The following are the outputs of the real-time captioning taken during the Tenth Annual Meeting of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) in João Pessoa, Brazil, from 10 to 13 November 2015. 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 event, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.
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>> JOANNA BRONOWICKA: Good morning, everyone. We don't have a panel. You are all participants in the discussion.
I'm Joanna.
Maybe I'll go in the front so I don't face... so I can face everybody.
The Center for Internet and Human Rights is an academic research institution at the European University Viadrina in Germany. And we have one of the projects called ethics of algorithms that began this year, and we were preparing ethics of algorithms for the Conference in March, when the terrorist at attacks in Paris happened. We decided to dedicate one of the days of the Conference to social media and radical content online, and the balance between Freedom of Expression on one hand and the need to prevent terrorist attacks on the other hand. Before Paris, I think a lot of the discussion was focused on what is sometimes called terrorist propaganda, the radical content, because of what we were exposed to with the Islamic state. And how some extremist groups use social media as a tool for recruitment and for radicalizing youth. So these two aspects were very much at the center of the discussion in March in Berlin. And naturally, the focus was on the responsibility of corporate actors, of social media platforms, and whether they should do more or not and somehow preventing radical content being displayed on their platform. And we had some fantastic participants. Richard Allen from Facebook and Mohammad from the SocialMedia Exchange from Lebanon. But what was missing is what we learned later. What we learned in the last couple months, we saw that Governments were very quick to react to what was happening, and we saw the -- we decided to focus exactly on the role of Governments and legislation, especially in the last 12 months.
And we prepared for you a policy brief that outlines some of the countries that experienced terrorist attacks in the last year. Canada, France, Tunisia, Kenya, Turkey. We also included Nigeria, UK, and EU. And what is kind of clear from this policy that you can find on the website of this workshop is that there is a clear pattern that in every one of the countries that experienced a terrorist attack, the Governments were quick to respond with new legislation.
Of course, that is more or less where the similarities end. The antiterrorist is just a label. It's like a bucket list where different Governments pick different things from this bucket list and they include it. And I really encourage you to go into the policy brief and see what are the specific changes. What is also interesting is that this is not a -- there is no north, south division here. This really is a trend that we can observe in all countries, in different continents. Some of the continents were a little less covered in our brief, but this is also true for Asia and even in Latin America. Even in this country, in Brazil, there is a talk of pushing antiterrorist legislation.
So the reason why we're here and why we wanted to present this workshop to you is because this is the IGF, the tenth IGF, and this is round number ten of the discussion that we have every year about the balance between privacy on one hand and Freedom of Expression on one hand and security. And we have done this over and over again.
So my main question to you, and I think that you are very well placed to answer this question, is there anything new to this debate? Or to put in other words, have we learned anything from the previous debates about this balance that would be helpful in analyzing the situation now?
And the second question, of course, that always comes to mind is: Are these measures effective? Is there evidence that supports that increasing surveillance or any of the other measures that were proposed can actually prevent -- make us safer? And is it even -- we can talk about cost effective, whether it warrants spending so much money around the technologies. Now we know how much the Governments are willing to pay for surveillance technology.
And, of course, the question is to what extent antiterrorist legislation can be compatible with human rights and especially privacy and Freedom of Expression. And as I said, this is an old debate. But I think maybe we learned something about the conditions in which this may be privacy and security do not exclude each other. And I'd be interested to hear your opinion about that.
The last thing is, this is the global discussion. We have a panel that is -- we have a discussion that is focused on national legislation. But I would like to hear from you what do you think is the International importance of this trend, ofthese national legislations being passed? And will it affect the Internet governance debates that some of them will continue this year?
And so with that, I'll turn it over to Anja Mihr, who is the session coorganizer, and then we have a couple speakers. We have Frank La Rue, Paul Fellinger, Gabrielle, and Melody Patry. And then after that, it's open to you to make a comment. We will try to keep all the interventions at five minutes maximum. And I hope that with this format it really is enough time for everybody to express their comments or questions.
Thank you.
Anja.
>> ANJA MIHR: Thank you very much, Joanna, for this excellent introduction and also for the policy brief on Governments when they hit "like" on War on Terror. I'm the coorganizer, but she organized the whole thing. I'm just decoration here.
And I play the role of an academic. I represent two institutions here. On one side the Netherlands Institute of HumanRights and the humboldt Center on Governance for Human Rights. And I want to play this role and sharing some observation from a sheer human rights perspective and research perspective on this whole issue on the human rights and the Internet in particular when it comes to terror and surveillance. And I'll share some of the recent developments. I'm not an NGO here, I'm merely an academic.
A few observations, and I'll try to keep it brief in the five minutes. That actually when we talk about these, the war on terror issue and the mass surveillance that we have here, we are not talking about privacy rights, even less than anticipated. It comes to the agenda that it's about our own privacy. But there are other freedom rights, which is currently very much under scrutiny. And that's the right to assemble, to organize, to politically participate. And this is also where Governments have to be brought back into the whole game on how to organize this freedom or to regulate the freedom right to assemble, to politically participate. I'm not saying anything about the quality of these groups. There are some groups we easily identify as terror groups, others as critical political groups, et cetera, et cetera.
What is in the focus here is whether the groups, political active groups, whether they use violence or not, have the right to Assembly on the Internet. And that is currently very much jeopardized by the groups around the world.
And the other one is the freedom of expression and discrimination, to where it begins and ends, which is closely to the freedom of Assembly and expression of political views.
Why is this difficult from a policy human rights perspective? The human rights community says what is new there? Why are you all so surprised? We had struggles to organize or regulate the rights already offline let alone online. But there is one observation that I like to share with you, particularly after the sort of massive antiterror acts we had after 9/11. And there we have some interesting studies on when everybody, not only in the western world, around the globe, the issue of the massive antiterrorist laws against terrorists. And we didn't talk about the Internet at this time, we talked about threats on the ground.
And when we look back over the last ten or fifteen years since 2001, we observed one interesting issue: Most of the antiterror laws that were amended, reviewed, changed, taken back through courts, it was court decision. It was not so much parliamentarian debates. It was not so International parliamentarian debates or forums. The regional courts, the interAmerican court, the European Court for Human Rights and National Parliaments and national courts played is not to be under estimated. And something similar we see now in the online world, the role that courts play. However, I say this because we cannot leave it on the back of these few judges who have the freedom to be independent. In most countries, courts are not independent. There are very, very few courts and legislations that allow for independent judgment. And this I think already indicates against from a human rights perspective how sensitive the issue is. We are talking about the Internet of cyberspace. We don't have a cybercourt who can regulate it. National or regional courts, territorial courts play the role and do whatever they can do. But there are -- they are just one actor among many actors. And I would say look at the antiterror laws after 9/11, they were very much left on their own. So just an observation.
