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Internet Governance Forum 2016 Enabling Inclusive and Sustainable Growth
Jalisco, Mexico 9 December 2016 Room 8 Workshop WS134: Assemblies and
Associations Online: Coping with Challenges 9:00 AM CT

>> MODERATOR: Good morning and welcome to the last day of the IGF and it is
understandable that everybody must be really worn out by now by all the
conversations and all the challenges we've been talking about over the
days. I work with the Association for Progressive Communicatioinss. It is
an organization that focuses on using the Internet for social justice for
all. We have a wonderful panel put together today to focus on the issue of
freedom of assembly and association online. The reason why we focused on
this issue we see the Internet has been an integral part with expressing
your opinion. Trying to explain what we mean by freedom of assembly and
association online. What we are talking about is the use of Internet to
exercise the right to freedom of assembly and association. But whether it
is solely assembly and association online or it is the use -- grows to be
the use of the Internet to assembly and associate offline. That's how we
framed our approach toward this topic. Today is the launch of two fantastic
reports in front of you. The report is the Pakistan national report on how
freedom of assembly and association online spans out in Pakistan. And this
is a quote from Malaysia on freedom of assembly and association. And if you
look at page 11 of the Malaysia report you'll see a list of definitions.
They've captured the definition of freedom of assembly and association
online in this report. I'm going to introduce my panelists and I will go
around and introduce all of them first so we know all of them before we get
into the conversations. To my right is HARUN. He works for bytes for all.
We have a representative from power of Malaysia and from the Digital
Empowerment Foundation in India and part of the impact project. We have
Deji from Access Now and a member from Facebook. Can we start out how the
Internet is used to express freedom and assembly and association? You can
go first.

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

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

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

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

>> DEJI OLUKOTUN: Thank you, what we've seen is that the Internet enables
people to organize. And what is happening at least in the U.S. context
right now is people are asking questions. There has been an organizing
model of using giant email lists to try to get people to do something. And
now what we're seeing is people trying to move -- I think what we will
expect to see after sort of a very contentious presidential campaign is to
try to move people from offline -- online action to offline as soon as
possible. And also to build power amongst themselves. I was just pulling up
an article which I think shows the complexity of the problem, but there is
a women's March planned in Washington on I believe January -- in January
22nd to speak up for women's rights. And most of that happened organically.
And that will happen shortly after the presidential inauguration. So it is
unprecedented and amazing opportunity for people to express the need to
support women's rights and the gathering is meant to be in a public space
in Washington, D.C. in the U.S. capital. I'm looking at a headline which is
two days old that that assembly, which has over 100,000 registered
participants, has been banned from Marching on the Lincoln Memorial. There
may have been updates since then since things move swiftly in the Internet
age. It shows the complexity of the issue. A great opportunity for people
to stand up for what they believe in, organize offline, online and quickly
move offline. And -- but it shows it is not always so easy. So we have more
work to do.

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

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

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

>> Hello, I will just time myself and make sure I don't speak too much. So
I'll be presenting a case study on a rally that just happened last month.
It is not included in this report yet. So really it is called -- it is
translated in English it means clean. So the main objective of the rally is
to protest against the Prime Minister for multiple counts of alleged
corruption. One of it is lawsuits filed by the U.S. justice department in
July claiming money has been stolen from the state fund. This is, in fact
-- This is, in fact, the fifth time the rally has been called to protest
against abuse of powers and to advocate for clean elections in the country
since 2007. But what we are seeing this time is the emergence of this new
group. They are widely known as the red shirt whose sole purpose is to
counter the demonstrations. The color red was to counter the yellow of the
movement and it is also a representation of the angers towards the
movement. And they have very close relationship with the rulers of the
country. The red shirts many times has fueled clashes with the supporters.
Instances of physical and online attacks against organizers or supporters
are disrupting the events has been reported. And they are trying to bring
in more people. In fact, they promise about 30,000 and they would do
anything at any cost to stop the rally from happening on that day itself.
So given the situations, dissemination of the information is extremely
important to make sure that there is no fear mongering among the public.
Internet was the main medium for mobilization and also for dissemination of
accurate information in this case. Especially when there is really no space
in the offline world for civil societies or any views that is different
from the establishment. For the past rallies, they have achieved a lot by
using the Internet as a tool to mobilize. However, the optimism of the
Internet being a solution to the authoritarian governments is changing as
well. They pro-government group the red shirts is occupying the online
space to discredit what the organization is doing. So this is one of the
examples of a -- the leader of the red shirt movement, it was circulated
widely on social media and people have been saying that the movement will
be planting some of its supporters of the yellow shirts in the protest
rally to create riots. It fear mongers the people. And secondly, this is
the second for those that are on Facebook showing a group of men in red
shirt trying to showcase their martial arts and their abilities to disrupt
the rally. On top of that, the main person leading the movement -- I'm
quoting this from him, we will not hesitate to do anything to stop this
rally. For me our struggle will continue even if we are bought in blood.
This was shared widely on social media as well. And this image was
initially shared on what's app group to the main organizers and
subsequently widely on Facebook. It has attracted them to stop and call off
the rally otherwise this would happen to them. They would attack the rally,
the country and them as well. And, of course, then we have things like this
going around on Facebook. These pictures was posted on an article trying to
discredit the movement as a foreign country agenda. I have no idea why they
decide to use this portal to explain the article. And then there are other
things that has been happening online. So a man posted on social media it
says that the name of the rally is like masturbating. You do thing the same
thing over again because this is the fifth time we're doing this rally. The
only thing you get is -- which means self-enjoyment. So this -- So these
are the sort of growing level of repression perpetrated by non-state actors
to control and monitor citizens political behaviors. This is non-state
behaviors. There are other forms of harassment by state actors. Before the
rally 10 people were arrested. The main organizer was arrested and detained
under national security law and locked up in solidarity confinement with
lights on 24/7 and she was not allowed access to lawyers or family members
as well. No mattress or blankets was given to her when she was in the
detention. So as a result, the turnout figures for the movement is much
lower than the previous rally. We are looking at from 500,000 to 40,000. So
some has argued that the turnout is no longer a direct reflection of the
support received by the organization because of repressive situations which
really does not encourage people to come out to the street physically to
protest without feeling -- I think this goes to the translation from
offline to online is complex and not as simple as we think it was. And also
one of the lessons that the rally has learned is for the past four rallies,
the mobilization has been largely focused online. But what they have left
out is those people who are not connected. There is a need to reach out to
the crowd as well. So that's why in this rally they have done a nationwide
convoy to reach out to people in rural areas who don't have access to
Internet. And that's also the false impressions of Internet and social
media as being an open and public platform. But we are really only reaching
to a particular type of audience that has really shared the movement. And
perhaps with algorithms it adds to the complexity of the issues as well. So
that's all for my presentation. I would like to hear from the rest of you
if you have any similar thoughts to this. Thank you.

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

>> I think these are some great points raised. I want to congratulate you
for the excellent work you've been doing in your country and the respective
countries. Specifically on the point of misinformation, I think like as a
company we believe in giving people a voice, which means that we will be
ERRing on the side of letting people share what they want whenever
possible. We need to be careful not to discourage sharing of opinions or
mistakenly restricting accurate content. It is also so you have a freedom
of speech and expression and so does somebody else as well. What for you
might be misinformation might be information for them. We have to be very
careful with how we tread this spot. Having said that, based on your
slides, what I could see there were a couple of things that as Facebook I
would like to address. These are policy-related questions. Our policies
state that any kind of hate speech is not allowed on our platform. If
somebody is being targeted for their based on their gender, gender
identity, ethnicity, religious affiliation, sexual orientation, anything,
that gets taken down immediately. All you need to do is report that content
to us. Another crucial point is any kind of advocating of violence or
credible threats are also not allowed. If you feel that people from your
organization are being threatened or there are situations where you fear
that could be credible threats, you report that to us and that will be
taken down. Another important thing is as a company, we believe in
authentic identities. So the army of people that you are talking about use
a certain name on Facebook, right? If you feel that is not a real person,
flag that to uls. Let any kind of fake account or impersonating account
goes down. We want authentic I.D. It helps all of us to act responsibly. If
there is a name attached to this, we know this person is responsible for
this action and when we know that this is Deji, if he is saying this, he
will be more responsible in terms of what I say on Facebook. So if you feel
that the person is fake, it is a fake account, an impersonating account,
report that to Facebook and it will be taken down.

