IGF 2016 - Day 4 - Room 8 - WS134: Assemblies and Associations online: Coping with Challenges

 

The following are the outputs of the real-time captioning taken during the Eleventh Annual Meeting of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) in Jalisco, Mexico, from 5 to 9 December 2016. 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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>> MODERATOR: Good morning and welcome to the last day of the IGF and it is understandable that everybody must be really worn out by now by all the conversations and all the challenges we've been talking about over the days. I work with the Association for Progressive Communications. It is an organization that focuses on using the Internet for social justice for all. We have a wonderful panel put together today to focus on the issue of freedom of assembly and association online. The reason why we focused on this issue we see the Internet has been an integral part with expressing your opinion. Trying to explain what we mean by freedom of assembly and association online.

What we are talking about is the use of Internet to exercise the right to freedom of assembly and association. But whether it is solely assembly and association online or it is the use -- grows to be the use of the Internet to assembly and associate offline. That's how we framed our approach toward this topic. Today is the launch of two fantastic reports in front of you. The report is the Pakistan national report on how freedom of assembly and association online spans out in Pakistan. And this is a quote from Malaysia on freedom of assembly and association. And if you look at page 11 of the Malaysia report you'll see a list of definitions. They've captured the definition of freedom of assembly and association online in this report. I'm going to introduce my panelists and I will go around and introduce all of them first so we know all of them before we get into the conversations. To my right is HARUN. He works for bytes for all. We have a representative from power of Malaysia and from the Digital Empowerment Foundation in India and part of the impact project. We have Deji from Access Now and a member from Facebook. Can we start out how the Internet is used to express freedom and assembly and association? You can go first.

>> Hello. Thank you for setting this ground for this discussion. It can be -- a lot of examples discuss the positives of the Internet. All the users are using for exercise of this freedom of association and assembly and online spaces. Very quickly I can give you an example from the research that we have focused on that study and it is about an online campaign which was like run by a member of Civil Society in Pakistan. It was both on Twitter and Facebook with the #reclaim your mosques. So it was like -- this campaign immediately happened like after the very unfortunate incident in Pakistan where 133 children were massacre had by Taliban in an attack at a school. It was a time where the entire nation was going through this sorrow. But one of the imams in the mosque, he refused to condemn that incident. He thought according to the teaching of Islam maybe he thought was going on. The Civil Society was like they were very -- they broke into anger and run this campaign. This campaign was an issue started on Twitter and moved to Facebook as well. And through that campaign thousands of people they affiliated to this campaign and they supported the narrative which really didn't exist in Pakistan. A soft narrative and condemning the terrorism in Pakistan. This campaign was afterwards moved to physical spaces in Pakistan where people in hundreds started gathering in front of the mosque that imam belonged to and they started putting pressure on the government as well. As a result of that campaign, the government had to issue like -- had to register a report against that imam and also that imam apologized for his word. This is one of the positive things that we can discuss in the Pakistan context.

>> MODERATOR: The fact that it has offline consequences is something that's significant and not something that is just contained to online Internet spaces. How do you see the Internet impacting freedom of assembly in India?

>> I think let's start with the positive note how Internet has been affecting freedom of assembly in India. In a time of 2009 there was a campaign started by a group of men, those who were facing some kind of -- those who wanted to go for things and they face -- 14 members of a group came up and said this is -- and something like that. They formed a group on Facebook starting with that. Within a week there were 40,000 members of those who joined Facebook and members thought -- undergarments against that in their group. That is one example how offline and online transformation together as well as mobilizations happened. Another example when the Internet made a largest jump in online movement in the battle against the largest corporate stakeholders. Within a couple of months -- over a month 33,000 people liked the Facebook page and they received more than 18,000 -- 100,000 responses. This is another example that people do use Internet as a medium to mobilize themselves and share the information and collective information goes online as well as offline.

>> MODERATOR: The fact that so many people who wouldn't have otherwise participated in these campaigns find it convenient through the Internet is a fantastic point there, right? Deji, how do you see the Internet impacting assembly and association just from the global perspective?