Joanna said already something about the particulars of the antiterror laws that we find over the last 12 or 14 months concerning terror groups that move in the Internet, let's say, that there is one particular thing that we couldn't find 10 or 15 years after 9/11, that is the criminalization of a whole generation of young people, particularly in the UK, but also in other countries. You know, people are criminalized before they even touch the keyboard.
Another thing that I like to share with you is what might be an interesting approach to particularly deal with sort of the terror groups that we find that also were mentioned in the policy brief, the big guys, ICs, Al-Shabaab. One thing that we are asked by Government, what can we do with the nonstate actors? The question is are they really nonstate actors? Because they all proclaim to have a state one day. And that sounds cynical. I'm not going into the content of what the groups do, but they all have on the agenda that they want to find a state, maybe a virtual state, whatever philosophy they share or we don't share. But the fact that they are looking for legitimacy and recognition, invites us, the other part of the world, the governmental and nongovernmental world, but also the academic world, to actually find a way to dialog with them. And to get in touch with them and talk also about human rights. Again, I know this sounds cynical in many ears, but I share this because the kind of governmental approaches which we have seen over the past, let's say, two years, to these groups, concerning their movement and their sort of their life and their organization movements on the Internet is to exclude them. To entirely criminalize them, not to talk to them, to exclude them. And we have not come very far. And this is -- we see this particularly in sort of the frequency of terror attacks and organizing them through the Internet.
This is just a few points that I share. And I hope I could provoke some thoughts and discussions.
Back to you, Joanna.
>> JOANNA BRONOWICKA: I just wanted to make a quick remark about participation through Twitter. We have a remote hub in Beirut, in Lebanon, with social media exchange. And if you want to -- I encourage you to tweet things that are being said in the session using hashtag WS 125. And we will also take some questions and comments from Twitter and from our remote partners.
With that, I'll turn it over to Gabrielle from Article 19. Thank you.
>> GABRIELLE: Thanks. You said what was new about the debate? It's an interesting question, because as a free speechorganization, Article 19 dealt with terrorist organizations and we looked at how it's used to silence journalists, activists, dissenters of all types. And for this reason in '95 we developed the Johannesburg Laws on Freedom of Expression and NationalSecurity. It's still relevant today.
So what is new about this debate? I think, first of all, what we're seeing internationally on a substantive level is that there are discussions not so much about terrorism, but about extremism. And it's very interesting, because there is no definition in any of the International instruments that I've looked at about what "extremism" means. We think it's very problematic, as I'll go into in a minute. Extremism is used at the domestic level. And that is a problem.
Now, if I turn to some of the recent developments we have witnessed at the national level, I'd like to briefly mention what we have seen both in the UK and in France. In the UK, the Government recently published their counter extremism strategy. It's problematic. Because the definition is extremely broad. The definition is the vocal or active opposition to the fundamental values -- including Democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty, and the mutual respect and tolerance of different faiths and beliefs. You can see it's broad, what it says about the measures that the Government would like Internet intermediaries to adopt. Here in the strategy they mention how they are working in partnership with industry and police to remove terrorists and extremist content. Another thing they mention is how they are hoping that the industry will modify their terms and conditions to enable the removal of extremist content. So this is one worrying development.
Now, in France, again, and to go back to the point that was made earlier, what has been really worrying is the application of a provision in the criminal code about publicly condoning terrorism. That has been used against a lot of teenagers in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo attacks. There were 132 convictions and a number of them included teenagers as young as 14 or 8 years old.
On the back of this legislation, they also adopted measures to enable the blocking of terrorist content. This blocking can take place without a court order. It's done on the basis of reports made by a special unit from the police. And again, here there is no regard given to the impact on Freedom of Expression.
So these are some of the new developments. I'll also briefly mention another development, which is linked to surveillance. And here again, terrorism is always used as a justification for greater surveillance powers. And we have seen this in France in the adoption of the recent law on mass surveillance recently and also in the Investigative Powers Bill. We have seen provisions used to potentially broach encryption.
>> MODERATOR: I'll turn it over to Paul, if you could keep the microphone close to you.
>> PAUL: I hope it's okay. Yes, this is a big topic and it poses challenges to both states and companies alike that I would like to highlight.
It poses challenges to States around the world and currently because of the sense of urgency that exists. So what we see around the world is the proliferation of a lot of national solutions. And there will be a lot of discussions I think by other speakers about the balance of rights and vis-a-vis and public order obligations.
But staying on this level, we are seeing the proliferation of organizations around the world that might make sense from the Point of View of Governments in the short-term, because something needs to be done. However, those solutions are uncoordinated. So in potentially 190 countries around the world, we see the proliferation of different procedures for how to request the takedown of content, how to access data around world. And this makes the problem harder to solve because there is a lack of coordination. And especially also a lack of a global debate about what are the due process requirements for those procedures, basically? What are the standards that should govern those interactions?
What is very important to highlight I think is also the crossbow of this problem. Most often we are talking about situations where public authorities in one country are requesting actions by private companies that are legally incorporated in other countries. And this poses a lot of jurisdictional challenges.
Taking into -- exchanging basically the perspective and having a look at how global social media companies deal with a situation or see the situation, we see around the world an emergence of a new sort of term that is not Intermediary Liability, but more sort of platform responsibility to proactively monitor, report on activity, take down content themselves. And this is a very uncomfortable situation for private actors. It's very difficult to strike the balance, for instance, between Freedom of Expression and apology to terrorism.
If you take an example, imagine a situation where someone reports about something that has been posted by a terroristorganization, for instance, and takes this as a reference. So does this qualify as something that has to be taken down or not? Those are very difficult determinations to be made.
Also, if you talk about terrorist law, what is the difference between a video of a beheading of a terrorist organizationor the beheading by a drug cartel?
What is missing currently is a shared vernacular about the different criteria that applies to these things. And this is a situation that cannot be solved by countries alone or can be tackled by the companies that have the content on the platformsalone. This needs to be approached in a multistakeholder manner. What are the shared vernacular that we use, what are the criteria and standards? So I'm very much looking forward to hearing more from the other speakers and more views on them.