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

>> Thank you for pointing out this main issue. That is one of the countries
now facing a lot of shutdowns. Since 2013 we have been facing 44 shutdowns
so far. In the last year itself we have faced 23 shutdowns. It a 22
shutdown. Since June one more shutdown happened as well. I just highlighted
some of the points that how these shutdowns are not only affecting freedom
of expression bit daily lives as well. More than 18 shutdowns in a
sensitive areas. The most sensitive area. It was given the reason of a
terrorist attack, social unrest and social media rumors. That particular
area has seen a shut down of more than 100 days, but if you compare with
the other state, which is also facing a shutdown of about 19 days, and that
shows that there is a State supposed to be said as a peaceful State is
facing a shut down. One of the -- I feel the reason to shutdown in the name
of so students cannot cheat and do the cheating during the classes. That is
the cause of a shutdown. If I talk about economic cost behind those
shutdowns, we have seen more than 96 million loss we have seen to our GDP
due to the shutdowns and if I could say further as well, there was a loss
of 190 million during the Internet disruptions in some of the locations. It
is a remote area due to the violence happening as well. And in our case,
there was 70 million RUPEES were loss. 17 billion economic loss. People
were unable to use the access. Their one-time password. A common thing when
we're accessing our mobile phones for business purposes, swiping the card
for accessing any kind of services. The one-time password people were
unable to access. People were unable to access emergency and health
services and business dealings were getting delayed. Those were the major
causes when these shutdowns were happening. During the time of the shutdown
the income tax filings were delayed and people were making extra income
they have to file again returns to file. Some of the basic elements of the
shutdown caused not only the economic but social impact is so much that it
disrupts the human life as well. The reason behind giving the shutdown is
sometimes vague as well. In a time of public emergency, the telecom act
says that they have a power to detain or even intercept messages. The
telecom department under its licensing process issues the directions that
it can take over the services, all the license in the event of an national
emergency, conflict areas. That's something but how to define these
national security and emergency reasons. And those are something which is
like sometimes -- these shutdowns is not particularly defined when it's a
national security they have done it. For example in the case of -- shutdown
was happen due to the cheating case, when people -- where is the emergency
and national security coming up? What was the reason? I can't see as well.
And so those are the basic examples when we are talking about the reasons
are sometimes vague and sometimes not clear. There is no clear information
before the shutdown is happening as well.

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

>> Shutdowns -- when we were doing the research we were mapping different
trends in Pakistan. We came across this thing very strongly. It is one of
the things that government is trying to use this as a tool, as a kill
switch to curb the human rights, like freedom of association. But not only
freedom of association and assembly but civil rights as well like freedom
of expression. Right to access to information. This is very important in
terms, if I say in Pakistan the government claims they are doing shutdowns
in the national security interest. This term national security is very
important to understand. But yes, it is true, Pakistan is facing threats in
terms of terrorism, but we cannot say national security first of all
because national security is a very broad term. We cannot say everything we
can include in this term. And here we need to see the importance of
necessity and proportionality of principle. In terms of Pakistan we not
only have seen this government using the kill switch for national security
or to avert terrorist events, because government says that maybe terrorists
are using mobile signals to explode bombs at rallies or events or important
happenings going on. But we also have seen political rallies, political
parties are trying to mobilize their support against government on certain
issues of corruption and other things, so government is like very
specifically targeting those rallies. They are passing through those areas.
They will shut down those signals on that area specifically. And we have
seen in 2014 there was a huge rally going on in Pakistan. It lasted for at
least two or three months and we have seen that particular area where they
were sitting and protesting against government's corruption. There was a
whole block out on that area. It is challenging for political parties when
they are mobilizing their support through Facebook or through Twitter or
through what's app. They cannot reach to their people. So it's very
difficult for them to carry out their activities from the rallies. So this
is very important that government is also trying to suppress the political
and other voices through this network shutdown switch tool.

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

>> DEJI OLUKOTUN: Thank you. We've seen very positive responses. We now
have a coalition of over 100 organizations from nearly 50 countries that
are committed to pushing back. It is called the keep it on coalition. Folks
in the room are part of that coalition. We've seen some wonderful gains at
the Human Rights Council in June, the council issued a resolution that
condemned Internet shut downs. A tremendous amount of work from Civil
Society groups including APC. The global network initiative has pushed back
and said these measures are disproportionate. That's a multi-stakeholder
group with companies such as Facebook and Google and Microsoft as well as
other investors and stakeholders. Then the GSM association has issued a
statement. I think what's most exciting over the past two weeks we've seen
three victories. It's not a victory when the Internet gets shut down.
People's lives are impacted, they can't talk with loved ones, emergency
services are disrupted. But in Gambia there was an election. It is an
international group and I'll mention it for folks who may not be aware. A
country in west Africa wedged between Senegal, a country of 2 million
people shut off the Internet. Telecommunications, telephone was also
disrupted. The government had reportedly done this -- ordered the shutdown
through Saturday. However, international pressure and it's impossible to
tell exactly what happened, but it does appear the international pressure
made a difference because all the headlines suddenly a country of 2 million
people was in the news because of this measure and it was up by Friday
morning. That was very positive. Chad lifted a long-term disruption. The
Government of Chad, and Ethiopia as well. We're seeing some positive gains.
There is a lot more work to be done. We have challenges in measuring
shutdowns. It is sort of a chicken and egg situation where the Internet
goes down and you want people to tell you whether it's up or down but you
can't talk to them because they're offline. So learning to address that
problem with the help of stakeholders, companies, academics is going to be
very important. We here at the Internet Governance Forum are pleased to be
partner with LUSH to raise awareness. We built this product, a soap
product. This one is broken. There is a message inside to world leaders
telling people how to take action so you drop it in the bath and then this
thing floats up to the surface. An example of a creative partnership. We --
the human rights community is very effective at explaining the causes that
we're fighting for and we have a tremendous array of tools at our disposal
that you've seen us getting people into the streets and assembling.
Sometime it can be helpful to take a creative approach and see what
happens. We delivered a petition of almost 46,000 signatures on west to the
Freedom Online Coalition. A collection of 30 governments and indicated
their desire to make a strong statement against Internet shutdowns.
Positive things happening. Anyone can join. Civil Society group can join.
Called the keep it on campaign. We welcome your involvement.

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

>> I think disruptions and shutdowns not only affect the State of rights
and human rights, but they also sort of impact people's livelihood. Their
businesses and economic growth. As a company, we are concerned by the trend
towards this approach in countries especially in India and Pakistan and
Bangladesh where there were Internet disruptions. In India there were 22
disruptions last year. And these disruptions have been primarily in
response to even instances where authorities want to prevent students from
cheating in an examination hall. It is concerning, yes. Recently I think
they already mentioned the economic impact of the temporary Internet
shutdowns. I don't think I should reiterate the same things already
mentioned but we believe that the possible solution, I think to the
situation is come up with creative partnerships and campaigns and
approaches. Second is that maybe we should encourage authorities to come
online. So they should work and use online platforms the way Civil Society
is using to address emerging issues and situations through maintaining
their own online presence and supporting appropriate counter speech
measures. Why I mention counter speech, it's important to understand that
sometimes when authorities are online and there is an issue which is
upcoming and we saw it I think in Bangladesh where there was a law and
order situation, a law of -- I won't say fake news but a lot of information
doing the rounds and the commissioner of police came out in the open and
said do not believe any of these forwarded messages. This situation is not
like this. We want to state that if you have any question or concern reach
out to us directly and gave the number. That is a great way of looking at
it and also it is more faster, it is more flexible. It is responsive and
capable of dealing with problems from anywhere and in any language. So I
think we need to come up with these kind of creative solutions to counter
these.