>> DEJI OLUKOTUN: Thank you, what we've seen is that the Internet enables people to organize. And what is happening at least in the U.S. context right now is people are asking questions. There has been an organizing model of using giant email lists to try to get people to do something. And now what we're seeing is people trying to move -- I think what we will expect to see after sort of a very contentious presidential campaign is to try to move people from offline -- online action to offline as soon as possible. And also to build power amongst themselves. I was just pulling up an article which I think shows the complexity of the problem, but there is a women's March planned in Washington on I believe January -- in January 22nd to speak up for women's rights. And most of that happened organically. And that will happen shortly after the presidential inauguration.

So it is unprecedented and amazing opportunity for people to express the need to support women's rights and the gathering is meant to be in a public space in Washington, D.C. in the U.S. capital. I'm looking at a headline which is two days old that that assembly, which has over 100,000 registered participants, has been banned from Marching on the Lincoln Memorial. There may have been updates since then since things move swiftly in the Internet age. It shows the complexity of the issue. A great opportunity for people to stand up for what they believe in, organize offline, online and quickly move offline. And -- but it shows it is not always so easy. So we have more work to do.

>> MODERATOR: Actually now is something we can really expect from Facebook used as one of the primary platforms to mobilize. Can you reflect on how you see Facebook's role within this mobilization online?

>> I think I agree with all the points that have been raised by the other panelists on this issue. So I think with the advent and expansion of communication technology, social media, new means of expressions have emerged which are within reach of the majority of people which weren't the case before. People don't want to express just ideas. They also want to occupy public spaces. As citizens who care about issues through social participation, political debates and at Facebook are mission is to make the world more open and connected and people the right to share. It is to facilitate expression and combat values to those expressions. Facebook services allow people to come together and gather on the online space to talk about these issues which matter so much to them. Sort of like when there is disagreement and when there is disagreement between the governments or authorities or even the people of Civil Society it is sort of creates a space of debate. So I think Facebook as a company is committed to making that world more open and creating those connections.

>> MODERATOR: Fantastic. But you know, I know we've been talking about the positives of how Internet has impacted us in association. But one of the things I noted in the report of Malaysia also is a more realistic approach to how the Internet interacts with assembly association. Can you reflect on the realities of how that is spanning out?

>> Hello, I will just time myself and make sure I don't speak too much. So I'll be presenting a case study on a rally that just happened last month. It is not included in this report yet. So really it is called -- it is translated in English it means clean. So the main objective of the rally is to protest against the Prime Minister for multiple counts of alleged corruption. One of it is lawsuits filed by the U.S. Justice Department in July claiming money has been stolen from the state fund. This is, in fact -- This is, in fact, the fifth time the rally has been called to protest against abuse of powers and to advocate for clean elections in the country since 2007. But what we are seeing this time is the emergence of this new group. They are widely known as the red shirt whose sole purpose is to counter the demonstrations. The color red was to counter the yellow of the movement and it is also a representation of the angers towards the movement. And they have very close relationship with the rulers of the country. The red shirts many times has fueled clashes with the supporters. Instances of physical and online attacks against organizers or supporters are disrupting the events has been reported. And they are trying to bring in more people.

In fact, they promise about 30,000 and they would do anything at any cost to stop the rally from happening on that day itself. So given the situations, dissemination of the information is extremely important to make sure that there is no fear mongering among the public. Internet was the main medium for mobilization and also for dissemination of accurate information in this case. Especially when there is really no space in the offline world for civil societies or any views that is different from the establishment. For the past rallies, they have achieved a lot by using the Internet as a tool to mobilize.

However, the optimism of the Internet being a solution to the authoritarian governments is changing as well. They pro-government group the red shirts is occupying the online space to discredit what the organization is doing. So this is one of the examples of a -- the leader of the red shirt movement, it was circulated widely on social media and people have been saying that the movement will be planting some of its supporters of the yellow shirts in the protest rally to create riots. It fear mongers the people. And secondly, this is the second for those that are on Facebook showing a group of men in red shirt trying to showcase their martial arts and their abilities to disrupt the rally. On top of that, the main person leading the movement -- I'm quoting this from him, we will not hesitate to do anything to stop this rally. For me our struggle will continue even if we are bought in blood. This was shared widely on social media as well. And this image was initially shared on What’s App group to the main organizers and subsequently widely on Facebook. It has attracted them to stop and call off the rally otherwise this would happen to them. They would attack the rally, the country and them as well.

