WS #183 Non-commercial Users Constituency Role in a Safe Internet

Summary

This discussion focused on the role of non-commercial users in fostering a secure and inclusive internet. Participants explored the challenges of balancing privacy, security, and accountability in the digital space. Vint Cerf emphasized the importance of accountability and agency, suggesting the need for an “Internet driver’s license” to ensure users understand online safety. Dr. Manal Abdel-Samad highlighted the importance of digital literacy and local cultural considerations in internet governance. The conversation touched on the tension between anonymity and the need to combat online crimes, with Farzaneh Badii stressing the importance of privacy for vulnerable communities.

Participants discussed the challenges of protecting vulnerable populations, particularly the elderly and those with diminished mental capacity, from online predation. The need for international cooperation in law enforcement was debated, with some skepticism about its effectiveness in less developed economies. Dr. Milad Sebaaly shared a personal anecdote illustrating the sophistication of online scams and suggested the need for insurance against data loss.

The discussion emphasized the importance of inclusivity in internet governance, particularly for vulnerable populations. Participants agreed on the need to bridge the digital divide, enhance cybersecurity, and promote digital literacy. The conversation highlighted the complexity of balancing global and local approaches to internet policy, with Dr. Milad Sebaaly stressing the importance of considering infrastructure, data hosting, and content access in policy development. Overall, the discussion underscored the ongoing challenge of creating a safe and empowering internet that respects individual rights while addressing security concerns.

Keypoints

Major discussion points:

– The tension between privacy/anonymity and accountability/safety online

– The role of non-commercial users in advocating for an open, secure, and inclusive internet

– The need for local/cultural considerations in internet governance, not just global frameworks

– Protecting vulnerable populations online while preserving rights

– The importance of digital literacy and education for internet users

Overall purpose:

The discussion aimed to explore the role of non-commercial users in fostering a secure and inclusive internet, while examining challenges around privacy, safety, and governance in the digital space.

Tone:

The tone was largely collaborative and constructive, with participants respectfully sharing different perspectives. There were moments of tension around topics like encryption and anonymity, but overall speakers sought to find common ground and acknowledge the complexity of the issues. The tone became more reflective towards the end as participants summarized key takeaways.

Speakers

– Amine Hasha: Moderator

– Pedro de Perdigão Lana: Online moderator, part of Non-Commercial User Constituency

– Vint Cerf: Vice President and Internet Evangelist of Google

– Bruna Martins dos Santos: ICANN GNSO Councilor, IGF MAG member

– Dr. Manal Abdel-Samad: Former Lebanon Minister of Information, expert in public policy and digital transformation

– Farzaneh Badii: Founder of Digital Medusa, expert in Internet governance and digital rights

– Dr. Milad Sebaaly: Managing Director of Global Learning, expert in e-learning and digital transformation

Additional speakers:

– Charles Shaban: Representative from International Trademark Association

– Andrew Campling: From tech community, trustee of Internet Watch Foundation

– Robert Carolina: General Counsel with Internet Systems Consortium, Senior Teaching Fellow at Royal Holloway University of London

– Ferdina (no surname available): Role/expertise not specified

Expanded Summary of Discussion on Non-Commercial Users’ Role in Fostering a Secure and Inclusive Internet

Introduction:

This discussion brought together experts from various fields to explore the role of non-commercial users in fostering a secure and inclusive internet. The conversation delved into the challenges of balancing privacy, security, and accountability in the digital space, while considering the importance of local cultural contexts and the protection of vulnerable populations.

Key Themes and Discussions:

1. Privacy, Anonymity, and Accountability

A central theme of the discussion was the tension between privacy/anonymity and accountability/safety online. Vint Cerf, Vice President and Internet Evangelist of Google, emphasised the importance of accountability and agency, arguing that “absolute anonymity can be problematic” and that “the veil of anonymity must be pierceable in some cases”.

In contrast, Farzaneh Badii, founder of Digital Medusa, stressed the importance of encryption and anonymity for protecting vulnerable users. Bruna Martins dos Santos, an ICANN GNSO Councillor, echoed this sentiment, highlighting that privacy is crucial for journalists, activists, and vulnerable groups to operate safely, particularly in countries like Brazil where such protections are vital.

Charles Shaban, from the tech community, added another perspective, noting that total anonymity can lead to issues like the dark web. He suggested a need to balance privacy with the ability to identify real domain name owners to reduce abuse.

2. Safety and Security Online

The conversation touched upon various aspects of online safety and security. Dr. Manal Abdel-Samad, former Lebanon Minister of Information, shared her experiences combating misinformation during crises like COVID-19 and the Beirut explosion. She highlighted the importance of digital literacy and education in protecting vulnerable users and emphasized collaboration between regulators, operators, and NGOs to spread awareness.

Dr. Milad Sebaaly, Managing Director of Global Learning, emphasised the need to consider local cultural contexts, infrastructure, data hosting, and content access in safety and security approaches. He shared an anecdote about digital identity hacking in an Arab country to illustrate the need for better protection measures.

Robert Carolina, General Counsel with Internet Systems Consortium, raised concerns about protecting vulnerable populations, particularly the elderly and those with diminished mental capacity, from online predation. He questioned the effectiveness of international cooperation in law enforcement, especially in less developed economies.

Vint Cerf highlighted Google’s efforts to filter phishing attacks and malicious content, demonstrating ongoing industry efforts to enhance online safety.

3. Role of Non-Commercial Users in Internet Governance

The discussion underscored the crucial role of non-commercial users in internet governance. Bruna Martins dos Santos characterised their role as “making noise” and providing important oversight and advocacy. She noted that non-commercial stakeholders often need to “shout even louder to be heard” in policy discussions.

Farzaneh Badii emphasised the importance of civil society voices in multi-stakeholder governance, while Dr. Manal Abdel-Samad highlighted how non-commercial users champion human rights and inclusive policies. The moderator, Amine Hasha, stressed the need to empower non-commercial voices in policy discussions.

4. Balancing Global and Local Approaches

A recurring theme was the need to balance global internet governance approaches with local cultural needs and policies. Dr. Milad Sebaaly argued for the development of local AI ethics frameworks, not just global ones. He stressed that there is “no one-size-fits-all solution” and emphasised the importance of considering infrastructure, data hosting, and content access in policy development.

Vint Cerf acknowledged the need for international cooperation but also recognised the importance of local contexts. Dr. Manal Abdel-Samad reinforced this point, highlighting that policies must consider cultural differences between countries.

Agreements and Disagreements:

There was broad agreement on the importance of balancing privacy and accountability, the need for education and digital literacy, and the significant role of non-commercial users in internet governance. However, speakers disagreed on the extent to which anonymity should be protected online and the best approaches to ensuring internet safety.

Unresolved Issues and Suggested Compromises:

Several issues remained unresolved, including how to effectively pierce anonymity when needed without compromising privacy rights, how to protect vulnerable populations from online predation without relying solely on law enforcement, and how to ensure meaningful participation of non-commercial users given limited capacity.

Suggested compromises included allowing anonymity but with mechanisms to pierce it in justified circumstances, developing privacy-preserving ways to authenticate domain owners to reduce abuse, and focusing on education and empowerment of users rather than solely restrictive policies.

Conclusion:

This discussion highlighted the ongoing challenges in creating a safe and empowering internet that respects individual rights while addressing security concerns. It underscored the importance of non-commercial users in advocating for an open, secure, and inclusive internet, and the need to consider both global and local perspectives in internet governance.

Vint Cerf’s closing remarks emphasized the ongoing nature of the privacy-accountability balance and the need to minimize harm. Ferdina added final comments about the importance of safety and internet access for everyone, and the need to consider global implications of policies.

The conversation emphasised the complexity of balancing various stakeholder interests and addressing cultural and local needs, moving beyond simplistic solutions to acknowledge the nuance required in addressing these challenges. It reinforced the need for continued dialogue and nuanced policy-making in internet governance to ensure a secure and inclusive digital future for all.

