kurzweil 1000 wherein you could scan your books and it could read out to you. But books had to be of really good quality and the software cost Rs 50,000. After a long debate and financial crisis, she decided to go with it, as that was the only way to move ahead.

She was excited with the free CD that was bundled called Literature 3.O that had 2000 books and kept her awake nights reading these books. Later, she also started using JAWS.

‘Disturbing’ trend of touch phones

It was around 2013, when the rest of the world was planning which touch smartphone to buy, it was a disturbing trend with mobile phones at least when blind and low visually persons are concerned. “Keyboards were gone. We got touch phones and it was a nightmare. There was nothing to feel. I am not comfortable text messaging even today. There is a screen reader on Android called Talkback, which is very good, but it works above a certain version, and all devices above that are touch phones. Moreover, it isn’t quite enough when you are outdoors and the voice input just doesn’t work,” she said.

Blackberry had a QWERTY but screen reader was not that great and the iPhone wasn’t affordable, she adds. “Everyone was rushing to the market to buy second hand keyboard phones, but they didn’t support good reading technologies.

Affordable software for blind, and support from leading OS makers

Easy availability, price and customer support have been a hindrance when it comes to software to assist blind. And the next agenda for Nirmita is building just that.

In 2012, they got funding for a project to develop text to speech in Indian language and work at enhancing a screen reader dubbed non visual desktop access (NVDA). “It’s an open source project, a good solution that is scalable. People cannot afford JAWS and that will make it difficult for them to ever start using screen readers,” she added.

Moreover, support for languages is another problem. JAWS only supports English and Hindi, and is a closed system with lack of India support.

It was also a struggle earlier as the project is for a social cause and not a full-fledged company, and required special skill set as the open source works with Windows. “After a long time, we now have a team in IIT Delhi and there has been some work and improvement. Many of us have begun shifting to NVDA, and under hat project we have started undertaking training so that we can teach others. 10- 15 organisations run these training and we supports numerous regional languages including Hindi, Marathi, Konkani, Gujarati and more. So, still need refinement, but at least there’s something, she adds.

“Now, we need to scale it, improve and train more people. The software can work on Android smartphones, irrespective of the display,” she said.

While there is an app for everything, and many standalone apps have been built for the visually impaired, Nirmita calls in for universal app design. A principle that every time a product is built, designed or developed, it can be done in a way considering the blind. Yes, why a separate app, when developers can add support for the blind. Nirmita talks about the hindrances when trying to book a taxi from Ola and the inability to place orders from BigBasket. A set of standard rules could help iron out the creases. In govt procurement bills, accessibility should be made mandatory.

Google and Apple OSes lead in the market, and if these OS makers add a mandate on how the same app should also assist the blind, a lot can change. “What is specially made is useful, but if what is made in an accessible manner then there won’t be two worlds,” she adds.

Copyright policy and other initiatives

The copyright policy may mean nothing to many of us, but for people with disability it was a big turning point. Some years ago the law said you cannot convert a book into any other format for people with disability, unless you get the permission of the publisher. So, if one lakh books were published in India, only minuscule 500-600 books were converted into braille or audio formats and these were usually text books.

“We started campaigning that we have a right to read. We should be able to pick and convert any book we want. Whatever people are reading and talking in news we should be able to access it and children should get access to all such books, “she said.

Nirmita explains how this isn’t a difficult task anymore, thanks to technology. It is simpler to convert and access these books. Yes, the problem of expensive technology still exists, but she along with a tech team has also begun working on that with new affordable software that could make it affordable for all. After struggling for almost 3-4 years, it was in 2012 that the new law was passed, allowing anyone with reading disabilities to convert any book into a format that helps them.

Meanwhile, she is also working on how all websites should be accessible by all including the blind. With the emergence of e-governance, it is important for everyone to follow a standard that will help this happen. Explaining further, she said that there are standards for digital accessibility called Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) and it came up with guidelines for Indian govt websites and a part of those dealt with accessibility. They have divided it into advisory and mandatory. And, accessibility comes under mandatory.

Another initiative involved was teaming up with Universal Service Obligation Fund (USOF) |”Whenever you pay a telephone bill, a part of it goes to USOF and they are supposed to use it for communities underserved and in rural areas. We teamed up to assist visually impaired, and a pilot scheme was launched, “she explained further. However, it was a chase for the project and the output wasn’t as they had expected.

Though copyright has solved the problem, we are still converting our own books, she added. There hasn’t been help. Opening an online digital library, wherein every time a publisher publishes a book, they can give a digital format that can help blind, which can then be shared with others.

People in villages still use Braille. There also need to be training to teach them. And, the primary way to reach in rural areas with resource centres associated with organisations. Technology has made many things simpler, and a few standards could definitely help bridge the gap.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/accessibility/news/first-post-naina-khedekar-october-10-2016-tech-for-the-blind-how-app-developers-can-help-end-the-disturbing-touchscreen-trend

Tech Anthropology Today: Collaborate, Rather than Fetishize from Afar

Geert Lovink and Ramesh Srinivasan — 2017-05-16T14:51:09Z

"That is why the 'offline' if you will is so critical to understanding the 'online'—because they do not exist in isolation and what we have constructed is an illusory binary between the two." In this interview, Geert Lovink discusses with Ramesh Srinivasan: “how can we embrace the realities of communities too-often relegated to the margins?”

Cross-posted from nettime.org.

“How can we embrace the realities of communities too-often relegated to the margins?”

In Whose Global Village? (NYUPress, 2017) UCLA scholar Ramesh Srinivasan travels the globe in order to find out much techno-autonomy there’s still left. Now that more than half of the world has moved to urban centres, the rural population is literary a minority and is kindly asked to adjust accordingly. This makes Srinivasan’s work even more urgent when he asks “what the internet, mobile phone or social media platforms may look like when considered from the perspectives of diverse cultures.”

The communities Ramesh Srinivasan visits are on the defensive, in a process of fragmentation. “There is a disconnection not just from one another,” he writes, “but also from the common threads of their history and culture. The tribes and villages experience “placelessness, fragmentation of identity, and dissolution of social bonds.” Throughout the study, which took place between 2004-2013, Srinivasan reports from the rising gap between the proposed technologies (such as videos, websites, databases) and the ‘techno-solutionism’ (as described by Morozov) that he wants to prevent. Ramesh is so honest to present this dilemma as an inner struggle of today’s anthropologist with a technology background. Computers and smart phones are an integral part of the everyday life—no matter where we go—and can no longer be presented as liberating tools. This put the ‘ICT for development’ researcher is an awkward position. Post-colonial theories have widely been read and their influence (from Fanon, Said to Spivak) is having an inevitable impact. This in turn leads to a new attitude that I would describe as ‘radical modesty’ (if not ‘vital pessimism’).

While studying the impact of the Tribal Peace system that he and others installed to connect the different Navajo tribes in San Diego County, Srinivasan realises that he has to work with rather than ignore the networks that exist. “It was neither the technology nor institutions that connected the people I had met. Instead, the very few threads of kinship I noted were related to revered individuals, regarded by most with collective respect and as a source of inspiration.” It is with and through the elders that he starts to draw up information architectures (or ‘ontologies’), listing topics, themes, and values across the native reservations. How can ‘lateral networks’ be supported in a a process of what James Carey calls ‘ritual communication’?

Needless to say this approach takes us light years away from Facebook and other social media. This is only in part a question of translating interfaces to local indigenous languages. The proposed systems require the design of its own visual metaphors, reminding us of 1990s multi-media navigation screens, meant to represent digital storytelling. This is dealt with in closed, or semi-open networks, paying respect to the different experiences of time and space. These ideas are put to the test in the last part of the book that describes the encounter with the Zuni tribe (Arizona/New Mexico), where Ramesh Srinivasan worked together with Robin Boast. It is amongst the Zuni peoples that the researchers encounter the distrust against anthropologists. “Our Zuni friends voiced feelings of misrepresentation and anger at their objectification. They explained that social scientists would visit their community, exoticize their traditions and customs, and extract what they could to benefit their own agendas rather than those of the community.”

The gained detachment aims to put the researcher “at the service of our friends and partners.” Important is no longer the one-way transfer of knowledge but the art of listening. Towards the end of his study Ramesh asks: “What would it mean to step away from top-down understandings of the internet and instead ‘splinter’ the way we think about technologies and the communities they may support?” As an activist in Egypt explained: “We do not need another NGO or a new dialogue.com to solve our problems—we just need you to listen, support our voices, an pay attention to what we we do.” Whose Global Village? adequately describes the moral and methodological crisis in the ‘ICT for Development’ field. The wide condemnation of Facebook’s neo-colonial internet.org balloon campaign to bring access (to Facebook) to hundreds of millions of rural poor in India clearly marks a paradigm shift. Access is no longer a benevolent project. It’s clear that ICT for Development as such does not contribute to a redistribution of wealth and makes global inequality only worse. So much for internet charity.

Ramesh admits: “Trained as a designer and engineer, I recognize my innate tendency to valorize my power to come up with a set of solutions for any challenge at hand. Yet every project I have described illustrates the valuable insights gained when I put aside my own agenda and bias as much as possible to open myself to experiences that could not have been predicted from afar.” This modesty sounds like a new starting point. But is it also resulting into new concepts and narratives? This might be too much to ask of a single publication (in fact, the first book publication of this author). The ‘tactical distance’, created out of respect for the communities-in-defence, results into rather sparse information about the places we visit. There are no interview fragments included in the book, and the few local leaders that we encounter do not speak to the reader in a direct manner. The chosen way to report creates a vague cloud of secrecy around the research itself. What happens when we listen but do not acknowledge the Other? Were more detailed research results published elsewhere or only accessible for donors (a common practice in NGO land)? What happens when we listen but do not acknowledge the Other? Is it too risky to give them a voice? Might their opinions and desires be too ordinary, too radical, or simply not what we want to hear? What if they do not fit our Western expectations? The Others are humans, after all, and, like us, tend not to live up to expectations. These, and more, are some of the questions we encounter once we give up on the development rhetoric.

Geert Lovink: You’ve been in a lucky, privileged position to travel so often and witness events and encounter communities in diverse places such as Cairo during the 2011 uprising, with the Zapatistas Chiapas, doing research in the land of your ancestors, South India and on reservations in the South-West of the United States. The offline encounter in-real-life seems to be constitutional for your theory. In the past scholars travelled through the library and many these days do not leave their screens while processing their ‘big data’. Digital ethnography, on the other hand, seems to require direct exchanges with the Other. This assumption pops in all chapters. Is travelling the new luxury? Or should we say that it is rather dedicated time? Once you arrive elsewhere there is suddenly another time regime.

Ramesh Srinivasan: Indeed, I think all of us as researchers and teachers are nothing if not 'lucky' or 'privileged'. And you're certainly on point to recognize that the root of my scholarship and activism locates technologies within an assemblage of other factors - peoples, places, infrastructures, and environments. Yet it is essential that I do not collaborate with (rather than ‘study of’) any community unless I am invited to do so and where our efforts are focused on initiatives that live and are owned by that group itself.

That is why the 'offline' if you will is so critical to understanding the 'online'—because they do not exist in isolation and what we have constructed is an illusory binary between the two. If we want to be of service and understand the complex relationships between technologies, politics, and cultures—as I attempt to do via the multiple case studies discussed in the book, we need to put our bodies and hearts in places rather than our distant gaze. It's critical for me to not step foot anywhere where I am not invited first, and to critically think about my role and power as I enter different environments. Indeed, the book is full of ethnographies of attempting to listen more than make, and how I eschew the 'study of' any community and instead write about what we create and work on together. My goal is to collaborate rather than study, rather than fetishize from afar.

GL: Whose Global Village? has an unusual time span of 10-14 years. First research goes back to 2003-2004. Some case study closed in 2005 while most literature dates from 2012-2013. In between, the 2008 global financial crisis occurred, the smart phone was launched and apps became mainstream. How did you deal with these constant changes? Are you proposing a ‘longue durée’ in media studies and internet criticism’? What are the benefits of this approach? How do you see ‘grassroots storytelling’ dealing with the relentless changes of platforms, interfaces and protocols? Do remote communities have a different approach to the latest fashion and the famous ‘fear of missing out’?

RS: There are some dynamics that don't change no matter what app, gadget or platform has captured the popular imagination. That is—the realities of power over how technologies are designed, owned, and politically or economically appropriated. The book starts with the simple but surprisingly ignored sociotechnical truism - People and societies shape and are shaped by technologies. Yet such a small percentage of Internet users have any power over the design process let alone any sovereignty over what occurs with their data and identities as they are refracted onto digital networks. Those issues are timeless and all the more urgent today. I focus on the political and cultural flashpoints where by users and communities can reign in their blind trust of new digital platforms and instead take power over these in relation to their local concerns and agendas.

GL: As a media activist you have a background in engineering. However, at UCLA you work inside library science (called ‘information studies’). However, you seem to relate most to the role of anthropologist, in that you deeply desire not make past mistakes in encounters with ‘the Other’. In this context you work with Mary Louise Pratt’s theory of the contact zones and apply this to the design of ‘multiple ontologies’. I never hear IT engineers talking about contact zones. How do you want to carry your insights into the tech world? After all, you live in California. Who else is going to do this? What could be a good strategy? How do you look at the Bay Area and the global geek class they still dominate in terms of its global imaginary?

RS: I see myself as a scholar who can contribute to fields that tend to remain mostly distinct in the academy—design, engineering, cultural studies, media studies are but a few. If I was ever an IT ‘geek’ that was decades ago!

To engage in the charge of the book, of locating our understandings of digital networks and systems in relation to diverse cultures and users worldwide, all of these fields are useful to invoke and bring into dialogue with one another. I'm fortunate to be in a department that supports this interdisciplinarity and indeed as you stated, coming from California and trained in engineering here, I believe it is all the more important to question the black boxes not just of Silicon Valley hardware and software platform design but to push these incredibly powerful technologies to open up to an engaged, conversational social contract with diverse publics.

GL: Over the past 10-15 years we’ve seen the closing down of the possibility space of the Web and the rise of the ‘easy to use’ template culture of social media. The technologies that you’ve proposed and built seem to move away from the consumer culture. In South India you’re spread video cameras, elsewhere you’ve developed a dedicated Tribal Peace system interface (as part of a stand-alone website) while for the Zuni communities you’ve utilized the FileMaker Pro Advanced database software. Not Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or YouTube (and no wikis either). Can you elaborate on this?

RS: It's important to not assume that naively putting content online is somehow empowering. Indeed, that which we ‘share’ (eg; sharing economy) asymmetrically builds power and value for the platform holder and all those that can monetize it. As a result, we increasingly know that corporate proprietary platforms such as Facebook or Google are hardly designed to directly support a user's sovereignty or agency. The interest, across each of the book's chapters, is to instead think about how the communities with which I collaborate can have their interests served via technologies either that we design together or appropriate/subvert in various ways. Far too often we see examples where such 'participation' actually does little to shape any cultural or political cause from the grassroots. So we think agnostically and critically about the systems, networks and infrastructures we use in relation to our collaborations.

GL: Can you tell us what you’ve been doing over the past few years? Did you continue to work in the same direction? The book indicates that your collaboration with Robin Boast and the work with the Zuni Native American Reservation seems to continue.

RS: My interests lie in that important space between understanding how technologies may aid and support grassroots political movements and diverse user communities. The Zuni collaboration, described in chapter 4, is interested in that cause in relation to the political and cultural sovereignty of a tribe that was not just historically colonized but still faces the objectification and misrepresentation of new forms of coloniality online.

The cases in the book look at both political movements as well as diverse cultures and communities. Currently, I am collaborating with activists and indigenous Zapotec and Mixtec communities in the Oaxaca Mexico region, one of the most biodiverse and culturally/linguistically diverse parts of our world. In this work, I am writing about the Rhizomatica project (invoking Deleuze/Guarttari's rhizome) where these communities are designing their own collectively-owned cell phone networks in cloud forests all around the region. This has massive political and economic effects. What we see here is a rhizome in the making, a set of networks, systems, and infrastructures shaped and produced from the grassroots, by communities and for communities, and not for the major corporations of our world that tend to on the surface exploit and monitor the activities of these people. More on this amazing project, including some videos at www.rhizomatica.org . I believe that as we start to think about this new effort, that Lisa Parks and I describe as 'network sovereignty', we can start to embark on a path I describe in detail in chapter 5 of the book, of getting back the social contract and communitarian potential of technology to serve democratic agendas located in people's politics and cultures.

I am hopeful we can start that conversation now. I attempt to continue it via my soon to be released second book, After the Internet (with Adam Fish, Polity, end 2017) which looks at examples ranging from Iceland’s Pirate Party, hacktivism, the Silk Road, the Arab Spring, and other activist movements that re-imagine new technologies in relation to grassroots power and voice.

Reference

Ramesh Srinivasan, Whose Global Village? Rethinking How Technology Shapes Our World, New York University Press, New York, 2017.

Profiles

Ramesh Srinivasan is Associate Professor of Information Studies with a courtesy appointment in Design|Media Arts. Srinivasan, who holds M.S and Doctoral degrees, from the MIT Media Laboratory and Harvard's Design School respectively, has focused his research globally on the development of information systems within the context of culturally-differentiated communities. He is interested in how an information system can function as a cultural artifact, as a repository of knowledge that is commensurable with the ontologies of a community. As a complement, he is also interested in how an information system can engage and re-question the notion of diaspora and how ethnicity and culture function across distance. This research allows one to uncover mechanisms by which indigenously-articulated forms of development can begin to occur, as relating to his current work in pastoral and tribal communities in Southern India. His research therefore involves engaging communities to serve as the designers, authors, and librarians/archivists of their own information systems. His research has spanned such bounds as Native Americans, Somali refugees, Indian villages, Aboriginal Australia, and Maori New Zealand.

Geert Lovink is a media theorist, internet critic and author of Dark Fiber (2002), Zero Comments (2007), Networks Without a Cause (2012) and Social Media Abyss (2016). Since 2004 he is researcher in the Faculty of Digital Media and Creative Industries at the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences (HvA) where he is the founder of the Institute of Network Cultures. His centre recently organized conferences, publications and research networks such as Video Vortex (the politics and aesthetics of online video), Unlike Us (alternatives in social media), Critical Point of View (Wikipedia), Society of the Query (the culture of search), MoneyLab (internet-based revenue models in the arts) and a project on the future of art criticism. From 2004-2013 he was also associate prof. at Mediastudies (new media), University of Amsterdam. Since 2009 he is professor at the European Graduate School (Saas-Fee/Malta) where he supervises PhD students.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/tech-anthropology-today-collaborate-rather-than-fetishize-from-afar

Teaching in the Age of Wikipedia

vishnu — 2014-12-28T04:04:47Z

This course is conceived by CIS-A2K. It is currently envisaged as an add-on Certificate Course jointly offered by CIS-A2K and the Nirmala Institute of Education (NIE)-a premier teacher training establishment in Goa, India.

Read the original on Wikipedia page here.

Problem Statement

In India and in other developing countries a lot of emphasis is being laid of late on the use of ICT for improvement of literacy and education.

Massive efforts are afoot by the Government of India, provincial governments within each state, civil society organizations and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) initiatives to include ICT (especially digital technology and the internet) into the teaching learning process. Most of these approaches are techno-utopian and think that giving a tablet to a child will automatically transform the learning environment.

Thus, substantial focus is on either technology or digital content creation (lesson plans, etc.) and almost singularly focussed on the student. There is very little done to empower or train the teachers on how to use digital technology in the classroom. When teachers are not equipped to deal with a digital classroom, use of digital technology is not optimised.

There are instances where the students were given free laptops or tablets by the government and the teachers banned their use in the classroom. Is the average Indian teacher equipped to handle a class of students who are always gazing at their screens?

How will an average Indian teacher approach a class with access to Wikipedia? Do we need to re-imagine the classroom? If yes, how? Consequently, do we need to re-imagine the role of the teacher in the age of Wikipedia?

How does this course attempt to address this problem?

This course is a small step in the direction of empowering the teacher trainees (mostly digital immigrants) to get a grasp on how the digital and internet has changed our mode of learning and approach to knowledge. It will show the macro and bird's eye view of how we have moved on from a Tree of Knowledge to a Web of Knowledge. The course will also introduce them to practical experiments that are being done within the Indian and global context and to also critically evaluate the relevance of a digital knowledge platform like Wikipedia.