>> JOANNA BRONOWICKA: Thank you. I would like to turn to Melody Patry from Index on Censorship.
>> MELODY PATRY: Hi everyone. I'm Melody and I work for another free speech organization, Index on Censorship.
I would like to quickly get back to some of the elements that Gabrielle mentioned, and that is mainly that increasingly States use terror laws and terror legislations and extremism legislation to restrict Freedom of Expression and to ban legitimate speech. And by "legitimate," I mean speech that is lawful, according to the law, and that fits within the limits of the Article 99 on the International covenant on human rights.
And the criminalization of speech that could support or promote or condone terrorism is very, very broad. It is defined broadly. And even in practice, terror laws have been used in cases with sometimes no direct link or even relation to terrorism at all.
And it is clear normally that terrorism offenses should not be broad or vague so that they encompass expression, when actually there is no immediate actual intent to encourage or incite terrorist acts. And yet we see more and more people being persecuted, arrested, even sentenced, for jokes published on Twitter. Even bad jokes. We're not here to judge whether they are funny or poor taste or bad taste. But it is problematic that when Gabrielle mentioned the fact that 14-year-olds in France have been detained, arrested and sentenced for condoning terrorism for writing maybe a controversial or just a bit of an ignorant tweet around the issue. That is problematic.
And it is true that the use of social media and the importance that social media takes today could be concern for States,especially for the youth online. But yet when legislation practices lead to suppressing controversial voices, it often leads to reinforce the conspiracy theories that furthers radicalization online. So it could be counter productive to try to curb any discussion related to terrorism or extremism.
Briefly, I'd like to mention a case in the UK, because as Gabrielle mentioned as well, there is currently a move to prepare an extremism Bill. It's still uncertain what the Bill will contain. And yet in July 2015, so just a couple of months ago, David Cameron stated that Internet companies need to do more to tackle extremist content on liability. And it is very unclear what "Doing more" implies. Does it mean that Internet companies should become censorship boards 2.0?
Do we want to hand over this responsibility to them, not only to monitor content, which without even entering into the technical aspects of that, in its essence I'm not 100 percent sure about. But also in terms of removing content, making the decision of what content is or isn't, promoting extremism, what promoting extremism means. And the result of such actions and such legislation could really be a clamp down on legitimate speech without any oversight mechanism to challenge censorship.
So there has been another case apart from trying to monitor and remove content online or trying to control the debate that is currently taking place online. But police officers have also used terror laws to confiscate laptops, to arrest journalists, even when there was no clear evidence of terrorism activity. That has been the case in the UK. Just a couple weeks ago, a journalist used the Terrorism Act to seize the laptop of a news night journalist and who produced a series of reports with British born Jihadists. It's British citizens who radicalize and then carry out terrorist actions. You see that when police start to use terrorism acts to arrest or detain journalists, without judicial oversight, there is a really slippery slope.
Likewise, the case in Turkey, it's not online, but it was related to some form of online or technical activity, which is the arrest of a vice news journalist, including Mohammad Rassou who is currently in jail, who was first accused of promoting terrorism by reporting on clashes between the Turkey authorities and the youth branch of the KKK. And one of the things that the reproach to Mohammad was that he used encryption -- PKK. It's not KKK. It's a different movement.
But ...
(Laughter)
So we can see that there is a fear around the use of encryption, anonymity, speech that can radicalize and yet is not unlawful. So where is the line? That's the big question when we discuss national security and Freedom of Expression.
And I think I'll stop here. But I had other cases that I'll discuss during a discussion. What I really wanted to highlight is really the -- this new trend in various countries to use terror laws to directly ban speech that is actually not unlawful. And sometimes that targets directly journalistic activity. Sometimes the targets and the victims of such overreach are just citizens who want to express critical opinions. Sometimes very bad jokes or poor taste jokes. Or sometimes they can be accused even of overthrowing Democracy or the Government by just using social media to organize and to push for a debate that can be controversial. So I'm looking forward to discuss further this with you.
>> JOANNA BRONOWICKA: Thank you, Melody. We don't have a person from Access Now but we do have a person from the MAG.
>> EPHRAIM PERCY KENYANITO: I'm from Kenya. I just wanted to highlight about this current trend. As you've noted, it's a trend. And in some places it has been going on for some time. For example, Ethiopia. And I would like to focus on Africa. For example, in Africa, antiterrorist laws were used against defenders. Or bloggers. Some months ago people were arrested because they applied to participate in a digital security training, that that was wrong, that is terrorism activities. It's a trend in Africa. The moment that you disagree with the dissidents, you label them and you go after them using the terrorism laws.
In Egypt it has been used. Actually, some people were arrested, journalists, and people using the Internet to do their day-to-day activities and to organize and to speak freely on whatever they think. In Camaroon, a law, it has very disproportionate sanctions for journalists, bloggers, which says the Freedom of Expression.
And I would like to talk about Kenya because I'm Kenyan. And this is something that you walked on in December. In December there was a new law that was being proposed on antiterrorism. So many people went to court and we were able to win. The court's ruled that some of the clauses were infringing on legitimate activity. So we noticed this kind of trend, whereby the moment there is terrorism activities, this proportionate response to it, whereby it infringes on just users, journalists. For example, in Tanzania there are security laws. These laws have some -- in Africa, this is a bit different. Whereby any -- any crime that is committed on the Internet, you can get to be labeled a terrorist. And some people have recently gotten arrested. It's a very recent incident. And we need to find solutions on how to do this. How to not just arrest and all of that, but also to find a balance of -- between Freedom of Expression and extremism and all of that.
And another thing that we noticed, Burundi, recently, when the people were protesting about the Government staying in power for a third term, which was -- in my view, I'm training to be a lawyer, and I view it as unconstitutional. Some courts view it differently from what some of us feel. They were labeled terrorists and there was a shut down. So there is this disproportionate response to extremism, to this legitimate Assembly.
Thank you.
>> JOANNA BRONOWICKA: Thank you. And last, Frank La Rue, who used to be the Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression and now is a Director of the Robert F. Kennedy Center.
>> FRANK LA RUE: Thank you, Joanna. I think a lot has been said, but I would like to focus on two main issues. First let me begin by saying that I think there is sort of an artificial build-up of some debate, this tension, using terrorism as sort of a -- a scare toward the public. I strongly believe in dealing with surveillance and privacy that it's a responsibility of the state to protect all the individuals under its jurisdiction, against any act of violence, including terrorism. So there is no contradiction in the sense of national security. And national security is recognized in Article 19 as one of the elements for protection and can in some extreme cases be limited in Freedom of Expression.