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

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

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

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

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

>> Great information from a number of Civil Society groups working on this
including the New York civil liberties union around assembly and privacy.
The electronic frontier foundation has a self-defense kit that is
effective. The Facebook safety check-in, is that something that is relevant
in the assembly context? Is that something that you provide to users in
disasters? There is this check-in feature.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

>> MODERATOR: That's a fantastic point. I think it has come out in all the
national reports as well. Tinder and grinder and all these apps that are
not actually associations in their own way. And it is perhaps for the next
IGF I think that's a very great important in the sense we should try to
look out and find more of a diverse group to address. I think that's a
great way to close this. Thank you so much. I know it's the last day and
you've been a wonderful audience. Thanks a lot. (Applause) Please take a
copy of the reports and there is also -- thank you. (Session ended at 10:06
AM CT) Internet Governance Forum 2016 Enabling Inclusive and Sustainable
Growth Jalisco, Mexico 9 December 2016 Room 8 Workshop WS262: VoIP
Crackdown: Implications for Government, Telecom, and Civil Society 11:30 AM
CT Clear Clear

>> MODERATOR: Hello. Thanks everyone for coming out. This is the panel of
web crackdown centered of the theme on VoIP and blocking. We have a great
bunch of panelists here, diverse and knowledgeable group. I'll introduce
myself, I'm Keith McManamen. An analyst at Psiphon. To the left of me is
pueblo. He pushed as a publish policy analyst and part of the research and
policy team there and does research and legislative follow-up of technology
and human rights-related issues. To his left HANAN is the senior manager of
the Internet governance program for HIVOS. On her left Peter, he leads the
access policy team's business and human rights work advocating for a more
rights-respecting telecom and tech sector and teaches a course at Columbia
university on Internet policy and governance and Robert Pepper here from
Facebook. Robert joined Facebook in 2016 and the head of Global
Connectivity, policy and planning. Before Facebook he was the VP of global
technology policy for 11 years at Cisco. Before that he spent 20 years
working on these issues at the FCC. Thank you for joining us. We have two
remote participants as well. We have amine Jobran from Toronto. Their
organization specializes in localizing access solution for the MINA region
and raising awareness, outreach and user support for circumfention and
digital security tools. We have -- a cyber law and policy researcher and
deputy director of legal and policy affairs at the information network
security agency in Ethiopia. He obtained his LLB in law, and communications
law from the University of Southampton, United Kingdom. So I'm going to
start off and just going to show you some trends and VoIP blocking as they
manifested on the Psiphon network. It allows people to bypass Internet
censorship and during instances of blocking events we can see usage trends.
In Brazil multiple instances in the last year of blocking of what's app
relating to a criminal case there. As you can see, the day that the
application was blocked there are 100 million what's app users in Brazil
and you can see that we had a huge spike in our network usage. The same
thing occurred in early may of 2016 and again we see the emergence of this
pattern. A third case in July, what's app was blocked for less than a day
and even still we observed a similar trend to this. Now, in the MINA region
there have been numerous cases as others will allude to. The Morocco ban on
VoIP applications that began around January 6th of this year resulted in a
huge increase in usage of our networks. And it persisted actually for a few
months afterwards as there was -- there was a ruling to block the service,
then it was briefly unblocked in response to public protests and then it
was reblocked and to my knowledge it is now unblocked, we think. And then I
have one last case to show you, which is a case from Uganda during the
Uganda elections in February of this year. The incumbent ruler had arrested
the opposition leader. He was detained under house arrest. There were
basically gangs roaming the streets intimidating voters, polling station
were closing while people were still lined up to vote. And there was a full
scale blocking of social media, VoIP and also money transfer platforms,
Psiphon had next to no usage in Ethiopia for all of 2015. We performed
little to no outreach to the country and all it takes is one person to send
a tweet out saying here is an application that will work to restore your
access to the applications that you want to use. As you can see we had
1,000% increase in our traffic there. So I guess in evaluating these cases,
we can see maybe three main reasons why VoIP applications would be
considered a threat to governments or regulatory agencies. Firstly,
oftentimes your communications are end-to-end encrypted, which presents
difficulty in obtaining user data or may undermine national mass
surveillance programs. Secondly, they're free. Which is A, the reason that
they're so popular. But they are also perceived as a threat to the revenue
model of telecommunications companies. And then thirdly they allow the
rapid dissemination of information, which is used by people during
elections, protests or other moments of political crisis. So I'm going to
kick it down the line. Everyone will have a few minutes, three to five
minutes, let's say, to present some opening remarks. Your perspective of
either of these regional cases or the issue as a whole. Why don't you begin

>> I am not a native speaker. In 2000 12 an industry spokesman called net
neutrality in search for a problem. -- it is relevant because blocking had
never ever happened and if it happened it would be the market forces that
will compel the Internet service providers to correct those and reopen the
networks. Years of experience have shown that VoIP blocking is a reality,
for us as a Latin American organization this is a human rights issue. That
is because freedom of expression is not only a right for everyone to fully
express their opinions but also the right to seek, receive and impart
information through any media regardless over the years. Because of that,
any limitation to the rights of freedom of expression has to fulfill the
three-part test establishing article 19. That is to say it has to be
provided by law, there must be a legitimate aim to that limitation of
freedom of expression and it must be truly necessary. The Latin American
region has seen plenty of instances of VoIP blocking motivated because of
economical reasons and lack of net neutrality rules but also because of
high standards of strong antitrust mechanisms. The particular Lehr tee is
that none of these cases complied with international human rights
standards. For example, voice net is a local Internet provider in Chile.
They offered more competitive prices than the big telecom in Chile. They
slowed down services. Voice net sued Telephonica accusing the later company
of unfair practices under law. Telephonica's argument for defense was lack
-- for the provision of broadband services and allowing to block certain
types of protocols. In 2007 the Supreme Court of Chile ordered Telephonica
to stop putting on limitations and the net neutrality law enacted in 2010.
And therefore would be illegal -- blocking would be illegal right now no
Chile. Other cases in 2013 Brazil telecom blocked VoIP using a network
management softer. The telecom regulated -- stop revenue loss. Later on the
-- (inaudible) but imposing the obligation to treat all packages under the
same standard. Currently there is no examples of enforcement of those kind
of rules. Other examples is communication limited is currently blocking
VoIP provided such as Skype and many others, in fact, the company went so
far as to block Google talk, messenger and OAM because they offered a
message services and also chat messages. In 2015 one of the most important
telecommunications company in Latin America blocked Skype in Mexico. To
date they have not regulated the issue even though it's against the Mexican
Constitution. These acts are left unpunished. From a human rights defenders
perspective we must not overlook the true nature and thus the true effects
of this kind of blocking. Similarities and differences aside, one key thing
in common with on jurisdictions around the world where blocking happens is
the effect this has on the population. A limited Internet with local -- to
be dramatically increased with the use of technology. A limited capacity to
choose a service that better fits our needs for privacy and security.
Ability for people with certain disabilities to connect and communicate
with others. A limited capability in isolated places or -- hindered
capability to use the Internet for the human rights. When  policies or
practices allow I had there is a precedent for blocking all kinds of
services. This is what has made a strong net neutrality rules not just in
principle but also in the enforcement mechanisms more necessary than ever.
When it is addressed as a regulatory issue and when we address all the tech
problems to be technically solved by the tech savvy, the effects of the
general population often are overlooked and ignored. Thank you.

>> MODERATOR: Thank you very much. Would you like to go next? HANAN?

