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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>> BILL GRAHAM: May I invite people to please, if you're not here for the next open forum, which is on the global Commission on Internet Governance, if you could take your conversations out to the hall so there's room for people to sit down and we can get started with this next session, please. And if I could ask our commissioner whose are here to join me at the front of the room, that would be very helpful. Thanks.
Okay. Thank you, and thank you all for joining us for this open forum on the Global Commission on Internet Governance. My name is Bill Graham. I work on the Secretariat of the commission, and we have some commissioners and others very much involved in developing the report of the commission here, who I'd like to introduce to you in a minute, but first I thought I would say that by way of introduction, the Global Commission on Internet Governance was established about a little over a year and a half ago, in January 2014. It's meant to be a 2- or 2.5-year initiative that's intending to present a comprehensive view on the future of multistakeholder Internet governance. The final report isexpected to make strategic recommendations across a variety of Internet governance issues. These will be based on a significant body of original research conducted by Research Advisory Network, and I'll be showing you some screen shots of our website so you can see what -- what work we're doing there.
One of the key objectives is to encourage and undertake a global public discussion on key issues in Internet governance through public consultation, platforms, and other institutional media and academic channels. The goal of this open forum is to facilitate a dialogue between members of the commission and the commission Secretariat and stakeholders attending the IGF that we hope will give the commission an opportunity to present its initial findings and some thoughts about the direction we're taking to the community and get some feedback.
I have too many buttons in front of me here.
So I thought it would be useful -- our primary method of communicating outward what's going on with the commission is through the website, of course. Here we have the home page, which is our Internet, and it's ourinternet.org.
Commissioners and partners, the commission was organized by Canada's Center for National Governance Innovation and the United Kingdom ofInternational Affairs, known more generally as Chatham House. It's supported by ten sponsoring governments and other organizations. We have 29 commissioners, far too long a list for me to go through in detail. It's supported by Dr. Laura DeNardis and staff. We have 29 prominent researchers in the field of Internet governance. Again, the full list is on our website. And our primary outputs to date are a list of research papers, so far numbering 22, produced by members on a wide range of topics and more coming, so there we see the second page of this.
Research papers will be published as a stand-alone document accompanying the commission report, and they're being used to inform the commissioner discussions; however, the final report isn't expected to be a summary of these papers but rather a broader synthesis of the issues.
The main output so far that you would see directly from the commission is a statement that was issued at the Hague Conference on CyberSecurity. It was titled "Toward a Social Compact for Digital Privacy and Security," and it was very well received by the community, got a lot of attention, and I'd urge you to take a look at that to see the quality of the work that's been produced.
So I think I'll leave it there and for now introduce the commissioners we have with us today and ask them to each say a few words about their views on the commission.
So starting from my left, we have Marietje Schaake, who is a member of the European Parliament. Here we have Nii Quaynor, who's no stranger to the IGF, from Ghana. We have Anne Carblanc from the OECD. The secretary general of the OECD is our official commissioner, Angel Gurria, but naturally, a person in his position isn't able to take on huge amounts of the work, although he is an active commissioner, and has been playing a playing a very strong supporting role. And last but not least, we have Kathy Brown, CEO of the Internet Society. Kathy is an official observer and a link to the Internet technical community from the commission.
So each of them will have a few words to say. We also have several RAN members in the room, Research Advisory Network members. I'd ask them to just raise their hands. Frankly, out of the 29, I'm not sure I'd know them all myself. So there we go.
So with that, I'll turn to Marietje to make a statement, and then we'll walk around and open this for discussion.
>> MARIETJE SCHAAKE: Thank you very much. I don't know if I have much of a statement because I mostly look forward to exchanging with you all and hearing more from what you have in mind as advice or questions or thoughts for us in in the global commission.
Maybe just a little bit of a flavor for the way we work, and I'll be very honest with you. When I was first invited to participate as a commissioner on the Global Commission, I thought, Hmm, how is this going to work? 29 people from very, very different disciplines, some of them with a very serious and heavy national security background. There were also a lot of questions from Civil Society asking whether I would even commit to such a commission.