Amine Hasha: Sorry, it was maybe a technical problem, but we can fix now. Good morning again. Farsi, we try with you. You hear us. Can you speak, please?

Ferdina: Yes, absolutely. I can hear you, and I think my audio is OK.

Amine Hasha: OK. Thanks. We will start. Ready? Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening for everyone. Welcome to the session titled Non-Commercial User Consistency, Rule, and Safe Internet. It’s part of IGF for 2024, which focuses on advancing human rights and inclusive in the digital age. It’s organized by Lebanese Cyberspace Association. My name is Amine Hasha, and I am honored to moderate this session and the discussion. I will give now Pedro for a short introduction as his online moderator. Please, Pedro.

Pedro de Perdigão Lana: Hi, everyone. I’m Pedro Lerner, also part of the Non-Commercial User Consistency. I’ll be moderating online, so please feel free to ask questions or make comments in the chat. If you want them to be read aloud, please just indicate it in the message. And I hope we all have a good session. Amin, back to you.

Amine Hasha: Thank you, Pedro. This session focuses on essential understanding rule of non-commercial user in fostering a secure and inclusive internet. Our speakers today will guide us through this conversation. And together, we’ll explore the challenge and success of non-commercial user advocacy, share regional case, and try to identify actionable strategy to create. and to keep a safer and more inclusive Internet. I encourage all of you, both in the room and online, to actively engage with our panelists and bring your experience to this conversation. Let us exercise this opportunity to connect, collaborate, and amplify the voice of non-commercial users as we work together on a truly inclusive digital future. Let’s start the turn with our first speaker, Vanserve. I want to thank most of the speakers now. It’s morning time, and for giving your time in this early morning on your side. Vint Cerf is the Vice President and Internet Evangelist of Google. I will give you the floor, please.

Vint Cerf: First of all, thank you so much for inviting me to join you today. As I think about the non-commercial users, I think about all the other users, and I think much of what you want is what everyone else wants, too. You want a safer Internet, among other things. I bring you greetings from the leadership panel. I can tell you that it is our hope that the IGF will continue beyond 2025. As you know, the next meeting is June in Oslo, in Norway. We have communicated to the Secretary General of the UN that it’s our hope that the World Summit on the Information Society plus 20 will renew the mandate of IGF to continue for another decade. I also would say that it’s our belief that the IGF can be an important element of the global digital compact in the sense that we have for the last 19 years been evaluating the access to the Internet its utility and reliability, and the global digital compact will need to be scrutinized for its successful implementation, there is no better place than the Internet Governance Forum for that evaluation and analysis. I will start out by saying that as I look at safety in the Internet, I’ve come to believe that there are two very important elements that need to be part of our universe. One of them is accountability, and the other one is agency. Let me explain. If we’re going to have a safe Internet, it is vital that the parties who are using the Internet and providing Internet services and applications be accountable for their behavior. That’s true of individuals, it’s true of organizations, and it’s even true of countries. And so I believe that we have to incorporate into the way we operate elements of accountability so that parties who are doing harmful things can be held to account. By the way, that requires international cooperation because the Internet is global in scope, and all of you know that the packets that flow through the Internet are insensitive to international boundaries. It was designed that way deliberately, which means that victims can be in one jurisdiction and the perpetrators could be in another. And we need international cooperation, again, to achieve accountability. By agency, I simply mean that we as users should have the ability to protect ourselves and to call for help if we need it. And so those two things, accountability and agency, are very important elements. On top of all that, especially for the non-commercial users, affordability is a very important item. Because we’re non-commercial, that means that we don’t always have the same facility to pay for access to the Internet and its applications, and so that’s an important element that needs to be part of our consideration. Some of you will have heard my story that I sometimes think we should invent an Internet driver’s license. I don’t really mean that you have to be issued a license to use the Internet, but many of you will know that before we give young people keys to the car, in most countries there’s some training that’s required so that these young people can show us that they understand the rules of the road, and in a sense, we should be training people to know what the rules of the Internet road are and be assured that they know how to behave properly and safely in an online environment, and the analogy here is an Internet driver’s license. The broader objective for us, of course, is human rights protection in the online space as well as in the physical space. Those two protections should be essentially the same. We should protect human rights wherever they are potentially threatened. Among the things that can help us achieve these objectives, I would say that strong authentication and provenance are two very important elements, so what do I mean by that? We need to be able to authenticate sources. We need to be able to authenticate parties in a strong way so that we know with whom we are dealing, so that we know where information has come from. That helps us evaluate its quality and its utility, so tools that allow us to achieve strong authentication and provenance would be very helpful in the context of noncommercial user access to the Internet. There are technologies that can help us in this mission, the Hypertext Transport Protocol secure version, HTTPS. the Domain Name System Security Mechanism, DNSSEC, of the Border Gateway Protocol Security, BGPSEC, are among the various mechanisms that can help us achieve more safe and secure environments. By the way, I’d like to draw a distinction between security and safety. Just because something is secure doesn’t necessarily mean it’s safe. A classic example of this would be a highly secure electronic mail system, which encrypts the traffic while it’s in transit, it gets decrypted at the end, and there’s a phishing message waiting for you to trap you. So we need to attend to both of them, both privacy and security, as well as safety. One of the ways to make ourselves safer is to take account of where software comes from. After all, this entire system is based on software, and people who are building products and services, whether it’s IoT, Internet of Things devices, or an application on the World Wide Web, will often turn to open-source software. For one reason, it’s inexpensive, it’s essentially free, and that makes it convenient to use. The problem is that sometimes open-source software is not very well-supported. There might be just one individual who’s contributed his or her software, but isn’t in a position to maintain it over a long period of time. Why is that an issue? Well, often, the fact that it’s open-source doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s bug-free. And in fact, often open-source has vulnerabilities in it. And so one of the things that we need to remember is that when we’re using open-source, we should scrutinize it for potential vulnerabilities and evaluate it with that in mind. So let us not use open-source blindly. Let’s use it. it with some degree of care. With regard to the general utility of the Internet and assessing its utility, yesterday I participated in a UNESCO meeting here at the IGF, and they drew attention to what they call the Internet Universality Indicators, or IUIs. They started out with a quite lengthy list of metrics that could be applied to the Internet to assess its utility, and they have compressed that number of metrics to a smaller number to make it a little easier for countries or parties to evaluate Internet access. I would say that the noncommercial users group should look to those Internet utility or universality indicators and consider exercising them to evaluate the Internet service that we are all getting. I can’t overemphasize reliability as an element of utility in the Internet. Any of you who are heavy users of the Internet will know that when it doesn’t work, you have potential cascade failures. For example, you want to log in to get to your email, but your mobile has to give you a second factor for authentication, that’s security at work, except your mobile isn’t working because the battery is dead or it’s broken, or maybe you didn’t get a signal. So you can’t get logged into your email, and that means you can’t get the message that you needed in order to keep your company going, and suddenly you go bankrupt. That’s an extreme case of cascade failure, but you should all be aware that we are increasingly dependent on Internet services for our daily work and living, and reliability becomes increasingly important. Finally, I just came away from the Policy Network on Meaningful Access. and I would like to urge the non-commercial users to participate with and collaborate with the PNMA. Their work goes on during the course of the year. And I think it’s very important for IGF to have a continued activity during the course of the year, leading up to the annual meetings and leading up to the national and regional meetings. So let me stop there. I hope I haven’t bored you to death. I just want to emphasize how important your work is to all of us who care about internet as a useful tool for our daily living and working. So, Pedro, I return the floor to you, I think.

Pedro de Perdigão Lana: Thanks, Vince. Just let me check here. First of all, thanks for this overview on the safety issues and priorities that the non-commercials should have as a group and as a stakeholder group, mostly. I think as to maintain the alternation between online and on-site audience, they can, speakers, sorry, they can go back to Bruna Santos. Bruna, would you like to take up the mic?