>> He mentioned that the economic incentives behind banning VoIP for
telecoms and then the impact on banning that on freedom of information and
freedom of expression. I think I will just maybe give an overview about
what is happening in the Middle East. Currently VoIP is blocked in many
countries in our region we have produced this map that gives a clear idea
which are the countries that are currently suffering from VoIP crackdown.
Now Morocco is excluded. We have updated the map because recently the king
of Morocco decided that people need to have access to VoIP because we
organize a key global meeting on climate change and it was luckily being
exposed international in these events help sometimes the normal citizens
just to exchange information. If we look at the map, we see the trend that
there is one main telecom operator who is present in these markets and that
is -- they seem to have a strategies that favors the business model and
that's based on getting an income from telecom communications. Of course,
the Internet came and shaped the business model of all these companies,
including telecoms, regulators and evident they are challenged by the
business model of the Internet. Now VoIP is basically free. If you have
access to Internet, you can use VoIP and I think that didn't go down well.
These companies made a lot of money and in the first decade when mobile
communication became scaled at a larger scale in these countries. But what
we see here, I think we see a very short sighted strategy when it comes to
how these companies don't see far. I think the Internet challenged them in
a way that they are unable at the moment to plan differently. Their
business model is challenged so they should think of different solutions to
reach out to the market in a different way. Of course, the purchase power
in the Middle East does not allow everybody to have contracts with
operators. It is not like what we have in the U.S. or in Europe where
telecoms are able actually to draw forecasts on their income annually. They
also make a lot of money out of services that we pay for as consumers but
they cost no money to operate like SMSs and so on. When it comes to human
rights, I mean, it is very difficult to convey the message that banning a
service like VoIP hampers access to information and hampers the exchange of
information in general. That is not only at the level of citizens, like you
really impact different activities, businesses, different opportunities.
And I've heard a real life examples where people are using what's app in
the Middle East to do business to communicate with their counterparts from
other regions all around the world and because it was banned for quite some
time, the business was damaged. And I don't think telecoms see that these
kind of decisions really impacts what's going on. Now, there are clever
people who try to quantify these kinds of actions and, for example, in
Morocco when VoIP was banned, a very talented programmer developed a code
to actually show Morocco telecom, the main operator, how much money they
are losing. People, of course, were very unhappy with the decision unliked
them on Facebook. He managed to quantify the value of Facebook unlikes to
show them how much money they are losing every single day. And it was
updated in realtime. I think that was maybe one of the things that helped
maybe change the decision on the top of reports like the ones of brookings,
which managed somehow to establish -- to put let's say a number on it. How
much money are you losing when you cut services like VoIP? I think that was
a very good research and it would be good if it is scaled in other regions
as well to show exactly the damage that is done from cutting services like
VoIP. So in sum I think as human rights advocates, corporates, many
companies are trying to help reach in the end reach. We still know we need
to connect the next three or four billion people. There is a lot of work
done by Internet corporations like Google or Facebook that are investing a
lot in alternatives where it becomes maybe obsolete to use a local operator
to connect to the network. There are many other models that could be
referred to here, namely blockchain technology as well is taking the world
by storm now and I think all these alternatives are being set up at the
moment will help people from regions where people are really
underprivileged and basically living under the mercy of their centralized
government. We need a model that is more decentralized. At the application
level, at the legal level and the implementation level and the standard
level. We see that happening slowly now. But I think that will catch up
very fast. The traditional -- whatever is traditional we know today,
government, companies, need to watch out because things are moving fast.
For us in the Middle East it is very important to have access to the simple
things which make life easier. Because people in the Middle East still
don't know how to use Internet for business. The Internet is not an
industry in the Middle East. It is more or less Facebook literally.
Internet equals Facebook. Everybody has Facebook and that's what they know.
Unfortunately that's the case. There is no long-term strategy to reap the
benefits of the Internet industry and we're just very good at shutting down
services in general. We are never able -- you know, maybe not only the
Middle East. It's all countries who are unable to keep pace with
development and technology. So when you don't know how it works. When you
don't know how to challenge a new thing, a new model, you just shut it
down. And that hampers a lot of other vital things. Be it services,
education, communication. So we need to have more of a long-term vision of
how we want the Internet to impact our lives and what do we want to do with
the Internet after all? So that's from my side.

>> MODERATOR: Thank you for giving us an insight into the regional case. I
wonder can we get AMIN? And maybe he will have some interesting follow up
to the -- I know he worked on the Morocco case specifically. Give us an
insight into the outreach with circumvention tools.

>> Can you hear me? Hey, everyone. Thank you very much for having me. Thank
you, HANAN for this, nice to see you on camera again. So as she said, we
did -- Keith mentioned that we did do some work on VoIP in the MINA region.
Basically we've been seeing a trend for the past couple years of aggressive
VoIP blocking and it was always increasing. And we do see the regional
trend how basically the companies -- telecom companies looking to expand
regionally export the blocking models. To Morocco they also brought with
them their blocking model. And the gulf countries in general this is the
case. This year alone Snapchat was blocked and they Facebook Messenger was
blocked and many others, what's app calling doesn't work. And like the case
-- the problem with this is the telecom industry is usually in bed with
political power. So what they do, the policies they come up with not taking
into consideration the interest of the citizen, they are interested in
profit. Should I do my presentation now since I'm talking already or just
comment on this specific thing?

>> MODERATOR: No, please go for it.

>> Basically, yeah, we've been seeing that and what we do at ASL19 our work
is basically to help MENA citizens access the Internet freely and without
any -- without any restrictions. So what we do is we go in when a blocking
happens. We distribute circumvention tools or VPM tools for the people to
bypass the blocking and make it obsolete. Again, we do that because we
believe in the right to access -- the right of access to information and we
believe these blocking actually affect the weakest and most marginalized
citizens. We try to help the ones -- the citizens that are not
technologically very tech savvy. We distribute these tools to them and give
them user guides on how to use them and what not. And we have seen many
successes. For example, in Morocco when we intervened back in I think
January and then the blocking happened again in March, we saw -- we
distributed Psiphon back then and sold 2400% increase and also in Saudi
Arabia and Yemen, and what we experienced on our end, because we interact
with users directly, is that they are all looking for a solution to
circumvent this blocking. The problem is sometimes with access solutions
that are out there, be it different technologies like proxy or what not, is
that those tools are not very connected to their users or with their users
in the region. So we try to kind of like bridge this divide so we can make
these tools more user friendly and basically work. I'll give an example. We
got reports from Saudi Arabia back in August, September that Facebook
Messenger wasn't working. We did the survey and got almost 1500 response
and basically it was confirmed that this was not working and we
communicated with Psiphon people, developers, and they basically came up
with a solution, updated the app and people were able to use more Facebook
Messenger with Psiphon which is an open source tool and basically they are
accessing the Internet in a safe way and circumventing the censorship. This
is one example about how citizens reach out. They want access and to reach
out to have that. One thing I would like to point out here is with the
private companies like what's app, Facebook Messenger, what not, sometimes
it's also the challenge comes from their end. So, for example, what's app
calling in Saudi Arabia and UE cannot be used and the reason why it's
because what's app calling especially it says it doesn't -- it's not
available in these countries and they basically block the usage of what's
app calling from their end by regional phone numbers. And therefore even if
the citizens in Saudi Arabia or UAE try to use VoIP and they actually are
not going to get anywhere because the blocking is not happening on the ISP
level but happening from the private company itself. Basically I think
there is a lot of work to be done. I think if the companies are going to
keep on trying to maximize their profits to go about dealing with this
whole thing in the wrong way without resorting to creative solutions, and
we as a Civil Society basically we should keep on building the capacity and
the resiliency off the Civil Society itself and the citizens as a whole.
Thank you.

>> MODERATOR: Thank you, AMIN. We'll go to Peter now. We can get a bit of a
glimpse into how exactly can we advocate for a more just and rights-
respected telecom policy.

>> Thanks. Yeah, I think we've heard so much great arguments and
information about the extent of impacts that this has and at Access Now
we're happy to advocate and connect directly with users both through our
direct technical support on the helpline. My colleague Kim here works on
that. And closely with them I'm on the policy team and we have an advocacy
group as well where we look to bring the lessons learned from this direct
engagement with users at risk and users being blocked and take them to the
stakeholders in the forums building the norms and writing the laws. So I
think I'm hearing one thing out of the panel which is a really interesting
interplay between commercial and rights-based arguments. I think we know
that VoIP blocking is a human rights violation. It is a violation of
clearly access to information, part of our right to freedom of expression
among other things. I don't just want to bring -- I want to beat them on
their own arguments. I think we can make the case that VoIP blocking is
actually a commercial failure and directly violates the economic, social
and cultural rights of citizens. Let's beat them on their own turf. The
economic, social and cultural rights protects the right to work. I would
love to read from it which includes the right of everyone of the
opportunity to gain his or her or their living by work which they freely
choose or accept and the State will take appropriate steps to safeguard
this right. These steps include technical and vocational guidance and
training, programs, policies and techniques to achieve steady economic,
social and cultural development. I don't think it takes a law degree to see
that VoIP blocking clearly violates this provision. I'm not even talking
about the freedom of expression. I'm talking about your right to work. We
hear that it hits the most marginalized citizens. We hear the Telcos no
they turn it back when the national people are watching. National events
they'll turn the switch back on. Talking about my perspective from a
business and human rights approach, we want Telcos and all companies to
know that they impact human rights, to know they have a responsibility and
to show us the steps they're taking to meet that responsibility. So in this
case we -- telco showed they know VoIP blocking impacts human rights. We
come up with the steps they need to take as a Civil Society group. One
thing we're doing is developing principles -- human rights principles on
connectivity and development. This is taking the opportunity to step back
and say that actually infrastructure providers impact human rights and have
responsibilities. This isn't just a Facebook, Google, problem. This is
actually a human rights apply to all layers of the stack and need to be
built in by design. Most directly we're tracking Internet shutdowns around
the world. We've seen vast increase -- over 50 intentional disruptions of
connectivity around the world in the past year. The incidence is rising on
all continents and we aren't waiting a moment to fight back. We've built a
coalition of keep it on in more than 100 organizations in 50 countries who
have pledged to fight Internet shutdowns and protect the norm of Internet
for all at all times. And this coalition delivered 46,000 signatures on our
petition to world leaders this week at the IGF to the Freedom Online
Coalition to ask their leaders to publicly pledge to keep the Internet on.
And as far as the technical guidance, you know, I see this as a bid for
remedy. Getting back to the business of human rights discourse, the third
pillar of the U.N. guiding principles of business and human rights declares
that both private sector companies and governments jointly have the
responsibility to provide access to meaningful remedy when abuses have
occurred. When they've caused or contributed to the abuses. Again, they
know they've caused or contributed to massive abuses across regions like
this. This is not a case-by-case basis. This is a systematic infringement
and deprivation. And so one of the remedies that we're asking for -- well,
again, it's turning it back on, it's understanding your economy and your
commercial duties as much broader than just maximizing a company's short
term profit and it is taking a human rights-based approach to connectivity.
I think my colleagues in Brussels and elsewhere fight for net neutrality,
which is the law in 46 countries. Net neutrality where enforced laws would
prevent this type of blocking. And I think the real pushback, though, will
have to be on the local level and that's where we're organizing with Civil
Society to really make a strong statement and to keep it on campaign.