And I thought why not just be open-minded and see what it's like. You can always decline from the beginning, but you can also see what it is, and I've been actually very positively surprised about the way in which we work together. The fact that we are 29 different people from very, very different disciplines creates kind of a balance between us. We have very intense, substantial discussions on very different topics, access in developing countries, the technical layers of the Internet and how they function, issues with regard to jurisdiction and how governance can, on a technical and legal level, even take place, or how we can come to norms that are helping the open Internet but particularly the people globally using the open Internet.
So we've had very -- and I'm leaving out many topics. I do hope you'll have a look at the very many research papers that we're also consulting. In any case, we've had several meetings all over the world where we sat in rooms like this from the early morning to late evenings discussing and discussing and discussing. And the test of whether we could agree on a common approach, which initially I wasskeptical about, came when we published this social compact in which I think the key line is that freedom and security online do not have to be and should not be zero sum. They are integrated, they are mutually enforcing, and the recommendation that is supported by all commissioners is that governments should not weaken encryption, and it is an outcome that I am very happy about and didn't expect at the beginning. It's pretty much sort of the half-time product of our work, and now the most difficult task to come up with final recommendations or action points is still in the works. It's very, very intense discussions and work that we do in smaller subsets of topical discussions with fewer of the commission that zoom in on specific topics and that should come together in some kind of final recommendation, but one of the reasons why we have this open forum is to learn from you, to answer your questions and hear your ideas about what it is we should be doing, and what you would like to see in these recommendations or action points or what role you think the commission should play in this massive discussion about Internet governance, where, of course, here we're at one of the most important and large multistakeholder meetings.
So I'll end there, just to give you an impression of my own experiences. We don't all agree on the commission. That should be known. We are all there as individuals but with a clear, shared commitment to advancing the open Internet and the rights and the freedoms of the people using it, so thank you very much. I look forward to the discussion.
>> BILL GRAHAM: Thank you very much. Nii, would you like to say a few words?
>> NII QUAYNOR: Thank you very much. I think I'll start out by pointing out the importance of the IGF in helping advance the Internet government debate, and that's to an extent one of the important reasons we are here as well. This being a neutral space, enabling all stakeholders to discuss the new issues and explore new things makes it possible for us to, in some sense, advance the Internet without feeling necessarily pressured. The commission has benefited from being able to draw on this community, especially since we learn to work together, and the commission's effort to get a smaller group to try to make recommendations to advance Internet governance on difficult subjects becomes a little bit more realizable.
Now, to produce concrete recommendations, you know, on something of this complexity requires that we benefit from the years of experience in an idea such as this, and it has made it possible for the technical community who is familiar with this approach of open discussion and the IGF to help with this particular effort.
At the Open Forum we are looking to hear from others on what they believe are a good approach to addressing some of the difficult issues that we want to make some recommendations on.
Now, in this case, I'd like to cite one example that comes from the statement that was made at The Hague, and -- because it's of interest to me, and the statement says something like this. It illustrates the difficulty -- the difficult issues the commission is trying to address. And it says, Governments working in collaboration with technologies, businesses, and Civil Society, must help educate the publics in good cybersecurity practices. They must also collaborate to enhance the training and development of the software workforce globally to encourage creation of more secure and stable networks around the world, and I think you'll agree that is difficult to address issues of this nature, and those are the kinds of things that the commission is looking to get good recommendations out of. Thank you.
>> BILL GRAHAM: Thank you, Nii. Anne Carblanc, would you like to say a few words, please.
>> ANNE CARBLANC: Yes. Our secretary general, as you said, is a member of the Commission and very supportive of this work by an independent and very diverse group of commissioners coming from different horizons with a different expertise and different background. The OECD is, in particular, supporting the work of the commission in the area of, let's say, the openness of the Internet. We've started -- we have a number of instruments very close to the NETmundial principles, we call them the Internet Policymaking Principles, that start from the premise of many years of experience in the OECD countries that you need an open Internet continue to have a good impact on trade, on innovation, in general on growth and on prosperity, and what we are doing currently is developed conceptual framework of what is Internet openness, looking at different dimensions from the technical openness to the economic openness to the social openness, and to other aspects, and we try to not only provide the qualitative information to explain what it means but also to get data and to begin to get a sense -- to begin to provide qualitative evidence of the link between the openness of the Internet and economic and social prosperity. So this is essentially what we do.
