The following are the outputs of the real-time captioning taken during the Tenth Annual Meeting of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) in João Pessoa, Brazil, from 10 to 13 November 2015. Although it is largely accurate, in some cases it may be incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. It is posted as an aid to understanding the proceedings at the event, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.
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>> CLAUDIO RUIZ: Hello, everyone. And welcome to the session on political dissent and online anonymity in developing countries. My name is Claudio Ruiz. I will be the moderator in this session and then the human rights organization in Latin America and basically in Santiago, Chile and in Mexico City. First of all, I want to thank every one of you for joining us this afternoon and especially thanks to my colleagues here at the roundtable. They are top mind people in this field. They're experts on these and I know and I'm pretty sure they have a lot of interest in things to share with us this afternoon.
So this roundtable is aiming to go in depth in one of the most controversial topics regarding internet and human rights today, which is how the right to best assembly can be affected by surveillance, practices and legal bounds to online anonymity specifically in developing countries. I really would like to highlight this specific point because it's kind of easy to find resources and discussions regarding anonymity and political dissent, but in developed countries. And I think it's very important to tackle down the nuances regarding an exercise of this human rights specifically in countries like us and countries from the region. And I think to be in Brazil this year is an amazing opportunity to discuss that. It's an amazing opportunity to propose solutions from the political ‑‑ from the policy ‑‑ so sorry ‑‑ perspective and the objective of this meetings and the working aim of this table here. It is just advancing in that direction. So, I would like to introduce my colleagues here. They're Mr. David Kay. He's the special (inaudible) from the United Nations and Joanna Varon. There's no bias and Joanna Varon is the head of human rights and technology organization here in Brazil. To my right, near right is Pedro Bless and Pedro LESS. He's the head of the public policy officer for Latin America, isn't it? For Latin America and for Google corps. A very tiny start up you maybe know. And to my left is Laila. You are talking on behalf of the APC somehow. Okay. Good. I need to confirm that because otherwise it would be, you know. To my far left is Soyia from Pakistan. I think we have a very interesting group of people here and I'm super excited again to have all of you on board. And from in terms of logistics here, there's two mics on my far left and on my far right. If at the end of the presentation from the panel, it will be very short and straight to the point. If you have any kind of questions around it, please join us. I will do an assigned when the time comes. So please coming in and do not change the direction of the mic because it will be problematic because of the speakers there.
So being said that, I would like to thank everyone again and Joana, please again started.
>> JOANA VARON: Hello, everyone. I don't know if ‑‑ can you hear me? I need to be closer. Okay. Yeah. So here in Brazil, anonymity is actually forbidden in the content of freedom of expression and that's in our constitution from AT8 before anonymity, online anonymity was an issue. So what has been happening is that it's forbidden in the context ever prohibition. This prohiddenition has been used in the content of political dissent. For instance Nrecent protests recently during the World Cup, but even before. Some states started to forbidden protestors to wear masks during demonstrations and can I ask you to go down, down, down a bit on the website. Down, down, down. Down. Down. Down. There. So it was ‑‑ I'm going to tell you a story a case that's a platform of protestors.org. A co‑developer ARTICLE 19. And for that context of protests before the World Cup, we released the security guide that had information about digital security about rules of engagement of the police in regards to protests. There was bon particular part of the guide that was calling attention to the fact that there were cameras with facial recognition software being used. So we were problemettizing this because we don't have a protection bill, we don't know how the databases that are being shared and we were saying if your state is not forbidden to wear a mask, it is forbidden to wear make up or whatever. That particular part of the guide got major ‑‑ I don't know if I can call it back lash or attention from the media saying that we were inciting people to be terrorist and break things and so on. That was one case that we saw. We really need to discuss further these applications of this prohibition of anonymity in the digital as well. No? Another case is related to the prohibition of an inn called Secret in which it enables people to communicate with each other and people within (inaudible) who is sending a message. And that app was brought from Brazil and also there was an order to remove the app from not only from the stars, app stars, Google star, but also from the phones of users that in first instance. Second instance was questioned because the argumentation was that the service provider has the subscription. So this is not anonymity. That was a good precedent because now to discuss how to apply that constitution and how to interpret that constitution of provision that forbids anonymity in the freedom of expression the online world which is much easier to see animals in their own line. In this case, we had been trying to trick the implementation to expand and the knowledge of how Internet works and to whom when you are communicating. Most of the time, you're not anonymous to some of the intermediaries. There's a strategy in Brazil, there's been framed cases which are really important for protection in the human rights. So, when David Kay was doing the consultation for the report and encryption and anonymity, what we did was to collect stories about cases in Latin America which people got in trouble because they couldn't guaranteed anonymity and cases in which people could be protected. Another strategy that we are developing now just to wrap this speech was we are crawling within coding rights in a partnership. We are crawling the hidden services in the web or darkweb or diabolic web, however people want to call it to try to future websites that work with anonymity to protect human rights like websites that allows people to leak documents and make announcements and things like that. Then they're going to play from that visualization to show that. So I think to demystify anonymity as something that is used for criminals is another strategy that we need to do. So some examples of how we are trying to address this tricky constitutional provision in Brazil to show how anonymity is important for political dissent and for protection of human rights.