Bruna Martins dos Santos: Yes, Pedro, thank you. Just as a note, I’m joining this session as part of the GNSO community, right? And as a member of the NCSG, but also a member of the MAG. And together with Vince, we have been working for this year’s IJF and shaping some messages around the broader and the next steps around the WSIS Plus 20 review, IJF mandate renewal, and many other things. But going to the first question, I think I would start by saying that the main role of non-commercial entities or speakers is to make noise, right? As good advocates for topics and themes, I do believe that we are looking at a stakeholder group that, unfortunately, sometimes we need to shout even louder to be heard, and we need to shout in a very precise and direct way about what are the harms, what are the issues affecting us, and so on. And that’s because we don’t hold business interests, we don’t hold original competence for policymaking, we are participants in the process, right? And the shouting loud part, it also entails convincing governments to hear to civil society voices, it entails that we need to talk to business and the private sector about our concerns around product development and some issues that might arise from the implementation of new technologies, and we need to keep on doing that just so that the problems continue to be solved, and so on, so I do think that besides shouting loud, I do see civil society or non-commercial entities with a very good and relevant oversight role, right? In which we do help each and every stakeholder to keeping checks with their mission and to make sure that no product or policy developed in this space, and especially for ensuring a safe internet, would result in human rights violations, would result in internet fragmentation. or fragmentation of the user experience in general, right? So I’ll stop now, but just for us to keep continuing the panel and so on, but just to summarize in that way, shouting loud and making sure every single stakeholder is in check with their mission. Thanks.

Amine Hasha: Thank you, Vint, for your speech. And thank you, Bruna, for your comments. Our next speaker is Dr. Manal Abdel-Samad, a distinctive leader with over 27 years of expertise in public policy, governance, and digital transformation. Dr. Manal served as a Lebanon Minister of Information, where she led the effort to enhance transparency, digitize public resource. Dr. Manal also held the senior role at Lebanese Ministry of Finance. Her contribution extends to Saudi Arabia, where she implemented advanced automated system to improve governance and sustainability. Dr. Manal’s dedication makes her a virtual voice in today’s digital transformation. The speech for you.

Dr. Manal Abdel-Samad: Thank you. Thank you, Amin. And I’m glad to speak here at the IGF and to participate. I thank you for the invitation. I’ll start where Vint Cerf has ended. He mentioned about the internet driver’s license. I like the idea about human rights protection and reliability and mainly accountability. The main issue is that every one of us is accountable of what we receive and what we share, because sharing is also a responsibility, not only writing our own posts. The new business model has changed and it’s not about receiving content like TV, like newspaper, like radio. Now we are participating in the content. We are creating value in the content. So everything definitely will influence the community and will influence the internet world. So new readers now interact. They put likes, they put comments, they put reviews, and this. definitely can influence a program, a journalist, an idea, a media outlet, they can influence also the visibility of these outlets. Drawing from my experience as Minister of Information in Lebanon, I have witnessed the transformative power of the digital technology in advancing some of the most pressing challenges of our time and I think by that time we had the major crisis that hit Lebanon, we had the COVID-19, we had the Beirut explosion and we had the economic crisis and these were unprecedented events and crises and in these moments we turned to digital platforms. What we couldn’t do in decades, we managed to do in a few months and this is also very important. We fostered public participation, transparency and we tried to deliver wide information to citizens. Also, this is very interesting, in collaboration with the UNDP also, I partnered with UNDP, WHO, UNICEF and we tried to create some awareness to the public by we had a hashtag take care before you share, take care before you share. This is by UNDP and this is mainly draws the importance of being accountable not only by receiving the content but also by spreading the content and we all know that we are all influencers so if anyone shares for example a message, a WhatsApp to someone else, these people will trust the message because it’s coming from you not because they read it even. So sometimes they share the message from you without reading it and here we definitely we can create some issues if we are not responsible. I believe I will conclude with three critical areas where users and here I’m talking about non-commercial users, they should engage meaningfully in the world of internet. First of all awareness and education. Knowledge is power so user must educate themselves on safety, on digital rights, on impact of misinformation and disinformation and definitely you should know the difference between misinformation which is unintentional behavior and disinformation when we manipulate news so it’s intentional and also the second point where users or non-commercial users engage is the advocacy and collective action. Communities can unite to advocate for stronger policies and protecting privacy, combating cyber threats, ensuring net neutrality and here we all know about the lobbying that we have by for example digital petitions or grassroots campaigns, these also can amplify the voice of non-commercial users. The third critical issue where users are engaged is the participation in governance. So you know basically we have the governance from one side, from the government, from the cabinet, from the parliament, nobody is engaged. Now we believe that people they have the power to be engaged in public policy so they can contribute to policy discussion, they can ensure digital policies reflect diverse needs, not just those of the government or those of the commercial entities. And beyond Lebanon, I have Giga projects experience where also I will share later if we have time. Let me conclude by emphasizing that a safe and empowering Internet requires that active participation of everyone is needed, especially non-commercial users, because these ones, as I mentioned, are very accountable and responsible nowadays. Their voices and actions are critical in championing an Internet that is secure, that is inclusive, and here we mean mainly the vulnerable people. We have to protect them by some digital literacy and definitely bridging the digital the digital gap and the Internet, in this case, can ensure the good for everybody of us. Thank you again for this opportunity. Thank you, Amine, and back to you.

Amine Hasha: Thank you, Dr. Manal, for your speech. And our next speaker is Farzaneh Badii. Additionally, she is founder of Digital Medusa. I don’t know what to say about Farzaneh. Farzaneh has a lot of active things in digital rights and in policy and of Internet policy. I follow her in many working groups. We do it together in ICANN and other parts. I will give you the speech, Farzaneh, to tell us about.

Farzaneh Badii: Thank you, Amine. Thank you so much for the invitation. And so, as Amine mentioned, I am involved with, I have been involved with Internet infrastructure and the governance aspect of it, as well as human rights and digital rights for the past, for over 15 years, but also I have worked a lot on issues such as digital trust and safety. And I can call myself an ICANN veteran now. I don’t know if that’s necessarily a good thing, but I’ve been involved with the processes since I was young, and a member of the non-commercial stakeholder group and non-commercial users constituency. And I can tell you a little bit about the evolution of how the non-commercial users’ interest and participation was affected, how they were empowered or how they were disempowered during these processes, and why it’s so important to have this voice, especially in multi-stakeholder processes. And I really appreciate Dr. Manal and also Vint and Bruna’s interventions, and it is very refreshing to hear about the importance of digital literacy these days that we are just going down the lane of regulation after regulation and leaving people behind. So we argue that the internet is for everyone. So should be safety. So when we provide meaningful connectivity for people, we should also keep them safe online. And that is, of course, challenging. But also the means that we use in order to keep them safe should not affect and diminish their online presence. It should not affect their human rights. We should not in order to keep them safe, we should not get rid of encryption. In order to keep them safe, we should not have unaccountable processes. And one of the role that non-commercial users have, they have a very multifaceted approach to safety and access to the internet. They use various frameworks in order to provide that advocacy. For example, they use human rights approaches to evaluate whether governance processes on the internet work and whether that affects safety and accessibility of the internet. Unlike governments and nation states, civil society’s work is usually global and transcends borders. So it doesn’t matter if you’re a user sitting in Kabul or in Brussels. Your safety and your access to the internet is a matter of importance to the non-commercial users. And non-commercial users, I should have mentioned this, non-commercial users usually consist of civil society organizations, but we also have technical operators that truly care about human rights and meaningful connectivity, and they are not for profit, and they join us in these efforts. Also, any process that claims to be multi-stakeholder must have the non-commercial and civil society organization in its processes, because otherwise it won’t be that much different from bilateral and multilateral processes or public-private partnerships. And to some extent, civil society organizations and non-commercial users might not use the tried and tested punitive measures that law enforcement agencies and others used in order to bring public safety but affected many human rights. And punitive measures that can have devastating effects on various aspects of digital governance, including access to the internet, including security and safety of the internet. And I can tell you a little bit about what NCUC does and what we do at NCSU and our successes, but I think that could feed into your final question. And so I just stop now. We can discuss that later.

