Session
Organizer 1: Natalia Krapiva, Access Now
Organizer 2: Lisa Dittmer, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) Germany
Speaker 1: Peter Micek, Civil Society, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
Speaker 2: Lisa Dittmer, Civil Society, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
Speaker 3: Natalia Krapiva, Civil Society, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
Speaker 4: Iris de Villars, Civil Society, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
Natalia Krapiva, Civil Society, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
Lisa Dittmer, Civil Society, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
Natalia Krapiva, Civil Society, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
Round Table - U-shape - 60 Min
Ensuring a safe digital space: How should governments, Internet businesses and other stakeholders protect citizens, including vulnerable citizens, against online exploitation and abuse?
Private sector accountability: What can be done at the national and international level to tackle private sector companies that aid and abet nation state attackers?
Additional Policy Questions Information: 1) How governments and civil society members can and should use the newly adopted EU dual use export control regulations to protect the most vulnerable citizens from invasive surveillance; 2) What can be done at the national, regional, and international level to tackle private sector companies that aid and abet nation state attackers?
The session will discuss the newly adopted EU export control regulation and how the governments and civil society can use it to protect journalists, human rights defenders, activists, minorities, and dissidents from hacking and unlawful digital surveillance facilitated by EU made surveillance technologies. The main focus will be on the EU and Member States, but it will also look at the regulation in a global context.
16.3
Targets: Ending abusive surveillance of journalists, human rights defenders, minorities, and dissidents is essential for achieving the rule of law and justice for all.
Description:
After years of stalled negotiations surrounding the EU export control regime for dual use surveillance technologies, the revised regulation has finally been adopted in early 2021. The key amendments, including strong due diligence provisions, contained in the original 2016 Commission’s proposal, have been significantly watered down in the resulting draft due to objections by the Member States. Some positive changes, however, did make it into the final regulation, including a more expanded definition of surveillance technologies, emergency brake procedure, and some additional transparency measures.
It remains to be seen whether the newly adopted compromise legislation will be able to stop the proliferation of abusive surveillance technologies originating in the EU. The slowly moving criminal investigation against FinFisher in Germany, as well as the revelations that Spanish authorities' illicitly used NSO Group’s Pegasus spyware against their own citizens, makes one wonder as to whether EU Member States would be serious about enforcement.
More reforms will surely be needed. But is there an appetite for them?
This session will convene human rights organizations, policy makers, litigators, as well as victims of EU-made surveillance technologies about the most effective implementation of the newly adopted rules as well as the room to advocate for further changes.
The session will result in developing a strategy for how to engage with EU states and institutions as well as other stakeholders to encourage the most human rights-complaint implementation and further improvement of the EU dual use regime.
All the speakers will be encouraged to be in dialogue with each other. If possible, there will also be use of polls for online audience and opportunities to ask questions.
Usage of IGF Official Tool. Additional Tools proposed: Teleconferencing, use of polls