>> CLAUDIO RUIZ: Thank you,.
>> Anna: I think you're addressing very important issues. Not just how to change the law in some cases, but it is very important as well how are the practices changing somehow the way within your own rights. I think it is very insightful. I would like to ask Pedro to continue. So, Pedro, please.
>> PEDRO LESS: Thank you, Claudio. Good afternoon, everybody. Great pleasure to be here to be part of this great panel. So, of course not everybody agrees at least here that anonymity online is key for the protection of freedom of expression and to participate online. I think in terms of one of the advancements of the Internet, anonymity has been played a great role. If we look back to early days of the Internet, at the beginning was enough just to use another name and be able to post and be able to comment online without the fear of retribution. What has been happening is that those that don't like is free expression has been developing more tools. And now that is not enough. It's not just to have, you know, your nickname is not going to protect you anymore. Governments and different organizations have been developing more technologies to be able to know who you are behind that nickname. And that's what we are seeing now that this has been ‑‑ this problem has been growing and sometimes in the name of secured and law enforcement. States try to eradicate opportunities that people have to be anonymous online. The restriction also have a chilling effect for expression. And also hamper the ability to widespread ideas around the globe. And I think that in terms of talking about anonymity now a days, we need to talk about encryption. Encryption is your new nickname. Encryption is what you are ‑‑ it's to assure you that you are not going ‑‑ it is going to be more difficult. I won't say impossible that someone will go after you for something that you said. And this is, I think, what we haven't seen lately also that it has been kind of demonization of encryption by different governments because it is very difficult also to track back behaviors. A lot of people has been using this in order to change things in their respective countries. There are some concerns about how the limitation of freedom of expression has been rising in the past years. We see a decline for a fifth year in a row, consecutive year that more governments are sensorring information of public interest and expanding civilian practices. Governments in 14 of 65 countries passed new laws to increase surveillance since June 2014. And many more upgraded their surveillance equipment, which includes not only developed, but also developing countries. I would like to give you some examples of what is going on around this. So for example, we have a new law in Peru is that is about informatic computer crimes. It is obligation communication services about how they have to provide delocalization. That's why I mentioned that the nickname is not enough. Or information recorded on registration of communications registered that are requested by judicial (inaudible). In other countries like Mexico, Mexico recently passed a law for authorities, which is really broad is not as specific that agencies that can request this to request data from telecommunication companies regarding delocalization and communications of their clients. This is important because there is no specific legal authority to those agencies. So they are skipping the judicial review. Less than a month ago, the new initiative was presented in the congress which also attempted to broaden this set of regulation that I just mentioned. In terms of the technology, we think that encryption is the 21st century medal for protecting personal data and we agree with the U.N. repettor that those are key to secure free expression and opinion. Well, a little bit of the tools that we have been developing for this passed year to help with this. We have been prioritizing our products and services for many years in terms of the security. Also, this is not only just for what we are discussing today. It is sals because of privacy. We think that in order to have privacy, we need to focus on security. By providing secure products, we have privacy as well. So, since we have been designing, the factor out of authentication, proactive warnings about status points or attacks. We have an IPA for safe browsing and also we have an ability reward program. That is we give a price for those that come find bottles in our products or any kind of security problems so we can fix it right away. In terms of ‑‑ also we are serving all our Google's product over HTTPS for filtering. We also avoid the filtering of our content. And this is in terms of encryption. This is because they're not only the states of the governments that are questioning when internet companies start to implement encryption mechanism. Also some private companies. For example, we are receiving a lot of concern from the Teleco industry. Some Teleco's might want to base their business model and also that is harder. Violation of neutrality is harder when the networks are encrypted. Sometimes we find a combination, but other business interests that could undermine encryption. So we have to be careful about that too. So also another recent addition that enables us to offer encryption of user data is, you know, we, for example, the most recent version of Android encrypting data on the device is a default. So, you know, Android and Android devices. We introduce a Cloud (inaudible) that allows you an end to end encryption. So this is basically you establish a secure channel between browsers. So those are some of the tools and in terms of activism, we have developed some project like project shield that we developed giantly with the division that's called Google ideas to protect (inaudible) from the service attacks. So, you have your website. You don't have maybe a lot of money to invest in secure protection for your website. We provide your tools to put your website in an environment that could be protect from the service or DOS attacks. So nobody can take you down by informatic (inaudible). So I think that is an overview of what we have been doing on this front.