We also contribute in other areas where we have a long experience and expertise which include digital security risk, digital privacy risk, and we also have a lot of work in eCommerce anyway. There's a broad range of OECD work that we can contribute to the work of the commission. Thank you.
>> BILL GRAHAM: Thank you, Anne, very much. And Kathy, would you like to talk a little bit about how you're experiencing the commission and its work?
>> KATHY BROWN: Thank you. Thank you for having me sit here. I want to apologize before I even start that I have to slip out, and it's no reflection on my view of the importance of this commission, because I think it is, indeed, very important. There's just other people calling as well.
Let me say this. I was asked to be an observer to this commission, and I -- again, I was a little skeptical as well as -- when we started as to how this very diverse group of people would actually operationalize their conversations and how they would reach decision-making, and I must say that this is, again, a testament to this idea of multistakeholders that if people of goodwill from very different, different, diverse backgrounds and not just who have an interest but who are actually experts in their area, really different expertise at the table, very high-level expertise, are willing to actually share their thinking and learn from each other that there is a possibility of principled decision outputs, and I think I, like you, was a bit -- a little startled and also pleased when the compact came together. It came together in the most unique Internet global way, and that is with a draft that multiple people were working on all over the world, and I saw what this mutual respect and expertise -- how that works together to actually come up with what I thought was a very substantial document and a substantial addition to our thinking about how to move forward.
So my observation is that this is a learning group. It's a funny way to say this because if you look at the level of expertise of thecommissioners, you would say they had learned all they needed to learn, but they learned -- they know what they know in their expert area, and what I have been watching is how they learned from each other to come to synthesis for what are brand-new problems. So if you're wrestling with brand-new problems, it's not enough to know what you know, it's what you don't know, and then looking around to figure out how you learn that and then what -- what contribution you can give to the thinking.
And so I'm looking forward. The commission is now involved in its, I guess, final phase of trying to think about what its recommendations are. I will tell you I observe that it's not there yet, and I'm going to be really interested to watch how this happens, and I'm interested in the questions that are being asked to help frame the actual output and the pushback that various people give to each other.
One last point. I have also been given permission to push back and to suggest and to sort of rattle the cages once in a while, and I have appreciated very much that opportunity to do that, to be part of this. So thanks, Bill.
>> BILL GRAHAM: Thank you, Kathy. So just to give a little context to our discussion, here's a list of the main topics, and I say this with some trepidation, but as of the 10th of November, these are the topics that are likely -- most likely to be addressed in in the final report. The need for a new social compact in the digital age. This concept of a new social compact came out from the discussions around the Hague statement, and I think that's going to be a major theme coming through the entire work of the commission. Discussions around digital citizenship in the age of the Internet and what does it mean to be a digital citizen? Discussions around how to achieve sustainable accessibility -- "accessibility" very broadly defined -- accessibility to the Internet. Then discussions around the Internet as a driver of development and Internet Governance for development, and that's one of the ones I'm helping with on the Secretariat and trying to figure out what we can usefully add there. Discussions, as you might expect, around crime and punishment in the cyber age, and then finally, but far from least, Internet stability and resiliency. So that's the current, most likely list of chapter headings.
And I think the point of this forum now is to -- I should probably go back to that. The point of this forum now is to open the floor for discussion on these or other topics. Are there things that we've missed here? Are there things that you feel very a broadly skilled commission should be learning about and helping the community to crystallize ideas, and so with that, I'll shut up and turn the floor over to you.
Anyone wish to be first? Please. Introduce yourself.
>> PATRICK CURRY: Patrick Curry. I'm involved in a whole array of different organizations in different countries, including ISO and ITU, standard bodies in the United States, and government activities in Europe, Asia, and also in the Americas.
The issue before some of the national leadership is primarily around digital economies, and the issues that we have on information centricity in the Internet and how that moves forward, so there's -- the question I would have here is that the requirements for trust and interoperability are fundamental to both the societal and digital economic requirements that we have strategically and nationally going forward. I would ask what the commission is doing to look at the economic aspects, and I'm not talking purely about money, I'm talking about how this relates to the complete changes that are occurring in economies, economic models, as a consequence of digital, so this isn't just bolting technology onto historic models.