And, of course, then we have things like this going around on Facebook. These pictures was posted on an article trying to discredit the movement as a foreign country agenda. I have no idea why they decide to use this portal to explain the article. And then there are other things that has been happening online. So a man posted on social media it says that the name of the rally is like masturbating. You do thing the same thing over again because this is the fifth time we're doing this rally. The only thing you get is -- which means self-enjoyment. So this --So these are the sort of growing level of repression perpetrated by non-state actors to control and monitor citizens political behaviors. This is non-state behaviors. There are other forms of harassment by state actors. Before the rally 10 people were arrested. The main organizer was arrested and detained under national security law and locked up in solidarity confinement with lights on 24/7 and she was not allowed access to lawyers or family members as well. No mattress or blankets was given to her when she was in the detention.

So as a result, the turnout figures for the movement is much lower than the previous rally. We are looking at from 500,000 to 40,000. So some has argued that the turnout is no longer a direct reflection of the support received by the organization because of repressive situations which really does not encourage people to come out to the street physically to protest without feeling -- I think this goes to the translation from offline to online is complex and not as simple as we think it was.

And also one of the lessons that the rally has learned is for the past four rallies, the mobilization has been largely focused online. But what they have left out is those people who are not connected. There is a need to reach out to the crowd as well. So that's why in this rally they have done a nationwide convoy to reach out to people in rural areas who don't have access to Internet. And that's also the false impressions of Internet and social media as being an open and public platform. But we are really only reaching to a particular type of audience that has really shared the movement. And perhaps with algorithms it adds to the complexity of the issues as well.

So that's all for my presentation. I would like to hear from the rest of you if you have any similar thoughts to this. Thank you.

>> MODERATOR: Thanks. I think that's a great point of presentation of the rally that really used the Internet and got impacted by the Internet as well. That was a double edged sword. And it is concerning. It is not the rally and organizers who got attacked but other organizations including your organization that is being targeted because of your association with and support for the movement, right? Can we move to you and try to get a sense of there were two key points that she raised by fear mongering and then the spread of misinformation on the Internet. Use of the Internet to create a situation of fear. So how do you think Facebook has been responding to this sort of a situation?

>> I think these are some great points raised. I want to congratulate you for the excellent work you've been doing in your country and the respective countries. Specifically on the point of misinformation, I think like as a company we believe in giving people a voice, which means that we will be ERRing on the side of letting people share what they want whenever possible. We need to be careful not to discourage sharing of opinions or mistakenly restricting accurate content. It is also so you have a freedom of speech and expression and so does somebody else as well. What for you might be misinformation might be information for them. We have to be very careful with how we tread this spot. Having said that, based on your slides, what I could see there were a couple of things that as Facebook I would like to address. These are policy-related questions. Our policies state that any kind of hate speech is not allowed on our platform. If somebody is being targeted for their based on their gender, gender identity, ethnicity, religious affiliation, sexual orientation, anything, that gets taken down immediately. All you need to do is report that content to us.

Another crucial point is any kind of advocating of violence or credible threats are also not allowed. If you feel that people from your organization are being threatened or there are situations where you fear that could be credible threats, you report that to us and that will be taken down. Another important thing is as a company, we believe in authentic identities. So the army of people that you are talking about use a certain name on Facebook, right? If you feel that is not a real person, flag that to uls. Let any kind of fake account or impersonating account goes down. We want authentic I.D. It helps all of us to act responsibly. If there is a name attached to this, we know this person is responsible for this action and when we know that this is Deji, if he is saying this, he will be more responsible in terms of what I say on Facebook. So if you feel that the person is fake, it is a fake account, an impersonating account, report that to Facebook and it will be taken down.