But having said that, what it means is that national security has to, in a Democratic society, has to be done with a Democratic due process. And what we're seeing today is not that. What we're seeing today are legislations based on intimidation. On people feeling that there is this huge threat on radicalism, on infantism, on extremism in the language or on acts of terrorism eventually. And in that sense, trying to overcome the legitimate boundaries of International human rights law.
So I would leave it aside. Combating para-terrorism and establishing national security in a Democratic way within the law and within the framework of human rights is legitimate. But not the use of scare to then begin passing legislations that want to limit the content and the user content that can actually build, as many of the speakers before mentioned, can also not only intimidate everyone in society to speak up, but can have terrible consequences for journalists, who are legitimately covering stories of terrorism or radicalism or different groups who are being challenged or those in power in Government.
So I have a feeling that we're living the space of an artificially generated tension with the intense limiting of content and Freedom of Expression, which is unacceptable. I think it's important to say that.
Now, having said that, I'll go to the two points that in a way have already been made. One is what is radicalism and infantism? And today I think Governments are trying to relate it to religious, like Boko Haram or other groups. Today it's different the way they want to approach, for instance, the radical right wing movements that are violent and racist and antiimmigration in Europe and other parts of the world. You are seeing a double standard. There is radical violent speech on other issues, but they are not looked at in the same way.
In Article 20 of the ICCPR, you have the specific elements of what could become incitement to violence and discrimination, and what is a legitimate concern of the state which doesn't say criminalized, it says prohibited. And with the High Commissioner, there was the development of the Lavat plan of action which ended with a conclusion that against the challenges of extreme positions and fundamentalism, the best way to do it is to increase Freedom of Expression and not to limit it. To increase knowledge among peoples of the world and to have positive speech to link negative speech.
I mentioned yesterday that there is also responsibility of society more than of the States. We can't pretend the Stateswill be censoring everything that we say, because then we end up with authoritarian States. What is healthy for society is an intense social debate about issues. And this is what we want, this is Freedom of Expression. If there are radical positions, let's discuss them and let's bring them out and let's show how wrong they may be. But this is part -- from the bottom-up, and not the top down -- this is part of the healthy debate.
So yes, I would agree with what is being said, that we are living in a way, the excuse of preventing recruitment to radical groups by preventing radical speech or fundamentalist speech, and that is becoming very dangerous. Again, I'm not in favor of recruitment, of course. I think it's important to prevent that. But to prevent it in a positive way, giving alternatives to young people, presenting them with different options and not so much by censoring language or content. There is a content that falls under the limitations. But I say that is the exception and there is some content. When there is a call to violent acts, if there is a call to genocide, if there is a call to commit terrorist acts or incitement to build and use bombs, yes, that is a legitimate concern. But we're not talking about that. I think over here they are talking about a debate that is flowing amongst some groups, and it's going to be very difficult to have within a human rights framework equal standards for all the world. Because everyone sees the debate differently.
For instance, for Turkey talking about the Kirk stand and the PKK is a matter of national security. For terrorism for other countries in the U.S. including the U.S. They are allies against ISIS. So there are not common standards and this is a dangerous scenario to be.
The second point was the question of surveillance that has been made. Also, this idea that there has to be a look at content has two approaches. Number one, it's passing to the platforms, to the Internet platforms and all the service providers the responsibility. I think that's also wrong. I think the State cannot delegate this responsibility. Because if a state makes a mistake, we can appeal and challenge the State and challenge our authorities. But if it's privatized, it's very difficult. And that is the wrong decision on many fronts. They are trying to transfer to the corporations, and then every corporation have their own standards. And private corporations tend to be more restrictive of the content than States would be, because they don't want to be challenged by the Sstate.
So we end up with the worst solution. Again, the principle is the States should not privatize their own decision, because there are specific elements that should be a State authority, hopefully a Judge. But if not, a clear State authority assuming responsibility.
But, secondly, to look at content and to look at these things implies a level of surveillance on the content. And this again is legitimizing in the name of preventing radicalization or preventing terrorism as justification for unlawfulsurveillance. There is a form of doing lawful surveillance. It can be done in the rule of law with a due process and legitimate decision-making by an authority, hopefully a judge that is not the same authority that implements the surveillance. But what cannot happen is security or intelligence agencies applying surveillance arbitrarily the same way. And here, the problem with this is that we have been looking at surveillance as a theoretical issue not a concrete one. There is an element of reality with the technology is going so far it's difficult just to keep up with it. In some countries I even heard state officials say why is it being done? Well, because it can. It's so simple and easy. Why not? But this is never an excuse to violate the right to privacy or to impose restrictions on Freedom of Expression.
So I think this is one problem. But the other problem, which is even worse, is that we have not monitored the corporations that make the technology available to decrypt messages or to find out where the person is coming from. And I think it is important to begin building a proposal that the sell and commercialization and export of these technologies should be registered with the States of origin, as the sales or weapons are done, with some degree at least of transparency to where they are being sold and who to. Because now we have the surveillance technologies being sold by private corporations with theacquiescence of the States, but sold to authoritarian regimes that are putting bloggers in jail or torturing people for statements made on the Web. This is serious. This shows how States will keep silent just to continue endorsing these corporations and the new technologies.
I think we have to go back to a State responsibility. But also to the corporate social responsibility as entities that should be registered somehow and have some elements of transparency.
>> JOANNA BRONOWICKA: I would like to open to the participants from the audience. I'll be passing the microphone. So is there anybody who would like to make a comment? One, two, three, four for now.
>> AUDIENCE: I'm Gunter. I represent the parliamentary simply in Europe in Straussbourg. You might have heard some previous words on the war of terror. There are reports on the CIA renditions in secret prisons. The conclusion was that the War on Terror is a wrong term. It turns criminal people who blow up other people, people who kill, maim people, into soldiers. It could be an apology for terrorism to call the efforts to curb terrorism a War on Terror.
Now, this year, another Rapporteur of the Assembly presented a report on mass surveillance. Frank La Rue was an expert, also. The Assembly has taken a very progressive stand in that it is denouncing what we call the surveillance industrial complex. It's like a military industrial complex, where a system is growing, is spiralling out of control. Where the cultural secrecy and the highly technical nature of surveillance makes it very difficult for decision makers in politics to say no. Because if something happens, they will be told had you only given us these funds, we would have prevented this attack. If nothing happens, they say oh, it works. Our efforts bear fruit. We prevent terrorism.