And I'd like to cite a specific issue. Three weeks ago the European Court of Justice ruled that cryptocurrencies were to be traded and managed as currencies, not as commodities. Now, different nations have different -- some are doing it like commodities, like the United States; others, like the UK, have it as currencies. The ruling is that it will be traded as currencies, so for taxation purposes, economic management, regulation, and so on, this opens up all sorts of opportunities and challenges, so as society, individuals, organizations, governments, crime follow the money and so too does investment in the Internet, the concern that we have, "we" being a loose, very broad constituency, need to get smart about the changes that are happening in support of that, and the one that I would bring out now is the shift in smartphone technology. Smartphones are, within the next year, going to become the trust anchor that we use. It will not be these devices, and there are sound technical reasons for that.
The beginning of next year we will see the implementation of the toolkits to enable trusted execution environments to work on the advanced smartphones and the S6 is one of those.
So my point is, as we see the power moving into the hands literally of the citizen or the business employee or the soldier or the pilot in their hands, that -- we are -- this is going to affect dramatically how we use information and what we call trust anchors in the back of the Internet, and it's really -- it would be really encouraging to know that the commission is engaging on the breadth of what I've just described.
So sorry for such a long and provocative question, but this ultimately is about money in order to ensure freely and business. Thank you.
>> BILL GRAHAM: Thank you. Any of our commissioners want to comment on that? Thank you.
>> MARIETJE SCHAAKE: I'll try to answer, but it's a reflection of our work. We're in a massive discussions, and the challenge is what do we do and what do we not do because there's a lot of new developments in genetics, in, you know, all kinds of technology areas that we cannot discuss, so we try to limit ourselves to governance issues, and we have, in the -- in the line of what you mentioned, digital currencies, one member who is very focused on blockchain and digital currency, so he educates us all the time, is extremely excited about what is happening there.
So that's one part. And then I think the sort of empowerment of the individual also in economic aspects would fall under our thinking about digital citizenship and much more broadly, we're in constant analysis along the lines of how lawmaking, jurisdiction, rules-making, norm developments, traditionally happens in the nation states on the basis of territoriality and traditional citizenship and how that is sort of at complete odds with a more horizontal hyperconnected reality that people not only live in literally but also live in when they go online.
And so we think about it in more broad terms than just the economy, but hopefully both in terms of governance and in terms of specific economic implications such as blockchain and cryptocurrencies we will come up with concrete points. I hope this answers your question.
>> PATRICK CURRY: So forgive me for kind of coming back on two points on that. Blockchains are being used increasingly for nonfinancial activity, and distributed ledgers, we're going to see it's already started, so I've been involved in discussions around things like food fraud, IT product traceability, and there are many more. Every sector is going to have requirements around blockchains within the next couple of years, and the question then -- you know, this is going to be another capability that has to link to trust anchors, like registers, and so on for the future, and I'd be very happy to take that discussion offline.
>> MARIETJE SCHAAKE: Yeah, lets. Maybe it's better to go into detail and have more general discussion here for the moment, but I'm here all weekend. Happy to connect.
>> PATRICK CURRY: If I can just connect to one last piece on that. In other groups around governance -- and I'm here as part of EU Project Mapping, which is an Internet Governance Project for the EU, and as part of that, the -- one of the cornerstone activities is around a dialogue around trust and interoperability mechanisms, and so the notions of anonymity, partial anonymity, pseudonymity, which are also being developed in ISO in particular and to some extent ITU, but it would be very helpful for those to be surfaced in here because absent those primary capabilities, it's really hard to support relationships in a cyber environment, coping with, as you've just said, the dualityof cyber space as a global comment versus the fact that I've got data sitting on a network or on a server in a specific jurisdiction.
>> JARIETJE SCHAAKE: Clear. Okay. Thanks.
>> NII QUAYNOR: Yeah. I think you're right. We do anticipates there will be a lot more of applications of blockchain in many different areas than cryptocurrencies. Because of interest in local government, we also are seeing examples of applications emerge in that arena, so certainly it is an important subject for us to consider even more, and I think she's right, there is someone on the committee who has been pushing us in that direction, but, you know, it's a balance, and -- but I think you are right, that this is becoming an important issue, and we will be looking at it, I'm sure. Thank you.