Background

The knowledge production, consumption, dissemination and distribution is undergoing a tectonic shift with the advent of digital technologies. Within this context of the digital turn, openness and transparency have gained new significance.

On the one hand, emerging participatory knowledge production models of openness like Wikipedia are increasingly pushing us to look beyond the traditional models of the past century; on the other hand, these models are being thought of to be effective in diverse fields like pedagogy, governance and policy making.

This has been impacting the way how teaching and learning happens at the school level. Open Educational Resources for instance is becoming a key asset for the students and educational institutions alike in imagining better pedagogy models.

This creates a pre-condition for the transformation of society into a ‘Knowledge Society’, wherein the student is increasingly repositioned from a ‘spectator’ to a ‘spect-actor’, from a consumer of knowledge to a “prosumer” (producer+consumer) of knowledge.

Within this context it becomes crucial that the teacher (a key pillar to building a robust knowledge society) is familiarized with the working of digital technology, especially within the context of the classroom.

Course Objectives

This certificate course is aimed at Teacher trainees and Teachers who teach up to High school in India. This course will give the Teacher participant:

a comprehensive understanding of the changes that are brought about by digital technology to the knowledge domain
an introduction to various openness movements that have informed the discourse on Open Educational Resources
exposure and training to participate on open knowledge platforms like Wikipedia
practical examples and best practices of using Wikipedia and sister projects within the classroom context.

Key Concepts

Digital, Digital literacy, FOSS, Internet, Knowledge, Knowledge Platforms, Mirrored Technology, Openness, Open Access, Open Educational Resources, Open-Data, Sugar, Wiki, Wikipedia, Wikisource, Wikitionary, Wikimedia Commons.

Course Design

The course will approach each of these issues within the context of Indian languages and school education, so that the teacher could take back the learning to his or her immediate pedagogic environment. The course will be delivered through lectures, demonstrations and hands-on training sessions. Every participant is expected to do 2 hours of pre-course work before coming for the first contact session. The face to face contact sessions will be done in two rounds with a gap of less than 40 days in between Round 1 and Round 2. The participant is expected to spend approximately 13 hours working on a real-time project with digital output.

Duration

This course involves 45 hours of effort.

30 hours face to face contact sessions
15 hours virtual contact

Resources

YouTube: Hindi Video Tutorials Play-list - FEEL FREE TO DOWNLOAD, REDISTRIBUTE AND REMIX THESE VIDEOS AS THEY ARE LICENSED UNDER CC-BY-SA 3.0.
YouTube: Kannada Video Tutorials Play-list - FEEL FREE TO DOWNLOAD, REDISTRIBUTE AND REMIX THESE VIDEOS AS THEY ARE LICENSED UNDER CC-BY-SA 3.0.

Registration

Step 1: All participants are expected to register themselves on Wikipedia. Please note that once you register on a Wikipedia project, you can use that 'Username' (i.e. same log-in details) across all Wikipedias and Wikimedia platforms. This should be done by September 4, 2014 (10.00 am). This tutorial will help you with Registration on Wikipedia: Registration Tutorial
Step 2: Once you create a Wikipedia user id, please fill up this form to complete the registration process.

Above: Flyer of the course to be held in November 2014 and January 2015

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/teaching-in-age-of-wikipedia

Talks by Richard Abisla and Kaliya Young

Admin — 2019-03-07T23:59:25Z

The Centre for Internet & Society will be hosting public talks by Richard Abisla and Kaliya Young, who are both 2019 India-U.S. Public Interest Technology Fellows at New America at its Bangalore office on March 4, 2019.

The event is over. Pictures of the speakers were posted on Twitter.

Agenda

4:30 - 5:10 p.m.: "Open Data from Below: Civil Society and Open Data" by Richard Abisla
5:10 - 5:50 p.m.: "Exploring the Domains of Identity and Emerging Open standards for Decentralized Identity" by Kaliya Young

The Talks

"Open Data from Below: Civil Society and Open Data" by Richard Abisla

Often NGOs and Civil Society Organizations' roles in the Open Data movement are considered to be solely last mile training with citizens. This talk will give examples from the TechSoup Global Network of how NGOs act to prioritize, organize, and create open data sets that can exist alongside official data sources, or become official government data. The talk will explore barriers to opening up data, both from within government and civil society, and possible solutions. For more info click here.

"Exploring the Domains of Identity and Emerging Open standards for Decentralized Identity" by Kaliya Young

In this seminar she will share two significant pieces of her work firstly the Domains of Identity that provides a clear picture of all the different domains individual's data ends up in databases. This can serve as the basis of a dialogue about the proper relationship between different domains. Secondly she has been at the heart of a community developing new Decentralized Identity Technology standards and will share more about them and how they can enable a many-to-many exchange of verifiable credentials between individuals and the institutions they interact with.

The Speakers

Richard Abisla

Richard Abisla is a 2019 India-U.S. Fellow at New America. Abisla is currently the Portfolio Manager for the Americas at Caravan Studios, a division of TechSoup. Abisla has a long history of working alongside local communities to help them access digital information and education and integrate technology into both their work and lives. He has created and directed technology education and adoption programs in Honduras, Jamaica, Chicago, and San Francisco, all the while focusing on increasing access to digital resources for those who need them most. Most recently, Abisla has focused on working with librarians and library users in Brazil to create applications and processes that help solve local problems through open data resources, as well as training librarians to integrate human-centered design principles into their work in order to plan more impactful programming.

Kaliya Young

Kaliya Young is a 2019 India-U.S. Fellow at New America. Young is one of the world’s leading experts on decentralized or self-sovereign identity technology. She is the author of A Comprehensive Guide to Self-Sovereign Identity and currently holds the position of adjunct professor at Merritt College where she is developing a curriculum about identity. For the last 15 years, she has worked within the industry to catalyze the formation of a new layer of the internet designed to serve individuals. She began sketching out distributed social networks in 2003 and co-founded the Internet Identity Workshop in 2005 with Doc Searls and Phil Windley. More details can be found here. She is also known as Identity Woman.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/events/talks-by-richard-abisla-and-kaliya-young

Talk by Anubha Sinha on Open Access in JNU

praskrishna — 2017-03-29T05:12:05Z

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/files/talk-by-anubha-sinha-on-open-access-in-jnu

Taking Stock: Emerging Issues - Internet Surveillance

praskrishna — 2013-11-09T06:31:57Z

This session was held at the IGF in Bali on October 25. Pranesh Prakash made intervention in this session.

Read the original transcript published on the IGF website here.

The following is the output of the real-time captioning taken during the Eigth Meeting of the IGF, in Bali, Indonesia. Although it is largely accurate, in some cases it may be incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. It is posted as an aid to understanding the proceedings at the session, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.

>> MARKUS KUMMER: Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Please take your seat. We are about to start our session on surveillance. We are organising ourselves a bit on the fly. The room is already set for the Closing Ceremony this afternoon, but this makes a little bit of a distant feeling. We're up here and you're far away and there are not that many people in the room so what we intend to do is to move down from the podium for the discussion. We've already set up the Chairs on the first row where the panelists will sit and interact with the audience to make it a little bit more often interactive and positive atmosphere for discussion.

We have originally we have reserved 90 minutes for this session but then we thought maybe more time will be needed so we can move on. We have 3 hours at our disposal but we don't need to fill the three hours. If we run out of steam we can conclude earlier, as some people have indicated already that they have to be leaving, so we take it improvise a little bit. But please leave free the very first, as we intend to move down there.

Before asking our Session Chair to introduce the meeting, I'll make a few preliminary remarks, and I would also like to ask the Secretariat to put up the policy questions.

We have had a process when the mandate of the IGF was renewed to look at IGF improvements. There was a special Working Group set up and the Working Group made recommendations and one of the recommendations was that each situation should address some policy questions that would help shape the discussion, and we would also ask to reach out to the community and we did so. We asked for public input and we got the input and these policy questions we received are available on the IGF website, and they will be made available on the screen.

But for better comprehension, I will read them out and our moderators will bear them in mind.

Okay. On Internet surveillance, the first question was the need to prevent mass surveillance carried out in the guise of targeted surveillance. The second question was balancing cybersecurity and privacy. The third question, principles of open Internet/net neutrality.

Fourth question: One of the emerging issues is on Internet regulation. Regulation versus self‑regulation where the Internet is concerned. How can countries that have questions on Internet regulation versus self‑regulation be aided to work on a level playing field that assist the best industry practices being adopted, best practices that make the Internet and thus countries and institutions safer from harm.

Fifth question: Better channels of cooperation between stakeholders especially in areas such as cybersecurity. 6, agreement on fundamental minimum principles for Internet Governance and multistakeholder cooperation.

7, priorities for the IGF, the Internet community, and multistakeholder governance post‑2015.

And with that I hand over to our session Chair, Dr. Setyanto Santosa, you have the Chair.

>> SETYANTO SANTOSA: Thank you. Good morning, everybody. I hope you enjoy the dinner last night. You can also look at the Balinese dancers, the modern dancer and also the original Balinese dancers.

10 years ago I was the permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Tourism and culture. At that time we had Indonesian tourism. The result was at the time surprise me when a question to the foreign tourists deliver most of them said that what actually the question is what actually was is the strength of Indonesian tourism?

They said, the people. And then following the second question, which part of the people that make you attractive? They say the smile. So at the time, I just realized that Indonesia is a country with the highest smile per capita in the world. And you prove already the last 6 days and you can find the Indonesian people with a smile.

So with this introduction, I don't take much time and the issue also very attractive is as Markus just mentioned, regarding the emerging issues.

So I look to deliver the floor to our moderator. So please, Madam.

>> MARKUS KUMMER: Please introduce yourself.

>> ANNE-RACHEL INNE: Thank you, Markus. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Anne‑Rachel Inne, the Chief Operations Officer the AfriNIC, the Internet registry for the African region, so we're happy to be here. I will let Jovan introduce himself later on when he takes the floor.

We're happy to be here with you today to moderate this session on emerging issues. As panelists we will have this morning Scott Busby, the Director of Office of Multilateral and Global Affairs in the Bureau of Democracy, Rights and Labor at the United States State Department. Then we will have Ross LaJeunesse. He's the global head, free expression and international policy. The then we're having Jari Arkko, who is an expert on Internet architecture with Ericsson Research, and also the Chair of the Internet Engineering Task Force, which is IETF.

And then we have Johann Hallenborg from the Swedish Government. And our last and not least panelist will be Joana Varon. I'll pass to Jovan now. We actually will have commentators. When we finish presentations here, we'll come down to the floor so that everybody will be seated and we'll hopefully have a more convivial atmosphere than talking down to you there.

We'll have commenters from the floor, Bertrand de La Chapelle, the head of Internet and jurisdiction process in France. We will have Megi Margioyono from Civil Society. Nick Ashton‑Hart from CCIA from Switzerland, and Ambassador Fonseca from Brazil. So thank you very much for joining us all, and I'll pass on to Jovan now.

>> JOVAN KURBALIJA: Thank you, Anne‑Rachel. I'm the Director of DiploFoundation, a Swiss Foundation working on inclusive and effective diplomacy and global governance. First of all, I would like to thank Raul Echeberria and the group that he led which propose this topic to be discussed at the emerging session. And as we know, this topic has already emerged on the various diplomatic agendas worldwide. Therefore it is quite important issues to be addressed during the Internet Governance Forum.

It also is the proof of the relevance of the Internet Governance Forum in talking about issues which are of high importance for international community in general and Internet community in particular. Markus already outlined the main questions that were discussed in the preparation for the session and they will be some sort of architecture of our session.

We will tackle these questions in five main baskets and we'll organise five main baskets in 20 minutes time slot. The first basket will be on the question of infrastructure and basic functionality of the Internet, and we'll have expertise in each basket, both on the floor and in the room.

The second basket will deal with the Human Rights issues, question of privacy protection and the other Human Rights issues related to the Internet surveillance.

The third basket will focus on security, and the situations when surveillance is justified and under what conditions.

Fourth basket will deal with Data Protection and the economic model.

And fifth, the last basket, will wrap up the discussion within the general framework of Internet Governance Forum which is ethics. We will address the question of trust on the Internet and impact of Internet surveillance on trust.

The underlying issues which will be appearing in our discussion are issues of the law enforcement procedures and international law. Therefore, this is a general infrastructure and we plan to proceed with 20 minutes dedicated to each basket after we hear from our panelists introductory remarks, which they will also relate to these five main issues.

I think this is the general entry I would like to invite Scott Busby to provide his introductory remarks on the question of Internet surveillance. Scott, please.

>> SCOTT BUSBY: Thank you, Jovan. Well, I'm very happy to be here as all of us from the United States Government are. We had some drama in our country with our Government shutdown, which put in doubt whether or not we would be able to come here. And I'm pleased to say that even had the shutdown continued through this week, we had approval from the White House and other senior officials in our Government for us to attend the IGF because we recognize how important this Forum is to our own policy, as well as the overall policies relating to the Internet.

The United States comes to the Internet Governance Forum every year to stand by our commitment to an open, interoperable and secure Internet. We recognize the importance of the issue of surveillance to the international community, and are grateful for this opportunity to engage with all of you here today on it.

As President Obama has said, the United States welcomes a discussion about privacy and security, and we are right now intensively having that discussion in the United States, as well with all of you in the international community.

We know that many of you, as well as many people in the world, have questions and concerns stemming from the recent reports about alleged U.S. intelligence practices, and we look forward to engaging with you today on them.

When it comes to those practices, I can say that the United States gathers intelligence of the type gathered by all nations. All Governments are involved in efforts to protect their countries from real threats and harm, and all Governments collect information concerning such threats. As we undertake those practices, we remain committed to protecting the American people, as well as our friends in the international community, and those friends include not only Governments, but the private sector and Civil Society.

This commitment relies on robust intelligence capabilities to identify threats to our National interests, and to advance our foreign policy, which includes our commitment to Human Rights. At the same time, we also acknowledge that such intelligence efforts must be fully informed by our international commitments, our Democratic principles, our respect for Human Rights, and the privacy concerns of people around the world.

Consistent with the terms of open debate and the democratic process, President Obama has initiated an effort to review and reform our intelligence practices, and ensure that they are appropriate in light of our commitments and our principles. In terms of reform, the President has already ordered the Director of National intelligence to declassify and make public as much information as possible about certain sensitive intelligence collection programmes undertaken under the authority of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, otherwise known as FISA. Numerous documents including decisions if the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court have been released as part of this effort.

Furthermore, the President has appointed a group of outside experts to advise him on how, in light of advancements in technology, the United States can employ its technical collection capabilities in a way that optimally protects our National Security, and advances our foreign policy, while taking into account other policy considerations, such as our commitment to privacy and to Civil Liberties.

This group has begun its work and is expected to produce its recommendations by the end of this year. We look forward to those recommendations.

Consistent with our normal practice of not commenting on specific allegations of intelligence activities, I cannot say more than this about such allegations. But I can say a few things generally about our commitment to Human Rights and to an open Internet.

First, I would like to emphasize that the United States does not use intelligence collection for the purpose of repressing the citizens of any country for any reason, including their political, religious, or other beliefs. Thus, for instance, we do not use our intelligence capabilities to persecute anyone for ideas that they express online.

Let me also assure you that the United States takes privacy seriously, both that of Americans and of individuals around the world. That commitment to privacy is reaffirmed in the President's international strategy for cyberspace, which states that, quote, individuals should be protected from arbitrary or unlawful State interference with their privacy when they use the Internet, close quote.

As President Obama has recently said, America's not interested in spying on ordinary people. Our intelligence is focused, above all, on finding the information that's necessary to protect our people, and in many cases protect our allies, close quote.

Furthermore, the United States will continue to uphold its longstanding commitments to defend and advance Human Rights in our diplomacy. This includes preserving the consensus reflected in Human Rights Council Resolution 20/8, that the same rights people have online also apply offline. Sorry, rights that apply offline also apply online.

United States will also stay actively engaged in the Freedom Online Coalition, a group of 21 Governments that works with Civil Society and the private sector in a multistakeholder approach to support the ability of individuals to exercise their Human Rights and fundamental freedoms online. As several people have suggested over the course of this week, this Coalition may be a very good Forum in which to continue the discussion on balancing the need for security with Human Rights, and to identify an appropriate way ahead on these tough issues.

I will be hosting the next Ministerial meeting of the Coalition on April 28th and 29th in Tallinn. We will also continue to advance Internet freedom through our programmes. Since 2008, the United States has committed over $100 million to Internet freedom programmes around the world. We intend to maintain that robust level of support for such programmes. On Internet Governance, the United States remains steadfast in our support for a multistakeholder model that supports international trade and commerce, strengthens International security and fosters free expression and innovation. We strongly believe that proposals to centralize control over the Internet through a top‑down intergovernmental approach which is slow the pace of innovation and economic development and could lead to unprecedented control over what people say and do online. Such proposals play into the hands of repressive regimes that wish to legitimize inappropriate state control of content.

We also believe the current multistakeholder system should be strengthened and sustained, particularly through broader multistakeholder participation from the developing world. Through our programmes, we have sought to make such participation possible.

We are aware that some Governments seek to take advantage of the debate initiated by the recent disclosures to draw attention away from their repression of their citizens, or the need for democratic reforms in their countries. The acts of these Governments include for example arresting opponents for what they say or intimidating them into silence and stealing intellectual property for the benefit of their economies. We therefore want to emphasize how important it is not to let Governments that do not share a commitment to Human Rights and fairness to exploit the current debate to their benefit. We should not allow them to gloss over the very important differences between their Internet monitoring activities and those of countries like the United States that conduct intelligence activities to enable responsible state craft. We hope that the discussion today will reflect the fact that the issue of surveillance is a global one and will take into account the views and practices of everyone around the world. We intend to listen closely so that we can take account the many comments and recommendations from you and ensure that they are incorporated into our own Governmental deliberations. Thank you.

>> JOVAN KURBALIJA: Thank you, Scott. Our discussions will result in useful insights for the process that you indicated started in the United States and I will say reflections are going on all over the world as we will hear from the other interventions. Our next speaker is Ross LaJeunesse from Google, and we'll hear something more about the business perspective.

>> ROSS LaJEUNESSE: Thank you very much. It's a pleasure to be here. Am I all set to go? Oh, sorry.

Hi, I'm Ross LaJeunesse from Google, and it is a sincere pleasure to be here. There's been obviously a lot of discussion and debate about this issue, and that is of course a very good thing, and it's very necessary. But in order to have a discussion about this, a discussion based on reality and based on facts, I just want to start by providing a few clarifications so that we're all operating from the same understanding.

The first is that Google does not provide direct access for any Government to our data, our servers, our infrastructure and it never has. And you can use any term you like to try and describe that accusation, a back door, a side door, a trap door, anything like it, but the fact of the matter is that we simply don't do it.

We also don't accept large, blanket‑like Government requests for user data. We are subject to the law, so when we receive a Government request for user data, we look at each and every one of them very carefully. We have a team of lawyers at Google whose sole purpose is to do exactly that. They ensure that the request is valid, is legal, follows due process, and is as limited in scope as possible. And very often, we push back, and we sometimes refuse to comply. And you can see this if you go to our transparency report online, which lists the number of Government requests we receive, how many of them we comply with, and we do that around the world wherever we have services.

Now, on the issue of transparency, we believe this is a critical element to the debate. And we're not newcomers to this issue. We've published our first transparency report. We're the first country, first company, in the world to do so about three years ago, because we recognized long before the Snowden revelations that this is a critical part of our responsibility to our users.

Every 6 months we release an updated transparency report that is better and more granular and I'm glad to see that now many companies are doing the same. We're continuing this work by working with NGOs around the world to publish National transparency reports and we've released one in Estonia this year and we've highlighted another in Hong Kong and that work will continue.

So transparency of course isn't a cure‑all but we really believe you can't have a meaningful debate on the path forward, you can't have a debate on this issue, if you don't have the facts, which is why we're suing the U.S. Government right now to get them to reveal more information about the number of National Security requests and demands that they make on companies, and we're also on a separate track supporting key legislation in the United States Congress sponsored by Senator Franken and another Bill by Representative Lofgren to do the same thing.