>> MODERATOR: Thank you, Peter. Let's go to Robert next and maybe you can
tell us sort of -- give us a technical overview from the private sector or
from Facebook. You get blocked routinely. You don't openly pursue a
circumvention strategy yourselves. How does it look from your view?

>> Thank you and thanks, Keith. This is actually a great session because
among other things, it is, as I love the way Peter named this, it's really
with the #keep it on, this is where the interests of the technical
community, the Internet companies, Civil Society, human rights advocates
all come together because it is really in many ways this is about citizens
and consumers having access to use services. Let me back up a little bit.
So I actually was at the FCC when we had the first case of VoIP blocking in
the Madison river case. Where there was a small telco and the U.S. for
those of you who don't know, we have several large Telcos but at the time
there were 1200 small Telcos. Madison river was one of the small Telcos and
it was blocking Vonage. Vonage filed an informal complaint to the FCC.
There is a formal complaint process and informal. It was a small startup
and it was an informal complaint. It went to the people at the time it was
the common carrier wire line bureau now. And they took the complaint and
called Madison river because it was a small company. Actually got the CEO.
And the staff person said we have this complaint, sir, that you are
blocking the sip ports. And the answer was you bet we are. These Internet
companies are using our network and they aren't paying for it. And the
explanation from the staffer was well sir, that's actually not permitted.
You can't do that. And sort of read them the riot act. Within a couple of
weeks, there was a letter agreeing never to do that again and there was a
voluntary contribution to the U.S. Treasury because it didn't go through
the full legal process so it was not a fine because it never had been -- we
didn't have to adjudicate it. It was stopped and they made a voluntary
contribution to the treasury. That actually led to the first set of net
neutrality principles at the FCC. And we looked at it from a consumer
perspective. First, you know, the notion that there is -- blocking of
applications was just not permitted. Why? Because the principles were from
a consumer perspective -- first, you have the right to connect your own
equipment to the network as long as it did not harm the network. Second,
you have the right to have access to any legal website, all right? Third,
you have the right to download and use any legal application, and VoIP are
nothing more than an application. Fourth, you have the right to have
sufficient information, the transparency to know your terms of service. Am
I getting what I thought I bought? Those were guidelines that then
subsequently were turned into rules. But they are really fundamental. If
you follow those principles, it is not permissible to block applications or
access to websites unless they are illegal. For example, it is permissible
to block access to websites of child pornography, right? Which everybody
would agree with. As a general matter, if you take those principles and
they've been implemented in different ways in different countries, but fund
mentally it goes back to those four principles. Now, that's sort of the
context. When you think about it, the telecommunications world, the network
world, has evolved dramatically over the last 20 years. Before that, the
entire telecom industry was based upon five assumptions that are 100 years
old or more. First assumption was the product was voice. The second
assumption was the metric by which you measure, bill and regulate is the
minute. Then the third, fourth and fifth assumptions are tied back to
regulatory economics. If you have an incremental cost, you have an
incremental charge. So if there is -- if the cost goes up because you are
connected for a longer period of time, time actually leads to higher costs.
That's why you had charges for more voice per minutes, right? Time charges.
If there was a cost associated with the distance, you have distance
charges. If there was a different cost in different locations, you had
different charges in different locations. That was all true with the
telephone network as it was built, designed and managed for 100 years. But
20 years ago things began to change and today -- today's flat I.P.
networks, right, LTE, for example, on the wireless sand or broadband
networks on the fixed side, none of those assumptions hold. The product is
connectivity. The metric is bandwidth. And in terms of the economic costs,
it's binary. You are on or off. The networks are time, distance and
location insensitive. And so when you think about that, the difficult part
for many of the telecom operators, especially, for example, in MENA or
elsewhere, their business model, even though their underlying networks have
changed their business model is still based on charging minutes for voice
and that's what is being protected from the economic side. But what's
interesting is that not all telephone companies or telecom companies are
stuck in that model. It is difficult for them to change. This is non-
trivial to change a 100-year business model. If you look at the U.S. or
Canadian operators, AT&T and Verizon have changed their business model. On
my AT&T, I buy a data plan. When they sell me my data plan they tell me my
voice is free and text is free. It's about data. The VoIP is no more than
an application. What's interesting, in 4G LTE, there is no voice. Right?
Voice on top of an LTE number it is voice over IP on top of a data
connection. So I think that the human rights implications of not updating
really what we're talking about here is we have an old business model based
upon old technology models that have changed. Some operators have made that
change, which is great. Others are lagging. But the implications of the
business case shift have huge implications on human rights and that's -- so
it's a really -- having to understand that. The last thing is in your map,
which I love, this is not sort of countries or operators in most cases
blocking now and then. Most of these countries there is regulation --
government regulation against VoIP, right? It's not like when we see some
of the blocking, for example, in Uganda because of political issues and
Internet shutdowns for freedom of expression questions. This is the law.
Independent of what is being said, right? These laws are designed to
protect 100-year-old business model and frankly it's very difficult for the
operators to make that change but that's the change that's necessary. Last
point. You mentioned the brookings study from Morocco. The number was --
brookings looked at the VoIP blocking in Morocco including Skype, tank owe,
what's app. Messenger. Over that period of blocking the economic harm to
Morocco was $320 million U.S. Economic harm to Morocco just over the almost
was not even a full year of blocking of VoIP services. The brookings study
showed for all Internet shutdowns of all kinds, not just VoIP, the economic
impact cost to those countries just in 2016 was $2.4 billion economic loss
to those countries because of economic shutdowns. That gets the attention
of the -- of government leaders, especially in ministries of finance and
economics, not just the telecoms. This is a really important point we need
to use. Let's meet them on their own ground. This is about the economic
future of countries. They have to be connected and it is about social,
economic and cultural benefits to countries as well. Thank you.

>> MODERATOR: Go ahead.

>> Thank you. Very interesting feedback from you. In the context of the
middle and Morocco specifically there is a regulatory framework, it is not
the law. Each country like since the mid-90s, so we had a liberalization of
the telecom industry. We had a little bit more competition. Companies came
to invest in the country and we do have a regulatory framework that I think
some of the campaigns that are happening like keep it on and so on is not
covering at the moment because it's a little more complicated. For example,
it is true the government refers to a very specific law that was drafted by
the national regulator, but it was concerned something completely
different. In 2004 we had like a buzz from the call centers, they come to
invest in Morocco to employ cheap labor. We speak many foreign languages.
We made sure as a government that we want to benefit from these companies.
We just don't want them to use VoIP. So this specific law was drafted or
regulation was drafted specifically to target these companies and they need
to be using the infrastructure in Morocco to make these calls based on
which they make money. Now in 2016 the same law was used and here there is
a huge issue. Because you draft something related to a completely different
subject and you apply it in 2016 when it is not relevant and that needs to
change. I think how can we change that? So it's usually people on the
ground who can advocate for these kind of changes. Global campaigns are
very important and I really appreciate the work that Access Now is doing. I
was very pleased to go to a big shopping mall here in Guadalajara, I took a
photo and I found it really very interesting and entertaining to see the
campaign reaching out. Many people around the world. The thing is we have
to do a lot of work so we can dealing with this issue more seriously from
the regulatory point of view. I appreciate, you know, your input with
regards to how the connection works now. We do know that there is ITU
regulating the whole spectrum space and they don't want to give up their
role in the industry and we have to look into that a little bit more
closely to see whether we need another regulatory body. Whether we need
other modalities of work so we can all benefit from the infrastructure in
general. The regulatory framework is really important. We need to zoom in
and I'm sure your company also have a lot of conversations about that with
different countries mainly in MENA. I'm aware of what you are doing in MENA
as well.