So the policymakers depend entirely on insiders from the system who benefit from the system. And this grows out of control just like the military complex that in the end caused World War I and other horrors.
The second point, I'm making a very short one, is that we have, in this report, shown that mass surveillance doesn't even work. It's a human rights problem. It's a violation of privacy. Violation -- many other rights are actually also endangered by this. But it doesn't even work. It's not worth the price. Serious inquiries have shown that the claims of -- that are made by some officials, NSA officials that attacks have been prevented were simply not true. On closer look, it was serious classic police work, classic intelligence work, using sources, pinpointing assessments who were then of course put under surveillance, which has prevented some attacks, but not mass surveillance. The famous staying, Frank also used it, if everything is a target, nothing is a target. Mass surveillance actually diverts precious resources from real police work, real law enforcement work, away to a field where maybe we catch someone, maybe we don't.
But it is actually putting at risk the classic police work and law enforcement work that we need to combat this type of crime, terrorism.
In this way, the Parliament stands against some Governments of the Member States of the Council of Europe. The Assembly took a strong stand against back doors. As a matter of principle, privacy. Human rights. But also as a matter of commonsense, back doors, and it's been shown by experts who advised us, back doors can be easily identified and exploited by cybercriminals as well as the next-generation of terrorists who may prefer bringing down a banking system or an electricity supply rather than standing on a market square and shooting around themselves. It will be a lot more damaging. And if we are -- Governments are obliging service providers to include back doors in their system, then we end up creating more danger of terrorism than what we can possibly prevent.
>> JOANNA BRONOWICKA: Thank you for this perspective. I want to say that this idea that we're diverting resources from the classic police work or spy work was used in the last James Bond movie. I don't know if you saw it. But it's a powerful argument for why the OO should stay.
>> AUDIENCE: I'm Courtney, the Director of the Committee to protect journalists. One of the problems with this approach to countering violent extremism online is that it ends up getting journalists caught in this trap. The very nature of what you have to do as a journalist often can be construed as terrorism. There was an analysis done, I think it was by Brooking, that looked at Twitter accounts of ISIS. There were about 46,000, and they found there were a significant number of journalists that were captured in those networks. Because as a journalist, you observe those, you need to report on them. You need to communicate with them. The vice news reporters and as well as other reporters working in Turkey who need to speak with the PKK, you know, just -- I think it's important for the transcript. You know, are being put in prison for terrorism, because they are talking to terrorists as part, you know, groups designated as terrorists as part of their reporting activity. So this is really dangerous.
Furthermore, you know, despite many conversations with people at various different platforms Google, Facebook, other social media forums, who say that they have a definition and who say it is in their terms of service, it's not clearly in their terms of service how or when the content will be taken offline.
So you know yes, they have to abide by US law, but US law is about providing material support to terrorists, not about whether you express sympathy or like what ISIS or what the drug cartels in Mexico or Al-Shabaab are doing. So there is this real difficulty. At an OSC workshop on this topic, the Facebook person said in our terms of service we define what we mean by terrorism. And they don't. It doesn't define what they mean by terrorism. So you don't know if your content is going to be removed, if it's terrorism or extremism.
Furthermore, the UK Government has some sort of special status with Google and YouTube. It can flag entire swaths of content to be taken down. And we know that when the video of James Foley, who was beheaded, it spread like wildfire across social media platforms, and so social media firms decided to get together to discuss what they would do in the case of Steven Saltlaf, because we knew that he was probably going to be also murdered, and he was. And you saw less of that content streaming through the channels. It would be important to know what did they do? We have to get to the in-between stage, which is not just supporting terrorism and not supporting it, but also what about the content online. Beheading videos, they are horrible, but they also serve a purpose. If you're a journalist who wants to go to Syria, one of the reasons we see so many journalists being killed in Syria, because they didn't have a good sense of the facts on the ground. If you hide content, what other implications does that have for other people's security and safety?
>> JOANNA BRONOWICKA: Thank you. There was a hand here.
>> AUDIENCE: Andre Sherberwish. I'm from Moscow, Higher School of Economics. I'm been dealing with human rights issues on the Internet for five years.
And I know that we have some tendencies. They are very threatful tendencies in the Public Policies related to the media, to the Internet. On the one hand, I think that terrorists threats should get the world united before these threats. But we can see that some difference in policies of different countries.
I mean, for example, Russia, it has tendencies for closure of its information borders. And that is maybe imposing some kind of iron curtain, like an experience of the Soviet Union. This is explained by the threat of terrorism as well. I think the Internet as an Open Network could be a good instrument for cooperation. Of course, no censorship, no restrictive measures could be useful in this combating terrorism. But only openness and only International cooperation could make positive results in this combating terrorism.
I believe that this could be a very possible -- I believe that this could be very possible when we will provide somehow draft in policies here of combating terrorism. But this could be inclusive for all countries and for all stakeholders willing to participate in this decision-making process.
I think that Internet governance -- I think that terrorism is very difficult topic for discussion. It's a very emotional topic for discussion. As you know, there is supposed terrorist attacks in Egypt where a Russian airplane was destroyed in the air in Egypt. More than I think 200 victims on this airplane. And this is a threat which is for all countries. And that's why we should get united in developing policies, in developing such common measures for information policies in responding to this threat.
I just would like to encourage everyone to develop such kind of policies, and the Internet Governance Forum would be the best space for these discussions.
Thank you very much.
>> JOANNA BRONOWICKA: Thank you.
Going to that corner in the room. And then I have a couple voices here. But I'll also check what is happening in our remote participation hub.
>> AUDIENCE: Thank you very much. You're doing a lot of walking around. I'm the Director of the Office of the OIC representative on the freedom of the media. I think I see here a lot of agreement in this room about the issues. But I think that's because we all come from fairly similar issues and perspectives on this problem, looking at it from a human rights perspective, also from a technical perspective and so on.
But what we have found very interesting and important is that we have to engage with other people, either the security services on this issue, with the police, with the people who look at this from the perspective of fighting terrorism. And thatfor us has been an important discussion. How they can understand better the human rights implications of the legislation that are adopted.