Now, I want to emphasize that it would be much easier for us and much easier for any company to simply comply with Government requests for user data. But we don't. And we don't do that because we're a company built on the idea that if you put your user first, everything else will follow. We don't do that because we take our responsibility to our users very seriously, and that's both a matter of principle and a matter of good business.

We're very aware that if our users don't trust us, they won't use our products, and they'll go somewhere else. So again, this debate is good and absolutely necessary, but I also want to echo a point made by Scott and made by Mike Harris at the Index on Censorship, which is this: I'm all for holding the United States Government and Western countries to the highest of standards. We need to do that. But I don't want us to do that at the expense of not focusing on other countries, countries where their surveillance programmes are just as bad or worse. Countries where journalists are beaten, bloggers are imprisoned and activists are killed.

The Expression Online Initiative just released a very important report on Azerbaijan where we held last year's IGF and how horrible things have gotten there over the past year. So I'm all for this discussion about the alleged hypocrisy of the United States and Western Governments but let's not do so in a way that discounts or damages the ability of those Governments to continue their otherwise excellent work which they've long done in supporting Internet and journalist freedom, in supporting Human Rights around the world, and let's not attack them to the point where it undercuts their very important support for the multistakeholder model of Internet Governance. Thanks very much.

>> JOVAN KURBALIJA: Thank you, Ross. Our next speaker is Jari Arkko from IETF from Finland but currently Chairing IETF. Jari, please.

>> JARI ARKKO: Thank you. And thank you for the opportunity to talk, and also this is my first IGF and I really enjoyed all the discussions this week so thank you all for that, on this topic and many other topics.

And then onto this topic so obviously, the Internet community, all of us here, care deeply about how much we trust the commonly used Internet services and products that all these services are based on so the reports about large scale monitoring obviously disturb us.

Interception of targeted individuals and intelligence activities have of course been well known but I think many people are concerned about the scale. And if Internet technology itself is vulnerable to wholesale monitoring, that is also a big concern, and we take that very seriously at the IETF, as the people at least partially in charge of technical aspects of the Internet.

But I wanted to put these events in perspective. Maybe you can consider this talk as the "do not panic" message. These are hard times but we can also work on the problem, and we should.

The first observation that I would make is that surveillance is probably a wider problem in the world than what you would believe just by reading the most recent newspaper headlines. If you live in a glass house, be careful of throwing stones, and if it weren't true before, I'm sure there are many intelligence agencies in the world who have a bad case of NSA envy today.

Secondly, surveillance is not a new issue. Even we at the IETF have had to deal with some issues around that historically. In 1994, we articulated the view that encryption is an important tool to protect the privacy of communications, but at the time, big parts of the world considered encryption a dangerous tool and wanted to limit its availability.

In 2002 we decided that the IETF standard protocols must include appropriate strong security mechanisms. At the time various nations wanted to employ weaker security mechanisms. Now we are facing a new situation and once again Internet technology needs to evolve to match today's challenges.

We need to deprecate the encryptions that are considered weak and that is by the way something we do all the time with new information from research community and others. We also need to consider a bigger update to the security of the Internet. On Tuesday I talked about the by default security model. Maybe that's something we can pursue but technology alone is obviously not a solution. Even if we had a perfect communications security system, you would still need to trust the entity you're communicating with.

If the peer leaks your conversation it was not helpful. So let me talk a little bit about some of the other areas of work where some things might be useful.

First, network operations and buildout. We've seen some proposals to build more Internet exchange points and add more connectivity. Those are excellent things for many reasons. They will keep traffic more local. They will increase speed, lower costs and enable local Internet businesses to grow but an Internet that is more densely connected is a good thing.

Second, the open source community. Open source solutions are useful to assure ourselves about the reliability of our tools, whatever they might be. On some areas it may be that we should actually consider doing more than we have than so far so let us all support additional efforts in this area.

And there's more. Research community and analysis of security vulnerabilities, the attention on the matter will surely make it possible to have political and legal discussions. Maybe the transparency we just talked about, that's a good thing.

Finally, I wanted to say that I really do wish that we keep the ideals of the Internet clear in all of our minds, and not compromise them. We still need a global and open Internet, one where we can all work together across borders, with us not fragmenting the Internet and we still need an Internet that is open to innovation and new applications without asking for anybody's permission to create those conversations. And we still need an Internet that is managed and expanded. Thank you.

>> JOVAN KURBALIJA: Thank you, Jari, for this brief introduction. You give us more time for discussion later on. And our next speaker is Johann Hallenborg from the Swedish Government. Johann, please.

>> JOHANN HALLENBORG: Thank you very much. My name is Johann. I work with the Department of International law and Human Rights at the Foreign Ministry in Stockholm. Thank you very much for inviting us and me to this panel. We're happy to accept. We've been engaging with the IGF for many years, and we continue to really support this important institution.

And the reason why we're engaging is partly because we believe that the integration of a Human Rights perspective in the discussions on Internet and Internet's future is crucial. So that is part of the reasons why we're engaging so much in the IGF.

So the ultimate goal is actually to make sure that the promise on securing Human Rights online as well as offline is realized. We cannot forget that last year, we had an affirmation by consensus in the UN in the Resolution 28 that Human Rights, they do apply in the offline environment ‑‑ online environment, as well as offline.

This was also something that the entire community agreed to. The Resolution was put forward by Sweden, the U.S., Brazil, Tunisia, Turkey, and Nigeria, and it received support by 87 co‑sponsors, and then adoption by consensus. We need to remember that this is a great success, and we need to make this reality.

Governments have a duty to respect and protect Human Rights. This is a central part of our obligations. And security is needed to secure individuals' rights and freedoms and also ultimately it is to protect the open and democratic societies in which we live.

But it's important to remember that there is no tradeoff between Human Rights and security. It is not about balancing. It is about securing the respect for Human Rights, but doing it in a way that is secure.

In providing security, the Government will address several aspects. One important aspect is certainly to protect rights and freedoms of individuals from abuse of others. But equally important is to ensure the State itself does not violate rights and freedoms, in other words setting the limits for State power.

This is why the rule of law is so critically important. The Constitutional framework includes rules on legality, transparency and accountability and provides the fundamentals for what the State can do, to what extent it can utilize its powers in order to secure the well being of people.

In providing security, access to electronic communication has become an important tool for law enforcement agencies to combat crime, and for security agencies to improve security to the public. Swedish legislation makes a distinct separation between surveillance of electronic communication by law enforcement agencies on the one hand, and intelligence collection by security agencies on the other.

This separation is critical since the operational mandates and objectives for law enforcement and security agencies are indeed very different. We are now at the point in time where trust in the Internet is challenged. Therefore, to Governments all over the world, it's crucial to strengthen the relationship with Civil Society and the trust with people. Governments simply cannot afford to lose legitimacy.

But to strengthen trust, we must reinforce the principles of rule of law, transparency, and also respect for Human Rights. This is done through a deeper dialogue with all stakeholders. Therefore, initiatives that come out of the Civil Society are important, and should be taken seriously.

The necessary and proportionate principles, they represent such an important initiative, and it deserves attention from us. Therefore, in recent months, we have arranged two consultations in Geneva and in New York with the International Civil Society Steering Committee and other Governments on these issues and principles. And as a result, foreign Minister Carl Bildt at the recent Seoul Conference on Cyberspace last week presented several fundamental principles that should apply to maintain respect for Human Rights when carrying out surveillance of electronic communications and these 7 principles, they are about legality, legitimate aim, necessity and adequacy, proportionality, judicial authority, transparency, and public oversight.

This is now the foundation where we would like to continue the discussions with all. We welcome a continued deeper dialogue with all stakeholders, and we're willing to engage with you. One such example is the work in the Freedom Online Coalition in which we will continue to engage deeply.

I conclude here, Mr. Chairman. Thank you very much for giving me the word.

>> JOVAN KURBALIJA: Thank you, Johann. I just realized we breached the diplomatic protocol by putting Joana at the end of the table. Joana Varon from Brazil, please go on.

>> JOANA VARON: Thank you for the invitation. Thank you all of you for being here, hearing us and discussing. What I want to highlight here is that the emerging details of the U.S. National Security Agency, mass surveillance programmes have painted a picture of pervasive mass cross‑border surveillance of unprecedented reach and scope, and a scope that's far wider than any reason that could be related to the enforcement of National Security, nothing to do with real threats or harms.

The scope of approved surveillance was broad as it involved tapping communications of the President of countries like Brazil, which could be considered a friendly nation, and as wide as it assessed sensitive strategic business communications, such as communications from our Royal company. This scenario is not only unacceptable for leaders of states but for all Human Rights defenders. It doesn't matter if this data was used or not. The simple collection of our data and our metadata already represents a complete disrespect to the privacy rights from citizens from all over the world and a disrespect of the provisions internationally agreed on international conventions and Treaties addressing fundamental Human Rights.

And it's also a bit hypocritical as all this surveillance was performed by countries that used to pose themselves as defenders for an open and free Internet, and I'm not saying that in order to promote any polarization between different countries that could be posed as good or evil, but I'm saying that to highlight the need that every country shall assume that we still need to work a lot in order to ensure that Human Rights are protected online and offline.

Significant changes are indeed needed. The scenario that we live now is the scenario in which trust among Governments and in the major ICT and Telecom companies is completely broken but it's time to move forward and I agree with the table here, and we need to think about solutions and engage on how to implement them.

As a response to this scenario, I'm happy to see that Brazil has been proactive and has been taking actions in many different levels, as a Brazilian, I'm happy with that. International scenario we have declared urgency to approve Marco Civil, our Civil Rights based framework for the Internet. Inspired by principles suggested through a multistakeholder mechanism incorporated by or promoted by our Internet Steering Committee, Marco Civil, as it's written today, became a model in terms of both content and process, as it was developed through a wide inclusive process of online and offline consultations and resulted in a draft that protects privacy, freedom of expression, and other digital rights. I think we could all learn about this process to think in international scenario, as well.

Also in the National scenario thinking about long‑term solutions, Brazil is now promoting incentives for research, development, and innovation of our ICT Sector. And particularly for building a mail service with encryption by design. But of course, the Internet is global and is meant to remain global, and we would not address this issue only with National policies.

So what I want to highlight here is that the actions taken at the international scenario. So besides delivering a very strong statement at the UN General Assembly, which highlighted all the principles from CGI.br and all the principles that are now drafted in Marco Civil and which are committed to Human Rights, our President now has proposed for us to engage in a multistakeholder fashion, and to develop a Summit, a Summit that in my view shall be bounded by the principles addressed by the President in her statement at the UN General Assembly.

And this could be an opportunity to address all those issues, and I believe that these issues on surveillance should be addressed in both ways, changing the way the companies are operating in order to ensure transparency, but also protection of these users, for instance, by promoting encryption by design, but on the other hand, states should review their practices.

It's good that the U.S. is willing to reform its intelligence practices, so I take this opportunity to ask the U.S. Government to refer and analyze the International Principles on the Application of Human Rights to Communications Surveillance which have been endorsed to date by over 280 international organisations, and represent an attempt to highlight and address some of these concerns.

These principles provide a framework in which to assess whether surveillance laws and practices are consistent with Human Rights standards in the current digital environment. As Johann has related, they focus on legality, legitimate aim, necessity, adequacy, proportionality, competent judicial authority, and due process. They also consider user notification, transparency, and public oversight.

I welcome the initiative from the Swedish Government to consider these principles, and invite other Governments from all over the world to do the same. As I've mentioned, it's time to reassess our practices in order to be sure they're drawing respect for Human Rights with a deep dialogue with all the States that care for the Internet. Thank you.

>> JOVAN KURBALIJA: Thank you, Joana. Thank you panelists for the initial intervention and I think the underlying point is that we can recognize and all panelists recognize the severity of the problem and the need for some action and solution as soon as possible, because it is affecting activities of Governments, business Sector and all Internet users, and there were a few underlying and interesting points that could trigger some discussion in your reflections.

As Scott mentioned, there is a need to observe international law and the existing rules. There is a need to achieve certain balancing acts between the security and Human Rights but we had later on slightly different view from Johann had it's possible to have win‑win solution and not necessarily to create the balancing act and that could be an interesting point of discussion between about balancing act between security and Human Rights.

Ross rightly indicated the need for evidence based policy making, moving from the general reflections to evidence based on the concrete issues, and transparency. Jari highlighted the importance of not only technological but also policy solutions. Technology is not enough.

Johann also indicated the importance of rule of law, institutional separation between electronic communication agency, if I'm correct, and intelligence agencies. Therefore, this is one aspect that we should tackle today, procedural checks and balances as a structural design that could help us to avoid this situation in the future.

And Joana listed an excellent summary on Human Rights, question of necessity ‑‑ necessary and proportional reaction, and the question of using existing international legal tools. And this is important. We have existing international tool that could be applied to this field, including International Covenant on the Civil and Political Rights, and it was clearly indicated throughout the discussion and it is position of all major players, including the United States, that existing international rules should be observed.

With this quick wrapup and ideas for discussion I pass the floor to Anne‑Rachel.

>> ANNE-RACHEL INNE: Thank you very much, Jovan. I think we're going to go directly to our commenters from the floor, so I am going to give the floor to Ambassador Benedicto Fonseca Filho from Brazil to respond to some of the ‑‑ do we have microphones somewhere?

>> JOVAN KURBALIJA: A microphone is coming, yes.

>> ANNE-RACHEL INNE: Thank you.

>> BENEDICTO FONSECA FILHO: Thank you very much. I'd like to start by doing something that usually we do in intergovernmental setting at the UN. For example, I served at the UN a few years ago, and we used to initiate our talk by saying we align our statement with the statement that was delivered before by some Regional Group or some larger setting so I'd like maybe to innovate in the context of IGF, and say that I'd like to align my statement with the one that was delivered by Joana Varon on behalf of Civil Society because I think she expressed in a very clear way most of the things I was prepared to say, and so she made my life much easier, so I'd like to align my statement to what she has expressed and also to a large extent as well to what has been stated by the representative of Sweden, we share also the view that it is not inconsistent to pursue Human Rights dimension and examine the surveillance context and the disclosures in the context of enhancing the Human Rights dimension. It's not inconsistent with the fact that we all and some of us we are very firmly committed to Human Rights.

We are not diverting the discussion. We are not ignoring that this discussion could serve the purposes which are not our own, but at the same time, we do not think it is ‑‑ it would be a good thing to, because of this, to ignore the situation, try to improve on the situation we have.

So the 7 principles that were spelled out by Minister Carl Bildt at the Seoul Conference also I'd say very much express the kind of approach we'd like to take in that regard.

Having said that, and referring to the speech that was delivered by our President at the United Nations, at the opening of the general debate of this year's United Nations General Assembly, I'd like to highlight that the protection of Human Rights, privacy, freedom of expression ‑‑ women's rights, and it's those two specific manifestations, are at the core of the concern of President Dilma. She has clearly indicated that from the Brazilian perspective, there is a clear need that at the international level we should devise and launch a process that would lead us as international community to achieve principles and norms that would guide use and operation of Internet. And these should be guided by a vision inspired by the multistakeholderism approach, and also be firmly grounded on Human Rights and other principles she spelled out.

So we see no inconsistency in pursuing these, and not taking into account the larger picture that we want to be very careful about.

And in that sense, it is very important as has been highlighted by Joana, that we view the Summit, we intend to hold in Brazil, as a follow‑up of the speech that was presented by President Dilma and of course we came to this setting, our Minister of Communication came here, and he was mandated by the President to further discussion and collect views, and I would say that without deviating from our main subject, that the Summit in Brazil today will also incorporate other dimensions of discussion, not only focusing on principles and norms, but this is indeed one of the very clear parameters for us for the meeting that will enable to engage in other aspects of the discussion as a result of the consultations we have held here.

But the clear focus on the necessity as international community working in a multistakeholder environment to develop principles and norms is clearly one of the main objectives we have in mind.

And if I can just clarify one point that has been the object of some misunderstanding in the course of this meeting, when President Dilma delivered her speech at the UN, she referred to a multilateral framework, civil framework, with the support, full support and full involvement of Civil Society, private sector and other stakeholders, and later on when we came to this meeting, our Minister was in contact with her, and as a result of the information he provided, she made clear that she meant what she really meant was referring to multistakeholder, not only multilateral.

And I was just reviewing the news from Brazil, and I saw that yesterday, President Dilma referred again to this, and again she used the word "multilateral," so I know this in the heads of Many people will maybe lead to a confusing reflection on the situation, and say: Well, Brazil is a swing state. Doesn't know if it wants to be multilateral, multistakeholder, or what is the situation.

What I would say, that even, first of all, President Dilma, she has interpreted what she has said, and we maintain there's no contradiction what she said in those circumstances. From the point of your Government, and this is a very important thing that has been discussed here in some panels, that we should be very careful about the concept, the language we use.

Sometimes from the point of view of Government, when the word "multilateral" is used, what is meant primarily is that this is, we use in opposition to unilateral, more than meaning it's something to be done on a purely intergovernmental setting. I think this was the meaning she wanted to convey when she delivered the speech at the UN, that we want a framework that would be indeed done by many parties, not only reflecting the view of one single party or a restricted group of parties.

And she explained that this certainly does not convey the idea of excluding any stakeholder, so I would just maybe, and I apologize for taking so much time, but to clarify that we need maybe not to pay too much attention to particular statement on a particular setting, responding to a journalist that made some question, but having into account the larger picture, and the larger picture, the President interpreted as meaning "multistakeholder."

And when she mentioned the civil framework as a reference for her speech at the United Nations, she used the word, as Joana has spelled out, this was developed in a multistakeholder setting. The principles developed by the Commission are a multistakeholder way are clearly inspired President Dilma's speech, so when she was referring that we need international level such an instrument, clearly there is a linkage to the multistakeholder dimension, even if there is not the word there.

So I just want to caution that sometimes from the part of Government, at that level of leaders maybe we should not be too much vigilant about any particular word, but see the larger picture and what is the real intent.

So I just wanted to take this opportunity to thank all stakeholders we have been meeting in the course of this IGF on the part of Government, Civil Society, private sector. We have seen an overwhelming support for the idea to develop, to go in the direction that was indicated by ‑‑ proposed by President Dilma, but also building on contributions that will add to the process, and it was very stimulating for us to see that there is a willingness to mobilize different stakeholders, to come forward with proposals, to be involved in the preparation for this meeting that we intend to be truly multistakeholder from its outset from the agenda setting, from the kind of outcomes. And we see it as a contribution to the processes that are existing processes.

We wanted to be respectful of the existing process and not compete or overlap or supersede any of the existing processes that exist. And maybe a final word, that is Brazil is a very firm defendant of Human Rights. We have been as was spelled out at the core group that drafted these landmark Human Rights Council Resolution, that gave this very clear message that Human Rights offline should be also respected online.

We are ready to uphold Human Rights in many settings, and in settings that would be global, that would be constructive, that would lead to stimulate countries and provide for positive incentives for Human Rights to be upheld on a worldwide basis. Thank you. Thank you very much.

>> ANNE-RACHEL INNE: Thank you very much, Ambassador Fonseca. I'll go directly now to Bertrand.

We have remote interventions.

>> Yes, there are ‑‑

>> ANNE-RACHEL INNE: Hold on a second Bertrand. We're going to start with remote questions. Go ahead.

>> SUBI CHATURVEDI: Thank you, Anne. There are two questions from Peter Hellman, and we have interaction as well, so that's a wonderful thing. Peter has a question for the U.S. representative, and he wants to know: Does defending U.S. foreign policy interests include surveillance of the phones of heads of Governments, of countries that are friends of the USA?

And there is a question for the representative from Google: There have been reports that U.S. cloud business can expect loss of business from non‑U.S. customers in the coming 3 years to the tune of about 30 billion U.S. dollars and that the overall negative impact for the IT industry over the next three years could be up to 180 billion U.S. dollars because of a loss of trust. What do you intend to do to restore that trust so that people feel that they can trust cloud providers to keep their data private and secure?

The Tweet also relates to the same theme of proportionate and necessary steps that governments can take on the theme of surveillance vis‑a‑vis security.

>> ANNE-RACHEL INNE: Thanks so much, Subi. So now we'll go to Bertrand while our panelists can reflect on what they want to say later. Thank you.