>> CLAUDIO RUIZ: Thank you. You're doing a lot on your start up, Pedro. I congratulate you. I would like to state that we invite some person from the government sector, but suddenly, they didn't come. We wanted to clarify. It's not our fault, but it is the fault of someone else. Being said that, I would like to pass the Mike to Soyia. Please?
>> ZOYA REHMAN: Hi. I program Pakistan and I would just like to add to what my colleagues already said giving specific examples. Obviously the right to anonymity to us as a digital rights organization means a lot, but personally it means a lot to me and my colleagues as well not just on behalf of my organization and profession but because it comes from a very personal place. We have friends, colleagues who use ‑‑ who take ‑‑ who are anonymous online and are at an advantage personally because of it also. So it's not just a beating issue to us, it's our politics and for me as a gender rights activists, I think it's a very, very important tool for tools and security. For us, it's basically like we get to witness and we see expression of alternatives of representations and apart from that, we see people interacting in ways that they won't be able to interact like within an online space ‑‑ offline space in particular. So let's talk about common misperceptions first. The first misperception that I hear in Pakistan is that somehow it's a bad thing because it is something bad that's happened because of the Internet and I don't think anonymity is something that came after the internet or was invented by the Internet. We've had even church confessions or when we see you know writers or artists used pseudonyms just to have a more established form of self‑expression. That also in itself is anonymity and we see it very enhanced and very interesting version of that online. So apart from that, I mean, I do understand that fair of anonymity because it is actual politics. It has had, you know, quite a bad press lately because you see a lot of Internet droves and even along with the whole (inaudible) of nothing to fear and nothing to hide sort of perception. So, I don't know. I think it is based around really ‑‑ it's framed with a very negative conservative terms and pragmatically, the concept ‑‑ gender rights in particular, which is what I do has become along with religious expression and political affiliations. It is a very important background in Pakistan as far as building projects. So, we've had a national action plan that was implemented earlier this year in Pakistan with that, we've seen, you know, a lot of las being suggested such as the cyber crimes Bill and then we have other laws as well. Just general the establishment of military code and all of them seek to suppress opinions online. When you are trying to frame a conversation around security, this has to include personal security Los Angeles and that's when anonymity comes in. It is a very, very important form for citizens to protect themselves as like a means of secured. So people instead of focusing on security anonymity, they should focus on accounteddability and focusing more on the users and not just tools that enable them. We use tools in a good way as well as misused. Anonymity that itself does not confirm accounteddability and we need to have a more progressive framing of this debate around anonymity and it shouldn't be a totalarrian and they cannot become common sense ideas as far as anonymity is correspond also. Apart from that, the right to secure anonymity is back matically the right to privacy, freedom of expression, freedom of association and assembly and these are in international laws as well as the constitution of Pakistan. In accordance with freedom of expression, the right to ‑‑ the user becomes legal also. And I think our government in Pakistan needs to be more sensitive when it comes to understanding the benefits of anonymity and understanding its importance as a right. For instance, we have a federal investigative agency, the FIA. They have a cyber crime where you can report crimes. So the one requirement they have when you are reporting a crime and it's primarily cases ever online abuse and harassment. You have to make sure that the case goes through. You have to go to court if need be and if you see women, for instance, resting these crimes and you live in the environment of