>> MODERATOR: Thank you, Robert. That was a great description of the
economic realities and how they are subverting the old regulatory model. We
have one more panelist. I think we're excited to hear the perspective of
the regulators because as noted, the blocking of VoIP and messaging
applications is not only economic but also political. If we can get him
connected, then --

>> Okay, thank you. Can you hear me?

>> MODERATOR: Hello.

>> Can you hear me?

>> MODERATOR: Yes.

>>  Thank you for having me. So can you hear me?

>> MODERATOR: We can hear you.

>> Thank you. So I'm working for the government. I want to share my
perspectives and my understanding from the government perspective on the
issue. The questions and challenges regarding VoIP. The primary problem
regarding VoIP should be regulated or not is the issue of classification.
It is because -- react based on their mode of classification especially in
our context. So it should be clear with VoIP should be classified.
Information services or television? As you know discuss of VoIP is vary
from country to country based on their prevailing issues and market issues
of that country. Take my country, it is difficult to understand how the
government treat VoIP or what the intention and what is blocking these
applications unless we have a full picture of the working conscious or
preventing policy issues of the country. So VoIP services are not welcome
by the government because of both security and economic reasons. As some of
you may know, we have only one telecom company. And that is owned by the
government. Whether it's good or bad is another argument. But that is what
it is. This is primary. The declared public policy of the country, in a
sense the government is a primary player in the country and for this policy
to work the government needs money. And telecom is the primary source of
money for the government to invest for these projects. Now the government
is financing -- (indiscernible) what does it mean from the VoIP
perspective? This means the introduction of VoIP applications could not be
welcomed by the government and the government reacts. I believe VoIP is
sometimes blocked because of -- (indiscernible) for example, this
application to make it very difficult and challenging for -- for example,
for the wiretapping issues and for this reasons it is highly regulated for
many, many years. So for the reasons -- for these reasons VoIP has been
blocked or at least banned since 2002. Even though this law was not
properly implemented. Finally in 2010 VoIP applications were recognized for
personal use. But there is no clear (indiscernible) for work and it was
then to regulate the telecom and protect the telecom and we don't have
clear understanding of how this application should be classified as a
telecom service or -- and because of that, the trend of blocking this
application is increasing even though in many users using it to bypass the
blocking. So these are the regulatory issues which are from the government.

>> MODERATOR: Thanks very much. So now Robert has a quick follow-up on
that.

>> I'll come back later with that. I want to be able to --

>> MODERATOR: I think we'll have a few responses. Let's follow up directly
on that if you want to start it off.

>> This is -- I completely understand because this is the traditional model
for many countries, especially in emerging markets was to use termination
of international calling with what are called accounting rates to generate
large amounts of hard currency for those countries and then be able to
finance a lot of other projects including telecom. When the telecom markets
in the vast majority of countries around the world and competition was
introduced. Ethiopia there is a monopoly and that's not the case. It became
clear that it's a tax. It became clear that imposing that kind of tax on
international calling actually hurt the country because -- and that it was
not sustainable. So that -- again, just like it's been very difficult for
the operators to make the shift, right, to change their business models,
countries that were dependent on this high tax on international calls
through accounting rates, as the world changed, it is difficult but they
needed to find -- and they have, right, in other countries, they need to
find other ways of financing because when you keep the prices very, very
high, this is one of the things we found, that we learned. When competition
drove the price of international calling down, when the VoIP drove it down
to almost nothing, the economic benefit -- first of all, the number of
minutes of use an connectivity use went way up, right? Because the
sensitivity to pricing is very high. So it is a very elastic service. As
the usage went up, as there was more calling and more international calling
and especially with countries that have a wide -- with people living around
the world and families could connect and get back together the economic
benefit to the countries increased. So instead of looking at it as from a
-- what we learned, lesson learned, empirical. When there was a t short
term reduction in calling revenue. The long term economic benefit and
growth of the country was positive and outweighed the loss of the near term
income in the telecom sector. Conversations in many countries that I had
when I was at the FCC and now in the private sector with ministers of
finance and economy, they want to see the costs of telecommunications go
way, way down because they see that as an enabler for growing the overall
economy of a country and it is not just about the telecom operator for the
telecom sector. You need to have a broader view. This is very difficult for
countries in that transition.

>> MODERATOR: I think that's a very good point. When you get into the sort
of specific legislative environment which is different country to country,
and you have these vaguely worded laws that can be leveraged to target any
platform or service, then you have the added complicating factor that many
stakeholders in the national telecom monopoly or like government officials
are also the shareholders in that same company, then that's another
complicating factor. I guess from an advocacy perspective, Peter there was
a workshop yesterday which basically stated at the very beginning you must
put your advocacy in terms of incentives for the policymakers. What are
they getting out of making a concession to you? I guess like what -- how do
you possibly incentivize for them to allow people to use free VoIP calling.

>> Yeah, I guess the sad reality I'm trying to say is that you don't
incentivize policymakers that you'll liberate free expression. I think you
do it by pointing to the agreements, the commitments that they've made,
including to reach the sustainable development goals. The global agenda for
2030 is really ambitious. I think perhaps the most ambitious part that I'm
aware of is goal 9C, to bring all -- least of all countries online in an
affordable way by 2020. That's really intense. That puts a lot of urgency
on this. This is something that not only governments but all stakeholders
have agreed is a goal for the good of humanity and to eliminate extreme
poverty getting back again to the marginalized. That's in part why we're
developing these principles of saying that there is more than one flavor of
connectivity and you are not going to get those economic benefits. You
aren't going to get the full enjoyment of the cross-border connectivity and
connections and people won't exercise their right to work without
thoughtful and open access to a secure Internet which obviously includes
VoIP. And so yeah, we're taking this to the U.N. Goal number 9 is being
reviewed this summer at the high-level political forum and we are going to
be sure to raise these cases as clear examples of where that goal is not
being met, for one thing. Otherwise we're building norms at the Human
Rights Council. We got clear language in the free expression resolution in
July calling out intentional disruptions as -- it condemned them. Could not
have been clearer. We were overjoyed to get that language from the Human
Rights Council. That needs to be input on the national level. I think it
was definitely made clear. What we can do at the global level is put in
place the structures that enable local stakeholders to find the solutions.
Maybe in your UPRs that you are submitting on these countries you can point
to Human Rights Council language and say what are you doing to account to
this?

>> MODERATOR: Thanks, Peter. Pablo, when it comes to legislative follow-up
angle how tough is it for the life of advocacy practitioners in the Latin
American context?

>> For example, I think this is an issue that we'll be on the same side as
Facebook. And even though I agree that beating them in their own turf is
perhaps the most effective way to swell the legislative and also the
policymakers, I do have a small point because, for example, in Chile we
have like the first net neutrality rules enacted in the whole world but we
got the data on all the decisions and all the decisions in Chile regarding
net neutrality are regarding the transparency obligations but not of like
-- regarding neutrality. You can watch the streets in Chile and see signs
for free social services and everything. So we kind of joke that if ever
there is going to be a real enforcement of net neutrality, it is going to
come in the competition court and not by the communications regulation.
That would be, of course, a victory but a bitter sour victory for us. When
this is settled in a competition court, often you are going to see
arguments about innovation, arguments about competition but the truth is
that the net neutrality law was not enacted only to protect -- to protect
competition and protect innovation but also to protect the user's right. So
I know that maybe the private sector is going to go that way but also as a
Civil Society if we don't raise those issues maybe nobody is going the
raise them. For us it is always important to let everybody know that net
neutrality is not only about competition and innovation but also the user's
right.

>> MODERATOR: Thank you. I guess I'll pop a couple of questions to you guys
and I think we'll keep the answers brief we can get some participation from
other people that are watching. These are some broad dramatic things on my
mind. Does VoIP or messaging apps or communication apps constitute a
special manifestation of Internet censorship than regular web blocking or
as a governance issue how is this different? And then I think my second big
question is why has the multi-stakeholder model failed to apply? If you
don't think it has, then you can tell us why as well. Who would like to go
first?