>> MODERATOR: Maybe when we go back on the conversations that can be a bit more of a back and forth on this issue of the different solutions you are presenting and perhaps it is a good thing that we are a smaller group because I think once we discuss the second part of the conversation, we can really have a back and forth on how to resolve this issue. How to tackle this problem that we're facing in the Malaysian Internet and assembly and association, right? I want to invite you now to speak about another whole side of the problem, right? We are talking about Internet being used for assembly and association, but that's only if you have Internet, right? So what happens when they shut it out for us, no?

>> Thank you for pointing out this main issue. That is one of the countries now facing a lot of shutdowns. Since 2013 we have been facing 44 shutdowns so far. In the last year itself we have faced 23 shutdowns. It a 22 shutdown. Since June one more shutdown happened as well. I just highlighted some of the points that how these shutdowns are not only affecting freedom of expression bit daily lives as well. More than 18 shutdowns in a sensitive areas. The most sensitive area. It was given the reason of a terrorist attack, social unrest and social media rumors. That particular area has seen a shutdown of more than 100 days, but if you compare with the other state, which is also facing a shutdown of about 19 days, and that shows that there is a State supposed to be said as a peaceful State is facing a shut down. One of the -- I feel the reason to shutdown in the name of so students cannot cheat and do the cheating during the classes. That is the cause of a shutdown.

If I talk about economic cost behind those shutdowns, we have seen more than 96 million loss we have seen to our GDP due to the shutdowns and if I could say further as well, there was a loss of 190 million during the Internet disruptions in some of the locations. It is a remote area due to the violence happening as well. And in our case, there was 70 million RUPEES were loss. 17 billion economic loss. People were unable to use the access. Their one-time password. A common thing when we're accessing our mobile phones for business purposes, swiping the card for accessing any kind of services. The one-time password people were unable to access. People were unable to access emergency and health services and business dealings were getting delayed. Those were the major causes when these shutdowns were happening. During the time of the shutdown the income tax filings were delayed and people were making extra income they have to file again returns to file. Some of the basic elements of the shutdown caused not only the economic but social impact is so much that it disrupts the human life as well.

The reason behind giving the shutdown is sometimes vague as well. In a time of public emergency, the telecom act says that they have a power to detain or even intercept messages. The telecom department under its licensing process issues the directions that it can take over the services, all the license in the event of an national emergency, conflict areas. That's something but how to define these national security and emergency reasons. And those are something which is like sometimes -- these shutdowns is not particularly defined when it's a national security they have done it. For example in the case of -- shutdown was happen due to the cheating case, when people -- where is the emergency and national security coming up? What was the reason? I can't see as well. And so those are the basic examples when we are talking about the reasons are sometimes vague and sometimes not clear. There is no clear information before the shutdown is happening as well.

>> MODERATOR: When you are talking about network shutdowns I think it is a bit of a strange concept for many of us who are outside these areas where the shutdowns happen. It is even hard to understand what we're talking about when we say there are shutdowns, shut down of all communication  channels. When you are talking social impact someone can't speak to you. The isolation is so scary, right? But on the flip side of that the only positive I see of this is the fact that there is something finally we cannot call the difference when we talk to our colleagues from Pakistan that we finally have -- we're equally terrible when it comes to shutting people off communication channels. Is it similar or different for you in Pakistan?

>> Shutdowns -- when we were doing the research we were mapping different trends in Pakistan. We came across this thing very strongly. It is one of the things that government is trying to use this as a tool, as a kill switch to curb the human rights, like freedom of association. But not only freedom of association and assembly but civil rights as well like freedom of expression. Right to access to information. This is very important in terms, if I say in Pakistan the government claims they are doing shutdowns in the national security interest. This term national security is very important to understand. But yes, it is true, Pakistan is facing threats in terms of terrorism, but we cannot say national security first of all because national security is a very broad term. We cannot say everything we can include in this term. And here we need to see the importance of necessity and proportionality of principle. In terms of Pakistan we not only have seen this government using the kill switch for national security or to avert terrorist events, because government says that maybe terrorists are using mobile signals to explode bombs at rallies or events or important happenings going on.