I think at the beginning there were lots of examples given of poor legislation that will or can limit Freedom of Expression, and we have intervened on all of those cases, warning the Governments of those possible consequences. So they are very much aware of those and they need to do something about it.
Another issue that I'm also hearing around the room, it's sort of how to define who is a terrorist. And that reminds me of when I first started in journalism many years ago, one of the questions that I was instructed, it's do not use the word"terrorist" as a journalist, because it's a loaded word. For one person it's a freedom fighter, for another person it's aterroriet. So you have to be careful how you define that.
The last thing is Governments need to pay much more attention to this as a human rights issue in the post Charlie Hebdoenvironment. What we saw was an aftermath of this horrible terrorist attack is Governments, coming out, demonstrating more freedoms, not more restrictions, but what we saw afterwards was the opposite. We saw more restrictions taking place, and that is a trend that needs to be reversed.
Thank you.
>> JOANNA BRONOWICKA: Thank you. I would like to read to you a comment from Mohammad in the social media exchange in Beirut, in response to our panel.
I quote, "more and more antiterrorism laws were drafted in the Arab region without any consideration for human rights. From Saudi Arabia to UEA, Egypt and others. And the attempt of journalists and lawyers to use the right of Freedom of Expression to express power misuse or corruption they might face vague charges, with the States using antiterrorism laws to suppress their speech. Governments in the region are in total control of the ISP, directly or indirectly, and with no transparency reports from the ISP, Governments have been able to censor and post surveillance illegally and send maliciousInternet works and (inaudible). So this is the perspective from Lebanon.
Now I'd like to ask Isa to see if there are comments on Twitter.
>> Thank you, Joanna. I'm Isa from the Open Source Association. I was following the social media interaction about this workshop.
There was a very fruitful interaction and conversation and many tweets expressed their opinions. But we have a couple of questions as well, which would be good if any of the participants could answer to them.
The first one is in Kenya. Actually, she is very active and participative and had a very good point and question. She asked if political active groups, that they are using violence, should they have a right to align Assembly or not?
The second question is from Roth from Bristol, UK, and basically he asked if reporting terrorist content can be removed as terrorist content itself. So journalists or bloggers or normal citizens that are writing and referencing terrorists online content can be persecuted or arrested under antiterrorism laws.
Thank you.
>> JOANNA BRONOWICKA: Thank you. There was -- yes. I can take a couple more.
>> AUDIENCE: Hi. My name is Yetka Las, I come from Syria.
And before I ask my question, allow me to express my frustration as a Syrian activist and journalist. Because what we see on the Internet today, let's be clear, first of all. Because when we're saying terrorism on the Internet, we mean only the www, which is only the tip of the iceberg of what is happening offline. And on the dark Web and the deep Web. And when we speak about that, the terrorists would normally organize a radical act on the www without using any kind of technology to protect themselves.
So anyway, for me, I would believe all of the efforts that are being implemented nowadays, they are not being enough. Because they end up -- there is a lot of effort and we end up arresting a toddler or a teenager with a bad list of jokes on the Internet. And this is not fighting for radicalism and extremism.
And the alternative, all of the efforts could be put somewhere else and be implemented to help the enabling environment to decrease the attraction by ISIS, the extremism, and what is happening around. But on the other side, they are not using it the right way. So we end up with laws being -- following people in France and Europe and arresting toddlers, which don't have really much of a big effect. While on the other side, this is increasing the victimization of the people and increasing the effect on the society in a developing world. And when you look at a place like my country, it's not affecting anybody. And this is not changing anything. And it's attracting more people towards it.
What has really got my attention in this session, that you were speaking about the kind of elements that could be implemented, and one of them was banning peer-to-peer encryption. And this is extremely dangerous especially for us as journalists. Because without that, we would be under a huge risk, being penetrated not only by Governments, Governments repressive Governments in our region, but also by the extremists. Because they have the technology and they could get to it. And this would put journalists not only by Government, such as in Turkey, but also we saw that a couple of weeks ago some of our colleagues in Turkey, they are Syrian, but they were slaughtered by ISIS in Turkey not in Syria. So this is getting really dangerous even for journalists.
So my question is, what are we doing today as -- I see that the panelists and everybody to contributed to the discussion today were in agreement about that. This is wrong. This is not going to help. But what are the kind of actions that are being implemented to stop this today? What are we doing as academics, theorists, journalists, freedom fighters? Do we have anything?
>> JOANNA BRONOWICKA: Thank you.
>> AUDIENCE: I work with the UN Human Rights Office in Geneva.
Closer to the microphone.
Okay. I'm from the US Human Rights Office in Geneva. In my office we receive many requests for further human rights guidance on the measures that are being taken to comply with Security Council Resolution 2178, which is on foreign fighters,and which calls to take measures to stem the flow of fighters, including using technology. We will have a study which will be published in January on the impact of the measures on the Freedom of Expression and on the right to privacy mainly and also on other human rights. So please be on the lookout for this new study. And if you are interested in contributing to the validation exercise that we will have, approach me after the session and we can discuss.
Thank you.
>> JOANNA BRONOWICKA: Thank you. I thought we had a couple hands on this side of the room.
Here.
>> AUDIENCE: Hi. My name is Wisma Hudo. And I came here by the youth at IGF program and I'm part of the youth observatory. And also the Centre for Technology and Society. And besides that, I'd just like to make a few comments and coming from a more academic perspective. I see that not only in terms of who is a terrorist or one's freedom fighter is another one's terrorist, but thinking about what cybersecurity means and what terrorism means and how all of the concepts seem to be articulated by those who are legitimate actors. And how the legitimate actor, such as States mostly, how they articulate that in certain contexts, such as we can see after Charlie Hebdo, all of the laws that were passed and proposed, they were in the context of how far do we deal with security on one side and on the other hand how do we hold privacy? And in this balancing both of these, I think one of the like main questions is how to get the Governments to be more accountable to the people and how they can be more transparent in relation to these kind of actions.
And thinking about that, it came into my mind one thing about Brazil, which is the intelligence agency of Brazil, it cannot have access to like personal data. And so it's -- which is prescribed like in its foundation. But on the other hand, I see a fluidity of who is doing what. And in the end of the day, like someone is going to do and maybe like enter someone's privacy. And what I mean by that is mostly that the Federal police of Brazil, together with the Center for Defense,Cyberdefense of Brazil, they are like special branches. And they were the ones that made the surveillance of the mega events such as the World Cup and they are going to do also the Olympics surveillance. So to think about how some actors within the Government are not legitimate. But on the other hand, this kind of not surveillance and then there are other branches in the Government that do that.