>> Maybe I can go. Answering your second question why has the multi-
stakeholder model failed? I think because VoIP blocking is a really good
example of the state capture. It is kind of a sort of political corruption
case. So in almost all of these cases there is some kind of arrangement
between local companies and the State to enact these kind of regulations
that consider the VoIP blocking. And the State is a phenomenon that is
difficult to tackle. That's why it's so important to enact multi-
stakeholder process. It is really clear if you go and ask the users and you
go and ask civil societies how do they feel when an application is blocked.
Nobody is going to agree with you. I think the most important part of it.

>> I actually think it depends upon where. So when the -- again, multi-
stakeholder approach includes the technical community, Civil Society, the
private sector, governments, right? Each acting on the constituencies
coming together. When you have government -- two minutes, one, when you
look at the private sector, the business sector, it's not homogenous. So
you have the Internet companies, you have the application developers, the
application providers. They aren't necessarily in the same -- have the same
interest as the network operators, especially where the network operator,
in this case on the VoIP is owned by the government. And so it's -- in that
case it is not really a multi-stakeholder process. The genuine multi-
stakeholder process in this area does work. Where it does not work where it
isn't a multi-stakeholder process, which is where the government owns the
network operator. That's not multi-stakeholder. It's State ownership, but
where you have, for example, in the countries where this actually has
worked and there have been good examples of where, for example, VoIP has
been deregulated such as in India, parts of -- it used to be totally banned
and it is becoming much more flexible and opening up is because the --
consumers, citizens, Civil Society, Internet companies, large companies
that were having call centers as well as government came together and had a
conversation that was a really very fruitful -- it was difficult but it was
a very fruitful, very rich conversation as a multi-stakeholder process. So
I think we can find examples where that has worked but we can find examples
where it hasn't. If you analyze why not, it's not actually I would argue
not multi-stakeholder.

>> MODERATOR: Why don't you go ahead. Introduce yourself.

>>  I'm Dominic GSMA. It's an interesting discussion and also I hope if you
continue the discussion next year it's on an earlier date so more of us can
come. I think also the point of multi-stakeholder and mult national I was
going to make that point, pepper, about the state-owned Telcos, that's
where I've seen in a personal capacity the growth of this, right? But I
also want to say that just in my own experience, my personal own experience
there is a growing trend for multi-lateral negotiations that would result
in either regulatory frameworks, regulations or international standards to
legitimize VoIP blocking with state-owned telecoms companies. So as you go
through and work within the U.N. system and look at the human rights
aspect, I would just say keep an eye out for that sort of growing trend to
try to legitimize this internationally in a non-multi-stakeholder way
through other processes. It is a concern for me from a personal and human
rights perspective.

>> MODERATOR: Okay, thank you. AMIN has a comment to add to this
discussion. You can put him through.

>> So my point is to take it just a little bit on the policy level the more
practical on the ground level, which we deal with users on a daily basis
and we do face a lot of challenges. And it makes me want to ask the
question what is the role that commercial stakeholders like Facebook, for
example, can play in helping organizations like ours that work for -- to
help empower citizens by giving them access to the Internet to challenge
the blocking? So, for example, although we are working to unblock some of
their services like Facebook or what's app or what not, which means for
them it's more users and more profit. We keep facing challenges that spring
from changes they make in their algorithms and poll seals that don't take
into consideration the nuances or local context of different countries and
are mainly focused on making profits. They seem similar to the telecom
companies when they do the VoIP blocking. Shouldn't commercial stakeholders
also account for human rights and access to information rights in their
practices without doing it in a selective manner and only where it benefits
them? Thank you.

>> MODERATOR: Thanks. I guess this falls to Robert to really respond. Maybe
Facebook actually has AMIN to thank for many cases of users were still able
to access their social media or messenger. Would you like to respond?

>> So I think it should be clear that as a general matter, we think that
everybody should be connected, use any legal application, be able to have
-- and not have the types of regulations that block either text or VoIP and
what's app and messenger, etc. One of the things, though, that companies
have to do, right, is adhere to laws of different countries. And so there
is strong advocacy to change laws where they do things like prohibit VoIP,
that's just I think the reality of having to function within law as a
company being able to operate. But notwithstanding that, there is
aggressive advocacy to eliminate the laws that prohibit certain things, A,
and B, where it's not a law that is requiring blocking of VoIP, you will
not -- I don't believe -- find the -- any ability or any effort on the part
of any of the companies providing things like VoIP to agree to any
blocking. In fact, blocking of any sort of application is sort of the
opposite of the DNA of all of the Internet companies and application
companies. This also goes to your other one of your questions. VoIP and
texting are nothing more than applications. It's like -- and earlier the
precedent for blocking VoIP is a precedent for blocking applications
generally. VoIP, what's app, messenger, Skype, any of the applications.
They are applications and it just happens to be that these applications
have functionality that, you know, were provided similar to but not the
same as applications that were providing completely different ways in the
old telephone world.

>> MODERATOR: Let's ask Khalid what he thinks.

>> Quickly I have many comments really. But I will make it very fast. The
first one like about finding an incentive for policymakers. I tried to get
the fax number of the minister of justice in Libya and they refused to give
me a telephone number. How to persuade them to change policies. We have
colleagues in prison just because of a tweet. The multi-stakeholders
approach, we are doing our best but there is little recognition for the
Civil Society and their rule. And then I get to another problem because we
are talking about talking. The website of the gulf center for human rights
is blocked and so is Libya and OMAN, united Arab emirates and with a small
talk about free software. We love it when it's free. We reported to have
provide access to citizens of this country. It was very costly and it ended
quickly. So really I just ask you if there is a way to make our website
available to citizens of these countries. Is there a technical way? Could
we work with you about that to provide access to our website in these
countries? Thank you. Thank you for all the speakers and for HANAN also.

>> MODERATOR: We can talk about specifics at another time. I guess, yeah,
from the sort of circumvention outreach perspective there is a free and
open SOURCS tool call Psiphon. We just had the 10-year anniversary of the
network last week and it's continuing to be a great success. Maybe Kim if
you would like to talk about anything to do with the circumvention
outreach. Fair enough. I didn't mean to put you on the spot. HANAN would
you like to follow up on that?

>> I wanted to speak about the famous multi-stakeholder hold model. Based
on the meetings that we have with the private sector from the MENA region.
It involved all in the policy making process at the global level, they are
also unaware of concepts such as net neutrality. There is no knowledge at
all about that concept when it comes to the telecom operators. At least the
ones we spoke to in the Middle East because we do a lot of ground work in
different countries and we identify the gap, the existing gap that there is
a need for more outreach. Is this an important stakeholder? We need to get
them to the table to speak to us and to speak to the government as well
because apparently there isn't even a channel to interact with the
government. In the case of Morocco, for example, the head of the regulator
was fired after I think the King got to know that VoIP is banned in
Morocco. Because it brought a lot of bad light to the country apparently.
And it helped that Psiphon luckily was deployed at a larger scale and it
helped that people could actually use Twitter to voice their concerns about
this operation. So multi-stakeholders in the Middle East is lacking a lot
of stakeholders. We can't assume that the work will be done very easily.
There is a need to do a lot of engagement work to actually bring these
people to the table. And the engagement work is building that capacity on
the subject. They need to understand the concepts we're talking about here
at the global level and they need to be more integrated in the discourse
and they need to see the benefits from doing that. The incentive for
companies, as you said earlier, when you speak human rights to companies,
they really don't understand that language very well. In the Middle East
the government is the same. If you speak human rights to them it is like
somehow they get deaf. They don't want to listen to that. You need to be
able to package your message is a certain way to reach out to them and
there is a lot of work to be done in that aspect.

>> MODERATOR: Thank you, HANAN. We're getting to our final five minutes. If
anyone from the floor has anything to add.

>> Hi, thanks for the opportunity.

>> MODERATOR: Introduce yourself.