>> BERTRAND DE LA CHAPELLE: Thank you, Anne‑Rachel. Again I'm Bertrand de la Chapelle, the Director of the Internet and Jurisdiction Project. And following the discussion before, I wanted to highlight that this debate on surveillance actually can be placed in a larger framework of issues and I'd like to tackle quickly three. The first word is "sovereignty."

What we're talking about here among others things is the exercise of sovereignty in the digital age. The traditional exercise of sovereignty is on the National territory. And the advent of the Internet is introducing an incredible new capacity for National decisions for better or worse to have a transboundary impact on other ‑‑ on citizens of other countries. The fact that operators are based in one country allows by definition in any country the authorities of that country to exercise sovereignty on those operators and impact decisions that have consequences for actors on another territory.

This is a potential extraterritorial extension of sovereignty, and it reduces and balances among the different countries depending on the number of actors located on their soil.

But the reverse is true, as well. Following what has been named the recent events and the revelation of the Snowden affair, a large number of actors and countries in particular have taken positions in reaction in order to defend their sovereignty and have pushed forward for instance the notion of data sovereignty, requiring or intending to require the location of the data regarding their citizens on the territory.

This is a reintroduction potentially of physical frontiers in a certain way, in a technical infrastructure that was intended from the onset as a cross‑border architecture, not necessarily a completely borderless but a cross‑border architecture.

This is a challenge because the traditional notion of the international system is based on the separation of sovereignties and most international organisations are based on the principle of non‑interference in the affairs of some other country. The current situation is challenging this, and is putting in front of Governments an incredible challenge, which is: How do you cooperate to manage shared online spaces? That's the first point. This is a new type of challenge.

The second word that I would like to highlight, and this goes to what Joana was mentioning, is the notion of due process, of fair process, or any kind of element that ensures that the procedures for issues related to surveillance but also to law enforcement related to freedom of expression, privacy and so on, any kind of process that deals with Human Rights and the rights of citizens and Internet users have to be done according to a set of rules that are fair and en sure due process.

This is particularly difficult when you deal with transborder relations. When something is done in one country across the Internet and you have to obtain data, take down content, have to ask for the removal of a website. There is currently a lack of procedures to handle this and fair process mechanisms to handle the relationship between states, platforms, end users in a fair process manner across borders. And this question is reflection also of what happens here in this debate on surveillance because what we've been talking about is the implementation fair process, oversight, and that's the main issue. Because principles in themselves are not sufficient to ensure the protection of Human Rights. They are necessary but not sufficient.

If the procedures are not appropriate, if the National frameworks are not sufficiently protective, it is not enough. And even when the framework is present, the actual implementation of the framework may be faulty sometimes. And oversight is an important element.

Finally, the third word that I would like to use is the law of unintended consequences. The trend that we're seeing today, in reaction to the recent events and the debate on surveillance, is a very troublesome one for everybody. The notion that in reaction and by legitimate concern regarding the protection of their citizens, Governments are thinking about establishing rules regarding so‑called data sovereignty is something that we should explore with extreme caution. There are extreme technical challenges to do this, and there is a great likelihood that if you want to sort in the databases of large global corporations which users are from one given country or located in one given country, you might end up having to do a larger breach of privacy than the protection you want to establish, or the things you want to correct.

And the second element, and this was very present in a meeting that we organised in Delhi in the Internet jurisdiction project where the industry in India, not the foreign companies, the industry in India, was explicitly saying to the government, be careful what you wish for., because if the principle of data sovereignty is pushed too far you're harming the potential of the local industry to be an actor, a major actor, in the global cloud business.

So without elaborating, the challenge is we are in a situation where because there is no sufficient international frameworks for discussion, among the different stakeholders on those issues of sovereignty in the digital age, and due process, we run the risk of having a large number of uncoordinated actions by different Governments and different private actors that will look perfectly natural as a first step, but what was a communative effect will be harmful to everyone, which leads me to this my conclusion which is this meeting of the IGF has proved beyond doubt the benefit of addressing those issues in a multistakeholder format.

The fact that the whole environment has triggered an event that is likely to take place in Brazil is providing an opportunity to address some of those issues, and to probably hold a little on some of the National decisions that are under discussions until there is a certainty that the communative effect is not harmful. The Brazil meeting will be important. There are other processes. The meeting of the Freedom Online Coalition has been mentioned. There's been a great effort and I'm sure somebody in the audience will refer to on a set of principles called necessary and proportionate. There are not enough but that will certainly be part of the discussion.

And I want to highlight a final element regarding the Council of Europe recommendation two years ago that established the principle of no transboundary harm, i.e., the responsibility of States from the decisions at the National level that may have an impact across borders.

So those elements are aspects that require a lot of caution in the individual actions that the different Governments are contemplating to make sure that they're collectively for the benefit of an open and unified Internet.

>> JOVAN KURBALIJA: Thank you, Bertrand. Before we continue with the other commentators and remote participants I'd like to invite Jari who has to leave in about 10 minutes to reflect on the discussion so far especially from the point of view of the infrastructure and basic functionality of the Internet. Please, Jari.

>> JARI ARKKO: Thank you. Apologies for being forced to leave. I had another commitment in another room in a moment. And of course, much of the discussion has been at the different level not so much about the infrastructure perhaps or the technical things. I wanted to highlight a couple of things I've heard in the discussion so far. I really wholeheartedly agree with Ross about a fact based approach to this. This is really crucial.

The other thing that is important that was highlighted by many people, or almost everyone, is transparency, and the rule of law. Those are very good things, and worthwhile to work towards.

And then I kind of wanted to return also to the important principle question, and many of you had these points, as well, to look after Human Rights, multistakeholder model, decentralized nature of the Internet, in particular the multistakeholder model is really key for us to have an open, well‑functioning Internet that balances the different concerns, and I with pleasure noted the comments from Ambassador Fonseca Filho and others on how important the multistakeholder model is and there's consensus at least here on multistakeholder being the way forward. And I think it was Johann who commented also that the Internet needs to stay global. That really is true.

Sort of the only thing that I gathered from all of the discussions so far that kind of relates to infrastructure or technical things was this possible demand for keeping data local and I just wanted to raise an issue from the technical community perspective that sometimes we may have conflicting desires or requirements, and we need to be careful what we wish for.

I think a blanket requirement for data to be local within a country would probably harm innovation in the Internet. Because if I'm a small enterprise that comes up with a great idea, and I will invite users from all over the world, I don't necessarily immediately have an ability to build out facilities all over the place. I need to be able to innovate without too much burden.

And this is just one example of the kinds of things that we may run into, but we need to be careful about setting too many demands on how the network actually runs. The management and buildout needs to be possible still, and cheap. That's a key, and the innovation needs to continue.

So those were the short remarks that I have at the moment.

>> JOVAN KURBALIJA: Thank you, Jari. You gave us quite comprehensive overview of the infrastructure and technical aspects of the Internet, and a few warnings that we don't go too far with some prescriptions but more guiding principles, and nudging towards useful solution and leave everything as to develop more spontaneously.

>> ANNE-RACHEL INNE: Thanks, Jovan, and thanks very much Jari for joining us so far. I know that Joana had another commitment. You're still okay? Great. Fantastic.

So I'm first going to go to the remote participation people, and then I will come back to Nick Ashton‑Hart.

>> SUBI CHATURVEDI: Thank you, Anne. There's a question from Monika Arnett, who is a freelance reporter and a journalist from Germany. And her question is to U.S. and Sweden representatives. She wishes to know: do the more mighty technical tools oblige us to fundamentally reconsider intelligence legislation? Because we otherwise face a state within the State which blinds public trust, oversight, erodes democratic control, and starts to possibly blackmail those elected to govern. Thank you.

>> ANNE-RACHEL INNE: Thanks, Subi. So up to Nick now. Thank you.

>> NICK ASHTON-HART: Thank you very much. The Computer and Communications Industry Association is made up of many of the Internet's more successful business to consumer companies, so of course we have a strong interest in this, though I would say that our comments stand on their own and our members including Google, who are here, have made their own statements, and you shouldn't conflate the two.

I think fundamentally we're facing a problem that is not technical or an Internet problem even though the Internet has made ‑‑ the tools of the Internet has made it possible and many aspects cannot be solved by legislating, especially at the National level, about the Internet, such as Johann put on hosting. We have a paradigm where we're common digital citizens but also common digital foreigners, by which I mean that in the analog past, our nationally protected rights of privacy were protected because each country could only post, frankly, so many cultural attaches in their foreign embassies before countries would say: No, that's too many spies. You have to get out.

So you could only spy in the analog world frankly on a fairly limited number of non‑nationals. Unfortunately now that situation is inverted and it is now ‑‑ the lack of any legal prohibition on countries spying on other countries' nationals means that we're all in some way fair game for an almost unlimited amount of surveillance by countries, except the one we live in.

And so in previous debates about ACTA in Europe, SOPA, PIPA in the United States, we saw a strong reaction against using the Internet in a way that was harmful to the Internet itself, to solve a specific issue for the benefit for stakeholder or stakeholders, and in a way we can argue we have the same dynamic here where technology is being employed by security services to facilitate information gathering with few limits, especially on non‑nationals, thanks to technology, yet at the same time, the Internet relays on trust. Without trust, people simply will use services less. They will say less. They will fear more.

And right now, we have a debate that is largely focused I think on negative incentives, characterized by a lack of trust, an increase of suspicion, and a fairly continuous stream of revelations which I think we all realize will continue for quite some time. It's understandable that this would generate a lot of unhappiness.

But I think it also obscures a few fundamental things that we share in common, which is that we all would want to trust the online world more rather than less for social and for commercial purposes, that the further development and spread of the Internet, for those who have yet to go online, which is more than half the human family, is a shared goal, so efforts which make that more expensive or more difficult are not welcome.

That legitimate law enforcement efforts as relates to crime of whatever nature, that societies decide need to be interdicted, is a reasonable activity. That fundamental transparency in Government operations is important even if there is a tension about the relative level of transparency in some respects of Government activity.

We want our National Constitutional protections of rights to privacy and the like to have real meaning, online and offline. We want to enjoy the internationally protected Human Rights that are pretty universally accepted, even if they're not always universally observed as we would like.

These are profound common shared needs, and perhaps we can find a way to use them as a basis for a constructive conversation about the role of security services and law enforcement online as it relates in particular to the everyday lives of individuals especially those who are not employed by the Government or in Government service.

The debate we have right now, I don't think leads to a positive end for the Internet community, and especially for the Internet. But as a community, we have the knowledge and the incentive to work to change that debate. I hope that can be another shared interest that we can build on, recognizing of course that criticism of Government behavior is a fundamental right of all, and there must be room for such criticism.

But to return to my original point governments have a responsibility not to allow surveillance of their nationals to get out of control and ironically in a digital age, for those National protections to mean anything, that responsibility really cannot end at your National border because if it does, the result counter‑intuitively is that if everyone but you is spying on your nationals, how can you say that your National Constitutional protections have meaning name? They have even less meaning because you have no idea who knows what and is doing what in relation to you. In that vein I think the explanations we've heard from Ambassador Fonseca of the Brazilian initiative are welcome.

A conversation about what we share, the beliefs we share, is not something we should fear. It's I think essential if we're to meet this conundrum of an analog past meeting a digital future in terms of surveillance.

>> JOVAN KURBALIJA: Thank you very much for your excellent intervention. We'll try to tap this enormous expertise in the room, experience, expertise and knowledge and we will like to ask you for your comments and questions. I think there is one person in the room who comes from the organisation that can help us to address these balancing acts in the surveillance issues. We already heard about Human Rights aspect, security aspect, and Data Protection. And Council of Europe is organisation which has under its one roof three conventions and three institutional mechanisms for covering cybersecurity, Data Protection, Human Rights. I don't know if somebody from Council of Europe, Jan Malinowski, is here. Could you give us a quick remark, a few points, how to address this balancing act between different aspects? It has been underlying theme throughout the discussion, please.

>> JAN MALINOWSKI: The Council of Europe approach I think mirrors in many respects the different dimensions that have been mentioned here already, and I wouldn't go into that. I think that in substantive terms, what Johann Hallenborg has said is valid and it does exemplify the different responses of the Council of Europe.

But the Council of Europe approach I think can be described as multistakeholder. One has to listen in order to deliver good governance, one has to listen to the different voices and leave whoever is responsible for something to take the decisions, but taking into account everything that others have to say.

The Council of Europe response is multidisciplinary. There are different issues that need to be expressed in one topic and we see there are issues relating to National Security, to privacy, to freedom of expression, to crime, to rule of law. All of them need to be taken into account, and that requires a broad vision.

There are in the Council of Europe multiple responses. There are in addition to dialogue, there are responses that go through the intergovernmental negotiation line, with soft law, with recommendations, Bertrand de la Chapelle mentioned some of them. There are a host of others that would apply to this and there is hard law. There is international Treaty law as well. We have the cybercrime Convention that's been mentioned. We have the Data Protection Convention and above all we have the European Convention on Human Rights that encompasses all of it. It goes all the range from freedom of expression to others.

And we have multiple accountability responses, as well. We have political accountability. We have legal accountability in the court. We have discussions in the specialized Committees, in the Data Protection Committee, in the cybercrime Committee and so on.

In connection with the Snowden case in particular, the Council of Europe does not have a response or has not given or attempted to give a response at this stage but there are two things that I would like to draw your attention to in that respect.

Already from the '70s, the European Court of Human Rights has made it clear that a system of mass surveillance can undermine or destroy democracy under the cloak of protecting it. I think that's a very important statement. As I said, it relates to cases well before Snowden, well before the Internet.

And the other aspect which is very relevant to the Snowden affair is that the Council of Europe cares about whistleblowers. Whistleblowers who disclose information in the public interest should be protected, and I think that the discussions that we are having demonstrate that Snowden has made revelations and disclosures that are in the public interest. Thank you very much.

>> JOVAN KURBALIJA: Thank you for addressing this main dilemma if you have in the same room people from cyber security, data collection community and Human Rights community, what is the way to address the question of intersurveillance? And we will be facing it more and more, that interprofessional dialogue.

I saw some hands over there. Khaled, please. And over there, yes.

>> KHALED FATTAL: Thank you, Jovan. Can everybody hear me? Yes? Okay, thank you. My name is Khaled Fattal, Chairman of the Multilingual Internet Group. The issue that I see in front of us here is not about alleged or not alleged. It's really goes to the core and to the values of what multistakeholderism stands for.

Many who attend ICANN would remember that I took the lead on making this a topic that needs to be addressed by ICANN, by the international community during the ICANN Durban. Raising the issue that unless we deal squarely with the issue of surveillance, we are not giving the true value of how damaging it is to multistakeholderism.

This is like a cancer scare to the trust of the multistakeholderism we all believe in. We believe many of us believe in multistakeholderism from an altruistic point of view, and we believe in privacy, freedom online. I'm a Syrian American, and nobody needs to lecture me on the importance of democracy and privacy and freedom of expression. But when the values are being challenged of what this stands for, I think it's time to come to terms with greater acknowledgment of what damage has been done, and how to fix it is required.

In emerging markets, we're embarking on major events in emerging markets. This is the subject matter that people want to talk about at many levels of society. And unless we deal with it very, very squarely, very ‑‑ at a high priority level, we will not be able to diffuse the situation, because so far all I see is an attempt to diffuse, that people get it off their chest. The values of what we stand for is really what's at stake.

I'll just close with this one remark: The war against terror was angled at our values versus theirs. The war against terrorism is our values versus theirs.

What does it say that in pushing towards a free and open Internet, we discover we are spying on the rest of the world? It's again going back to the values. Please take note, a cancer scare does not get treated with an aspirin. It needs an acknowledgment of what had happened, and a desire and a genuine desire and process put in place to show this is being addressed and fixed, rather than just being an attempt to diffuse.

This is my recommendation, because all of us who believe in this do not want to see this multistakeholderism damaged. I will close with that remark. Thank you.

>> JOVAN KURBALIJA: Thank you, Khaled, contributing to the fifth basket on ethics and trust, importance of trust and values in addressing internet surveillance and we will try to organise our discussion along these main five lines. Please could you introduce yourself, Sir?

>> REN YISHENG: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I believe we have ‑‑

>> JOVAN KURBALIJA: Could you introduce yourself?

>> REN YISHENG: Yes, okay. My name is Ren Yisheng. I'm from the Foreign Ministry of China. I was going to introduce myself in my mother tongue Chinese because I believe we have interpretation in the room so please put on your earphones.

Let me start by making my intervention in English while you are getting your earphones. I have a couple of points to make. Number one, we all have consensus on the common values of the universality or universal value of Human Rights. On the other hand, that we would also like to stress that Human Rights concept is an integral concept, it's a whole concept that we should not neglect the other parts or elements of Human Rights, which is to say that we have two sets of rights, civil political rights, economic, social and cultural rights, and in fact the right to development.

On the other hand, also there is a check and balance of rights. We have rights. On the other hand, we have our obligations, responsibilities. Our obligation, our responsibilities to the society, to respect the rights of others. This is the first point I want to make.

The second point is on Internet. I think that we have so many elements, so many factors that we need to look at. There is at least in my view that we have many elements that we need to look at. For example, the right to access. I think this is a very important issue for many countries, the developing countries in particular.

I'm glad that you're getting your earphones so that I can switch back to my mother tongue language, Chinese.

Since all of you have earphones right now, I'm going to switch back to my mother tongue. Over the past two days, few days, IGF discussed many important issues in relation to Internet development including the stability of Internet, the resource allocation issues of the Internet, and the Internet crime issues, spam e‑mails, as well as how to enhance the trust of the public to Internet.

Meanwhile today, the issues we're discussing and issues we discuss over the past few days is that some individual country carrying out largescale surveillance over other countries, like other Delegations of other countries, we are very surprised, very much concerned over this issue. We believe massive surveillance no matter over the individual citizens or other politicians of other countries is a infringement of sovereignty, National interest, and privacies of other countries, and also it poses as a threat to the safe operation, secure operation, of Internet operation.

Meanwhile, this conduct seriously damaged the public trust of Internet. Last but not least, I'd like to say to discuss the principle of Internet Governance, several points are extremely important, such as transparency, inclusiveness, participatory principles, and cooperation. And so on and so forth. Therefore, we're very much in favor of the points made by the Brazilian Ambassador, the governance of Internet is something that we have to work very hard on the basis of multistakeholder, no matter be it the Government or Internet companies, academic circle, Civil Society, no part should be excluded from this process.

We believe all people should participate. If you exclude any stakeholder in the course of Internet Governance, it's not good. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

>> JOVAN KURBALIJA: Thank you for your patience with our technical facilities and readiness to address us in English, and I think you reiterated quite a few important principles for our discussion, and elements of trust, Human Rights, in comprehensive way, question of sovereignty and I think we have quite a few interesting points. We have intervention here.

>> SUBI CHATURVEDI: Thank you. Am I on? Hi. Is the mic working? Okay. My name is Subi Chaturvedi, and I teach communication and new media technology at a University in India. It's a women's college, and we run a Foundation called media for change. The issues that we primarily look at is how the Internet and new media technologies can empower developing countries. I thank Raul once again for organising this session because we're looking at some of the most important questions that go to the heart of the matter. At the core of the Internet is trust.

The fact that we can trust this wonderful empowering technology which data which is immensely and increasingly private, personal and confidential. I do want to raise a couple of points here. When we start talking about situations such as these, I'm reminded of a story and we all grew up reading Sherlock Holmes and one of the stories was about why the dog didn't bark.

And this was about how we've decided to keep quiet at moments such as these, and when we are faced with uncomfortable situations, we decide to take positions. This is an important moment, and I can't agree more with what Khaled had to say. This is about trust but this is also about working in a space which is collaborative and I do not believe that cybersecurity and concerns around sovereignty can exist in isolation without the consideration for individual rights of States and citizens.

And I do want to reiterate that this journey from being the slave to the citizen has been a long one, and when we come to this point, of data collection by Governments for what purpose, by whom, and for how long, and where is it going to be kept? When we create honey pots such as these, these are questions that we worry about, not just from the Human Rights perspective. And I come from India. We have laws to protect children and women, and vulnerable communities in particular and we have just had two 18‑year‑old girls go to jail for updating a status, because they decided to voice their dissent.

And this is all for our own good, which is what I hear increasingly more often from Governments across the world, but I do want to say that two wrongs don't make a right, but what we have with us is a wonderful process which is bottoms‑up, inclusive and multistakeholder. Yes, there might be problems in the current system but that does not mean that we privilege one stakeholder which is largely the Government and most of us do not know then when these conversations take place, whether our voices would be heard.