>> BILL GRAHAM: Next, please. Introduce yourself before.
>> IZUMI AIZU: Thank you very much. My name is Izumi Aizu. I am based in Tokyo and working for the University of Global ResearchInstitute for InfoSocinomics. Over three years, I've been looking outside of traditional Internet governance or Internet arena. I'm actually picking up with what the other gentleman said. There's certain areas using the digital technologies and applying into the physical world as you may see. I agree that we do not -- we should not expand too much of the focus on the one hand, but what if the new things, new challenges or brand-new things coming up in the next five to ten years, so I just would like to shortlist the key words, and it might be good if the commission's final report will not elaborate too much of these new areas, but still, at least if you all agree, cover areas of emerging issues or potentially become either harmful or very positive areas.
So with a different manifestation that you made, Internet of Things is one, Industry 4.0 is another, the makers movement, the digital and social fabrication sharing the product data, how do you really protect the IPRs or, you know, there's open source design, open source hardware, and these are getting mostly very serious or more tangible than, say, every three months, I would say, you know, working also in my small entity, the quest for the next mobility, it is a combination based on the physical mobilities that -- the cause is assisted by Google self-driving, with the drones, do you need the drones' licenses when they are connected, and there are a bunch of others.
I had a good conversation with a member of the commission working on the blockchain and Bitcoin stuff or smart contract. The movement of the money or currency is facilitated by the distributed system network, but all these things are facilitated. The movement of the matters on top of the movement of information, so there's a little bit more abstract areas, but if you look at some of the specifics, you'll find very intriguing and difficult issues of the governance down the road, so I just would like to mention these. Thank you.
>> BILL GRAHAM: Wolfgang, please.
>> WOLFGANG KLEINWACHTER: My name is Wolfgang Kleinwachter. I'm a professor emeritus at the University of Aarhus in Denmark, and first of all, I wants to congratulate for the output you've produced so far. As an academic, it's wonderful to have the 20-plus papers, which is really a contribution to this never-ending flow. You know, being in this field for more than 20 years, it's like the Mississippi, you know, it never stops, it goes and goes and still 1,000 miles to New Orleans, so it's a long way to go, and we are in the middle of the process.
My concrete question goes to your concrete proposal on the new social compact in the digital age.
So, you know, being involved in -- many years in drafting of principles and producing instruments and mechanism, so could you be a little bit more specific? I think Anne mentioned the Sao Paulo declaration, which was a great step forward by adopting a set of principles, which is supported by a lot of governments, society organization, technical community, and private sector. It's really globalized in the stakeholder document, and my question is how this new social compact would be embedded into what we have already, and what is the added value of what it means, where -- and how is this implemented, you know, who will negotiate this social compact if it comes to -- you know, to practical part of it, of implementation. Thank you.
And by the way, your -- the commission, the amendment terminates this year, or what is the follow-up from the commission?
>> MARIETJE SCHAAKE: Thank you very much. I just want to make sure that everybody knows that we don't produce these papers, it's a vast research network of people, so we don't write it ourselves. We learn from it as much as you do, but I'm happy it's appreciated because it's in a public domain, and it should contribute to a much broader discussion than just the ones we have in the small circle of the commission.
I'll just be brief and clarify that our mandate is indeed limited. It was for two years, so we have until, I think, early spring of next year, so the pressure is on us to take the next steps, and from my point of view, we're not so much framed by the notion of a social compact or, you know, something set in stone yet. What I hope will happen is that there will be clear recommendations coming out, which will be on a slightly more abstract level, so in terms of, you know, what standards should be adopted or what interoperabilities should be integrated and by whom, instead of filling in all the details, we want to have a priority of issues that we think are key to be addressed now, but I don't think anyone on the commission is under the illusion we can work out in great detail some kinds of new pact or whatever you call it, which would also then be globally implemented. I think it is more recommendations on the basis of thorough analysis than a very detailed map of a mechanism that should address these questions.
That's my view, but I understand that, you know, there's a long list of ambitions on the screen. I'm not sure whether all of those will eventually be addressed in the end results. I think some of us are pushing for more short concrete recommendations, like three or five, andthen have annexes of justifications and research to accompany.