But we also have seen political rallies, political parties are trying to mobilize their support against government on certain issues of corruption and other things, so government is like very specifically targeting those rallies. They are passing through those areas. They will shut down those signals on that area specifically. And we have seen in 2014 there was a huge rally going on in Pakistan. It lasted for at least two or three months and we have seen that particular area where they were sitting and protesting against government's corruption. There was a whole block out on that area. It is challenging for political parties when they are mobilizing their support through Facebook or through Twitter or through What’s App. They cannot reach to their people. So it's very difficult for them to carry out their activities from the rallies. So this is very important that government is also trying to suppress the political and other voices through this network shutdown switch tool.

>> MODERATOR: Which is really an interesting observation, right? Because restrictions like this are always used and abused as well, no? When they are supposedly used for national security, but this kind of example shows how it is used to target political expression. But let's try and look at some of the responses to the situation. Deji, what has been in your opinion the international response to network shutdowns?

>> DEJI OLUKOTUN: Thank you. We've seen very positive responses. We now have a coalition of over 100 organizations from nearly 50 countries that are committed to pushing back. It is called the keep it on coalition. Folks in the room are part of that coalition. We've seen some wonderful gains at the Human Rights Council in June, the council issued a resolution that condemned Internet shut downs. A tremendous amount of work from Civil Society groups including APC. The global network initiative has pushed back and said these measures are disproportionate. That's a multi-stakeholder group with companies such as Facebook and Google and Microsoft as well as other investors and stakeholders. Then the GSM association has issued a statement.

I think what's most exciting over the past two weeks we've seen three victories. It's not a victory when the Internet gets shut down. People's lives are impacted, they can't talk with loved ones, emergency services are disrupted. But in Gambia there was an election. It is an international group and I'll mention it for folks who may not be aware. A country in west Africa wedged between Senegal, a country of 2 million people shut off the Internet. Telecommunications, telephone was also disrupted. The government had reportedly done this -- ordered the shutdown through Saturday. However, international pressure and it's impossible to tell exactly what happened, but it does appear the international pressure made a difference because all the headlines suddenly a country of 2 million people was in the news because of this measure and it was up by Friday morning. That was very positive. Chad lifted a long-term disruption. The Government of Chad, and Ethiopia as well. We're seeing some positive gains. There is a lot more work to be done. We have challenges in measuring shutdowns. It is sort of a chicken and egg situation where the Internet goes down and you want people to tell you whether it's up or down but you can't talk to them because they're offline. So learning to address that problem with the help of stakeholders, companies, academics is going to be very important.

We here at the Internet Governance Forum are pleased to be partner with LUSH to raise awareness. We built this product, a soap product. This one is broken. There is a message inside to world leaders telling people how to take action so you drop it in the bath and then this thing floats up to the surface. An example of a creative partnership. We -- the human rights community is very effective at explaining the causes that we're fighting for and we have a tremendous array of tools at our disposal that you've seen us getting people into the streets and assembling. Sometime it can be helpful to take a creative approach and see what happens. We delivered a petition of almost 46,000 signatures on west to the Freedom Online Coalition. A collection of 30 governments and indicated their desire to make a strong statement against Internet shutdowns. Positive things happening. Anyone can join. Civil Society group can join. Called the keep it on campaign. We welcome your involvement.

>> MODERATOR: The Keep It On campaign has been quite active and extremely vigilant, right, when it comes to shutting off -- I also think you have a group, right, that if you are interested in keeping an eye out on Internet shutdowns, I think you should subscribe for that mailing list and you will probably be informed and also pitch in on how we think we can resolve this. There is another whole side to this, right? We've talked so far about how it's impacting us but how about corporates and Facebook. How is Internet shutdowns affecting you?