Democracy is a wonderful thing and a participatory democracy is an even better one but it's not the same as multistakeholderism. I think we've got a solution. We have a platform. Let's acknowledge this, let's take it from here, and let's keep working with this platform. But let us work to reinforce the system that we have in multistakeholderism.

I think that is the only way forward. Thank you, Chair. Thank you for giving me this opportunity.

>> JOVAN KURBALIJA: Thank you for bringing Sherlock Holmes into our discussion, as well.

>> May I? My very brief question is for Mr. Scott Busby. I was really pleased to hear a changed statement or a changed tone from the U.S. Government, and I would hope and I believe that it is a reflection of the changed mindset within the U.S. Government towards surveillance, and Human Rights and privacy.

And if that's indeed the case, I would like to ask you that at the center of this whole ‑‑ at the center of these developments is a man called Snowden, whom Mr. Obama has referred to as a traitor. Is that still the position? Or has that position changed? Is this changed tone from the U.S. reflective also of the position on Snowden?

Because it's an important Human Rights issue. Snowden as a cause and Snowden as an individual, I'm talking about Snowden as an individual, what does the U.S. Government want to do with him? That's my very brief question and I would like that answer. Thank you.

>> JIMMY SCHULZ: May I? Okay. My name is Jimmy Schulz and I was a member of the German Parliament until Tuesday and the Committee for Internal Affairs and Home. And I've been taking care of the issue since it occurred.

It was said the whole thing of surveillance is not new. It was said that others do that, too. That's true. That doesn't make it better, and that's no excuse.

A question to Google: You said you don't give direct access, which sounds a little bit like Keith Alexander said in last year's Defcon, we don't spy on every American. That doesn't mean we don't give direct access. Is there any indirect access?

Because you've talked about legal interception, are you forced by any law not to tell us everything? That's a question to Google.

To the U.S. Representative: Keith Alexander said earlier this year those who encrypt are treated as potential terrorists, wherefore I am a potential terrorist. Do you think I am a potential terrorist?

And you also said some countries are taking advantage of the situation. Does this apply to Germany? Because I think the whole thing is an earthquake in our relationship. Friends don't do that.

And you said you're taking recommendations. I give you something that is not a recommendation: Stop surveillance now. But to be more coming to the point, I think we have to take three steps. First of all, I expect and I think we need complete transparency, complete transparency which means you have to tell us everything, and everyone has to be open on that issue.

Second, what we need are international contracts that friends don't spy on friends. And, third ‑‑ and this is a thing we really should do ‑‑ is encrypt all our communication so surveillance won't work. Thank you.

[ Applause ]

>> Thank you very much. Yes?

>> EVERTON LUCERO: Hello. So I'm with the Brazilian Government. I think we are dealing with a situation now that requires clarity in terms of what we need to address in the future, so as we avoid that it will ever happen again.

I mean, the unprecedented mass surveillance and un authorized monitoring of communications of millions of citizens worldwide by one intelligence Agency of one single country has naturally revealed something. First, I agree that it reveals we do not have a technological gap to fill in. This is an ethical and a political question. We have an institutional gap clearly. Because the only way that we will avoid there to happen again is if we agree in a set of principles and norms, and an institutional framework that would on the one hand recognize legitimate multistakeholder processes, and on the other hand, create an ethical ground for every actor to behave in the future in a way that will not damage Human Rights and privacy of any citizen in the world based on any grounds.

In particular, when it comes to National Security, I believe this argument does not stand for it any longer since you may hardly conceive a situation in which normal Brazilian citizens or companies or authorities are violated in their privacy. Is that done in the name of National Security? And how come? Does that mean that there is a suspicion that millions of Brazilian citizens and Brazilian companies and authorities are somehow involved with terrorism or any other activity that may be harmful to National Security of other countries?

As a Brazilian citizen and as a Brazilian public servant, to me, these are questions that are still to be answered. And the only thing we can proceed with this in order to create a new vision is to get together all the stakeholders and think deeply about how to make sure that we will agree on a minimum core set of rules and principles that will become the norm, and that will be observed from now on, so that this situation will not repeat itself. Thank you.

>> ANNE-RACHEL INNE: Thank you very much, Mr. Lucero. I'm going to ask for you forgiveness for a few minutes. Given what Everton said I would like to call on our commenter, Megi. Megi is a special consultant with the right of Internet users so we'd like to hear from him now. Thank you.

>> MEGI MARGIYONO: Thank you, moderators and Chairman. As I am an Information Technology lawyer, so my comments will be on the legal aspects. I think our discussions should move forward, not just track a debate whether the surveillance are accepted or not accepted, but on how to make Internet still free and open despite surveillance activities. One of the issues is striking the balance of rights, the rights of security and the rights of privacy and freedom of expressions.

However, to make globally accepted set of standards, principles, and rule to striking the balance of those rights seems difficult, because despite Human Rights is accepted as universal rights, but the applications of Human Rights differs from places to places.

Also on the threat of security issues also different from countries to countries. Freedom of expression in the U.S. is regarded as quote, unquote, the most important right, because protected under First Amendment, but privacy in the U.S. is not clearly whether it's protected under U.S. Constitution. At least it's not written on the U.S. Constitution, despite there are some interpretations that privacy is Constitutional right in the U.S.

On the contrary, in European countries, privacy is most important and there are some sets of limitations of the applications of freedom of expression. We know there are margins of appreciations that apply and applications of the freedom of expressions in European countries.

In Asia, privacy and freedom of expression seems not a strong right, and not strongly protected. Government of Asia like Indonesia pay more attention on security than freedom of expression, also privacy. Some say that privacy don't have cultural rules in Asia like Indonesia.

So regarding to the matter of facts, it seems difficult to set up a globally accepted rule to striking the balance of these rights.

Sorry. However, democratic on the surveillance activity is very important. Maybe the surveillance activity have to be commissioned by Parliament to make sure the surveillance technology is not abused by Government. It's important because technology of surveillance has been proved to be abused by some Governments of Emirates Arab Union and Bahrain. According to a report, surveillance technology provided by United Kingdom company named Gamma Group International is misused to monitor journalists, bloggers and activists in those countries. That is also a report that militia use surveillance technology to monitor the activities of opposition parties prior to the general election last year.

And Indonesia just signed a contract with Gamma Group International on September this year and we should make sure that Indonesian Government don't use this surveillance technology to monitor the opposition activities on the election next year.

>> JOVAN KURBALIJA: Thank you. For our next speakers while they're queuing, a few ideas I can think of. One is this question of balancing act ‑‑ and we just heard that balancing act is not the same in Europe, Asia, United States and other places ‑‑ between security and privacy. Second point, we have the rules on privacy protection and international Government on civil and political rules, and as I've already indicated, there is a question how to apply it, what are the mechanisms.

>> One more point, please.

>> JOVAN KURBALIJA: How we can make the next ‑‑ while you're waiting in the queues think about these two issues: Balancing act in different regions and how we can move from applying the general rules to the problem that exists. Thank you.

>> RAUL ECHEBERRIA: My name is Raul Echeberria. I'm the CEO of LACNIC. I think that some consensus seems to be emerging from the discussion. One thing is that it seems that all of us agree that massive surveillance is something bad. It is something that should not be done, no matter who does it and no matter what are the motivations for doing it. There is also a kind of consensus that some kind of investigations should be permitted using technology but that this kind of use of technology should be done based on the respect of Human Rights given the due process warranted to everybody.

And I have heard many people speaking, using almost the same words about principles, and that any use of technologies for this kind of purpose should be done in the framework of certain principles so here is my question for all of the panelists, because it seems that the speech of the representative of the Swedish Government was very interesting, and it seems to me that they are applying this concept. So my question for all the panelists is: Could be what the Swedish Government is doing a basis for continuing to develop this concept and trying to get a solution in the future? I'm not expecting to have a full agreement today about the principles.

But probably we can get a kind of common view in this session about that this is the path forward. Thank you.

>> MATTHEW SHEARS: Thank you. My name is Matthew Shears with the Center for Technology and Democracy. A couple of comments on what we've heard so far. Let's not trivialize this discussion. I've heard others are worse, NSA envy, alleged hypocrisy. When we use the sentence "others are worse," that's no justification for our own mass surveillance. When we say NSA envy, that's pretty serious stuff, because there are countries out there who are exactly saying that, this is not a joke.

And it is hypocrisy. It's not alleged so let's be clear on this.

Second, thank you to the representative from the Government of Sweden for saying there is no balancing act. We've waited a long time for someone to say, there is no balancing act. Respecting Human Rights increases security, diminishing Human Rights diminishes security.

Three, Frank La Rue, to paraphrase him ‑‑ I'm sure very poorly ‑‑ says that mass surveillance not only makes a mockery of Human Rights, but threatens the very foundations of our societies and the rule of law. Let's remember that. It's very important.

And finally, I don't know about everybody else here, but I have not lost my trust in the Internet. Let's stop saying that. I've lost my trust in the institutions that use the Internet for the purposes of undermining my fundamental rights. Thank you.

[ Applause ]

>> PINDAR WONG: Good morning. I am Pindar Wong from Hong Kong. Hong Kong has been where Snowden chose to make his revelations. My question really was a question is about forgiveness. Partly because as a long time Internet participant, I think what's been demonstrated is spying on an open network or surveillance on a network are low hanging fruit. We really shouldn't be surprised. What we are surprised on about is the scale. So I'll echo what Jimmy Schulz's intervention in terms of full disclosure.

Those of us who have kids know that kids make mistakes, and although the Internet is in its adolescence, looking forward clearly there's been a mistake that has been made. So a starting point really is that full disclosure. It may be naive to ask it. I'm not saying who discloses to whom, but it is a basis of recognizing that you've made a mistake, coming clean, and then going forward.

But what is that going forward? What is that vision? I don't agree with the previous intervention by the CTD guy. There is no balancing act. At least I have a very clear vision of the future that we wish to build, and I think I would suggest that whilst there's a temptation to fall within our National boundaries, to go back to what I would call a pre‑internet era, let's not forget the opportunity before us, the opportunity to really build trade.

And let us view things in positive terms. The next 1.5 billion people perhaps will be coming on the Internet through their mobile phones, making payment over that mobile network. So let's not also look at the issue of routing money over the Internet.

So trade, money, these are all very important issues and those issues if we have a vision of our future, I would hope we can find forgiveness because I'm not surprised of the surveillance, I'm surprised about the scale but let's find mechanisms to reestablish trust and let's look at how we can do so through the old '70s concept: Peace through trade. Thank you.

>> MARKUS KUMMER: Just a quick correction to the scribes. Please correct in the final version the name of the gentleman who just spoke as Pindar Wong. Thank you.

>> MIKE GURSTEIN: Mike Gurstein from the Community Informatics Network from Canada. It's a global network. About a month ago I wrote a blog post arguing or pointing out that the Internet was in fact a two‑way system, and that the National Security Agency while drawing information from the Internet, was also fully capable of putting information into the Internet, and having significant impacts in many of the places, if not most of the places, where it was drawing information from.

In the meantime, we've had confirmation of that, direct confirmation, one being the fact that Mr. Cheney's heart pacer was made hacker‑proof because of fears that using the Internet, it was possible to interfere with his pacemaker and assassinate him in that way. That came out recently.

The second was the use of the Internet and Internet surveillance as a direct input into the drone wars that's being conducted in various parts of the world as guidance systems and as direction systems for these drone wars.

I guess my observation, it's not really a question, is that I think we're dealing with something far more serious than simply surveillance. I think we're dealing with the potential for the active intervention in spurious and potentially dangerous ways into whatever elements of the Internet that we use for whatever purposes that we choose to in our daily lives, including our banking, our health records, our internal organisational communications, our financial communications, and so on and so forth, so that whatever response that's developed into the issues of surveillance also have to take into account the issues of aggressive and offensive actions by those who are in a position to undertake this kind of surveillance. Thank you.

>> And the speaker's name was Michael Gurstein. Thank you.

>> WOUT DE NATRIS: Good morning. I'm here on behalf of NLIGF and reporting back on discussions we had which were relevant. I think one of the main things that came up in the two panels that we did is that Internet is becoming more and more a part of our lives and isn't it time to start acting towards the Internet as if it is normal and not something which is far away from us and unseeable. So in other words if that is true, then what goes on in regular life also goes for Internet life so that would mean there's a triangle of economic development on the one side and the other side is security and the last part is freedom. So in other words, if you treat it like that, then economic development becomes possible, and the Internet becomes safer because there are so many best practices we heard of that it's about time that we stop talking and start to act upon those best practices.

And I won't recall which ones they are but they're in the transcripts. You heard some excellent ones.

And some things that really came forward is that would if Governments want the Internet to be safer, then start showing leadership through showing the best practice. So we did a head count saying who actually orders software off the shelf, or who says, I wanted to have this, this or these qualities before you can sell it to me? And only the commercial parties showed their hands saying, we're doing these sort of demands on software and all the Governments were looking, what are we talking about?

So in other words if you want leadership on security for the Internet, then start showing it yourself by demanding security before you buy something from the Internet.

And the last comment I would like to make is that we tried to envision how large this table should be if you want to have all parties discussing Internet Governance, and we probably have a table as long as this hall up and down and still not enough. And about 50% of the people know each other and still they're responsible for making the same products. So how do you get these sort of people at the table? Maybe never. But let's start with software developers, because they're hardly here in the IGF discussion, they're hardly ever there so Governments can show leadership in security by bringing the right people to the room in your country or regionally or internationally, and start discussing security with the right people, because that's the only way to make the Internet more secure.

And that was one of the comments made by the IETF, which I think made some excellent comments during this IGF, and I was happy to hear them.

>> JOVAN KURBALIJA: The last two presentations brought the broader context for this issue and importance of this issue of surveillance also for individuals, and the way they use the Internet. Now we have the next speaker.

>> JOHN LAPRISE: Good morning. My name is John Laprise. I'm a Professor at Northwestern University. As a scholar and historian, I'm surprised so many States are so surprised by the scope of the NSA surveillance, and I'd just like to offer to those States that perhaps you better take a better look at your intelligence‑gathering entities in your own countries, because they're either demonstrating incompetence in terms of not seeing the history of intelligence gathering or they know about it and are not saying anything, in which case they're guilty of collusion. Either way you have a few problems to remedy in your own countries for your own intelligence organisations. Thank you.

>> JOVAN KURBALIJA: Thank you. Nothing new under the sun.

>> NORBERT BOLLOW: Thank you. My name is Norbert Bollow, speaking in personal capacity right now as a human being who cares about my Human Rights. I start by echoing some remarks that have been made. We should not try to balance Human Rights and security. We need security that protects our Human Rights, our ability to fully experience our Human Rights.

We already have a good set of international Human Rights standards. What we need is the ability to effectively enforce them. This requires, as it has been said, full transparency. And I think it requires an international Treaty of sorts to deal with these widespread transborder Human Rights violations that we have experienced.

And perhaps most importantly, we need to get serious about looking at the technical side of metadata encryption. This is much more difficult technically than encrypting communications content. I am absolutely convinced it can be done, but it requires a fundamental rethinking of the architecture that we use for communicating via the Internet, so I propose the creation of a Dynamic Coalition of metadata privacy protection. Thank you.

>> JOVAN KURBALIJA: Thank you. We have the last two comments and then we'll pass the floor to the panelists, last three comments, I'm sorry.

>> MALCOLM HUTTY: My name is Malcolm Hutty. I work for the London Internet Exchange, and my comments are informed by this, but I'm speaking entirely on my own behalf. I think we've heard a great deal of "can't" about the surveillance issue. It is plainly and always has been the proper purpose of intelligence agencies to gather information about foreign countries, and their activities, insofar as they affect the essential National business and the proper business of security services to identify and do something about those that would cause us harm.

What has changed however is that it is now being said that these proper purposes can only be purr sized if the intelligence and security agencies essentially know everything about everyone. This has never been previous approach of anything except totalitarian societies. And if the Heads of Intelligence and security services cannot be persuaded their mission can be pursued in other fashion I hope that the political leaders will understand that the reaction that's being built around the world here shows that it's worth more than the beliefs of the appropriate way to pursue their mission on the part of those authorities. It is undermining our friends and allies.

Secondly and finally, the activity that work to undermine the protective security mechanisms, in particular undermining fundamental encryption standards, do not merely help the intelligence and security agencies identify those that would do us harm, but generally advance the interests of those who would penetrate information systems and undermine those who would protect them. Fundamentally this is a poor tradeoff for the National Security interests. I would urge you to consider the consequences to business, as well as to citizens, of making flaws generally available as they are becoming generally available to those that would penetrate information systems whether they be states or not state actors. This is an owned goal. Thank you for your attention.

>> PRANESH PRAKASH: My name is Pranesh Prakash. I work with the Center for The Internet Society in India and with the Yale Information Society project. While issues of Human Rights privacy and surveillance will be dealt with at the National level, and there are some indications that in some cases they are being dealt and reforms are ‑‑ will be attempted at least, we need to agree that privacy is a right that belongs not just to the citizens of one country or another, but no one country should be able to deny me the right of being human that privacy is indeed a human right and a country can't escape its international Human Rights obligations by saying that we are safeguarding the privacy of our own citizens and only our own citizens.

Second point I wanted to make is that mass surveillance at the level of Internet infrastructure and architecture as is being done by countries like our friends in the West and India, are contrary to the UDHR and ICCPR and its non‑targeted, non‑proportionate, non‑reasonable nature makes it an arbitrary or unlawful interference in the enjoyment of privacy, that this is contained in itself in International Human Rights Doctrine that mass surveillance of the sort that we are seeing today, especially at the level of the Internet infrastructure, just is not legal. Thank you very much.

>> FURIYANI AMALIA: Thank you very much. My name is Furiani Amalia. I'm from Indonesia. During the last few days we have heard and listened to many challenges that portrayed by multistakeholders in the Internet field. However, we also come up with the common views that trust and cooperation are important issues that we should address. We have a problem of trust there but we cannot stop just right there.

So we need to think what IGF as one of maybe the most Forum that involve many various multistakeholder worldwide. That we need to think what IGF could offer in the future, what IGF can do in the future in leading the role of setting out the principles or norms that are agreeable by all stakeholders, because in this multistakeholder Forum, it's not only to speak up what your interests are. It's not only a Forum to tell everybody else what your concerns are but we need to understand what other interests are so therefore IGF should be a bridge for all stakeholders to be a Forum where everybody can understand each others. Thank you.

>> ANDRES AZPURUA: My name is Andres. I come from Venezuela as part of ISOC Ambassadors Programme. My country is a relatively small country with Human Rights problems makes completely no sense in making the decision if you have Human Rights problems or challenges as they like to be said here.

It doesn't make any sense distinguishing if they're online or offline so I would like to put my perspective on many of the subjects we've been talking in this IGF from the perspective of small countries that are not frequently represented in this Forum or that their issues are not usually commented too much. It's a little sad when Governments defend their actions by saying that they only target foreigners as if they were not subject to Human Rights, and the international Declaration of Human Rights.

I'm also really sad to see that the U.S. who had a very strong agenda in pushing it throughout the world now lacks the moral authority to keep doing that. I think it's time for other countries to step up if they decide not to change their policies.

Mass surveillance and other advanced persistent threats that are more targeted are being used not only by big Governments, also by small ones. In the case of these Governments, usually the controls and oversights are even more weak than in the famous case we've all been discussing. So it would be of much help for countries like mine to actually know what's getting into our countries, because most of this technology doesn't come from our own industries or our own tech industries. It comes from developed nations or nations with stronger IT industries.

So more controls and transparency in those important experts would definitely help activists like myself.

So as I said I'm not a lawyer. I'm just an activist with a tech background. And for me, it's obviously clear that mass surveillance should be treated as a huge Human Rights transgression. So I hope that in the meantime, we learn to use encryption correctly to protect ourselves, our colleagues, and our work. I hope that for next IGF or next meetings of this kind we'll see a lot more PGP fingerprint keys on business cards so that we could start to share the knowledge on how to communicate effectively and securely. Thank you.

>> ANNE-RACHEL INNE: Thanks very much. We're going to go to the online remote participation. Subi?