Amine Hasha: Thank you, Farzana. And we will move now to our next speaker, Dr. Milad Sebaaly. He’s Managing Director of Global Learning and the Middle East leader in e-learning solution. He has played a key role in shaping the face of virtual education as we know it today in the Middle East. As an international figure in the area of AI, robotics, and automation, and digital transformation, and technology-enabled learning. And the fingerprint of Dr. Milad was and continue in different side in our region, in Saudi Arabia, and in all the region and internationally. I will give you the speech, doctor.

Dr. Milad Sebaaly: Thank you very much, and good morning for everyone. In addition to what has been covered by the colleagues, I would like to shed a light on the local aspects of this global trend of policy development by various people as… Farzahne just mentioned that the policies that are developed globally can benefit other people in other places but it’s not always the case and there are three aspects that I would like to highlight based on our actual problems in the past 25 years in implementing solutions that are really relying on the Internet specifically in education and human resource development or professional upskilling and reskilling and so on in different areas covering types of non-commercial uses including marginalized people or even refugees and we had to face a lot of issues in the past 15 years probably or more in different Arab countries and the tendency was that underprivileged people should not have a solution that’s based on technology and our hypothesis since more than 20 years is that technology is not only for rich people or for advanced countries but it can also provide efficient solutions in different including places with war or whatever so the three I would like to highlight based on this and later we can go into more details are some of them have been covered but I would like to talk about them from a different angle privacy for example privacy equity and accountability accounted covered from a certain angle I would like to come from and as well as governmental for different areas but first let me try with let me start with privacy where of course we need advocacy for stronger privacy policies we’ve we’ve been government’s jumping into all kinds of new technologies and regulations without having the right policies in place. Many times, some policies have been copied, pasted. Can you hear me? Okay, so maybe now this is better. So, strong privacy laws in different countries are badly needed. There are some international standards like GPR or others, but we don’t have such things in different places in the world, and we have to take into consideration the local cultural sensitivities when we do that. Also, privacy tools and different types of available tools, as it was mentioned before, many people would go for open source because of affordability, but many times this is not 100% safe. Also, surveillance. I mean, we have seen a lot of surveillance efforts in the region by governments or even by the internet providers, all the way to using tools like Pegasus spyware to see what people are doing and so on, and this is affecting human rights and freedom of speech sometimes. Also, as Dr. Manal mentioned, we need to educate people about their digital rights. Sometimes we take it for granted that people know what they want, and therefore we ask for non-commercial users to have a major role in developing policies or drafting new policies or whatever, while they are way behind. Many people, especially in underprivileged places and in different countries, they are way behind what we expect them to be doing, so capacity building and education is a major point. Another very important point is equity, and this is, again, digital divide is not only about accessibility of the internet, which is still a very important point, especially in areas like war areas or refugees. In the region, we had millions of refugees. When we started talking about educating refugees, the only method that UNICEF and other international organizations know is to bring them to physical places and teach them in conventional ways. When we said, let’s go for some kind of blended or online or AI-based modern technology to reach out to these people and to have this kind of individualized solutions for them, that was very new even for international organizations. So many times the local development or innovation is by far more advanced and flexible than archaic international solutions that are repeated everywhere, copied and pasted from one region to another. And this is another area when we talk about policy, you have to take into consideration that it’s not what has been decided in advanced countries, that this is the policy that goes everywhere. The local is more important in many other areas, especially that when we go to some kind of multilingual access or even freedom of expression and so on, we have to access of the end user, even students or other underprivileged people to different types of content. It’s not only to block some kind of content for cultural sensitivities, but also to allow, as Dr. Manal said, to amplify the opinion and innovation or creativity that is done at the local level by such non-commercial users. At the accountability, I’ll just highlight a few things. One is that transparency reports are lacking in many regions, in many corporations or governments in the region. How data is collected, where is it stored, and how it is shared, and who has the access to share it, who has the right to access it. There is a lack of independent audits and the policies, sometimes they mention, sometimes they don’t mention this. And nowadays, in the last two, three years, when AI became a major tool in the digital transformation, and even digital literacy is now more of an AI literacy as well. So there is a need for local AI ethics frameworks, not just copy the UNESCO framework, which means nothing in many of our countries. And you need to develop some local flavor, taking into consideration cultural sensitivities as well as the actual situation on the ground in terms of infrastructure, access, and all this stuff. And finally, there is a need for surveillance accountability by corporates or by governments who do different types of surveillance that we don’t know what they’re doing, and suddenly we discover after some time that millions, hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent to control what people say or to gauge what people say on social media and so on. So this is a brief of our experience. I can talk more about the educational part or other practical experience if we have time.

Amine Hasha: Thank you, Dr. Milad. When Bruna started to talk, we don’t introduce her very well, I think, but we work together with Bruna on several sides. As she mentioned, she’s ICANN JNSO counselor, and she’s also an IJF member, and also Bruna has a lot of active work in Internet policy. I have a question for Bruna. It’s about how can the NCIC and its partner advocate for equitable and inclusive Internet governance that respects freedom and expression while countering the overreach of both state and non-state actors in cyberspace?

Bruna Martins dos Santos: Thank you. I’m a bit appalled by the conversation in the chat on how civil society can undermine efforts. I don’t think that’s the case, to be fair, but I just wanted to put this on the record. Going back to the question, I think I’d like to start maybe by stating that we really live in unprecedented times, right, where just not the discussions about Internet governance, but also our spaces, the IJF, ICANN, some of our spaces have been challenged by governments, their interest in this conversation, other stakeholders, and also other processes taking place around the globe. In 2024, we have seen challenging processes like elections in more than 80 countries, and also some threats regarding the duplication or fragmentation of spaces where Internet governance discussions take place, and this has all been shifting towards different approaches or different ideas about what’s the ideal approach to Internet regulation, what’s the ideal approach to Internet policymaking, and I think that’s one of the main challenges that we need to tackle, and I’m very glad to hear some of the interventions about this point. In light of that, I think that some of the challenges are things that CUC and INSEC can also help work on and talk to, would be, first of all, promoting multistakeholder governance framework, right? It’s our key role to engage in these spaces and make sure that all voices are heard in this space, and I’m not just talking about ICANN, I’m talking about Mundial Plus 10, if it’s guidelines, I’m talking about engaging in ITF, ITU, and any kind of space that addresses Internet governance by any mean or in any kind of surface way, and by doing so, I do believe that noncommercial users, they need to also advocate for more transparency and accountability, and that our participation in this for us is at the same kind of level. or in some acknowledgeable level to other stakeholders. What we saw in the GDC process with the sidetracking of the technical community, civil society voices was definitely concerning. But that happened despite our complaints and despite our points about the process. Another thing I think non-commercial users can do and NCUC has been doing a lot is to challenge overreach in content regulation. We are really strong advocates. Carson is one of them at ICANN, mostly, where every single time that stakeholder groups within the space try to advocate for more content regulation, we are kind of the ones that keep raising the flag of we don’t do content in this space. But besides ICANN, it’s just really relevant that any sort of policy approach is human-centered, transparent, and appallable besides all, and that we also have proportional state actions, and proportional state actions that have civil society and academia concerns in mind. Other than that, I would say that advocating for corporate accountability is something that’s really high and should continue to happen. And by that, I mean pressuring private intermediaries and our registries and registrar’s colleagues within ICANN to adopt due process mechanisms, human rights-based approach, human rights impact assessments, or anything that can help assess the type of policymaking they can do. That comes aligned with defending freedom of expression in the DNS ecosystem. That’s something we have been really keen on. But also, going back to the points addressed by other panelists, I’d say that supporting digital inclusion and equity, and also educating and empowering stakeholders is a key and a core aspect of our mission because there is a lot of capacity building. Civil society folks and groups can do, and also to provide for more spaces for other organizations to come in and other organizations to also be more well-experienced within ICANN. And I would maybe just close by saying that there is definitely not a one-size-fits-all kind of measures for this question, as we still face a lot of discrepancies on how states approach the broader idea of safeguarding users and ensuring human rights in order to access the internet online. Unfortunately, we don’t live yet in a world where we can simply ask for regulations because it goes both ways, right? In my country, Brazil, it can come in order to safeguard human rights and make sure everyone has access to the internet. But unfortunately, in some regions of the world, it also talks about using transparency regulations to surveil users or to ask for companies to share data with governments and to prohibit abusive requests on that sense. But I do believe that the power of advocacy and civil society can be a main tool for making sure we reach a safer online space and in hearing the voices of users. But this conversation doesn’t go anywhere if we don’t address the voices of the victims and that these are the ones who get their rights violated, these are the ones who have their private lives shared on social media, are victims of deepfakes or anything like that. So I do believe we have a lot of work to do in including more and more voices, but above all, the victims are also relevant in this conversation. So I’ll stop here, thanks.