living in Pakistan where they wish to remain anonymous for fear of social repercussions, they wouldn't want to remain anonymous and wouldn't want to file reports anonymously. You know it's become very important also. So apart from that, if you look at our country deport on online files against women, we have this ‑‑ this is really eminent human rights activist. So she developed a (inaudible) in response to some narratives except the back lash she rest huge. She started receiving really abusive comments and threats and she was working on her legal name, her actual name. Once she learned of that abuse, she deactivated her facingbook and data accounts. They were saying she committed blaspheme. It was fatal repercussions for her. She was a few years killed because of what happened. Going by your legal name it sometimes isn't beneficial. It could have really severe repercussions for you especially in oppressive and political environments. It can be dangerous to operate under your name in environments such as Pakistan. So we see there are many cases in Pakistan particularly in which anonymity has been beneficial. So we have this blogger I know. She has a blog which is a blog about ‑‑ it talks extensively about sexuality in south Asia. Her facingbook page was blocked one day. They showed her government photo ID and her response to this was very straight forward. She said I'm anonymous because I would be killed if I wasn't. She further wrote that the real name policy of Facebook it make its very impossible for (inaudible) in Pakistan to sort of avoid constant death threats and you know to talk about their opinions safely. And in this political environment where you know south asian bloggers and Pakistani bloggers are being hacked to death and are being threatened online. Illustrators and cartoonists are threatened for blaspheme. You have is ‑‑ they can talk about their issues together and they have the support system. Apart from that, if you just focus on Facebook's real name policy, which is very problematic because it seeks to reduce anonymity, it is posting privacy and identity issues at risk and you know we're saying you can't use so so‑called unofficial names. So there's also this other kid of LTB rights activist. Again he's using his pseudoname. His name comes from two names. One of this Pote who used to talk openly ‑‑ who used to write poems about hom*osexuality and one of the most famous writers. He started this movement called the Pakistan queer movement and he talks about gay culture in Pakistan. He writes for the Express Tribune and it's very interesting to see how anonymity has helped him so much because he has a lot of articles under his name online. If you look at hom*o sexual and sexual minorities, we have the telecommunications minority that has blocked websites. This is a move on their part to suppress freedom of expression as far as gender is concerned. And this includes the expression of the trans community, like gender non‑confirming gender. For that, this is where I would like to say that again the reason our governments like agencies feel so threatened is that anonymity does threaten the authoritarian mindset. It let's them pigeon hold the citizens and to establish that sort of sense of control. And they basically decide that we are going to establish our identify your ethnicity, your gender so they know who they're talking to and they know who they're threatened by. Less extreme example would be if they just demand what your political legions are and based on that, PT has blocked leftists pages online such as musical band called LAL. So fairly innocuous initiatives and this is where anonymity becomes integral because it is a political space for us to explore our identity and also access information regarding pertinent issues 10 sexuality, 10 politics and the works. It should remain that way. So I think, in my opinion and in my organizations opinion, anonymity is perhaps ‑‑ one of the internet's most critical advances. It is also a guarantee to remaining secure and also changing the narrative on security in the world within countries and of governments. So I think they can be anonymous repercussions in sort which is everywhere in the world. Anonymity is integral.
>> CLAUDIO RUIZ: Thank you. So thank you, Zoya. The need have an approach. I would like to pass the mic to Leila.