>> SUBI CHATURVEDI: Yes, we have a question, there's one from Twitter that talks about what Government can do another from the same team about ethics and trust, and this is a question to European Governments. Sweden, as a representative of Europe regarding the individual Snowden issue who has done a great service to the global public in making this information accessible, do European countries consider him to be a whistleblower who needs to be protected? Or is he to be considered a traitor who should not receive protection?

Would any European country, any member of the Council of Europe, now be willing to grant Snowden asylum?

>> ANNE-RACHEL INNE: That's very much. So I think we're going to wrap up a little bit Jovan and then we're going to give the floor to our panelists to respond to some of the questions that we've had. Jovan?

>> JOVAN KURBALIJA: There were ‑‑ I think there was quite high level of consensus of both problems and main issues and controversies, and here are a few points.

There is agreement about the severity of the problems. I think it was equaled in all intervention comments. And also highlighted that there is a question of trust, fundamental trust, as underlying element for the success in the future development of the Internet.

Second point, I think we agreed that there are existing rules in international law that cover this issue, and there is Article 17 of the International Covenant on Political and Civil Rights saying clearly that no one should be suggested to arbitrarily or unlawful interference with his privacy and so on. The international law exists. As we know, international law is sometimes not easily applicable and then we come to the next point which was raised in many comments from Bertrand, how to apply international law. What are the procedures? And here the key words were: Checks and balances, introduce checks and balances, careful transparency, use due process, observe the rule of the law, and have institutional division as Johann from Sweden mentioned between different players in this field.

That will be the main challenge, and one can argue that maybe some new reporting mechanism of existing conventions should be introduced, or it should be introduced in universal periodical review in the work of the UN Council of Human Rights. We're speaking about the way how to implement existing rules.

There was a bit of ‑‑ there are quite a few different views about possibility of having win‑win solution or balancing act. We should act and we should aim for win‑win solution by achieving Human Rights protection through more security. But we should be equally ready to have some balancing acts, because it is reality of political life.

What are the next steps? First, we are waiting for the results of the review process in the United States. In the meantime, there are quite a few international initiatives in the UN Human Rights Council, and it will be moving on especially on the issues on protection of privacy and Data Protection.

And we should start exploring some National models like Swedish model for tackling these issues and these delicate balances between security, Human Rights and Data Protection and it was clear from all interventions the topic is extremely important and the IGF should find ways and means to continue discussion including proposal to create Dynamic Coalition dealing with these issues.

I hope it reflected in a few Tweets what was ‑‑ were underlying messages. Please.

>> I think there is one important issue that I should address, it's the liability and responsibility of technology providers. Technology providers should ensure that technology, they provide not be misused by Government so there should be any legal remedy if the technology used to suppress or to monitor the activity of activists or journalists. So there is the contract between the technology providers and Government should be cover an Article saying that the Government only use this technology for legitimate purposes, not misuse et cetera.

>> JOVAN KURBALIJA: We'll start now with our panelists answering the questions and commenting on overall discussion and also this underlying elements for possible summary of our discussion.

I think we had the most questions addressed to Scott. Scott, could you start, please?

>> SCOTT BUSBY: Thank you, Jovan.

>> JOVAN KURBALIJA: It's not surprising.

>> SCOTT BUSBY: I'm not sure I'll be able to answer them all, but I'll do my best. First of all I want to thank my Fellow panelists, commentators as well as the audience for all of your many thoughtful comments and questions. The United States Government is here in force. There are over 10 of us here. On the heels of a Government shutdown, mind you, which there was travel restrictions on virtually every U.S. Government Agency, and I hope that demonstrates to all of you not only the seriousness with which we take the IGF, but the seriousness with which we take this issue.

We intend to take back your comments, your questions, to report back to our senior leadership on what we've heard here, with the goal of ensuring that those views are taken account of in the deliberations that are now taking place in the United States.

Second of all, to Khaled who first made this point but the woman from India, as well, about the seriousness or potential lack of seriousness with which we take this issue, I don't think that President Obama and the rest of the U.S. Government is not taking this issue seriously, is trying to deflect. The President has taken extraordinary action in setting up this review Board of independent experts to give him their best advice on how the U.S. should move ahead on this issue.

As I just mentioned, the U.S. Government has come here in force knowing this issue was going to be at the heart of the discussions at this IGF and willing to engage with you, to hear you out, on this issue. So we take very seriously this issue.

With regards to transparency, which several commentators mentioned, the President has already ordered that as much transparency about what the NSA has been doing, the judicial orders relating to the NSA activities, that those be released, and indeed, you can find those online. If anyone wants to know the site where they can be found, I'd be happy to send that to them.

On Edward Snowden, I don't have anything to say on that beyond what President Obama has already said, so I would refer the questioner to what President Obama has said.

On China, on our intervention from a colleague from China, I would simply ask anyone who has questions about the Human Rights situation in China and the Human Rights situation in the United States to look at any independent Human Rights report on these issues, and draw their own conclusions. One of the best reports I think is the Freedom on the Net report issued by Freedom House. We have Freedom House here. There are copies of that report here. That report is critical of the United States, I would mind you. It's not often that a Government official refers people to a report that's critical of the United States.

I would urge people to look at that report, and draw their own conclusions.

To the Indonesian representative, the lawyer here, who asked about privacy in the United States, so interesting story here in the United States, for good or worse, we have a very old Constitution in the United States, older than most countries, and the concept of privacy actually post‑dates the creation of our Constitution.

So, yes, the concept of privacy is covered by our Constitution, but it's covered through legal interpretations of that Constitution by our Supreme Court. And there are a slew of decisions in the last century that essentially create this concept of privacy and indeed it is now considered a Constitutional right.

And lastly, there were several questions about the NSA and sort of the NSA out of control, being a state within a state. I would just urge folks to look at what the President has said. The NSA and these activities are subject to judicial review. They are subject to legislative review, and the NSA finally is subject to the command and control of our Commander in Chief, namely, the President of the United States.

So the President has said what he intends to do in this area. He has empowered a review panel to look at these issues, and we will be considering the recommendations of that review panel going forward. Thank you.

>> ANNE-RACHEL INNE: Thank you very much, Scott. Now we go on to Ross.

>> ROSS LaJEUNESSE: Thanks very much. I want to echo Scott's sentiments that I've enjoyed today's panel, and particularly enjoy hearing questions from all of you. And so I've taken a couple notes. I don't think I was as thorough as you were, Scott.

But to Jimmy's question, I appreciated that very much, about direct access versus access. It's a very good point. When I meant we don't provide direct access, what I meant is that we really don't provide access to the infrastructure. I was trying to draw distinction between that and the process I outlined that when we get a legal request from the Government, we look at it thoroughly, and so it is possible for the U.S. Government to get user data, but only through that process that I outlined in my remarks. So thank you for that clarification.

There was a comment or question from a remote participant about user trust. And that is something that we are very focused on. It really is what drives everything we do at Google, so we're incredibly concerned about the impact of users' trust on us from the Snowden revelations. It drives everything we do. It's why we spend the resources that we do on our security infrastructure, on our encryption, with search encrypted by design and Gmail being encrypted and I would make the point that I feel the cloud is certainly more secure than alternative models as Bertrand characterized it, data sovereignty, data localization. The cloud is much more secure than that model.

But this issue of user trust drives much more than our security infrastructure and our technology. It drives the work we do on Internet Governance, our membership, our founding membership in GNI, which is a third party which audits the practices of companies. It drives our development of things like Project Shield, which allows independent news sites and similar sites to take advantage of Google's own security infrastructure for those sites that have been subject to DDoS attacks and the like, and it drives our sponsorship of Civil Society and our work which we do really in each and every country in which we have an office on free expression from issues like intermediary liability in Thailand and India, to even more challenging situations in parts of Southeast Asia.

Finally, to Matthew's intervention from CDT, as Matthew well knows, we are a strong partner of CDT for pushing for greater transparency in the United States, and we see I think very clearly eye to eye on that and so I wanted to clarify Matthew's point. When I said that others are doing it too I thought I made it fairly clear about five or six times in my comments but I'm happy to say it again, I'm not trying to excuse or trivialize in any way the revelations that have come about, about U.S. surveillance but I am making the point that this is not just a U.S. issue. That this is happening everywhere around the world and I think it would be unwise of us to focus solely on the U.S. surveillance programme, and not focus on the very real challenges that are occurring everywhere else around the world.

So that was may point and I thank Matthew for giving me the opportunity to clarify that. And I think as I'm checking my notes, that was it. But someone correct me if I'm wrong.

>> ANNE-RACHEL INNE: Thanks very much, Ross. Next on our panel is Johann.

>> JOHANN HALLENBORG: Okay. Thank you very much. A couple of points from me, as well. There was a question about the powerful tools and resources if that has prompted any change in our society and any legislation. And the answer in my country is: Yes, it certainly has because that has created an all‑new way of looking at this, of course.

And around 10 years ago, discussions intensified in my country on how to find the right legislative framework for this, an area which largely were unregulated before, and so after long negotiations, a draft law was presented. It was thrown out of Parliament, wasn't approved, back to Government. Again the second draft wasn't approved, because of the Parliament felt that the protections for privacy were not good enough.

And the third draft eventually was approved in 2009. This law applies equally to everyone, every citizen. There was a question about not making a difference between different nationalities. It applies equally to Swedes and non‑Swedes. And it includes a fair amount of special mechanisms to protect individuals' privacy. Amongst other things, it includes a special court which takes a decision in every case of signals surveillance.

This law is now being put to the test in the European court of Human Rights. It's being challenged, and we welcome this of course. We welcome to hear if the court in Strasbourg finds it lives up to the standards of the European Convention on Human Rights.

There was a comment on Article 17 of the ICCPR. It is true, it establishes the fundamental right to respect for private life, which is I believe the accurate wording. We believe there may very well be reasons to look at Article 17 and see how we can increase our understanding of how Article 17 should be interpreted.

There are a number of different ways to do that, and we're currently engaging in Geneva and in New York to find ways of promoting the best way forward.

Finally, a few comments were made on the Swedish model. I'm not sure I really know what that would be, but if it refers to the fundamental principles that my Minister outlined last week, we are more than happy to discuss on the basis of those the way to go forward. And indeed, those principles are integrated in our law and in our framework, so in a way, it will ‑‑ I suppose it does represent the Swedish model.

Finally, I am not representing any other country than may own country here on this panel, so I am not in a position to speak on behalf of Council of Europe Member States or European Union Member States when it comes to Edward Snowden. I can just conclude that his Human Rights should be respected, period, regardless of the label that you give him. Thank you very much.

>> ANNE-RACHEL INNE: Thank you, Johann. Joana, you've heard most of the comments. Would you like to say something more?

>> JOANA VARON: I just would like to make some remarks for us to include the comments on Mr. Bollow in this panel report because I believe it's an important Human Rights issue and we're only here debating surveillance because of them. And I'd like to ask Scott and the U.S. Government to give further thoughts about this. That it seems penalties for whistleblowers are getting worse and worse, and I'm not referring only to Snowden.

A person who leaked the information about the war in Iraq is in jail with a 35‑year sentence after remaining for three years without a sentence and according to notes from The Guardian that I quote here, "Manning’s three‑and‑a‑half‑decades jail term is unprecedentedly long for someone convicted of leaking U.S. government documents. Compare, for example, the ten years received by Charles Graner, the most severely punished of those held responsible for the Abu Ghraib torture in Iraq." So the jail is not only talking in Russia.

These people had normal importance for the countries we believe today are being severely punished and in a dilemma between being traitor to a nation and providing openness and important information to the world, I think that most of people here with good faith and will would go for traitor. So that's it.

>> ANNE-RACHEL INNE: Thanks, Joana. So we've heard quite a few things, and I think we're going to give a few seconds to ‑‑ minutes to our commenters to respond. And we're going to start with Ambassador Fonseca. Is the mic around?

>> BENEDICTO FONSECA FILHO: Thank you. And very briefly much has been said and I don't have much to add, just also in reaction to what was proposed and the question that was formulated by Raul Echeberria from LACNIC, I would like to comment that the Swedish model, not the Swedish model, but the points that were raised by your Minister of External Relations at the civil conference really provide a very good basis for our work in regard to the issue of privacy in relation to security, which is of course one of the focus areas and core areas of the speech our President delivered at the United Nations. So we'd be comfortable in working within this framework.

But just to recall that we have proposed and the President has proposed we should aim at having a larger set of principles, and taking into account a huge amount of work that has already been done in that regard within different contexts, it has been mentioned the Council of Europe, we could refer to our OECD so we have a different set of principles but of limited in scope of participation so we are aiming at something of global nature that would encapsulate the core norms and agreed principles that should guide us through.

And just reiterate the invitation and the call for participation in the Brazilian meeting to be held next year. And if you allow me just a very brief comment in regard to this, I was referring before to the kind of misunderstandings that sometimes occur, and the President has termed this meeting as a "Summit," and it must be understood that from the point of view of Government, what we are aiming at is at a very high‑level event that would wishfully be able to make kind of decision that could impact on the work we are doing.

So this is the meaning of saying a "Summit." It should not be interpreted as meaning it's something exclusively for Governments. I think this is the kind of conceptual difference that sometimes must be spelled out. When we say "Summit," we mean a meeting that will be ‑‑ will have authority enough to make decisions. And at the same time, the President clearly also spelled out that she would expect Civil Society, private society, all stakeholders to be represented, and I would dare to say on an equal level as regard any decision‑making process that might be ‑‑ might take place at that point, which we aim of course at some kind of consensus.

So this is just very briefly to reiterate something I said before, and to specify that as we go back, our President is due in the next few days to make an announcement on the basis of everything we heard and the very important inputs we have received and ideas that were presented here. I would not at this point like to anticipate anything the President will say. I think sometimes we like to interpret what she has meant. I think it's as a disciplined civil servant I would prefer the President herself to spell out.

Of course, this will not be a decision or anything made in isolation but fully taking into account the multistakeholder aspect we want. But as the host of the meeting, I think it would be the President's prerogative to decide for example on the Summit aspect or not and this is something we will invite all to be there, and again the announcement to be made in next few days. Thank you very much.

>> JOVAN KURBALIJA: We'll have a few treats if it is possible Nick and Bertrand and we have one comment. We're closing the Plenary Session and the comments, we're wrapping up and if it is of relevance for the wrapping up comments that we will hear.

Please.

>> BERTRAND DE LA CHAPELLE: Thank you, Jovan. I wanted to reaffirm one element that after this panel, it is clear that the answer to excessive surveillance cannot be the proliferation of National frameworks establishing data sovereignty but rather increased oversight and increased due process respect and assessment of the impact of transboundary action or impact assessment for any National measures that has a transboundary action. Thank you.

>> JOVAN KURBALIJA: Nick, please.

>> NICK ASHTON-HART: Thank you also for inviting me to speak in general. One thing that struck me here is that I think we have many different National approaches to surveillance and the protection of individuals in relation to it, but very little have I found published that actually spells out and contrasts the different choices countries have made, and the reasons why they have made them.

I know in Latin America, recent very serious Human Rights violations by security services in living memory have made this issue particularly sensitive in that region, for example, and in Switzerland I know we had a similar scandal in the '90s that has greatly changed the way surveillance is conducted by Switzerland and we've heard a bit about the Swedish protections.

Perhaps it would be useful to have more clarity and be able to compare different systems and understand the choices that they made, and I would say also, the interparliamentary Union in Geneva, the home of the world's Parliaments, perhaps should discuss this issue to see if the world's Parliaments can share information, understand each other better, and perhaps that would help.

>> JOVAN KURBALIJA: Thank you, Nick. We'll have a Chinese colleague, and after that we'll be closing discussion. Otherwise I will be declared persona non grata by the IGF Organising Committee. I just received a letter from Markus. Please.

>> REN YISHENG: Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, for giving me the floor for the second time. I'll be very brief. First of all, I'd like to clarify. This morning we discussed issues on surveillance, so the Chinese Delegation while making the point quoted a well‑known case, but I don't know why the U.S. speaker is so sensitive to our intervention. He's not here. If he's here, he has to explain to us why he's so sensitive to that.

Secondly, the Human Rights condition situation in China is well known by the Chinese. The Chinese has every right to explain that. Other country has no right to comment on China's Human Rights. The universality of Internet in China, we have almost 600 million netizens in China, much more than the population of the U.S. We have more than 300 millions of users of social media. It's almost the same population of U.S.

Every day, people are posting things on microblogs, blogs. More than 200 million people doing that. Therefore, Chinese also enjoy a full freedom of speech, but any information shall not infringe the society. You have to abide the basic code of conduct, moral conduct, and also you are not allowed to spread any information that will harm National Security. Also, you are not allowed to spread groundless rumors online.

Last but not least, let me say one thing: Every year, U.S. Government publish Human Rights situation or status of more than 200 countries in the world. He recommend us to read that. However, he neglected one thing: The U.S. Government never published Human Rights status report of its own country, but the Chinese Government has done that for the U.S. Government, and for free.

China's state Council's information office publish annual report of U.S. Human Rights status. You're welcome to access. All the information are collected publicly from the U.S. media.

>> JOVAN KURBALIJA: ‑‑ periodical review which is useful mechanism to comparing various situations worldwide when it comes to the Human Rights as what we heard.

We are ‑‑ well, just a half Tweet.

>> ALEX COMNINOS: My name is Alex. I'm from the Internet. It seems people in this room are concerned about eaves dropping so I would just like to point out if you registered online to attend the IGF, you have leaked your personal information including date of birth, ID number or passport number, and residential address, e‑mail address, full name. So defenses against these type of things really do start at home. You can see it on the APC website, APC.org. Thank you kindly. Bye.

>> ANNE-RACHEL INNE: Thank you very much.

>> My name is Juan Carlos. I'm from Brazil. Everyone is still under the perplexity of the size and the rich of American intelligence and many are making decisions in the heart of emotion and it's this that worries me. Decisions that are taken so passionately, decisions under the scenario generally does not so passionate and generally are hurting our hearts. I'm definitely not wanting to give away any right in exchange for security. That's all.

>> JOVAN KURBALIJA: Closing the session with a poem, an artistic expression of overall discussion.

>> ANNE-RACHEL INNE: So what we're going to do right now, I think we're going to have Jovan remained us a little bit some of the points that were raised here in answering if you remember some of the questions that we had that Markus read that the session was also supposed to address.

And I would like to simply say that I think this session is one that is again Building Bridges. This is the start of discussions and I know that I've seen a few Tweets where people are saying we're not satisfied because there aren't really answers. And I don't think anybody expected really that we would have answers here this morning.

But at least conversations have started. You know, the start of a bridge is being built as Ambassador Fonseca said, one of our next meetings will be in Brazil, and that could be a place where at least some general principles could be agreed upon, and then it will be up to all of us to actually just like the other general and global principles that we have, to make sure that we adhere to those. Jovan?

>> JOVAN KURBALIJA: With the risk of confronting Twitter community which is not a wise thing to do, I have to admit that there were quite a few answers and quite a few useful insights. We heard about experiences within Brazil, quite a few suggestions.

There is agreement that there are international rules that cover these issues, and quite a few concrete suggestions how we can implement these rules, through due process checks and balances.

Therefore, I would say that I personally feel quite comfortable with advancement of our discussion, much more than expected before the session. And as you know, these problems are complex and they're so called big problems. You don't have a quick fix. There are many aspects, security, Human Rights, ethical, business that should be addressed. Markus gave us 7 questions at the beginning of the session which were questions posed through the public consultation.

And we answered all of those questions, and even added quite a few more questions. Therefore, we will be having an interesting discussion. And if I can conclude with one point with a famous quote, don't waste a crisis. It seems we're not going to waste this crisis and that at least based on your inputs and panelist inputs, there is a serious determination and responsibility to do something useful for Internet as a whole, and for humanity, first of all to avoid the situation like this one with NSA case, but also to prevent similar situations happening worldwide.

Therefore, there is an opportunity that we shouldn't miss, and I think quite a few players around the world are moving in that direction, to create space, ideas, and proposals that could make Internet even more powerful tool for enabling of the social and economic development worldwide.

Thank you.

>> MARKUS KUMMER: Let me just add a quick word: I think the discussion, A, was certainly very interesting. This is a sensitive issue on top of the agenda. And I think again, the IGF proved its value and its worth, and this kind of discussion clearly is best held in a multistakeholder setting.