Amine Hasha: Thank you, Bruna. I will give the turn now to Pedro, to if there are someone online or any comment. I see comments now.

Pedro de Perdigão Lana: We don’t have exactly comments. We have a conversation going on about increasing… privacy, and the possibility of attenuating privacy mechanism, encryption mechanism has to make it easier to prosecute so as session or other crimes online. And I think considering that fires, president is participating in the conversation, if she would like to talk a little bit about this issue regarding lower or higher levels of encryptions and how non commercial interests are involved in this, this kind of conversation. So please, as you have the floor.

Farzaneh Badii: Um, Pedro, that’s a very, like, this is a topic that we’ve been discussing for a very long time. And I think that’s, I don’t think time would allow. So but let me, let me tell you a little bit about what we do for privacy at non commercial users constituency. So as you know, non commercial users constituency is a part of ICANN governance. And for a long time, we had the domain name registrants, sensitive and private data out in the public. And anybody could have an access through who is to the domain name registrants date. And one of the so as NCUC, we were advocating for privacy, but we were not advocating for just redacting the data or not collecting the data. We were saying that don’t make this public. If you need access to have a countable disclosure policy processes in place in order to have access to. So, and this is, and we were not too successful in bringing privacy to domain name registrants until GDPR happened. And then after that, we managed to advocate for privacy for every domain name registrant in the world, which to some extent happened. And we are, we claim that as a win for us and as a success. But another thing that we should be cognizant of is that when like many of our members, many of the non-commercial users, many of the organizations work on these safety issues. They work on online safety. It doesn’t mean when they advocate for privacy, when they advocate for freedom of expression, when they advocate for strong encryption, it does not mean that they don’t work on trust and safety, the problems that information integrity and other issues are being raised online. So, but we are of a, like we have a position that we need privacy globally for everybody. We need a strong encryption. And when we want to do, when we want to bring safety, those principles should not be undermined because then we are not bringing safety to the internet and internet users. I’m sorry, I didn’t address the whole encryption thing. But I think that can be a segue to talking about. how can we actually not undermine privacy and security of the users online, but bring safety as well. And I think one way is by coming up with alternative solutions. Alternative solutions, not to encryption, but alternative solutions to how are we going to combat CSAM? How are we going to combat content moderation issues? Thank you.

Pedro de Perdigão Lana: I mean, one minute to take back the floor. We have a question of one to, I think our panelists. You made a question about if your panelists would consider that greater encryption is a leading cause of less safe internets. I would also like if you are interested in contribution to that discussion, since I’m seeing that there are comments in the chat being about the encryption challenges and other challenges regarding non-commercial interests that may arise globally that we need to halt or we need to deal with to ensure safe internets. We would like to hear your contribution on that issues as well, be it encryption or other challenges that we’re facing nowadays that are important on a global level. So Vince, I would like to give the floor back to you.

Vint Cerf: Well, thank you. I’ve just been trying to track the conversation in the chat as well as the online Audible discussion. It seems to me that encryption is a really important tool and for… people and organizations that need to protect information. I think we can’t escape from the utility and value of cryptography. At the same time though, I think we also have to remember that sometimes we have to be able to pierce the veil of anonymity, if you like, in order to assure accountability. I would observe that the law enforcement, although some members of that community say that encryption is somehow harmful to safety, many of them seem to have found ways of dealing with bad behaviors despite the existence of cryptography. And so I would encourage an argument along the lines of alternatives to things like backdoors and so on in order to deal with accountability and law enforcement. Sometimes cooperation helps. Sometimes, frankly, penetration of some of the groups that are doing harmful things online like ransomware turns out to be more effective than trying to eliminate cryptography, which has all kinds of side effects with regard to safety and security. I think there are others who are online right now that might speak to this as well, but I leave that to your discretion.

Pedro de Perdigão Lana: I mean, I will get back to you. I would just like to read two comments, one comment and one question from Benjamin. Benjamin concord with Dr. Miladviou on the need to have local flavor internet digital performance frameworks and about necessity of having local approaches in different countries, which may enter in contradiction to global frameworks sometimes. And there was a specific question on how do we have meaningful non-commercial participants if we have limited capacity in the non-commercial community. But before going back to you, I see that Farzaneh has her hands up. So I would like to get the floor back to her, and then going back on site.

Farzaneh Badii: Thank you, sir. Pedro, I just wanted to quickly mention that. So anonymity is very important for some vulnerable communities. This is how they got their voice heard in the beginning when the internet was displaced that they could, without having to mention their religion, their identity, their name, they could go, they could join online communities. And I truly believe that the pioneers of the internet, including Vint, had this vision of for everyone to have access to the internet, regardless of where they are from. And that’s what made the internet this powerful tool. And I believe that we should still preserve anonymity. And in our accountability conversations, we have to focus on, like, instead of looking at identification of users, I think that we should also look at, like, holding law enforcement accountable. Sometimes law enforcement is a human rights violator. And one of the things that I wanted to tell you briefly about NCUC and NCSG, what we have done, and, like, it’s a small role, but we have actually worked with the Government Advisory Committee to discuss how we can come up with authentication for law enforcement, and also how we can, like, report on the request for access to people’s registration data, how we can bring that transparency so that we can actually provide some sort of accountability for law enforcement as well. This is why the voice of non-commercial is so important because they can bring these nuances that yes, law enforcement is great, but some law enforcement agencies are actually intent to violate human rights. Thank you, and I see Vince’s hand is up. I was not trying to misframe anything, Vince, just to be clear.

Vint Cerf: Look, there are, it’s Vin again. Look, there are lots of arguments on either side of this equation. Absolute anonymity, however, feels to me like overreach. I absolutely understand and agree with the points made that for some people, being able to speak and to be anonymous in that speech is necessary because without that, they face potential serious consequences. However, I believe we still have to maintain that the veil of anonymity has to be pierceable under the right circumstances. Without that capacity, we have a great difficulty dealing with accountability. You’ll notice that in some reporting mechanisms where anonymous reports are accepted, sometimes the party to whom that report is made needs to know whether or not the reporting party is legitimate or not, but is held to account to protect the anonymity of that reporting party. You’ll find reporters, for example, who even go to jail in order to protect their sources, but in order for them to know whether the source is legitimate, sometimes they have to know who that source is. This is not a trivial matter, and it’s not an easy matter, and there are tensions in both directions, but I am now finding myself leaning towards accountability because in its absence, I don’t know how to protect people from harm.

Pedro de Perdigão Lana: Thanks, Farz and Vin for the interaction. I mean, there is the question about Benjamin, about, just let me get back here, about the participation of non-commercial, there is enough space, there is a limited capacity by the non-commercial community in the intergovernmental spaces, but I would believe that this will be a question for our on-site speakers, and it would also be nice to collect some questions from the on-site audience, so I mean, back to you, to see, to check with our speakers on-site.