>> I think disruptions and shutdowns not only affect the State of rights and human rights, but they also sort of impact people's livelihood. Their businesses and economic growth. As a company, we are concerned by the trend towards this approach in countries especially in India and Pakistan and Bangladesh where there were Internet disruptions. In India there were 22 disruptions last year. And these disruptions have been primarily in response to even instances where authorities want to prevent students from cheating in an examination hall. It is concerning, yes. Recently I think they already mentioned the economic impact of the temporary Internet shutdowns. I don't think I should reiterate the same things already mentioned but we believe that the possible solution, I think to the situation is come up with creative partnerships and campaigns and approaches. Second is that maybe we should encourage authorities to come online. So they should work and use online platforms the way Civil Society is using to address emerging issues and situations through maintaining their own online presence and supporting appropriate counter speech measures.

Why I mention counter speech, it's important to understand that sometimes when authorities are online and there is an issue which is upcoming and we saw it I think in Bangladesh where there was a law and order situation, a law of -- I won't say fake news but a lot of information doing the rounds and the commissioner of police came out in the open and said do not believe any of these forwarded messages. This situation is not like this. We want to state that if you have any question or concern reach out to us directly and gave the number. That is a great way of looking at it and also it is more faster, it is more flexible. It is responsive and capable of dealing with problems from anywhere and in any language. So I think we need to come up with these kind of creative solutions to counter these.

>> MODERATOR: Thank you. What is good about this group it's a bite-size group. What we can now do is try and get a feedback on crowd source solution in a sense and maybe we can run sort of a Hack-A-Thon and try to figure out what to do with these two issues of spreading of this information and on the network shutdowns. Would it be okay if I requested you to move a little bit closer so we could try and have that conversation? Would that be okay? Want to get up and move the mic around so it's easier. So we have about 45 minutes. So let's split it evenly between 20 minutes to talk about how to deal with the spread of misinformation, the spread of hate material really, trying to behead someone. How do we deal with that? Let's try to do 20 minutes of that and have a round of feedback and back and forth and then let's try and also look at 20 minutes of the network shutdowns and see what -- how we can approach that. Any reflections on how we can improve the use of social media platforms for the mobilization of people? Any feedback? Is there something you wanted to talk about or question you wanted to ask?

>> I think having organized rally for the fifth time, right, the organizer have sort of learned especially how to manage misinformation. They also know what will happen in -- on social media because you can post anything on the official websites but once people start share it on their page, it would become something else eventually and from Facebook you see the information moved to What’s App and things just change bit by bit. So instead of relying solely on information, the organizers have developed this other apps called prime, which carries information about the rally. And this is very -- they manage to do it in a way where it requires really low bandwidth. So during the rally, right, when you have thousands of people and traffic, network traffic is an issue. So with this low band people can easily access to the apps appeared get information. That's one way to sort of contain and minimize misinformation that is happening around. Rethinking the platform, perhaps, as one of the solutions.

>>  Just want to chime in about the bandwidth question. People lose connectivity when they assembly. It is unclear sometimes whether there is disruption by public authorities like law enforcement and that's another -- a next stage in the keep it on campaign as we see people protesting and expressing themselves and assembling. Being able to measure that in a concrete way. UNI mobile is not ready for roll-out that could potentially help us understand when a rally is disrupted versus when it is just network congestion. That's definitely -- we've seen in Bahrain in the neighborhood of DURAS there have been nightly disruption like a curfew happening. But it is threatening. They conducted a study and identify the throttling when people gathered each evening. This measurement issue and knowing the difference between my cell phone is not working because someone is actually sweeping up all my information with cell site simulator or they're actually jamming is another important thing -- issue we need to address with the campaign.

>> MODERATOR: What needs to be still done on network shutdowns, right? We talk about the social impact and the technical understanding, the technological level how the disruptions happen. How about using prime. Is there any recommendation you can make to organizers of rallies. Any particular thing you feel that maybe they should be doing to counter this rather than first looking at what social media platforms have to do? What do we have to do to make sure we can counter this misinformation? Any suggestions? None?

>> Speaking in terms of how people use social media platforms is also in terms of how to keep themselves safe is important. Knowing your privacy settings, who is contacting you, how to block people is also a good way to sort of secure yourself from unwanted contact or those kind of things. Online safety and sort of getting a good sense of what your privacy settings are is important as well.

