3. Good Health and Well-Being
8. Decent Work and Economic Growth
9. Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure
16. Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions
17. Partnerships for the Goals
Targets: 3. Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages: The horizon of enhancing techniques to promote better medical care, diagnosis, and remote medicine are deeply interrelated with new connected technologies in order to reach a broader population and to offer qualified services. Information security policies and protocols for connected public and private health programs are some of the first steps to the development of such systems and to the safety of users. Encryption offers the necessary levels of secrecy for sensitive health data of big populations, as well as the integrity of information and data flows that permits doctors to establish a secure channel of communication with their patients. During times of pandemic, the reliability of health applications and telemedicine became a more noticeable issue as citizens have been able to remain socially isolated while receiving remote medical care. Overmore, the well-being of children, for example, are at the center of recent encryption debates. If some government and civil society entities argue that encrypted platforms are offering a free environment to the dissemination of sexual child's abuse material, other civil society organizations, service providers, and academics advocate that encryption makes the online environment safer for children as it ensures privacy and security. These challenges are appearing in legislation and public debates regarding, for example, the EARN IT Act, in the United States, in recent leaked documents from the European Commission, and in the recent modifications in the Intermediary Liability Rules in India. From the perspective of health and well-being, encryption is centrally located in Internet Governance discussions. 8. Promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all: E-commerce, digitalization of traditional services and the technology industry are, each day more, representing a larger part of global economic growth. According to Statista's 2020 publication, retail e-commerce is expected to exceed US$ 3.6 billions worldwide by 2024. The digitalization of traditional services, as seen in internet banking, creates a socioeconomic scenario that permits – and sometimes imposes – users to move daily activities to the Internet and, specifically, mobile applications. Also the big tech industry - including Facebook, Apple, Google, and Amazon – are placed between the most valuable companies of the world, showing larger margins of profit each year. Since 1997, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has continually reaffirmed that encryption is one of the technological means to provide security for data on information and communications systems regarding economic goals. It is safe to say that encryption is a security technology that promotes crucial prerequisites of integrity to these services, without which the reliability of purchases and transactions wouldn't be trustworthy. On the other hand, law enforcement advocacy towards encryption workarounds impacts, fundamentally, the business models of hardware and software industry with the intent of solving crimes. Those perspectives must be confronted. As a result, sustainability of economic growth is an intrinsic issue that should be addressed by the speakers of the panel.
9. Build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialization and foster innovation: The promotion of a resilient Internet infrastructure, such in terms of "over the top" application as well as the chain of connectivity infrastructure, is a distributed responsibility regarding the multistakeholder model of the Internet Governance and the transborder spectrum of the multiple networks. It is possible to say that establishing secure protocols to collect, process, transmit, and store users' data taking into account encryption technologies must be a consensual and shared obligation. On the other hand, a single vulnerability in security systems – such as lawful ways of exceptionally access to encrypted data or unforeseen code flaws in encryption algorithms - might jeopardize multiple industries as well as the end-user of the Internet. The "reliability" value of infrastructures that count on encryption for maintaining resilience has been fostering innovation for decades. Therefore, the question is fundamental to the proposed panel.
16. Promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels The crucial role of encryption regarding the promotion of privacy and freedom of expression has been broadly documented by U.N's special rapporteurs such as David Kaye, Frank La Rue and Joe Connataci, as well as by state-sponsored research and publications by civil society and academic entities. By assuring the secrecy of communications, political dissidents have the possibility to report crimes perpetrated by government and private agents; journalists has been connecting with sources in secure ways to promote access to information; and less politically represented groups such as the LGBTQIA+ community, the black and gender equality movements and ethnical minorities have the potential to gather engagement and contributions to disrupt political inequalities. Encryption embeds in connected platforms the capacity for society to communicate with freedom and without fear of repression or other chilling effects. The exercise of political rights related to privacy, freedom of expression, and security of digital communication channels are key elements of democracy. Therefore, in order to achieve social and institutional justice, the security of communications, specially encrypted platforms, must be prioritized. The proposed panel has these topics at its center and will develop them in relation to the collective sense of trust regarding encryption.
17. Strengthen the means of implementation and revitalize the global partnership for sustainable development: As Internet services and connectivity infrastructure have a transborder amplitude, public and private policies regarding encryption must observe ripple effects that transcend a single domestic jurisdiction or specific stakeholder's agendas. Private companies, for instance, carry the necessity of foreseeing how privacy policies that address encryption might affect users and domestic legislation of other regions; law enforcement agencies also need to partner with diverse state agencies, such those responsible for technological and economic development and national security in order to promote resilient solutions for their agendas; as well as civil society organizations must align advocacy work internationally as a means to reach different regions and promote international parameters of social engagement and human rights. The establishment and the debate around encryption policies - considering their relation with an international and multistakeholder sense of trust on the Internet – must be, inherently, a collaborative work and it has the potential to valorize the role of partnership in the Internet Governance ecosystem.