And I think it will not be over and we will revisit it at the next IGF. With that, Mr. Chairman, over to you to close the meeting.

>> SETYANTO SANTOSA: Thank you, Markus. Thank you also, Madam Anne‑Rachel and Jovan, for moderating this opening discussion on emerging issues with focusing mainly on approaching the role of security, surveillance, transparency and privacy issues. If I may value this session, it's really the top of the top session of the IGF 2013. If you look at the response from the floor and also they say all the ideas.

As a piece of information that Indonesia also aware of positive impact of Internet as a means of economic development. However, it has become increasingly concerned over the impact of access of information and has demonstrated an interest in increasing its control of offensive online content, particularly pornographic and anti‑Islam online content. The government regulates such content through legal and regulatory framework and through partnership with the ISP, Internet service provider and also the Internet cafe. Meanwhile the telecommunication 99 also prohibit the wire tapping of communication necessary for obtaining evidence for criminal investigation. So ladies and gentlemen, this is my first IGF engagement, with more especially in Bali 2013 from 109 countries so let us wait for our next IGF 2014, wherever it will be held. I think we should come and really I enjoyed this familihood circumstances and it's really a kind of the spirit of multistakeholder cooperation of world community. With a statement I would like to conclude this meeting and again thank you for excellent moderating, and thank you also to our panelists and all participants for this valuable discussion. I hope you enjoy your stay in Bali, Indonesia. For those of you who will leave before the Closing Ceremony, I wish you have a pleasant and safe trip back home.

Please join me to give a big hand to all the panelists and moderators.

[ Applause ]

I return the floor to Mr. Markus Kummer.

>> MARKUS KUMMER: Nothing to add. We resume at 2:30 for the open microphone "Taking Stock" session.

[ End of session ]

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/news/igf-2013-october-25-taking-stock-emerging-issues

Taking Cognisance of the Deeply Flawed System That Is Aadhaar

praskrishna — 2017-05-19T14:52:58Z

Aadhaar and its many connotations have grown to be among the most burning issues on the Indian fore today, that every citizen aware of their rights should be taking note of.

The article by Shreyashi Roy was published in the Wire on May 10, 2017.

With the leak of 130 million Aadhaar numbers recently coming to light, several activists, lawyers and ordinary citizens are up in arms about what is increasingly being viewed as a government surveillance system. Keeping this in mind, on Tuesday, May 9, Software Freedom Law Centre India (SFLC) hosted an event that brought together a panel to clearly articulate the dangers of Aadhaar and to discuss whether the biometric identification system is capable of being reformed.

SFLC is a donor-supported legal services organisation that calls itself a protector of civil liberties in the digital age.

Titled ‘Revisiting Aadhaar: Law, Tech and Beyond’, the discussion, with several eminent personalities who have in-depth knowledge of Aadhaar and its working, threw light on the various problems that have cropped up with regard to India’s unique identification system. The discussion was moderated by Saikat Datta, policy director at Centre for Internet and Society, which published the report that studied the third-party leaks of Aadhaar numbers and other personal data.

The leaks

The discussion took off from the point of the leaks, with Srinivas Kodali, a panelist and one of the authors of the report, explaining his methodology for the study that proved that the Aadhaar database lacked the security required when dealing with private information of people. He highlighted the fact that during the course of his research, he had noticed several leaks from government websites and notified the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) about the same. Yet, at every step, UIDAI continued to deny and reject the possibility of this happening. Kodali says, however, that he had noticed that the websites that were unknowingly leaking data were, in fact, fixing the leaks after being notified without acknowledging that the leak had happened in the first place. Kodali reiterated at the discussion, as in his report, that a simple tweaking of URL query parameters of the National Social Assistance Programme website could unmask and display private information. Unfortunately, UIDAI cannot be brought to task for unknowingly leaking information because there is no such provision.

He also addressed the question of the conflict of interest that existed in the entire system of building Aadhaar, which was created by developers who later left the UIDAI and built their own private companies, monetising the mine of private information that they were sitting on. Kodali blames UIDAI for this even being allowed, since the developers, though clearly lacking ethics, were in fact, merely volunteers.

The system

One of the glaring issues with the technology behind Aadhaar is that the software is not open source. Anivar Aravind, a panelist, called it “defected by design” and “bound to fail” because not only is the technology completely untested but there are very obvious leaks that are taking place. Moreover, UIDAI does not allow any third-party audits or any other persons to look at the technology. Datta pointed to the fact that this is unheard of in other nations, where software is routinely subjected to penetration testing and hacking experts are called upon to check how secure a database is.

Anupam Saraph, another panelist and future designer, illuminated the creation of the Aadhaar database, pointing out that this is a system less about identification and more about verification. All of the verification, moreover, has been done by private parties, making the database itself suspect and leaving everyone’s private information loose at the time of enrolment. In addition, Aadhaar was meant for all residents and not just citizens. But now there is a mix of both, creating confusion in many aspects. Saraph also brought up how one rogue agency with access to all this information could pose an actual national security threat, unlike all the requests for information on breaches that the government keeps pointing fingers at. Referring to Nandan Nilekani’s statement about Aadhaar not being like AIDS, Saraph pointed out that it was exactly like it because much like the body, which cannot distinguish between an invasion and itself, the Aadhaar system is not being able to distinguish between aliens and citizens and has begun denying the latter benefits.

The Supreme Court has declared time and again that Aadhaar cannot be made mandatory, but the government continues to – in complete disregard of the apex court’s judgment – insist on Aadhaar for a multitude of schemes. More and more schemes are being made unavailable without the existence of an Aadhaar number as the government continues to function in a complete lack of cognisance of the fact that the poor are losing out on something as basic as their food because of a number. Prasanna S., an advocate and a panelist, called it a “voluntary but mandatory” system that is becoming an evidence collection mechanism. Moreover, everything is connected through this one number, making many options like financial fraud, selective treatment of citizens and other horrors possible. The collection of all this information is not dangerous, screams the government. Maybe not in the hands of this one. But what of the next? What of rogues?

The legal aspect

One of the panelists was Shyam Divan, a senior advocate of the Supreme Court, who has represented petitioners fighting against Aadhaar. Divan spoke about how along with a group of advocates he has been trying to get the apex court to rule on the issue but has been met with long queues before a ruling can be procured. He addressed the right to privacy aspect of the system and the recent declaration that the citizen does not have the absolute right to the body. He emphasised that the government cannot own the body and that for a free and democratic society, a limited government, instead of an all-knowing and all-seeing government, is essential. Unfortunately for India, there is no express right to privacy in the constitution, but that does not mean that rights can be taken away in exchange for a fingerprint. It is the government’s duty to respect privacy. For him, Aadhaar has become an instrument of oppression and exclusion, a point that Prasanna also agreed with, calling it a “systematic attack on consent”.

There is complete agreement that there has been a railroading of consent in this entire matter if Aadhaar being passed forcibly through the Lok Sabha as a money bill is anything to go by. If parliament’s consent can be disregarded in that fashion, what is an ordinary citizen to do in the face of this complete imbalance of power in the state’s hand?

Usha Ramanathan, a legal researcher and a long-time critic of Aadhaar, spoke about how India has turned into a state where there are more restrictions than fundamental rights, rather than the other way around. She related how there was no clarity at the beginning of Aadhaar of how it would be a card or a number and was never a government project in the first place. This is a private sector ambition that the government has jumped on board with, without considering that the private sector does not concern itself with civil liberties. As other panelists also pointed out, the private sector cannot and will not protect public interest. This is the job of the government, especially in an age of digitisation. But Aadhaar compromises the ability of the state to stand up for its citizens.

With June 30 approaching fast, many of those who have so far abstained from enrolling in the system are considering giving up their rebellion and going like sheep to get themselves registered in the database. In the words of Divan, they will have to “volunteer compulsorily for an Aadhaar”. The government is probably counting on this. Turning to the Supreme Court has been of no help, although a verdict can be hoped for in a couple of weeks. But what can we do if they rule for the government?

Some of the panelists are on board with the idea of a civil disobedience movement, a kind of a rebellion against Aadhaar. Some suggested thinking of out-of-the-box ways to register one’s protest and dissent against what is clearly becoming the architecture of a surveillance state. Saraph was particularly vehement about the need to completely destroy the Aadhaar database – “shred it”.

What all the panelists emphasised repeatedly was that there can be no improvements to a system that is so deeply flawed and that has had so many “teething problems” that are making millions suffer. The main takeaway from the discussion was that Aadhaar must see a speedy demise because it cannot be saved and cannot persist in its current state.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/the-wire-may-10-2017-shreyashi-roy-taking-cognisance-of-the-deeply-flawed-system-that-is-aadhaar

Take charge of Facebook

praskrishna — 2011-06-06T08:16:19Z

Want to take control of your data and the way you use your Facebook account? Then try these tricks, writes Shweta Taneja.

When Tejas Pande, a 23-year-old Bangalore-based information technology professional, heard about a workshop called Facebook Resistances at the Centre for Internet and Society (www.cis-india.org) in the city, he signed up without thinking twice. "I spend almost 10 hours every day logged in to my Facebook account. Its fixed rituals were getting to me. So I wanted to find out how I can take more control of my account and make it more personal."

The workshop, which was conducted by Marc Stumpel, a new media researcher and privacy advocate from Amsterdam, the Netherlands, had the same concerns. Stumpel’s workshop, which has travelled across the world from Barcelona and Berlin to Bangalore, is a research initiative that looks at changing the rules and functionality of Facebook. "We want to change your experience of the site and make it more personal," he says, adding, “We also want you to safeguard your privacy in the Facebook world." All this, he says, is possible through add-ons to your Internet browser. “People just need to know what these cracks are."

With more than 600 million active users, Facebook has become prone to attacks from hackers. Problems such as identity theft and malicious bot messages or status update worms are becoming common. Other than that, privacy concerns which have wracked Facebook since its inception continue to be controversial despite the "controls" it now offers.

The main reason for this is that the social networking mammoth keeps on pushing new features or changes constantly and rapidly, even before we can understand the ones that already exist. "Most often we don’t get a chance to opt in to new features, and can only opt out if they get our attention," explains Stumpel. This leads to a loss of control over personal data and what Facebook can do with it.

To prevent this, it’s necessary to keep going back to those account settings and make full use of whatever control Facebook offers at any point. Here are some of the latest ways you can protect your online identity.

Log out of multiple sessions

How many times have you logged into Facebook from an Internet café or a friend’s mobile phone and forgotten to log out? Every time you do that, even though you close the browsing window or application at the end, Facebook keeps your session open, making you vulnerable to mischief. Now you can log into your account and see a list of active sessions with their details, which include the login time, device name, the approximate location of the login based on IP address, and browser and operating system. If some of them are unauthorized or you are unaware of these activities, shut them immediately and reset your password.

Take control now: In your Facebook account, go to Account > Account Settings > Account Security > Account Activity > Also Active. Facebook lists all your active, open browsers in the Also Active list. Click on End Activity on the unwanted ones. You can also take control of which gadgets you log on from with the Login Approvals feature that comes under Account Security. This feature lets you put a code alert, which can then be SMSed to your mobile phone as soon as you log in from an unrecognized computer. This will alert you in case there’s been a login from a source you don’t know about.

Avoid the unwanted photo tag

Did a friend just put your drunk as hell photograph, wearing a "I hate my boss" T-shirt and making an obscene gesture, online? And did your boss and wife see it and blast you for irresponsibility? Other than the embarrassment, you may get into trouble at home or at work because of friends tagging inane photographs they clicked somewhere you don’t remember.If it’s not photographs, it’s minor irritants such as social or festive messages that you unexpectedly get tagged in. Avoid such irritants with a simple click.

Take control now: Go to Account > Privacy Settings > Sharing on Facebook. Click on ‘Customize settings’. In the page that pops up, choose in each option who can see and comment on things you share, things on your Wall and things you’re tagged in.

Secure your account

Hacking is increasingly a problem on Facebook. The reason is that on most of the networks, Facebook (unlike email clients) works on an unsecured connection (http) and not a secure one (https). Now the social networking site gives you an option to choose a secure site for logging and browsing. You can also choose one-time passwords when logging into Facebook from a public connection.

Take control now: Go to Account > Account Settings> Account Security > Secure Browsing. Tick on Browse Facebook on a Secure Connection (https) whenever possible. In case you are using a public computer, take the option of Facebook One-time Passwords. Text "OTP" to 32665 on your mobile phone and you will get a new one-time password which expires within 20 minutes.

Stop Facebook from haunting you online

Baffled when your Facebook profile image pops up every time you are reading a news site or a travel website online asking you to "Like" a news or review since another friend from Facebook does? Or surprised when you are browsing a travel website and your friends’ photographs pop up suddenly, saying they have been there and "Recommend" a hotel or site? Facebook has partnered with some websites to, as it delicately puts it, "provide you with great, personalized experiences the moment you arrive, such as immediately playing the music you like or displaying friends’ reviews”. Basically if you are logged in to Facebook, these sites can take information from your account and display it and also tell you which of your friends have visited that particular city earlier. If you wish to stop Facebook from haunting you everywhere you go online on your browser, act now.

Take control now: To block a third party, go to Account > Privacy Settings > Apps and Websites> Instant Personalization. Deselect Enable Instant Personalization to stop getting these subtle suggestions from Facebook.

Cut off the ads

A Facebook friend, Mr-I-Like-Everything, "Likes" yet another page and it pops up as a suggestion on the right side of your profile. If you have been on Facebook long enough, chances are one of the "Sponsored" pages has been shoved under your nose at least once. These little ad blurbs which keep popping up on the right-hand side corner, or underneath your apps on the left side of your page, are a mix of advertisements as well as Facebook’s way of further profiling you. Facebook calls them “Suggestions” that add to your social personality, but they are just ads. The good news is that you can now block these permanently.

Take control now: What you need is an ad-blocking add-on for your browser. The best in the market is GreaseMonkey, which works as an add-on for Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, Opera and Internet Explorer. Run it and you will be able to customize the way your Facebook page is displayed or behaves by using small bits of JavaScript. On your browser, go to Tools > Add-ons > GreaseMonkey. Click install. Once the basic add-on is installed, it will direct you to http://userscripts.org, which is an open-source, online space for free scripts that can be installed into GreaseMonkey. Find Remove All Facebook Ads in the list and install it. Google Chrome has a basic extension which is called Hide Facebook Ads, which effectively blocks the ads on your Facebook page.

Customize your Facebook page

Bored to death with the classic Facebook blue and white? There’s help at hand to see your Facebook page in a new, stylized version.

Take control now: Download and install an add-on called Stylish in Mozilla Firefox. Then go to Userstyles.org and choose a theme you want to install. Click on Load Into Stylish. Once the theme is successfully loaded, choose it from a small icon on the right corner and activate the theme. Refresh and enjoy the new look.

Block unwanted applications

How does an application you haven’t given access to know your birth date? The answer is your friends. Even though your settings might be sealed and set, you are vulnerable if your friends don’t care who’s accessing their information—and most of them don’t. Applications on Facebook can harvest not only a person’s birth of date or city of residence, but also that of their friends. As Facebook writes, the applications "may access any information you have made visible to Everyone as well as your publicly available information". Publicly available information "includes your Name, Profile Picture, Gender, Current City, Networks, Friend List, and Pages". Facebook offers a way for you to control what your friends can share about you with these applications. It’s a well-hidden section under Accounts called Facebook Ads.

Take control now: To check which applications are using what from your profile, go to Account > Privacy Settings > Apps and Websites. Block any of the apps you haven’t used for a couple of months and don’t remember when you gave access to. Cut down the information accessible to other applications through your friends by unmarking under "Info accessible through your friends". If you don’t want the "suggestions" that Facebook makes about the pages that your friends "Like", go to Account > Account Settings > Facebook Ads. Choose "No one" for both “Ads shown by third Parties" as well as "Ads and friends".

Remove yourself from Facebook & Google Search

Now you can avoid unwanted attention from generic Google and Facebook name searches with a simple privacy setting to turn off your public visibility.

Take control now: Go to Account > Privacy Settings > Connecting on Facebook. Click on View Settings and under it, and in the options under "Search for you on Facebook", select Friends or Friends of Friends.

Add a dislike button

Tired of no option but to "Like" comments, links and silly photos on Facebook? Now you can install a Dislike button to show your hatred of everything inane that people put on your wall.

Take control now: The Dislike button comes with an add-on called Facebook Dislike 1.2.3 by Thomas Moquet. It works on both Google Chrome and Firefox. Remember that you are the only one who will see that button. For your friends to see what you dislike, they need to install it too.

Illustration by Raajan/Mint

Write to us at businessoflife@livemint.com

This article first appeared in the Business of Life, Mint. The copyright of this article rests with Mint and no part of can be reproduced without prior permission. Please log on to http://www.livemint.com/articles/2011/05/24210434/Take-charge-of-Facebook.html.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/news/take-charge-of-facebook

T20 Regional Consultation Meeting

praskrishna — 2015-10-19T01:17:54Z

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/t20-regional-consultation-meeting

Syllabus: “Policy and regulation conducive to rapid ICT sector growth in Myanmar: An introductory course”

praskrishna — 2013-10-24T03:56:31Z

A five-day course is being offered by LIRNEasia in collaboration with Myanmar ICT Development Organization, with support from the Open Society Foundation and the International Development Research Centre of Canada in Myanmar from September 28 to October 5, 2013.

Sunil Abraham will be supporting Prof. Samarajiva on the last optional day of this course in Yangon. Read about the Introductory course on “Policy and regulation conducive to rapid ICT sector growth in Myanmar”

Goal

To enable members of Myanmar civil-society groups (including academics and those from the media) to marshal available research and evidence for effective participation in policy and regulatory processes, thereby improving policy processes and helping achieve the government’s objective of providing ICT access to all.

Outcomes

The objective of the course is to produce discerning and knowledgeable consumers of research who are able to engage in an informed manner in ICT policy and regulatory processes in Myanmar. The course will benefit those working in government and operators as well.

At the end of the course attendees will:

Have an understanding of telecom policy and regulatory processes
Be able to find and assess relevant research & evidence
Be able to summarize the research in a coherent and comprehensive manner
Have the necessary tools to improve their communication skills

- Have some understanding of how media functions and how to effectively interact with media

Assignments

Participants will be formed into teams on Day1. Each group will work on an assignment that addresses both substantive and procedural aspects of law, policy and regulation. Teams will be assigned topic areas that are being developed into regulations under the new Act. They will have to make presentations on what the desirable provisions should be. We will emphasize the procedural aspects as well as the substantive. Disciplined and focused team presentations, preferably using slides, are required.

It is necessary to use the Internet for the assignments. All who have laptops are encouraged to bring them. Arrangements will be made for Internet connectivity at the hotel.

Tentative topic areas

Licensing and authorization regulations
Essential facilities and anti-competitive practices
Universal service policy
Price and quality regulation
Independence of regulatory agency

Course schedule

	Day 1 (September 28)	Day 2 (September 29)	Day 3 (September 30)	Day4 (October 1)	Day 5 (October 2) (optional)
09:00-10:30	S1 Introduction to course: What have been the results of reform & rationale for regulation. Rohan Samarajiva (RS)	S5 Regulatory legitimacy, including procedural legitimacy (RS)	S10 Challenges of monitoring complex license commitments (HG)	S14 How does the Internet work? (TBA)	S16 Internet governance The big picture. Sunil Abraham (SA)
10:30-11:00	Break	Break	Break	Break
11:00-12:00	S2 Interrogating supply-side indicators & research based on them. Helani Galpaya (HG)	S6 Current status of telecom law and policy in Myanmar (RS)	S11 How evidence is used in policy & regulation (panel discussion, KS, RS	S15 The art of media interaction (RS)	S17 Economic & technical interface with telecom industry (RS)
12:00-13:00	S3 Finding information on the web. Roshanthi Lucas Gunaratne (RLG)	S7 Presenting evidence in slides & written submissions (HG)	S12 Essential facilities and anti-competitive practices (RS)	A3 Mock public hearing (RS & panel)	S18 How Internet is governed within India (SA)
13:00-14:00	Lunch	Lunch	Lunch	Lunch
14:00-15:00	A1 Group formation; Assignment explained (HG and RLG)	S8 Licensing and authorization (RS)	A2 Midpoint check on assignment/group work (HG and RLG)	A4 Mock public hearing & critique (RS & panel)	S19 Content regulation (TBA)
15:00-15:30	Break	Break	Break
15:30-17:00	S4 Demand-side research (RS)	S9 Price and quality regulation (RS & HG)	S13 Universal service subsidies: Theory & practice (RS & KS)	Reflection on the course	S20 Surveillance & privacy (SA & RS)
17:00	Group work	Group work	Group work
19:00	Welcome dinner Speaker: TBA

Faculty

Sunil Abraham is the Executive Director of CIS. He is also a social entrepreneur and Free Software advocate. He founded Mahiti in 1998 which aims to reduce the cost and complexity of Information and Communication Technology for the Voluntary Sector by using Free Software. Today, Mahiti employs more than 50 engineers and Sunil continues to serve on the board as a board member. Sunil was elected an Ashoka fellow in 1999 to 'explore the democratic potential of the Internet' and was granted a Sarai FLOSS fellowship in 2003. Between June 2004 and June 2007, he managed the International Open Source Network, a project of the UNDP's Asia-Pacific Development Information Programme serving 42 countries in the Asia-Pacific region. Between September 2007 and June 2008, he also managed ENRAP, an electronic network of International Fund for Agricultural Development projects in the Asia-Pacific facilitated and co-funded by International Development Research Centre, Canada.