>> Great information from a number of Civil Society groups working on this including the New York Civil Liberties Union around assembly and privacy. The Electronic Frontier Foundation has a self-defense kit that is effective. The Facebook Safety Check-in, is that something that is relevant in the assembly context? Is that something that you provide to users in disasters? There is this check-in feature.

>> The safety check? Usually the safety check features happens not just in terms of when there is a gathering but a situation where friends and family want to know if you are safe. So I think if it's a peaceful rally, it's mostly in the aftermath of a natural disaster or accident or terrorist attack.

>> I have a question, so we know that when the demonstrations, traffic jamming tends to happen. So in the last rally, they actually sent booster to the site. We know Internet networks are important in the demonstration. I'm just wondering should this be a right, then, in any form of -- that peoples are given sufficient bandwidth to be connected, to stay connected? I'm just wondering.

>> MODERATOR: That's an excellent point. Questioning whether or not telco companies should also take up the responsibility of ensuring you know well in advance there will be a massive rally. You make sure you increase the infrastructure. Any feedback on that point? Any questions on that point? Did you have something to say?

>> When we were talking about occupy parliament was a space by Taiwan that's a campaign when they occupied the parliament and provided the bandwidth to assembly it. That's an important example that when you have some bandwidth where you can access the Internet and the jamming and those kind of things. It could be some kind of a solution which can also do it. There is a networking can come up and set up some kind of establishment and provide some kind of a bandwidth to them as well. That can be used for the Internet access during the time of jamming or during the time when there is no network as well. But yes, there are other complications of who will give the back hole actually, so yeah.

>> Throughout this session I've been looking at a report from this year where he talked about freedom of assembly and there is a lot of great information here in Section I he is talking about businesses have a responsibility to respect human rights in the context of assemblies and that relates to the U.N. guiding principles on business and human rights. I think it's a very interesting questions that you posed. Because businesses are supposed to provide some sort of remedy when rights are violated. I think it's an interesting question that you pose which is if a business knows that there is going to be a rally and are notified in advance that hey, there will be 100,000 people in this place, does that impose a responsibility on them to raise the bandwidth and have -- be prepared for that? I don't think the recommendations in in the special rapporteur of freedom of assembly. I don't think he would say there is an affirmative duty but something we could explore and see if there is a possibility to find solutions and talk with stakeholders on that.

>> Just wanted to add on, I mean, very good question that came into my mind because we have done one more study that is related to privacy and like, you know, the trolling when people are doing some campaign online and we have seen specifically in cases when they express during the campaign, so they start receiving threats online from trolling from the fake accounts and they're so huge and they are so threatening up to the level of rape or like death threats. I'm wondering if some of the participants could have any express any thoughts on this like how to prevent or what sort of -- other than are provided by the Facebook or Twitter, that can be very useful in that.

>> MODERATOR: Quickly to your point. Community standards. Any kind of threat is not allowed. Especially if it's death threats are not allowed. I would encourage you and your friends to report that immediately and that will be taken down. So that is one important point. And if you feel that these are fake accounts, please report those accounts to us as fake accounts and we will review them as well.

>> The question comes in my mind that all the time is not like -- we all are not available. These community guidelines that we have to approach and how to get the redress. But it's again important in terms of the users is how like, you know, these platform are spreading to the users. If they face a situation, then how they can like, you know, approach.

>> That's a very good point about education, especially of policies on how to keep yourself safe online. I would say that if your organization wants to actually train people, we can train your trainers who can go to other areas and organizations and sort of give them the basics of online safety and tell them these are the tools available and this is how you report and blog and how you check your privacy settings so on. We're happy to do that.

>> Hello. I just wanted to say that I think that treating the problem as a matter of bands and blocking certain people is very symptom addressing. When we say the platforms and users have a responsibility, I think currently many of the platforms don't provide enough tools to users to take on that responsibility in an effective way if we're blocking an account or two accounts and we're getting 100 new accounts threatening us we aren't addressing the issue. We've seen some recently where there are more system level tools being place on platforms to filter out everyone who uses certain language with us or that kind of thing. I think really we need to see more power being given to the users to manage the situation so they can control their own experience.