>> AUDIENCE: (Off microphone)
>> MARIETJE SCHAAKE: Well, the idea is that a new compact or the notion of a come -- notion of a compact should be associated with the notion of multistakeholders coming together and creating trust between each other again, so that's the idea behind it because we also identified the lack of trust between different actors, between different institutions in the technological infrastructure or the services running over, it's between people and governments lack of trust in companies and the services they provide, so a notion of a compact is more to identify that there will be -- that there should be a pause and a trust on focus where multiple stakeholders should come together and agree on certain norms, for example, and I would hope that these kinds of norms and what they would look like are the ones that we can identify, but we're -- again, we're still in the middle of discussions, so if you would put a microphone under the mouth of a commissioner that's not here right now, you may hear something completely different.
>> NII QUAYNOR: I'd like to just comment briefly. I think the idea would be that we want to contribute to the larger debate, larger discussion, and, in fact, that is why we are here. So if we make any recommendations, it could not be for us to go somewhere else and implement, it must be that we're bringing it to the same community and have them also debate further and adopt which ones work best for them in their area. We use the same mechanisms that are in place, but we want to influence by the kinds of recommendations that we make, so it's very open, it's contributory, and believe that when you see some good recommendation, you will follow, and I think that's the approach, yeah.
>> BILL GRAHAM: Anne, please.
>> ANNE CARBLANC: Just a few words to respond to your question in relation to, again NETmundial principles. See, from where we stand at the OECD, we think the work of the commission is nothing contradictory to the NETmundial principles. I think there is -- the same -- yourobjectives are the same, and it's true that, as Marietje just said, trust is central, and trust has been -- has been put at risk for -- and very explicitly for the last few years, and that's one of the topics which is currently discussed within the commission with different views, but with the idea of finding a consensus position that would speak in favor of preserving human rights, liberties, and so -- basically.
>> AUDIENCE: A social compact would be a confidence-building measure?
>> MARIETJE SCHAAKE: I think it's -- we call for a social compact between actors and we could identify certain elements, but we're not going to draft the social compact for everybody. Does that make sense?
>> BILL GRAHAM: Okay. I have three speakers identified. We've got about 15 minutes more, so first here.
>> DIVINA FRAU-MIEGS: Thank you. I'm Divina Frau-Miegs. I'm a researcher and a reporter of the WSIS+10 for Action Line Media, and particularly media education. I wanted to congratulate the commission for its work because it's really been wonderful and to thank you for allowing us to produce a paper, me and Lee Hibbard on Education 3.0, and I'd like to come back to that because I think the topics that you mention here that you're working on all call for citizenship and education at the moment remains very much understated. It's passed off as capacity building, but if we think of education as capacity building, we're going to go nowhere in terms of attitude, in terms of value, in terms of trust, so for me in the long-term continuation of your work is through education and reempowering education and rebooting education. It needs a real transition. Fab Labs, et cetera. We see the changes that education is taking is moving towards these other spaces where there's much more stakeholder interaction with young people in and outside schools, and this is what is needed at the moment it seems to me, so I would like to push for an Internet of Citizens besides the Internet of Things so that we ensure that we have, you know, not in parallel tracts but in regionally focused stages these two elements in one hand and objects on the other hand so we remain humanity-centered and that the Internet of Citizens remains the one that is the GPS for all of our young people, so I would push for that.
At the moment when it's done, it's reduced -- trust is reduced in education to safe and responsible Internet use but is very small part of what education should be, and it's not optimistic in a sense, it's about fears and overcoming fears instead of opportunities and embracing opportunities, so this is what we would like to push.
We make recommendations in our paper, sorry to refer to them, but two of them are it seems to me important. The future of Internet and the future of economics is about creative industries. We still don't know what they are and how to get there, but we know that they are participatory, and so push for harnessing the potential of creative industries for learning and training, not just for economics, for learning and training. If we don't do it, it would be done by private sector only, and it would be a shame for liberties.
And the other idea, and I speak here to the researchers in the room, is to push for Internet studies as renewed basics, renewed basics for 21st Century skills and literacy. Thank you for your attention.
>> BILL GRAHAM: Thank you. Any comment?