Amine Hasha: Okay. Thank you, Pedro. Before I come back to our speaker here, I will give, I see a lot of colleagues interested to add their valuable input. I will start by Charles, please.

Charles Shaban: Thank you, Amin, and thank you for having us as commercial with you. We are, of course, I’m Charles Chaban from the International Trademark Association, and I like what, Farzaneh is laughing, okay. I like what, to start with what Vin mentioned when he started talking. He talked that he’s talking about all the Internet users, and this is very important, and going back to Farzana, when she mentioned that it is important to have the privacy, I agree with her, but of course, I liked when she said to, we need a procedure to know who’s behind it. As again, Dr. Manal and Vin mentioned it again, sometimes total anonymity is not really good, because you cannot know if it’s someone, let’s say, criminal behind it. Is it related to disinformation, as Dr. Manal mentioned? So this is why I think it’s important to cover it. from many sides, and especially when going to the ICANN, who is, for example, it was a good move to have the, let’s say, the private information to be hidden, but I don’t think it’s important to hide, for example, who is the company around responsible for this domain or something. Anyway, what I’m trying to say is that it’s a conversation for sure needs a lot of talk, but in general, it needs the different views from all the stakeholders to be sure we reach, I think, what’s needed for everyone. Thank you.

Amine Hasha: Okay. Thank you. Next, please.

Andrew Campling: Hi. Good morning. Thank you. My name is Andrew Campling. I’m mainly in the tech community, but I’m also a trustee of the Internet Watch Foundation, which is in civil society. I think I completely agree with Vince’s point about being able to pierce the veil on anonymity in appropriate circumstances, and dare I say it, absolute anonymity, absolute privacy takes us to the dark web, and we only have to look there to see why we don’t want to go there. That’s not the right destination, but it seems to be the path that some of us have us set on if we’re not careful. But if I may pose just two brief questions, how can we avoid continuing the weaponization of privacy, which in reality is mainly the privacy of adults when it’s a qualified right, overriding all of the human rights of children, leading to an explosion in child sex abuse material, sexploitation, et cetera, and how can we ensure, for example, that domain name registration data includes the details of real owners, which can be stored privately, only accessible in limited circumstances to law enforcement agencies, and data shows us that effective know-your-customer efforts lead to significant reductions in DNS abuse. So if we don’t know who the owners of the domain name are, we do see significant abuse, DNS abuse, arising from it. So I don’t know if any of the panel would like to respond to either of those points. Thank you.

Amine Hasha: Thank you.

Pedro de Perdigão Lana: I mean, just a note, Bruna has her hand up.

Bruna Martins dos Santos: Just very briefly, I think it’s really dangerous to place the discussion about privacy as weapon ization of privacy, especially when you have journalists getting arrested for exercising their profession, when you have civil society and activists getting killed, getting murdered in a lot of parts of the world, when you have male journalists being attacked on X and many other social media platforms for simply reporting on elections. I come from Brazil. Brazil in the last years has been skyrocketing in terms of like gender-based attacks to female journalists, female politicians, queer politicians, and in that sense. So I do see privacy as a core aspect of a safe Internet and as a core aspect of these discussions. When we address privacy as a right, I’m not saying by any means that I want the criminals to have privacy or I’m not saying by any means that I want the criminals to use aliases on the Internet. I’m just saying that a lot of users, they do rely on this as a tool to exercise their jobs, to feel safer online, or to simply work on the details of a protest against Bolsonaro because that’s what happened in my country, right? And rights to protest, rights to freedom of expressions, they both need to be aligned with the right to privacy or the need to fight crime or the needs for law enforcement agencies to work. And it’s not… One size is not more important than the other. We need to advocate for all of it more broadly and not just for the law enforcement agents to work. I don’t need my rights to be able to go to a protest and feel safe or to be able to go anywhere and feel safe in that sense. So I just wanted to reply on that point because I honestly, as a proper civil rights advocate, I dislike the idea of privacy weaponization.

Amine Hasha: Thank you. Can I… Next, please.

Robert Carolina: Hello. My name is Robert Carolina. I’m General Counsel with Internet Systems Consortium, we’re a root server operator. In that capacity, I think there’s really nothing of value I can add to the discussion. So instead, I’m going to shift to what I do with part of my time, I’m a Senior Teaching Fellow in Legal and Regulatory Aspects of Cybersecurity with University, Royal Holloway University of London. I think there’s been a great deal of ventilation about the tension between accountability and privacy. So I won’t pile onto that as much as I would enjoy it. I think instead, I’d like to ask a question about Vince Cerf’s other key challenge that he led with, which is agency. Specifically, I’m wondering to what extent we can or should focus more on protecting vulnerable populations. And I think I should be, in this context, I should be much more clear what I mean by vulnerable populations. I’m not speaking here about people who are vulnerable by reason of their political or sexual or religious identity. I’m speaking here about people who have become vulnerable because of an ongoing diminishment of their ability to think clearly. I’m thinking here about aging population or people who have come under some type of mental cloud because of health issues. And what we’ve seen is an explosion of predation upon that type of vulnerable population. through phishing campaigns and similar online crimes when thinking about that population people who’ve had life savings stolen uh… who’ve had uh… significant amounts of their retirement uh… taken from them through criminal activity i think it’s extremely difficult to solve problems like that through the normal tools that we use to instill agency such as better education i think that’s a false horizon i’m wondering what else can be done to assist that group to reduce that kind of predation and now i am going to be quite difficult by suggesting that whatever the answer is i would suggest to you that the answer is not increased law enforcement cooperation on a multinational basis and the reason i suggest that is because if we look at where the criminals are often located asking the law enforcement officials of a let’s say less developed economy whose primary job is to solve crimes that have local victims i think it’s on likely that one could ever get the type of cooperation that would be effective at a mass level if that’s off the table and perhaps you’ll disagree what else is there that we can do to assist or to try to interdict that kind of predation on that kind of vulnerable community

Vint Cerf: so uh… on the presumption that that question might have been aimed at me uh… among others uh… let me say that accountability uh… does loom large in my mind as you describe that scenario If we’re unable to identify the source of a phishing attack, I don’t quite know how we will deal with the bad behavior. At Google, as you might know, we try very hard to filter as much as we can of the incoming email if we can detect that it’s a phishing attack or some other malicious content. Maybe it’s got malware as an attachment, for instance. And the only reason we can do that is that we have such a large population of users that we can see a lot of the phishing content flowing into the system. We can identify it and try to filter it out into the spam folders. That’s one kind of response, which is just to try to detect and remove it. But if you want to go after the parties who are generating these attacks, I don’t know how you do that without some ability to pierce anonymity and to, frankly, try to get cooperation, which is what the Budapest Convention and the more recent Cybercrime Treaty, I think, have attempted to facilitate, which is cooperation. I don’t disagree with your point, however, that it may not be effective if the law enforcement component doesn’t have the capacity to respond. So I don’t really have a comfortable answer to your question, not a pointed response. But I think that we have to keep thinking in the back of our minds that accountability is our only real tool for dealing with bad behavior.

Dr. Manal Abdel-Samad: Thank you, Robert. I think you raised a very important issue. It’s about vulnerability and how we protect vulnerable people. In my point of view, definitely technology should empower more than marginalize. So here, if we will not go international, let’s go local. Locally, I think the major issue is to empower people, educate people so that they know what they are reading, how they are acting. And the main, I think, action that everybody should take, and specifically the policymakers, is to collaborate and cooperate. Collaborate not only with regulators. Regulators should collaborate with operators, with Google, with Facebook, with every company or every organization that are engaged in the Internet governance. We should collaborate also with NGOs to spread awareness. And this is what I did during my tenure as Minister of Information. I partnered with Twitter. with X, with Facebook, with every platform, so that we ensure that we talk in a language that is acceptable, and the most important issue, we have to spread awareness or literacy based on the country that we are working in, because different countries have different cultures, have different languages, so we have definitely to take in consideration the culture of the country. I have to tell Facebook, and to tell Google, and to tell these platforms that we have our own culture, we have to protect our culture by certain also standards, not only your own standards. So this is very important, the cooperation and collaboration, and education comes on top. Thank you.