>> I'm Levine, the president for the Association of -- it's a global
carrier association based out of new Delhi, India. I just want to bring one
perspective. I think when we talk about application with the service, there
is merit to that discussion but we in my view we still have to go an extra
mile. There are economies who would still do not want integration between
services to services. So as we -- today's world is perfectly converged
world but there are networks predominantly voice centric. It is important
we should not only talk about application but we should talk about a
seamless service which does not have the application. If you talk about
service, VoIP, Internet connection. There are other connections, virtual
private network service between a public network. If you put in the angle
of human rights. There are enterprise users who legitimately require
connection between different networks. Revamp thes -- allows convergence of
all type of applications. Of course, the important point here which came up
in the session is about the security. Currently there are security concerns
if an application service rides an incumbent network. Keeping those in mind
it will make sense if you talk about seamless service against only an
application. Thank you so much.

>> I'm also from -- I'm speaking on my personal capacity. My question is
with Dr. Robert on this issue. When we are talking for the costing aspect
where we're talking the cost base and the -- (indiscernible) but when we
are saying that VoIP, it is just as application is there. My question is
that under this, whether the principle has been changed and there is a --
(indiscernible) or what network utilize that is call letter tedium. Because
we understand there is no change in the cost. Cost is still there. What
would be the charging mechanism? You have already mentioned like in the
case of U.S. and Canada, -- wise is free because there is a charging
different from the others. Like in the Europe charging the same as the CPP.
And the same thing is happening in India also. So how we are going to
handle especially for the costing? That would be the one of the reasons why
the regulators or operators are discussing.

>> MODERATOR: Are there any further questions from the floor? We can add
one more or two more. Go ahead, sir.

>> Mine is not basically a question but just to give you a toss on it. I'm
from the Government of Ghana and I'm part of the team for the Freedom
Online Coalition trying to draft a joint statement for international to
prevent government from embarking on such shutdowns. I just want to get
your thoughts. I know -- the government can engage in terms, but I want to
get your thoughts. What do you think must be included in such statement
that can prevent government from shutting down the Internet? Thank you.

>> MODERATOR: Maybe we can do a quick go round and everyone have some final
remarks if you have any. Because it is almost time to close the session.
Could we start with HALAFAM and maybe yet to focus on one key question, do
you view Ethiopia as a place where the multi-stakeholder model has not been
applied or has not been successfully applied?

>> Implemented -- so to solve this problems we have already discussed it's
important to put the multi-stakeholder model. I think it's important to
create consensus to advocate best practices based on this model. Most
importantly it is necessary to engage and understand the interest of
government. Especially those governments who are practicing blocking. So I
don't think all regulatory -- by governments have bad intentions, but
unless we engage governments, we have an in-- (indiscernible) and we ended
up with bad laws and policies. For example, for every new tool in my
country, the government invokes or tries to fix integration on the Internet
or they try to fix with new laws but we are less informed about the multi-
stakeholder process, what is going on in other countries around the world.
This process is very important. So it is necessary to engage especially for
civil society and technical people. It is important to understand the
service and government.

>> MODERATOR: Thank you. Robert, would you like to--

>> First, because we don't have time I'm happy to talk about the business
model question but the short version is the calling party pays model
actually is part of the problem. Because it creates both the economic
theoretical problem but the economic practical problem of a termination
monopoly and so I'm happy to talk about that. The reality is, the
application and Internet and content companies have a symbiotic
relationship with the network providers. We cannot exist without a network
but we also create the demand for the reasons for people to subscribe to
broadband services on those networks. So we have to approach it as a
symbiotic relationship and build and work together to have the investment
in the networks but also the innovation in the applications. But we have to
make sure the economic incentives and signals are correct so I'm very happy
to talk to you about that in detail. Final comment, our colleague in
Ethiopia began to touch on this. In an ideal world you have policymakers
that are well-intentioned and well-informed making decisions. That's what
you want. You want well-informed and well-intentioned decision makers.
Unfortunately well very well-intentioned but ill-informed policymakers.
Frankly, we also have well-informed but ill-intentioned policymakers. And
we have to make sure that we really work towards the well-informed, well-
intentioned. I hope that we do not have -- although it's a subset, ill-
informed and ill-intentioned but we should all be working for well-
informed, well-intentioned decision making and we can sort a lot of the
things we see into this paradigm and begin to address some of these issues
and the capacity building question which is helping decision makers become
better informed.

>> MODERATOR: Thank you very much. We'll to go AMIN now for some closing
remarks.

>> So just one remark about the multi-stakeholder model. Multi-stakeholder
model works in countries where governments actually care about other
stakeholders. So in countries where it's basically governed by the
political authority in place that again, like their interests are
intertwined with the business sector it becomes necessary to ask the
question, why should we really respect the laws of these countries that
violate net neutrality and also human rights. So in that sense I would like
to say that the multi-stakeholder model in countries where there is harsh
laws against even carrying or being -- if you are caught having a VoIP on
your phone you could be if trouble, why should we accommodate that as Civil
Society or as commercial multi-stakeholders? Thank you.

>> MODERATOR: Thanks. Peter.

>> This is an excellent session. I think one thing is not to give up on the
Telcos. I think we should continue circumventing and continue bringing new
providers into the space as -- with new technologies and innovative
solutions but, you know, letting a TISLA be a TISLA is not what I want to
see now. We sent them a letter and other 16 and it was one of four
countries around the world that didn't respond to our letter. A Russian
company did and I think we'll continue looking for who their investors are
and looking for more ways to find leverage into their operations. Thank
you, Kenneth. I'm really excited about the Freedom Online Coalition's
statement and we'll continue with working with you and others to get that
going. One thing I want to see there is linking human rights, economic
rights, and open and resilient networks. Just really not taking one track
or the other but just like we need all stakeholders to find the solutions
and we need a fuller understanding of why networks are essential to
realizing both human and economic rights. And I would just say we are happy
to bring on a new policy analyst in our Tunis office working on these
issues, I hope. She hasn't said her plan yet but she is really excited to
do that.

>> Thank you, Keith, for the invitation. This was really a very good
session with different initiatives on the table. I think I would like to
draw your attention to the fact that what is going on in regions like MENA
or Latin America is not the exact same image that we see in North America.
So it is a completely different story. There is a reality that we have a
very tense situation at the moment. There is a lot happening at the
political level. There is a lot of other priorities which makes clamping
down on information in general a natural instinct of the government and we
have to deal with it in a certain way. And unfortunately the companies
happen to be the extended arm of the government. We need to look at the
reality of what is going on before aim at high objectives. We need to
manage our expectations and focus on what we think is going to help people
generally in their lives. Sometimes work that we do does not help the
people that we're working with for one reason or another. We have to be
very careful how we do our work and I hope that Psiphon keeps working in
the Middle East. It is very important. We need those kinds of services. It
doesn't look like things will get better any time soon and we have to be
prepared. Work of groups on Freedom Online Coalition is appreciated and
happy also to contribute to the working groups and I think that's more of a
high-level political message that is very much needed on the top of all the
other work we have to do at the grassroot level, Civil Society level,
private sector. We basically have to fight every single battle. We will
lose some of them naturally. But I think that there is like, you know,
there is a need for work from all angles and I think all together I hope
that we will contribute to a better Middle East and Latin America and all
the other disadvantaged regions.

>> I want to stress the importance of enactment of strong net neutrality
rules but also enforcement. In a country like Chile theoretically tell
ko*ms maybe have a lot of problems but if they had strong net neutrality
rules then VoIP blocking shouldn't be problem. On the other hand I list a
lot of examples of VoIP blocking in Latin America where there is a lot of
competition. So I don't know, I think that maybe there is a little con grew
answer by industrialized countries are pushing a lot for obligations to
deregulation of competition. On the other hand regarding the net neutrality
obligations inside, the United States is supposing the inclusion of the
term non-discriminatory. That's maybe something that we could talk about in
another session but is also like an issue that we should address. Thank
you.

>> MODERATOR: Great. Thank you. So I guess now is time to wrap up the
session. As the moderator I have the privilege of the last word. Thank you
to all our panelists. I think if there is one thing to take away is that
this year there was a lot of progress made on the advocacy side of things
as Peter outlined at least in words. Things have moved along. For Internet
users in Civil Society around the world there is recourse against online
censorship. There is a great circumvention software called Psiphon. It has
trusted by millions for 10 years nou. it doesn't ask your IP or your name.
In instances of blocking clearly users are able to restore access to the
platforms and communications with your friends and family. Thank you all
for attending. If you would like to speak with us more afterwards, we'd be
happy to chat with you and thank you again. (Applause) (Session came to a
close at 1:20 PM CT) Copyright © 2016 Show/Hide Header