So I don't know if I made myself clear, but yes, that's my comment.
>> JOANNA BRONOWICKA: Thank you.
>> AUDIENCE: Steve Zelzer with Labour Net in San Francisco and Labourtech.org. And there is a general attack on journalists who are trying to tell the truth Internationally. Even in the U.S. Journalists covering stories on police violence are being attacked. So this is an International issue. And there has to be a International campaign to stop the suppression of journalist universal service and the right to write about what is happening. Many of the causes are social conditions. The whole economic conditions are what journalists are talking about. Many Governments don't want those things addressed by journalists because they are part of the corruption and part of the systemic problems. Particularly in Turkey where not only independent journalists were attacked, but major newspapers were attacked. And there has been no outcry from the United Nations or Governments who talk about Democracy about the jailing and murder of thousands of journalists around the world. This is a systemic problem that has to be addressed.
I'm in the Union, the CWA media workers. If journalists are afraid to write about what is going on, how are we going to know what is going on? That's a real question. Getting information out and being able to provide information to people of the world, working people and others, is a human right to have that information. And what is happening, more and more Governments, including the US Government, are making it more and more difficult for journalists to operate and to get information out and creating fear and intimidation and that has to be addressed.
>> JOANNA BRONOWICKA: Could you please raise your hand again if you wanted to speak? But I haven't given you voice. You will go first and who else? One there? Am I missing somebody? Not yet. Okay.
>> ANJA MIHR: I would like to come back to some of the points that were raised, particularly the questions when the right to assemble becomes terrorism in a way, in a nutshell. There was a question about it. What is radical? What is terror? What is just a different opinion?
Again from a human rights perspective, the question is as old as we have political groups. It's probably a couple thousand years old. When is something radical or becoming a threat? I just want to recall how some of the International courts -- sorry to come back to the courts, because it's the only thing that we have right now that aims to Regulation. And they are completely understaffed and overwhelmed by this issue, but you'll see what I'm trying to come back to. What the courts do, the European court and the interAmerica courts and others that are most active in that, is they use the "do no harm"rule to estimate. They have no other tool to say when is something becoming sort of a threat to society and whatnot? A lot of national courts also apply that rule, because there is nothing really else that we have. And in trying to differentiate. Yes, we have at least a European definition on what terrorism is, it's vague of course on the International level. On the UN level it failed a couple years ago, because they tried to sort of be brought up in 2001 and then 9/11 came in between.
The point that I'm trying to make is there is nothing new on the planet. We had the same debates 15 years ago. I was active at the time. The new dimension about this whole let's say war on terror or Internet or cyberspace is what has been highlighted here. Even the regional recognitions that we have thus far will not manage the magnitude and the dimension of this. So we're talking about on -- yes, everybody talks about a global solution, and I would like to throw in something that has been mentioned recently at a forum on Internet governance, at an academic conference, and the idea of having an International global sort of cybecourt or tribunal or some global enforcement mechanism. Not talking about yes, we need aglobal solution, everybody is talking about it, but nobody is making an effort when it comes to enforcement. We agree that the human rights that work offline also work online and we don't need new norms and standards. We need mechanisms that regulate, govern and enforce. And that's why I'm bringing back this idea.
And there are people who spent time on it and how it can look. I just want to throw this in as an idea, because yes, the assessment has been done fruitfully and what has been mentioned here is evident to everybody. Journalists scared to report it. There is such an insecurity worldwide. But what is not so much missing is national, not even regional enforcement mechanisms but global ones. And there is an idea on the ground to have something sort of a global, at least some sort of tribunal courted idea. And I wouldn't say immediately that this is a ridiculous idea. Whether this would be fruitful is another thing, but I thought it was inspiring when someone brought it up.
>> AUDIENCE: Yes. Thank you very much. Matige Guten. After listening to the debate, I had a more general remark. Where do we take the debate? Who how do we counter the trend that we have seen here? I agree it's an old story, it's not new,the continuing unsuccessful attempts to restrict the freedoms and human rights in the fight against terror.
And I think it's important to go back to what Frank La Rue said about the starting point has to be that the -- acknowledgement that the Governments have a legitimate right and obligation to protect our societies from terrorism. That has to be our starting point. And then to make the -- our arguments. Because the risk is that we must not be seen and perceived as somebody who is trying to weaken the effort against terrorism. But to the contrary, that we are the ones that actually are trying to reinforce it. And think for that purpose, we need to continue with the ethical argument. It is wrong to transgress International human rights law in the fight against terrorism, because that's true. We have to continue with our legal argument that it's unlawful. But I think we have to strengthen and put a lot more effort on -- and emphasis on the argument of effectiveness. That respecting human rights, fundamental freedoms, International human rights law, is not only not an obstruction or obstacle in the fight, but it's an indispensable precondition for any successful effort to counter terrorism.
Because first, because it's true and I think we heard a lot of evidence from people who spoke about it, of how the War on Terror, the disregarding of human rights and freedoms fails to deliver. Also because it's the only way, really, to win the public support for this argument. Because when, in the atmosphere of fear and intimidation that prevails around in many places around the world, the ethical arguments and arguments International are not going to be terribly successful in getting the majority of the public opinion on your side. So you have to continue a relevant and real and true argument that any effort against terror that is going to -- that is systematically disregarding human rights standards and laws and fundamental freedoms has failed. Because the simple truth is that the only effective antiterrorist law is what stops terrorism. And our Governments have difficulty to understand. A lot of people said that there is a need to develop common approaches and knowledges, the Council of Europe is preparing a single interesting review of the practices, national practices, in blocking, filtering Internet sites and removing content in 47 Member States of the Council of Europe. Of course, this is an exercise, a regional exercise in one part of the world, but the outcome of that will show what are the good practices and what are the worse practices, and try to extract some common policy things out of that could be interesting and relevant to other parts of the world.
>> JOANNA BRONOWICKA: Thank you. Who else would like to make a comment or add something to the discussion?
Okay. From people that haven't spoken before?
I'm going to call on Isa to talk about the issue more concretely. What it looks like in Jordan and then I'll turn it over to you.
>> ISA: Well, hello again. I'm Isa from the Jordan Open Source Organization.
And, basically, I will try to just to summarize the whole situation in Jordan.