>> Thanks very much for this very interesting discussion. My question is for Facebook. Often when people post pictures online it will suggest -- Facebook will suggest who to tag in the photo based on facial recognition software. It seems like a tempting tools for governments to ask when pictures are being taken at protests and other types of demonstrations to just ask Facebook for information on the people based on what information you have in your database. So I'm wondering what types of policies Facebook has in place to prevent disclosing identities in an unlawful way and if you experience such pressure.

>> To that question I would encourage you the read our government request report. We disclose all that information on our platform. If we receive information on user information or content takedowns, all of that is published.

>> I just want to ask the question what is publication of the government request. What I would be more interested to know is whether Facebook has a policy saying no, we won't give you the names of protestors based on photos you take?

>> We don't handle information like that to the government. They have to follow certain due process and certain procedures. Once that we are satisfied that due process has been followed, that is when we sort of -- we may do it or we may not do it.

>> MODERATOR: One question and we come back to you, yeah.

>> Thank you, my name is -- I work for Diplo Foundation. It seems to me when they're Civil Society acting in countries that do have checks and balances and Democratic procedures, our main concerns is with violations of human rights, perpetrated by the private sector. When we are in countries in which there is Democratic problems the private sector becomes an ally. We shouldn't look for saviors in this discussion either way. We have just concluded our research that has been publicized in this IGF in which we analyze more than 50 terms of service of different aligned platforms including the big ones. Some of the statistics that we found is that 46% of them reserve the right to block, to scan, to filter or remove content without users’ consent in the same way more than 50% of them say they can share information with third parties without users' consent and we don't know who the third parties are. I think that the situation is tricky and we should not put our rights in the hands of only one actor and put our trust in the hands of only one actor. When it comes to the principles of business and human rights, I think the responsibility of business is to respect human rights, not be in the business of trying to enforce human rights. Sometimes it's very difficult to tell apart what is a rally that is fighting for Democratic principles and human rights and what is a rally that is not. I come from Brazil, a country in which we had a very swift political changes and there were people taking to the streets to ask for a coup that didn't happen. Many of us believe it is coup and shouldn't have happened. I wouldn't like to see social media platforms getting in the business of trying to tell apart what is Democratic of human rights oriented or not. Thank you.

>> I want to go back to the due process. So Facebook will comply if -- this process is a standard that was set by Facebook or it is in accordance to our domestic law?

>> So usually there are -- these are international legal laws. So you have to -- it's like cross word information sharing.

>> MODERATOR: Any other inputs or questions? Is there any questions that were raised that you would like a specific response from anybody? Okay. All right. So I think it's good to close it here and I think some really interesting points have come out in terms of what Civil Society has to do, right, in terms of we have to study the social impact or the technical level disruption impact or whether we need to engage more with the policies of private entities. It has been a very interesting discussion and it is also I think the most startling thing is a couple of years back, over the last two years we've been pushing the Internet as the solution for assembles and associations. And it is so fascinating to see the flip side of that. I think that's a good reality check. And with that I think we should be able to see what all of us can do in our own little spaces to push back and improve the situation.

>> Just to make a possible suggestion would be that we're fortunate to have Facebook here today which has fielded a lot of difficult questions but there are a lot of other companies that really play a role. There are social networks in different countries. I'm thinking in a practical level in the U.S. companies like Meet Up, Foursquare, companies like Grinder, you know. Anything that gets people together offline. I think they all have -- should be at the table here and speaking about this because they are affecting our lives in important ways. So Facebook, of course, is a giant company and makes a big impact, but there are other companies that should be here and listening and joining and trying to do the right thing. That's just my final point.

>> MODERATOR: That's a fantastic point. I think it has come out in all the national reports as well. Tinder and grinder and all these apps that are not actually associations in their own way. And it is perhaps for the next IGF I think that's a very great important in the sense we should try to look out and find more of a diverse group to address. I think that's a great way to close this. Thank you so much. I know it's the last day and you've been a wonderful audience. Thanks a lot.

(Applause)

Please take a copy of the reports and there is also -- thank you.

(Session ended at 10:06 AM CT)