>> MARIETJE SCHAAKE: Just briefly. I mean, we will not be able to address every aspect of digitization, so we're going to disappoint a lot of people. I think our focus should be on the governance questions and also being strict about what should and should not be governedand by whom so we don't overregulate, which is also a risk, but I can assure you when we talk about the open Internet, the public interest is at the heart of our thinking, so the fact that it's an Internet for Citizens for me is, you know, self-evident, let's say, but taking people's interest in -- into consideration may also include thinking about how the Internet of Things should be governed because we want to make sure that people are not, you know, put in a difficult position in the absence of the appropriate governance or interoperability or norm structures, so, yeah, just a few thoughts.
>> DIVINA FRAU-MIEGS: Just to answer, it seems to me we are all, and I think it's maybe something we can think about, we haven't reached out to the general public. We have not reached out to the general public, so all these issues that are being discussed now, decided by government, regulated by governments, are done with the general public not knowing or getting it piecemeal.
We have to present a general picture of what has to be unpacked into governance. Governance has to go public.
It's not just about safety, it's about data, it's about portability. We have to make a huge effort, especially for researchers and commissions like yours to reach out to the general public because it's not just kids who need to be educated today, it's adults, and so we have to move together with them, and I'm afraid we haven't managed that yet.
>> NII QUAYNOR: I'd just like to make one or two comments. As some academic, I do share, like, your view about education needs to be rebooted and maybe revised in some respects, and I think that is -- that is good. With respect to the commission, every time a meeting's held in different countries, there is an attempt to reach out, so even though we can't reach the billions unconnected, there's some effort that the local environment to indeed factor in some of the local input, and it's a mixture of whatever ecosystem they have in the country, like when the meeting in Ghana was held, there was extensive efforts to bring in Civil Society and many other groups so that at least we can become sensitive to the consents in the local region, so that also I think you are right, but we cannot do enough of it, and that's probably the issue.
>> BILL GRAHAM: Paul, please.
>> PAUL FEHLINGER: Hello. My name is Paul Fehlinger. I'm the manager of the Internet and Jurisdiction Project. I'm very much looking forward to reading the commission report next year. I like the expression of the new social compact in the digital age, and I think this points down basically to a question of how do we manage digital coexistence in a way because on the Internet, citizens from different countries, be it for private or business purposes or other purposes, coexist and share cross-border online spaces, and a key question from a governance perspective is basically how can we manage coexistence, how can we enable coexistence, and I think what was just said in the beginning is a very important point. The jurisdiction question underpins almost the entire fabric of the global Internet, so if we want to collaboratively preserve the global nature of the Internet, the benefits that the Internet has brought so far, we need to come up with the necessary transnational mechanisms that are maybe as transnational as the Internet itself in order to manage something that is global and that spans across multiple jurisdictions, so I think for me this is one of the key topics that need to be addressed because it underpins all the different areas, be it human right, be it freedom of expression, be it economics, growth, innovation, so I'm very much looking forward to reading the report, and I hope that this can be something that might be highlighted by the commission as well
>> BILL GRAHAM: Thank you. I see our time is running short, so I see two more hands. I'd like to get you to say -- raise your point, and then we'll do a final round of comments from the commissioners, if that's okay. Over here, please.
>> SALLY LONG: Hi. Thank you. I'm Sally Long, and I'm with the Open Group. We have a new standard that we came out with we've been working on for six years. It's called the Trusted Technology Provider Standard, Mitigating the Risk of Tainted Products for ICT, and so along with that goes an accreditation program that identifies those ICT providers and component suppliers that comply with the standard.
So my question is if -- and I'm not really sure, I couldn't really glean if you're going to cover recommendations for standards or not. I thought maybe you said you were, and if so, then how would I provide information on this? It was adopted by ISO in September. How would I provide input to you all on potential standards that affect ICT and the Internet?
>> BILL GRAHAM: Good. Thank you. And finally back here, could you come up to a mic, please.
>> SUSAN MORGAN: Hi. I'm Susan Morgan. Until the end of last year, I was executive director of the Global Network Initiative, and I'm now a freelance researcher and consultant, and I just wondered if you could say a few words about how the protection and achievement for fundamental rights, such as free expression of privacy features in the commission's work. I also thought now for the first time we've actually got specific special -- in the UN process, both for privacy and free expression. I wondered if there was any connection and the work that you're doing. Thanks.