>> Much better than what I usually get. So yeah. So like Claudio said, I work for APC. I am a Spanish Syrian activist and human rights defender. So some of the issues are very similar in that the middle east and north African region, the issues our colleagues and countries like Pakistan face. In particular, I don't know how many of you follow the events in bent 11, the citizen protests, all that wave of discontent and people take business to the streets. One of the things that this protests and what happened after the protests that showed and highlighted was that freedom of expression and free speech activists and human rights defenders were the real target of repressing governments and repressing regimes. So four years later and five years later, we see more and more loss to allegedly counter extremism, but it is the human rights defender and the free speech that are in prison like countries like Syria and (inaudible) and Egypt are both the target of extremists and of the increase in extremism and the target of the loss allegedly created to counter extremism. So they're trapped between both fires and they're the real casualty of this whole war on terror that we keep seeing legit myself increasing regulations against free speech. So a Chilian friend of mine who is a psychologist and dealt with victims of torture in Chile, she has never seen anything like that. The middle eastern African region, especially Syria, is like a habit where she's seeing alld practices in the whole Latin America. She's seeing them together cons traded in Syria right now. So imagine if we're talking about this extent of repression. Imagine how it is when it comes to tracking down and how that has an effect and how there's a strong connection which in surf valance and lack of privacy and new regulations and how that affects people defending certain values and working in certain fields. So I would like to mention the example of APC's association for progressive communications, APC partner and friend. He's Basil (inaudible) and so he's one of the most reknown figures of internet freedom, internet culture. He's a software engineer. He won a censorship cut are and he was arrested in Syria for participating in peaceful protests in 2011. He's the leader of creative common Syria. He worked in ‑‑ I don't know if you heard recently that Pal mitta was being attacked by the selfauto called Islamic state. So he took photograph for years to documentation of Palmita and he created 3D replicas to maintain this history and document it in case anything happened to this monument. It is important he continues this online work in rebuilding these patterns. A month ago, he disappear from the prison he was taken. We don't know his whereabouts. So we're erasing his profile. So if you could ‑‑ we have a petition that APC and many other organizations like the electronic frontier organization and many organizations to raise his profile free Basil. Because if there's ever going to be a future for Syria, it will definitely need to count on people like Basil. So yes. Another example is Ala Fatta, the Egyptian activist and we have (inaudible) who actually got his nationality revoked by the authorities. Because of his work through his website, he's one of the Godfathers of the internet in the middle east. These are the real targets by this government within the context of increasing so called fight against extremism. So this fight against extremism and this harassing of activists is happening to a large degree with the help of companies that are ‑‑ that have their venue and have their things from the west. Companies like Blue Coat and the hacking revelations have revealed late revelations for years have shown how the western companies supporting governments like the mobadda government or the Syrian government that is having an impact on human rights ins region. So that is something to keen in mind. In this context, in this extreme context that we're talking about, anonymity is definitely a life and death situation. It is a lifesaver. It is not a guaranteed because you can be persecuted in any way. You can be harassed in any way. It is the minimum we can offer from the spaces that we have. So on the one hand just a few points, a few valid points, anonymity translates to non‑development tools where users have the ownership and the capacity to control the tools, the spaces, the platform. That is a given, but we also have to be aware that in many countries and in the case that I know best, which is Syria, many of the people who are sharing things and organizing things are not so tech savvy. Just to give you an example, I don't know a single person between 15 and 50. Not a single of my relatives friends acquaintances who are not on Facebook. The only reason I'm on Facebook is because I work on this field, but also because my whole family and my whole Syrian family is on Facebook. We can't close our eyes to this fact and develop tools without really addressing the fact that most people live on a daily basis on Facebook. Now more than ever for Syrians, it is the window to the world in a context of extreme isolation. So people recognize this in and out of the country are decking through Facebook. I personally don't like it, but it is is a fact. And just to give you another anecdote of how to what extent Facebook is used in Syria for sharing, protesting and to what extent it is considered by the Syrian regime. We tend to see Syria and we associate it with ISIS. And the level of repression and torture it is being neglected because of the media focus on the race on extremism. So what the authorities do for the Syrian authorities, for the Syrian regime, the regime, Facebook is the DEVile and countless friends tell me the first thing they do when they arrest an activist is do you have a Facebook and sometimes they don't really know what they're talking about, but they ask them what what do you do to unload the Facebook. Point to me. Show me the Facebook and they want to know. So it is something that they know. People talk and people talk and people communicate. So they're scared of that. They're terrified of that. So this is the same friend. I won't say his name, but he's a reknown techy. Someone was asking me where do you have the Facebook and he opened the computer and access do you want me to access the facingbook. And then they blind folded him and he was ‑‑ and he was ‑‑ because of the real name policy that Facebook has, so most activists have ‑‑ because they cannot have an anonymous account or they're too scared this may fire because of terms of services. So they create another account with the same name and another e‑mail and they fill it up with photos and flowers and friends, blah, blah, blah. They ask him what is the face block in the accounted, and he owns his account and hen he remembers that Facebook has this thing that down next to his profile to the real one is like recommended friends. His same name, the real account. So he's blind fold and said they're asking him do you have another account? And he says yes. He's sweating because he remembers. I was trying to make this order account scan fear from the indexes and it doesn't disappear. It's still there. And he's sweating and they say do you know how we know this? And he says yes. I have another accounted. Do you know how we know this? How do you know, sir? Because we are the Syrian secret services and we know everything. You know? And they had it down there because Facebook highlights your contacts that way and your recommended friends. What's that?