Dr. Milad Sebaaly: I would like to tell you a story that happened to me in one of the advanced Arab countries, and it’s not about only specific type of users. Some international hackers have been and are still able to hack the digital identity of that country, which is usually used for the government to talk to citizens or to people with residency. And they contacted me, and they started taking, they impersonated the police, they said, we are from this police department, and we would like to double check your KYC and identity and so on, and then at some point, he said, what’s your account number, bank account number? And I stopped there, and later on, one week, and I called the police, and they said, did they take your money from the bank? I said, no, he said, it’s okay, just forget it. The next week, one week after, a friend of mine in another country, in Belgium. in another city of the same country, lost around $150,000 from her account because she did not stop at that. She thought that, I mean, the government is asking her for some information to update her information. And she’s a top manager level, but she’s not well into technology. I think in addition to all what has been discussed, maybe at some point in time we need some kind of insurance or re-insurance on the data loss. Because if you want just to rely on centralized decision or police or international collaboration, it might not be sufficient. Thank you.

Amine Hasha: Thank you, Dr. Milad. We have a few minutes before we close the session and I’m very interested to listen and turn for our speaker as conclusion. I want to say something that time runs, but we will not let this discussion run from us. We will continue and we will build on this discussion. And this is the main reason why we think to make this session. Because we don’t want to focus about a problem we have as non-commercial user. This session is focusing about the rule. We already make it as non-commercial user, especially in NCEC. And we are looking forward to this discussion to continue and to build on for continue the stability and security of the Internet. I will make a turn from Dr. Manal to conclude this. I want to thank all who attend with us in present or online. Your valuable input and your support is very accountable for us. Thank you again.

Dr. Manal Abdel-Samad: Thank you, Amin, also for inviting me. I also want to emphasize that as we deliberate on the future of the Internet governance, we must prioritize inclusivity. Particularly for vulnerable populations and here population also differs from country to country. This means bridging the digital divide, trying to enhance cyber security, trying to promote digital literacy. This is very important. Also literacy is subjective and ensuring that technology empowers rather than marginalizes. And I conclude also by emphasizing that a safe and empowering Internet requires the active contribution and the active participation of everyone, including the non-commercial users. Their voices and their actions are critical in championing an Internet that is secure, that is inclusive and a force for good. Thank you.

Amine Hasha: Please, Bruna.

Bruna Martins dos Santos: I think maybe I’ll start with Vint’s point on the chat about the balance between safety and privacy not being a static matter. I do agree with that in general, because I think it’s one of the things I was kind of referring to in the beginning. We do have different approaches to many of these issues we have discussed, whether it’s encryption or any other need for anonymity tools for anyone that feels threatened online to simply exist and perform their jobs. And we also have business interests and governmental interests. And each and every single one of those, it’s initially legitimate, right? What’s not legitimate in my mind, it’s the abuse. And whether it’s the abuse coming from governmental requests for access to data, or the abuse from law enforcement for further identification of users, and so on. And I think the main challenge within this and any other internet governance discussion is to find the common point, right? What’s the point we can compromise with? And that won’t result in any violations to users’ rights or violations to the way the internet is supposed to work, or to the core aspects of the internet in that sense. So maybe I’ll close with that and just adding a plus one to your point, Vint.

Amine Hasha: Thank you, Bruna. Turn to Vint, please.

Vint Cerf: Well, I’ve had more than my fair share of airtime. I will say, though, that this discussion has been very helpful to me because it sheds light on a variety of different situations that put this whole question of privacy, and anonymity, and accountability, and agency into a kind of dynamic discourse. I have the feeling that we will never end up with an absolute solution to this problem, that we will find ourselves. oscillating around some point that mostly seems to protect people from harm, but sometimes ends up in abuses that we failed to prevent. I hate saying that, but I’m afraid that it’s probably realistic to recognize that we will not achieve perfection. What we want to do, of course, is to minimize harm in all of its potential guises in this online environment. There are a number of different tools that we can use to achieve that objective.

Amine Hasha: Thank you again, Van. Now the turn of Dr. Milad.

Dr. Milad Sebaaly: Yes, I would like to close by highlighting again the importance of having a balance between what’s local and what’s global in terms of policy and solutions. And here I would like to highlight three levels. One is the infrastructure level in any country. All this discussion is highly affected by how advanced the infrastructure is and therefore what are the plans to develop this in order to provide equity and access to all kinds of people. And the data, when we talk about privacy and the rights, digital rights and so on, what about the access of the data? Where is the data hosted? For example, in many countries, the governments have policies not to host the data outside the country. And this creates additional threat. And the third level is the content, which sometimes we disregard, especially nowadays with the AI available tools that can create any kind of content. And in this sense, it’s both ways. It’s not only preventing people from voicing out certain opinions, but also what people, especially underprivileged or even younger generation and so on, can access from internet. international available content and here there is a need for balance between some kind of surveillance and local cultural sensitivities. So we need to take this into consideration and therefore, as Vince just said, there is no one-size-fits-all and there is a need for some local flavor into different types of policies that have a lot of things in common with the

Amine Hasha: global level. Thank you. Thank you. Please, Ferdina. So I just, I’m very chatty in chat,

Ferdina: so I just believe that in order to bring safety as well as upholding those long-standing internet values such as open, free internet and keeping people safe, we need to discuss more about like who’s accountability are we talking about? Is there a way to, like what sort of safety issues are we tackling that needs an actual identification and how do we actually go about that? Are we going to act, are we talking about getting like people asking people for their driver’s license? Some people in some countries don’t have driver’s license. So these are the issues that we have to consider and also I don’t think that, as I said in chat, I don’t think that this kind of like balancing or trade-offs take us to the, like, yes, it’s closer to the solution. We have to be, we have to say that, okay, so this is the policy that I have decided to come up with in a multi-stakeholder environment or however in a democratic way. These are the implications of this policy. Then we will evaluate whether that policy is actually good for the public and for the global public, not just communities in certain countries. With that, I just ended with, we need safety for everyone, and we need Internet for everyone. Thank you.

Amine Hasha: Thank you. Pedro, you can conclude from your side, please.

Pedro de Perdigão Lana: No, I mean, I think you can, considering the time we have, I think you can conclude now. Thanks. Thanks everyone for their presentations and their contributions to our discussion.

Amine Hasha: Thank you. The session is over, and we’ll continue our effort together. Thank you. Bye.

Agreement Points

Importance of balancing privacy and accountability

Vint Cerf

Farzaneh Badii

Bruna Martins dos Santos

Andrew Campling

Absolute anonymity can be problematic; the veil of anonymity must be pierceable in some cases

Encryption and anonymity are important for protecting vulnerable users

Privacy is crucial for journalists, activists, and vulnerable groups to operate safely

Need to balance privacy with ability to identify real domain name owners to reduce abuse

Speakers agree on the need to balance privacy and anonymity with accountability, recognizing the importance of both for different user groups and scenarios.

Importance of education and digital literacy

Dr. Manal Abdel-Samad

Vint Cerf

Education and digital literacy are crucial for protecting vulnerable users

Accountability and agency are key elements for a safe internet

Speakers emphasize the importance of education and digital literacy in empowering users to navigate the internet safely and responsibly.

Similar Viewpoints

Both speakers emphasize the importance of considering local cultural contexts and differences when developing internet governance policies and safety approaches.

Dr. Milad Sebaaly

Dr. Manal Abdel-Samad

Local cultural contexts must be considered in safety/security approaches

Policies must consider cultural differences between countries

Unexpected Consensus

Importance of non-commercial users in internet governance

Bruna Martins dos Santos

Dr. Manal Abdel-Samad

Non-commercial users provide important oversight and advocacy

Non-commercial users champion human rights and inclusive policies

Despite coming from different backgrounds, both speakers strongly emphasize the crucial role of non-commercial users in internet governance, particularly in advocating for human rights and inclusive policies.