Helani Galpaya is LIRNEasia’s Chief Executive Officer. Helani leads LIRNEasia’s 2012-2014 IDRC funded research on improving customer life cycle management practices in the delivery of electricity and e-government services using ICTs. She recently completed an assessment of how the poor in Bangladesh and Sri Lanka use telecenters to access government services. For UNCTAD and GTZ she authored a report on how government procurement practices can be used to promote a country’s ICT sector and for the World Bank/InfoDev Broadband Toolkit, a report on broadband strategies in Sri Lanka. She has been an invited speaker at various international forums on topics ranging from m-Government to ICT indicators to communicating research to policy makers. Prior to LIRNEasia, Helani worked at the ICT Agency of Sri Lanka, implementing the World-Bank funded e-Sri Lanka initiative. Prior to her return to Sri Lanka, she worked in the United States at Booz & Co., Marengo Research, Citibank, and Merrill Lynch. Helani holds a Masters in Technology and Policy from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and a Bachelor’s in Computer Science from Mount Holyoke College, USA.

Roshanthi Lucas Gunaratne is a Research Manager at LIRNEasia and is currently managing the Ford Foundation Funded project on Giving Broadband Access to the Poor in India. She is also contributing to the IDRC Customer Lifecycle Management Practices Project by conducting research on customer lifecycle management practices in telecommunication sector in Bangladesh. Before joining LIRNEasia, Roshanthi worked at the Global Fund to fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, Geneva, Switzerland as a Strategic Information Officer. She contributed to the process of defining the Global Fund Key Performance Indicators, and also worked on improving the performance measurements of their grants. Prior to that, she worked as a telecom project manager at Dialog Telecom, and Suntel Ltd in Sri Lanka. As Suntel she managed the design and implementation of corporate customer projects. She holds a MBA from the Judge Business School, University of Cambridge, UK and a BSc. Eng (Hons) specializing in Electronics and Telecommunication from the University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka.

Rajat Kathuria, PhD

Rohan Samarajiva, PhD, is founding Chair of LIRNEasia, an ICT policy and regulation think tank active across emerging Asian and Pacific economies. He was Team Leader at the Sri Lanka Ministry for Economic Reform, Science and Technology (2002-04) responsible for infrastructure reforms, including participation in the design of the USD 83 million e-Sri Lanka Initiative. He was Director General of Telecommunications in Sri Lanka (1998-99), a founder director of the ICT Agency of Sri Lanka (2003-05), Honorary Professor at the University of Moratuwa in Sri Lanka (2003-04), Visiting Professor of Economics of Infrastructures at the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands (2000-03) and Associate Professor of Communication and Public Policy at the Ohio State University in the US (1987-2000). Dr. Samarajiva was also Policy Advisor to the Ministry of Post and Telecom in Bangladesh (2007-09).

Koesmarihati Sugondo

Resource Material

infodev, ICT regulation toolkit. http://www.ictregulationtoolkit.org/en/Index.html

infoDev. Broadband strategies toolkit. http://broadbandtoolkit.org/en/toolkit/contents

infoDev (2011). Tenth anniversary telecom regulation handbook. http://www.infodev.org/En/Publication.1057.html

ITU (2011). The role of ICT in advancing growth in least developed countries: Trends, challenges and opportunities. Geneva: ITU. http://www.itu.int/ITU-D/ldc/turkey/docs/The_Role_of_ICT_in_Advancing_Growth_in_LDCs_Trends_Challenges_and_Opportunities.pdf

Samarajiva, Rohan (2000). The role of competition in institutional reform of telecommunications: Lessons from Sri Lanka, Telecommunications Policy, 24(8/9): 699-717. http://www.comunica.org/samarajiva.html

Samarajiva, Rohan (2002). Why regulate?, chapter 2 of Effective regulation: Trends in Telecommunication Reform 2002. Geneva: International Telecommunication Union.

Samarajiva, Rohan (2006). Preconditions for effective deployment of wireless technologies for development in the Asia-Pacific, Information Technology and International Development, 3(2): 57-71. http://itidjournal.org/itid/article/view/224/94

Samarajiva, Rohan & Zainudeen, Ayesha (2008). ICT infrastructure in emerging Asia: Policy and regulatory roadblocks, New Delhi & Ottawa: Sage & IDRC http://www.idrc.ca/en/ev-117916-201-1-DO_TOPIC.html

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/news/policy-and-regulation-conducive-to-rapid-ict-growth-in-myanmar

Swatantra 2014: Fifth International Free Software Conference, Kerala

praskrishna — 2014-12-28T02:44:19Z

ICFOSS, Govt. of Kerala organized the fifth international Free Software Conference at Hotel Hycinth by Sparsa, Trivandrum from December 18 - 20, 2014. The Centre for Internet and Society was one of the organizations supporting the event. Prof. Subbiah Arunachalam was a speaker and made a presentation on Open Science.

Click to download Prof. Arunachalam's presentation on Open Science here. For more details see the ICFOSS web page. T. Vishnu Vardhan chaired a session on Wikimedia and Access to Knowledge in India and Rahimanuddin Shaik co-presented on Making DLI Accessible. The programme schedule can be seen here.

Theme: Free Software for a Free World

About Swatantra 2014

After India's first-ever Free Software event, “Freedom First!” that was convened in Trivandrum in 2001, Kerala had organized international Free Software conferences in 2005, 2008, and 2011. These conferences were an occasion to highlight Kerala's achievements in the domain of Free Software, as well as to bring together the community to discuss priorities and action items.

ICFOSS is proud to present the fifth international Free Software conference of Kerala, Swatantra 2014, scheduled during 18-20 December 2014 at Thiruvananthapuram.

The theme of the conference is “Free Software for a Free World”. This reflects emerging concerns that citizens and communities face vis-a-vis privacy, online rights & freedoms, and security at the global level. Free Software provides a viable alternative to proprietary software which often compromises on these aspects. Further, Free Software also provides a technologically robust and cost effective alternative to other genres of software for all public uses, notably in Academia, Government, and personal computing, and even in the Arts & Culture domains.

International dignitaries participating at the Conference include Dr. Richard Stallman and Ms. Nina Paley. Several luminaries from the FOSS world within the country are also expected to take part.

About 150-200 Free Software enthusiasts, including practitioners, developers, researchers, academics, students, as well as representatives from civil society institutions, industry and the Government are expected to participate in the three-day conference.

Supported by

FSF-India
Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore
SFLC.IN, Delhi
Swathanthra Malayalam Computing
FOSSEE, IIT-B
SPACE
DCBB, Kerala University
Spoken Tutorials, IIT-B
IEEE Kerala Section

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/news/swatantra-2014-icfoss-december-18-20-2014-fifth-international-free-software-conference-in-kerala

Sustainable Smart Cities India Conference 2015, Bangalore

vanya — 2015-09-21T02:24:19Z

Nispana Innovative Platforms organized a Sustainable Smart Cities India Conference 2015, in Bangalore on 3rd and 4th September, 2015. The event saw participation from people across various sectors including Government Representatives from Ministries, Municipalities, Regulatory Authorities, as well as Project Management Companies, Engineers, Architects, Consultants, Handpicked Technology Solution Providers and Researchers. National and International experts and stakeholders were also present to discuss the opportunities and challenges in creating smart and responsible cities as well as citizens, and creating a roadmap for converting the smart cities vision into a reality that is best suited for India.

The objective of the conference was to discuss the meaning of a smart city, the promises made, the challenges and possible solutions for implementation of ideas by transforming Indian Cities towards a Sustainable and Smart Future.

Smart Cities Mission

Considering the pace of rapid urbanization in India, it has been estimated that the urban population would rise by more than 400 million people by the year 2050[1] and would contribute nearly 75% to India’s GDP by the year 2030. It has been realized that to foster such growth, well planned cities are of utmost importance. For this, the Indian government has come up with a Smart Cities initiative to drive economic growth and improve the quality of life of people by enabling local area development and harnessing technology, especially technology that leads to Smart outcomes.

Initially, the Mission aims to cover 100 cities across the countries (which have been shortlisted on the basis of a Smart Cities Proposal prepared by every city) and its duration will be five years (FY2015-16 to FY2019-20). The Mission may be continued thereafter in the light of an evaluation to be done by the Ministry of Urban Development (MoUD) and incorporating the learnings into the Mission. This initiative aims to focus on area-based development in the form of redevelopment, or developing new areas (Greenfield) to accommodate the growing urban population and ensure comprehensive planning to improve quality of life, create employment and enhance incomes for all, especially the poor and the disadvantaged.[2]

What is being done?

The Smart City Mission will be operated as a Centrally Sponsored Scheme (CSS) and the Central Government proposes to give financial support to the Mission to the extent of Rs. 48,000 crores over five years i.e. on an average Rs. 100 crore per city per year.The Government has come up with 2 missions:Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation (AMRUT) and Smart Cities Mission for the purpose of achieving urban transformation.The vision is to preserve India’s traditional architecture, culture & ethnicity while implementing modern technology to make cities livable, use resources in a sustainable manner and create an inclusive environment. Additionally, Foreign Direct Investment regulations have been relaxed to invite foreign capital and help into the Smart City Mission.

What is a Smart City?

Over the two-day conference, various speakers shared a common sentiment that the Governments’ mission does not clearly define what encompasses the idea of a Smart City. There is no universally accepted definition of a Smart City and its conceptualization varies from city to city and country to country.

A global consensus on the idea of a smart city is a city which is livable, sustainable and inclusive. Hence, it would mean a city which has mobility, healthcare, smart infrastructure, smart people, traffic maintenance, efficient waste resource management, etc.

Also, there is a global debate at United Nations regarding developmental goals. One of these goals is gender equality which is very important for the smart city initiative. According to this, a smart city must be such where the women have a life free from violence, must be made to participate and are economically empowered.

Promises

The promises of the Smart City mission include:

Make a sustainable future, reduce carbon footprint, adequate water supply, assured electricity supply, proper sanitation, including solid waste management, efficient urban mobility and public transport, affordable housing especially for the poor, robust IT connectivity and digitalization, good governance, especially e-Governance and citizen participation, sustainable environment, safety and security of citizens, particularly women, children and the elderly, and health and education.

The vision is to preserve country’s traditional architecture, culture & ethnicity while implementing modern technology. It was discussed how the Smart City Mission is currently attracting global investment, will create new job opportunities, improve communications and infrastructure, decrease pollution and ultimately improve the quality of living.

Challenges

The main challenges for implementation of these objectives are with respect to housing, dealing

with existing cities and adopting the idea of retro-fitting.

Also, another challenge is that of eradicating urban poverty, controlling environment degradation, formulating a fool-proof plan, proper waste management mechanism, widening roads but not at the cost of pedestrians and cyclist and building cities which are inclusive and cater to the needs of women, children and disabled people.

Some of the top challenges will include devising a fool-proof plan to develop smart cities, meaningful public-private partnership, increasing the renewable energy, water supply, effective waste management, traffic management, meeting power demand, urban mobility, ICT connectivity, e-governance, etc., while preparing for new threats that can emerge with implementation of these new technologies.

What needs to be done?

The following suggestions were made by the experts to successfully implement government’s vision of creating successful smart cities in India.

Focus on the 4 P’s: Public-Private-People Partnership since people very much form a part of the cities.
Integration of organizations, government bodies, and the citizens. The Government can opt for a sentiment analysis.
Active participation by state governments since Land is a state subject under the Constitution. There must be a detailed framework to monitor the progress and the responsibilities must be clearly demarcated.
Detailed plans, policies and guidelines
Strengthen big data initiatives
Resource maximization
Make citizens smart by informing them and creating awareness
Need for competent people to run the projects
Visionary leadership
Create flexible and shared spaces for community development.

National/International case studies

Several national and international case studies were discussed to list down practical challenges to enable the selected Indian cities learn from their mistakes or include successful schemes in their planning from its inception.

Amsterdam Smart City: It is said to be a global village which was transformed into a smart city by involving the people. They took views of the citizens to make the plan a success. The role of big data and open data was highly emphasized. Also, it was suggested that there must be alignment with respect to responsibilities with the central, state and district government to avoid overlap of functions. The city adopted smart grid integration to make intelligent infrastructure and subsidized initiatives to make the city livable.
GIFT City, Gujarat: This is an ICT based sustainable city which is a Greenfield development. It is strategically situated. One of the major features of the City is a utility tunnel for providing repair services and the top of the tunnel can be utilized as a walking/jogging track. The city has smart fire safety measures, wide roads to control traffic, smart regulations.
TEL AVIV Smart City, Israel: It has been named as the Mediterranean cool city with young and free spirted people. The city comprises of creative class with 3 T’s-talent, technology and tolerance. The city welcomes startups and focuses on G2G, G2C and C2C initiatives by adopting technologically equipped initiatives for effective governance and community building programmes.

Participation

The event saw participation from people across various sectors including Government Representatives of Ministries, Municipalities, Regulatory Authorities, as well as Project Management Companies, Engineers, Architects, Consultants, Handpicked Technology Solution Providers and Researchers.

Foundation for Futuristic Cities: The conference saw participation from this think tank based out of Hyderabad working on establishing vibrant smart cities for a vibrant India. They are currently working on developing a "Smart City Protocol" for Indian cities collaborating with Technology, Government and Corporate partners by making a framework for Smart Cities, Big Data and predictive analytics for safe cities, City Sentiment Analysis, Situation Awareness Tools and mobile Apps for better city life by way of Hackathons and Devthons.
Centre for SMART cities, Bangalore: This is a research organization which aims to address the challenge of collaborating and sharing knowledge, resources and best practices that exist both in the private sector and governments/municipal bodies in a usable form and format.
BDP – India (Studio Leader – Urbanism): The Organization is based out of Delhi and is involved in providing services relating to master planning, urbanism, design and landscape design. The team includes interior designers, engineers, urbanists, sustainability experts, lighting designers, etc. The vision is to help build and create high quality, effective and inspiring built spaces.
UN Women: It is a United Nations Organization working on gender equality, women empowerment and elimination of discrimination. They strive to strengthen rights of women by working with women, men, feminists, women’s networks, governments, local authorities and civil society to create national strategies to advance gender equality in line with national and international priorities. The UN negotiated the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development in August 2015 (which would be formally adopted by World leaders in September 2015) and it feature 17 sustainable development goals, one of them being achievement of gender equality and empowerment of all women and girls.
Elematic India Pvt. Ltd.: The Company is a leading supplier of precast concrete technology worldwide providing smart solutions for concrete buildings to help enable build smart cities with safe infrastructure.

Conclusion

The event discussed in great detail about what a smart city would look like in a country like India where every city has different demographics, needs and resources.

The Participants had a mutual understanding that a city is not gauged by its length and width, but by the broadness of its vision and height of its dream. The initiative of creating smart cities would echo across the country as a whole and would not be limited to the urban centers. Hence, the plan must be inclusive in implementation and right from its inception, the people and their needs must be given due consideration to make it a success. The issue of the road ahead was resonating in the minds of many, as to how would this exactly happen. Hence, the first step, as was suggested by the experts, was to involve the citizens by primarily informing them, taking their suggestions and planning the project for every city accordingly. While focusing on cities which would be made better by human ingenuity and technology, along with building mechanism for housing, commerce, transportation and utilities, it must not be forgotten that technology is timely, but culture is timeless. The cities must not be faceless and community space must be built with walkable spaces with smart utilization of limited resources. Also, it must be ensured that the cities do not cater to the needs of the elite and skilled population, but also the less privileged community. Adequate urban mapping must be done to ensure placement for community facilities, such as restrooms, trash bins, and information kiosks.

A story shared from personal experience by an expert Architect in building Green infrastructure was highly instrumental in setting the tone of the conference and is bound to stay with many of the participants. The son of the Architect, a small child from Baroda left his father speechless when he questioned him about the absence of butterflies from the Big City of Mumbai since he used to play with butterflies every morning in his hometown in Gujarat. The incident was genuinely thought provoking and left every architect, government representative and engineer thinking that before they step on to build a smart cities with technologically equipped infrastructure and utilities - can we, as a country, come together and ensure to build a smart city with butterflies? Can we pay equal attention to sustainability, environment and requirements of a community in the smart city that is envisioned by the Government to make the city livable and inclusive?

Questions that I, as a participant, am left with are:

Building a Greenfield project is comparatively easier than upgrading the existing cities into Smart ones, which requires planning and optimum utilization of resources. The role of local bodies needs to be strengthened which would primarily require skilled workforce, beginning from planning to execution. Therefore, what must be done to make the current cities “Smarter” and how encourage and fund ordinary citizens to redefine and prioritize local needs?
The conference touched upon the need for a well-planned policy framework to govern the smart cities; however, what was missing was a discussion on the kind of policies that would be required for every city to ensure governance and monitor the operations. Chalking out well thought of urban policies is the first step towards implementation of the Project and requires deliberation in this regard.
The Government plans seem to cater to the needs of a handful of sections of the society and must focus on safety of women, chalk out initiatives to build basic utilities like public toilets, plan the infrastructure keeping in mind the disabled individuals, etc.

This is of paramount importance since it is necessary for the Government to consider who would be the potential inhabitants of these future smart cities and what would be their particular needs. Before the cities are made better by use of technology, there is a requirement of more toilets as a basic utility. Thus, instead of focusing on technological advancement as the sole foundation to make lives of the people easy, the cities must have provision of utilities which are accessible to develop livable smart cities. Hence, what measures would the Government and other bodies involved in the plan take to ensure that the urban enclaves would not oversee the under privileged class?

Another issue that went unnoticed during the two-day event was pertaining to the Fundamental Rights of individuals within the city. For example, the right of privacy, right to access services and utilities, right to security, etc. These basic rights must be given due recognition by the smart city developers to uphold the spirit of these internationally accepted Human Rights principles. Therefore, it is important to ask how these future cities are going to address the rights of its people in the cities?

Apart from plans of working on waste management, another important factor that must not be overlooked is sustainability in terms of maximization of the available resources in the best possible ways and techniques to be adopted to stop the fast paced degradation of the environment.

The conference could suggest more solutions to adopt measures like rain water harvesting, better sewage management in the existing cities.

Also, the importance of big data in building the smart cities was emphasized by many experts. However, the question of regulation of data being generated and released was not talked about. Use of big data analytics involves massive streaming of data which required regulation and control over its use and generation to ensure such information is not misutilised in any way. In such a scenario, how would these cities regulate and govern big data techniques to make the infrastructure and utilities technologically efficient on one hand, but also to use the large data sets in a monitored fashion on the other?

An answer to these crucial issues and questions would have brought about a lot of clarity in minds of all the officials, planners and the potential residents of the Smart Cities in India.

[1] 2014 revision of the World Urbanization Prospects, United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, July 2014, Available at : http://www.un.org/en/development/desa/publications/2014-revision-world-urbanization-prospects.html

[2] Smart Cities, Mission Statement and Guidelines, Ministry of Urban Development, Government of India, June 2015, Available at : http://smartcities.gov.in/writereaddata/SmartCityGuidelines.pdf

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/sustainable-smart-cities-india-conference-2015-bangalore