>> (inaudible)
>> LEILA NACHAWATI: Yes. Just two minutes. Okay. So 10 seconds. If you can show the policy that the statement that we brought a statement. A few organization including APC to try to ask for Facebook to really change his realname policies. So they have announced some minor changes, but we believe it's not enough because there's this cat and mouse game between repressive governments and activists. Governments are winning, but activists are putting up a fight. At least what we can do is at least help them with protecting their identity when they do this important work. Sorry.
>> CLAUDIO RUIZ: Thank you, Leila. I really like the name. But I think it is very important to remember (inaudible) and colleagues from the critical movement as well. He's not here because we don't know exactly where he is and I think it is important to highlight that any time we can. And I think it is very important and I would like it go deeper later on regarding the connection between Latin America and anonymity was important in that context. We know suddenly very well about it and how that is connected or not with this new narrative regarding the internet and fight for anonymity. For me, it's a great honor to introduce Mr. Kaye. So please take it.
>> DAVID KAYE: Maybe it's been implicit, but we haven't specifically talked so much about disent is or developing countries and I, it would be interesting to get into that. First, sort of the value that we place on dissent and promy perspective, ARTICLE 19 of the ICCPR protexting disent is and exploring a little bit whether there's something unusual about developing countries or different about developing countries that we should be focusing our particular attention on. But I thought I would do a couple of things. First, talk about framing of anonymity issues. And second, identifying a couple different category of individuals that have been identified already and then third talk about some specific problems and, of course, real name policies have already been mention but maybe talk a little bit more about those. I will try do it in just a few minutes. Sod first thing is how to frame. I think the discussion to this point has been maybe assuming agreement on anonymity and I don't know what your own experience is and your own countries or back in your own organizations is, but I think compared to encryption, anonymity is a little bit more sent to doubt. It is certainly as a matter of the Brazilian constitution prohibited, but I think it is something that when you talk to people in theirordinary lives, the thing that I often hear is if you have an opinion and you care about it enough, then you should sort of put your identity behind it. And I think that idea means ‑‑ I think that idea is fairly well embedded around the world. Bless you. That we should be thinking about how to frame anonymity and I think the framing here has been excellent and I would point out a couple of ways to frame our approaches to anonymity that really drive from international human rights law and many of our own domestic constitutions. So one I would say is personal development. So the rights under ARTICLE 19 is ‑‑ well, it's two independent rights. The first one is to maintain an opinion without interference. In my report to the recommend rights counsel in June, I tried to emphasis that is not one subject to restriction. Anyone can hold an opinion. I think in a digital age, the ways in which we hold opinions is shifting quite a bit from ways that we might have in the past so that we can talk about how that is really operationallized. Then the second paragraph is the right to seek, receive or impart information and ideas of all kinds threw any media and regardless of 41 frontiers. The information part, it is sort of saying to us or should suggest to us that the right of freedom of expression is also about personal development. And there are times and I think the instances that are raised here show that when one can't develop personally can't develop ideas if you don't have access anonymously to ideas whether through search, browsing, you name it or through communication with others to have anonymity in order to develop one self. The second related to that, of course, is access to information. Anonymity can be a tool to circumvent censorship. So to the extent that we can have tools of anonymity, we can also access information that we might not otherwise have access to. Third it's about political participation. I think it was mentioned that ‑‑ I think this important that anonymity is not a product of the digital age. Anonymity has been a, you know, forever and it's something that in the physical world, sometimes you are in a crowd and you enjoy the anonymity of being in a crowd. But I think for purposes of political participation, we can look back in history and see anonym Russ pamphletting, anonymous newspapers and now online of which is essential to many to participate in the political system or to actually share ideas that might otherwise get you in some kind of trouble. And then the fourth kind of framing I think is around accountability. This will tie to one of the categories that I want to mention and the second which is whistle blowers and general sources