I would like to put you into the local context. Jordan is a very tiny Middle Eastern country. Our neighbors are Syria, Palestine and Israel, Iraq, and so full of wars and problems. So, basically, Jordan officially has joined the US led military interventions against ISIS. And after that, we used to have let's say more restrictive and more laws regarding terrorism. We already had the state security law, which is a very old law from the '70s, and then a new antiterrorism law just passed something like one year ago. And after that law, basically, we currently have something like 12 percent -- 12 persons that were being arrested and jailed and persecuted under that law.
Then I want to focus about the -- all the participants have already said, the broad definition of terrorism. So I might read very quickly what basically terrorism actives are according to the Jordanian law. Any action that threatens the country's relations to any foreign state or might expose the country or its citizens to retaliatory acts on them or their money.
There is an additional Article on this law that makes it cover, basically, the use of any information system or information network or any other publication or media outlet or website to facilitate terrorist acts and to support a group or an organization or society which commits or funds terrorist acts.
So as you can see, the definition of terrorism and terrorist acts is a very broad one. Unfortunately, the Jordanian Government is using this law again and again just to basically persecute and to arrest journalists, bloggers, and outlying activists and the normal citizens that are just posting stuff on Twitter and Facebook.
Thank you.
>> JOANNA BRONOWICKA: Thank you.
Then we go to the last three, starting from this side.
>> AUDIENCE: Actually, just a quick proposition. Since we're all here and there is an agreement, why not creating a mailing list and maybe make a petition with everything. You have the transcript, maybe we could come up with a petition and sign it and just try to apply some pressure and lobbying on the courts, for instance.
>> JOANNA BRONOWICKA: I encourage you to -- we will prepare a final policy report based on what was said in this room. And I was going to say that I wanted to encourage you to e-mail me if you would like to stay in touch about this subject.
So I think my e-mail address, I can tell it to you right now. But you can also use the scheduling tool from IGF to contact me. It's This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. and I'd be happy to facilitate the exchange of information. And understand that if you send me an e-mail about this, that you agree that it will be shared with other people the e-mail about this. So I'm happy to facilitate that.
>> AUDIENCE: Yes, briefly, I wanted to provide elements of solutions, since it was asked what can we do to preventradicalization online. And among the many things that contribute to radicalization, there is lack of information or misinformation. So one of the solutions is to support journalism. And to enable especially local journalists and reporters, but also translators and fixers to do their work, to condem when there are attacks on journalists or bloggers, citizens who exercise journalist activities, so that there is information. So that terrorist groups cannot use lack of information, cannot use gaps to indoctrinate and spread propaganda and lies.
Another one is to promote debate and have a society where we are not scared of discussing controversial issues such as radicalization and engage with various actors, including people who were radicalized and then turned away from terrorism. Try to find out how did they become radicalized online and what led to their deradicalization. It's essential to engage with asmany people as possible, so that there is not just one kind of actor against another kind of actor. But together we find solutions that are appropriate. But also that we don't antagonize each other as a society. Antagonization is also fueling radicalization. So these are the two elements that I wanted to bring to the table.
>> AUDIENCE: Since we mentioned the case of the vice journalists a few times and people asked what can we do, therepetition that has more than 75,000 signatures. It's on change.org. I tweeted links to the change, which is not available in Brazil. But I tweeted out a link to the Rizolo Article. Please do what you can to get him out of jail.
>> JOANNA BRONOWICKA: Thank you, Courtney. I'll turn it over to Frank. It will be our last comment. And then we can break for lunch.
>> FRANK LA RUE: Well, thank you, Joanna. I think this was a very good discussion. Obviously, there is always a frustration with the fact that how can we make sure that there is an effective enforcement of human rights at an International level. We clearly depend on the fact that the legislation should be drafted on the principles of International human rights, and therefore the domestic courts in every country and State should respond to those principles. But here, with an issue like Internet and we're dealing with an issue that is particularly International, I think some of the reflections of today should be drafted and would be very important. And who knows, maybe the debate should follow-up from the -- not wait for the next year IGF, but maybe between IGFs. Because the idea is that -- I'm always in favor of, first of all, reinforcing the human rights approach. Human rights standards do exist on Freedom of Expression, freedom of association, the right to participation and civic participation, and all the different elements. But we don't have what is enforceable on some level. The interAmerican court, the African courts, and other,s they guess, but I think it would be important to maybe think of some International procedure based on International human rights, as a last resort for the most extreme cases. And that would be an interesting issue to begin reflecting upon, on making something enforceable, which would mean an International Convention between States. By the way very complicated.
The second issue is the protection of journalists. It's clear, it's been repeated and I agree, one problem is how do we increase the information and knowledge of everyone? And it is more knowledge and more information between the peoples of the world that will increase the understanding and peace in the world. And that is very much directed to journalism and to researchers. And I think there are several campaigns going on from different organizations, CPJ one of them. But also UNESCO has this sort of coordination of the multiagency plan for the United Nations, which I think would be very good. It would begood to increase the participation of Civil Society, to make it a multistakeholder and not only a State initiative, but to reach out to domestic mechanisms, protection of journalists, which I think at this moment is an urgent matter because they are really under danger and under threat.
>> JOANNA BRONOWICKA: Thank you, Frank. And thank you for everybody that did agree to participate in this conversation. I think it's a difficult subject, emotional one as somebody mentioned, and oftentimes people just simply avoid talking about it. And that's why I'm happy that we were able to do it here in this context.
But we have to notice that, in this -- there were two very important stakeholders that were actually absent from this discussion despite our efforts. We don't have anybody representing any of the Governments that were mentioned. And,unfortunately, we didn't have anybody from the big social media platforms. Of course there are many reasons behind that. We have to be aware that we are probably here, maybe one of the interesting outcomes of this workshop might be the fact that we recognize each other, the people that are not afraid of talking about this issue, and that are solution focused. So I do encourage you to contact me on the center for human rights. And if you would like to make a contribution to the final report, even like a short mention of some initiative or some solution that you would like to see, and I'll try to facilitate also exchange of contact information. Maybe we can create a mailing list and stay in touch.
I hope next year that we don't meet to talk about this, because there will be new legislation that will push for surveillance, push for more control. But chances are that this debate has to continue and then we have to stay on our toes, because if we don't, as academics, as Civil Society, follow the debate, then we might just wake up in a world where a lot of things happened without our participation.
So thank you very much again for participating. And I hope to see you again.
(Applause)
(End of session 12:31)