>> BILL GRAHAM: Good. Thank you. Anyone want to address those? Marietje, please.
>> MARIETJE SCHAAKE: Thank you. I'll try to address all questions as concluding remarks as well. The public outreach, on the one hand I agree; on the other hand, what we're trying to do is really do our homework first, but in the process we get feed-in from a lot of people, and I think -- and I say this perhaps also as a member of European parliament, there's many areas that relate to Internet governance or the digital economy or digital society where I see an exceptional level of engagement by people, whether it's on that neutrality, copyright, on child pornography, education, skills, I mean, the list is long. If you compare it to other areas of policymaking, I think there's more than ever, a lively, globally connected Civil Society with networks of people that engage with decision-makers everywhere, and we benefit greatly from their input, but of course, we can always do more to -- to, well, take responsibility, educate, and share what we're doing.
The jurisdiction question is one of those complex matters that really even if you put legal experts, governance experts, former or current CEOs of companies in a room, I mean, you know, rarely have I been challenged intellectually so much as during the work of the commission. It's actually a treat, but it's really true. I mean, sometimes I just felt like I couldn't fit it in my head anymore, so we are really trying to work through these immensely complex, layered, almost matrixed aspects of all kinds of questions by zooming in on specifics and then zooming out again on the consequences in different areas, but, you know, we don't have a golden formula to solve it all.
In terms of standards, my sense is that what we might do is recommend where specific standards are needed, so for example, if they aren't there yet, where should be or on what level should they be made, but we are in no position. We're just not qualified to map out what those standards should be on a technical level, if that makes sense, so the relation of standards could come in the form of recommendations where we identify vacuums or loopholes, but I don't envision us saying, Well, we need standards and this is what they look like. I don't think we're capable because -- yeah, that would be overpromising our abilities.
The question of rights and freedoms of people, I think, for a significant amount of commissioners is really at the very foundation of the lens through which we look at the world, at least for me this is the case, but of course, different expertise highlights a different angle to this question, but I -- you know, I see the recommendation not to weaken encryption as a very concrete one to make significant progress to empower individuals to choose who they wish to share information with or not, to allow them to access information safely, et cetera, et cetera.
We also have had very interesting discussions supported by some of the RAN members on the privatization of norm setting of rights and of freedoms, for example, social media companies identifying what is, quote, unquote, appropriate content and what isn't, and this often being outsourced to sort of modern-day sweatshops where people for $1 a day are assessing whether or not there is too much nudity or vial thence a picture. You know, these kinds of discussions are a part of the work we do. We don't have direct contact with the UN representatives, although I think on an individual level we do, and we do learn and get input from norms where they exist, discussions where they take place, and this can be both in governance circles or in intellectual areas or in very technical arenas, so it's -- it is part of our work and view on what we're doing, yeah.
>> BILL GRAHAM: Good. Thank you. I see we're officially out of time. Just any very quick comments from Anne or Nii?
>> NII QUAYNOR: Very quick. I think for us the importance of the open multistakeholder processes must be noted. It's very good to have. We like to address difficult subjects, difficult issues. That's why I cited a case of software enhancing the capacity and ability to produce software with less errors, which is a real tough issue, and it does, indeed, impact on the security and safety, depending on where the balance is, so you can see it's an effort to address something that' does not quite fit in one, and that's why all the multistakeholdersought to participate in those things.
We want to be as clear as we can, but we can't also be too prescriptive, you know, because then we'll lose out some of the important things that the committee can best handle, and that needs to be mentioned. And on issues like rights and freedoms, we have to appreciate that it's difficult because in addition to having that, we also need to assure the safety and the peace of the community, so it's a difficult subject, and that's, I think, the kind of things that the commission is wrestling with, and I'm just pleased to have had a chance to have your inputs. Thank you.
>> BILL GRAHAM: Okay. With that, we'll draw to a close. I'd like to thank you again for joining us and for this lively discussion. I think all of us here will be around this week, and we'd be happy to engage individually.
Also, I'd like to introduce Eric Jardine and Samantha Bradshaw from the Secretariat staff here. They are also around this week, and there is a booth there which is intermittently staffed. If we're there, drop by and talk. Thank you all again.
(Applause)
(Session concluded at 1303)