Overall Assessment

Summary

The main areas of agreement include the need to balance privacy and accountability, the importance of education and digital literacy, consideration of local cultural contexts, and the significant role of non-commercial users in internet governance.

Consensus level

Moderate consensus with some diverging views. While speakers agree on broad principles, there are differences in emphasis and approach. This suggests a need for continued dialogue and nuanced policy-making in internet governance.

Different Viewpoints

Balance between privacy/anonymity and accountability

Farzaneh Badii

Vint Cerf

Andrew Campling

Encryption and anonymity are important for protecting vulnerable users

Absolute anonymity can be problematic; the veil of anonymity must be pierceable in some cases

Total anonymity can lead to issues like the dark web

Speakers disagree on the extent to which anonymity should be protected online. Farzaneh Badii emphasizes the importance of anonymity for vulnerable users, while Vint Cerf and Andrew Campling argue for some limitations on anonymity to ensure accountability.

Unexpected Differences

Approach to global vs. local internet governance

Vint Cerf

Dr. Milad Sebaaly

Accountability and agency are key elements for a safe internet

No one-size-fits-all solution; need balance of global and local

While both speakers discuss internet safety, their approaches differ unexpectedly. Vint Cerf advocates for more universal principles like accountability and agency, while Dr. Milad emphasizes the need for localized approaches, highlighting an unexpected tension between global and local governance strategies.

Overall Assessment

summary

The main areas of disagreement revolve around the balance between privacy/anonymity and accountability, as well as the tension between global and local approaches to internet governance and safety.

difference_level

The level of disagreement is moderate. While speakers share common goals of internet safety and inclusivity, they differ significantly on implementation strategies. These differences highlight the complexity of creating universally applicable internet governance policies and underscore the need for continued dialogue and compromise in this field.

Partial Agreements

All speakers agree on the importance of user safety online, but they propose different approaches. Vint Cerf emphasizes accountability and agency, Dr. Manal focuses on education and digital literacy, while Dr. Milad stresses the importance of considering local cultural contexts.

Vint Cerf

Dr. Manal Abdel-Samad

Dr. Milad Sebaaly

Accountability and agency are key elements for a safe internet

Education and digital literacy are crucial for protecting vulnerable users

Local cultural contexts must be considered in safety/security approaches

Similar Viewpoints

Both speakers emphasize the importance of considering local cultural contexts and differences when developing internet governance policies and safety approaches.

Dr. Milad Sebaaly

Dr. Manal Abdel-Samad

Local cultural contexts must be considered in safety/security approaches

Policies must consider cultural differences between countries

Key Takeaways

There is an ongoing tension between privacy/anonymity and accountability/safety online that requires careful balancing

Non-commercial users play a crucial role in advocating for human rights, inclusivity and safety in internet governance

Both global and local approaches are needed to address internet safety and policy issues

Education and digital literacy are key to protecting vulnerable users online

Multi-stakeholder cooperation is essential for effective internet governance

Resolutions and Action Items

Continue discussions on balancing privacy, anonymity and accountability

Non-commercial users should engage more in policy discussions and multi-stakeholder forums

Develop local AI ethics frameworks and policies tailored to cultural contexts

Increase efforts on digital literacy and education, especially for vulnerable populations

Unresolved Issues

How to effectively pierce anonymity when needed without compromising privacy rights

How to protect vulnerable populations (e.g. elderly) from online predation without relying solely on law enforcement

How to balance global internet governance approaches with local cultural needs and policies

How to ensure meaningful participation of non-commercial users given limited capacity

Suggested Compromises

Allow anonymity but with mechanisms to pierce it in justified circumstances

Develop privacy-preserving ways to authenticate domain owners to reduce abuse

Balance global frameworks with localized implementation and cultural considerations

Focus on education and empowerment of users rather than solely restrictive policies

I’ve come to believe that there are two very important elements that need to be part of our universe. One of them is accountability, and the other one is agency.

speaker

Vint Cerf

reason

This comment introduced two key concepts – accountability and agency – as fundamental elements for a safe internet, providing a framework for the subsequent discussion.

impact

It set the tone for much of the following conversation, with many speakers referring back to these concepts and exploring their implications.

I think I would start by saying that the main role of non-commercial entities or speakers is to make noise, right? As good advocates for topics and themes, I do believe that we are looking at a stakeholder group that, unfortunately, sometimes we need to shout even louder to be heard

speaker

Bruna Martins dos Santos

reason

This comment highlighted the unique role and challenges faced by non-commercial entities in internet governance discussions.

impact

It shifted the conversation to focus more on the specific role and importance of non-commercial users in shaping internet policy.

Drawing from my experience as Minister of Information in Lebanon, I have witnessed the transformative power of the digital technology in advancing some of the most pressing challenges of our time

speaker

Dr. Manal Abdel-Samad

reason

This comment brought a real-world perspective on how digital technology can be leveraged during crises, providing concrete examples of its impact.

impact

It grounded the discussion in practical realities and highlighted the importance of digital solutions in crisis management.

The local is more important in many other areas, especially that when we go to some kind of multilingual access or even freedom of expression and so on, we have to access of the end user, even students or other underprivileged people to different types of content.

speaker

Dr. Milad Sebaaly

reason

This comment emphasized the importance of considering local contexts and cultural sensitivities in internet governance, challenging the one-size-fits-all approach.

impact

It broadened the discussion to include considerations of cultural diversity and local needs in internet policy-making.

Absolute anonymity, however, feels to me like overreach. I absolutely understand and agree with the points made that for some people, being able to speak and to be anonymous in that speech is necessary because without that, they face potential serious consequences. However, I believe we still have to maintain that the veil of anonymity has to be pierceable under the right circumstances.

speaker

Vint Cerf

reason

This comment addressed the complex tension between privacy/anonymity and accountability, acknowledging the importance of both.

impact

It sparked a deeper discussion about the balance between privacy and accountability, with several participants offering their perspectives on this issue.

Overall Assessment

These key comments shaped the discussion by introducing fundamental concepts (accountability and agency), highlighting the unique role of non-commercial entities, grounding the conversation in real-world examples, emphasizing the importance of local contexts, and addressing the complex tension between privacy and accountability. The discussion evolved from broad principles to specific challenges and considerations in internet governance, with a particular focus on balancing various stakeholder interests and addressing cultural and local needs. The comments collectively deepened the analysis of internet safety and governance issues, moving beyond simplistic solutions to acknowledge the complexity and nuance required in addressing these challenges.

How can we develop local AI ethics frameworks that take into account cultural sensitivities and actual situations on the ground?

speaker

Dr. Milad Sebaaly

explanation

This is important to ensure AI governance is appropriate for different contexts rather than just copying international frameworks.

How can we address the lack of transparency reports in many regions regarding how data is collected, stored, and shared?

speaker

Dr. Milad Sebaaly

explanation

This is crucial for improving accountability and data protection practices globally.

How can we avoid the weaponization of privacy, particularly when it comes to balancing adult privacy with protecting children online?

speaker

Andrew Campling

explanation

This highlights the need to carefully consider different stakeholder needs when developing privacy policies.

How can we ensure domain name registration data includes details of real owners while still protecting privacy?

speaker

Andrew Campling

explanation

This is important for reducing DNS abuse while maintaining appropriate privacy protections.

What alternatives to increased law enforcement cooperation can be developed to protect vulnerable populations (e.g. elderly) from online predation?

speaker

Robert Carolina

explanation

This explores new approaches to online safety beyond traditional law enforcement methods.

How can we develop insurance or re-insurance mechanisms for data loss?

speaker

Dr. Milad Sebaaly

explanation

This proposes a novel approach to mitigating harm from data breaches and online fraud.