where sometimes in order to draw attention to legal wrong doing or to just matters of public interest is important to have access to anonymous channels. So all of these different areas I think is important for us to go back to basics for some of them. For some of us, simply highlighting the experience of activists is important, but I think in many of our sorts, highlighting individual experiences and relating our own individual search histories is something that I think can resonate with people. So the second thing and I will try to go through these quickly. We already mentioned activists. I want to mention and then the other a category is everyone. And that's everyone's right to the in terms of search and browsing and communication, et cetera. The two other categories that I want to mention that I think are really important of in terms of anonymus is whistle blowers. This may play into dissend. We think of public protest, but as much as government ‑‑ there's no government representative here on the panel, but there's also dissent within government and there's whistle blowing within government or within corporate spaces and sometimes it's critical for those actors to have access to anonymity to anonymous channels in order to highlight wrongdoing or order issues of public interest and I think that there's a lot that we can talk about there. And then related to whistle blowers is journalists and able to protect well sources. We have seen in the developed and the developing world how governments are quite willing to break, you know, anonymity and to look at metadata to really identify sources through all sorts of measures and the tools out there obviously need to be used even more by journalists, I would say. At a very basic level, the ability of journalists to maintain that anonymity or confidentiality of sources is really under threat in a digital age and not just in an age of surveillance, but in an age where metadata is collected and it's very easy to track people. So I will just conclude by identifying maybe two other problems. Realm just one order problem because prohibition of anonymity has already been mentioned and real name policies have been mentioned. I would just add to the real name policies the issue of SIM card registration. I don't know the extent of the problem everywhere, but it is a serious problem in Africa, for example. And it becomes an even heightening problem or extenuated to some extent when people really rely on their cell phones, on their mobile technology to access the internet. So that is a very hard nut to crack, I would say, because SIM card registration is pervasive in many parts of the world, but I do think it is an area that we should be thinking because not everybody is going to go out and use signal. Although they should. Or use other kinds of red phones or whatever it might be in order to have anonymity, but we really need to think about how to move away from those kinds of registration policies. So I'll end there. Thank you.
>> CLAUDIO RUIZ: Thank you very much, David. I have tons of questions for every one of you, but we are 34 minutes and 35 seconds left. So I think that the most important part here is the questions. I really love this part. I don't know about you, panelists, but I love it. I would ask everyone who has questions to please join us at the front either to the left or the right, whatever you prefer and please introduce yourself at the beginning and then we will have a final wrap up of comments. Please do not change the direction because of the noise of the speakers. Wait a second.
>> Maybe you can try this one.
>> GUSTAVO: Greetings. My name is Gustavo. I research ‑‑ G‑u‑s‑t‑a‑v‑o. And we study my research focus specifically on internet anonymity. And we have analyzed many academic researches on this to find a way into resident law to when can anonymity be accepted. We use it anonymity in Brazil and internet happens, of course, like in other countries, but we are trying to see the legal aspect. When we have been reconsidering because in the internet, the digital anonymity is not the same as the anonymity we see in the physical world. It's not like wearing a mask and we ‑‑ so I would like ton your opinions. There are many articles about this from Etco research. We can share this later, but I want to know what do you think about a new definition for anonymity on the Internet?
>> Thank you.
>> Hi. For the record, my name is Asa Saddia. I'm from Lebanon. We work in Syria, we work ‑‑ so basically my question is we completely know the challenges that she talked B. we completely know the stories. We know the context, but the thing is what exactly can we do? There's another session in the next room speaking of cyber building and here we're talking about what's happening in the regions and they're over there talking about something that is very complete opposite of what we're talking about.
>> CLAUDIO RUIZ: Maybe that's why there's no (inaudible) and they're here.
>> That's the case. How can we figure out a way to actually do something maybe through the laws. I don't know if in our region we can do something. It is unreachable. So just maybe you can give us some kind of best practices. Maybe like the special (inaudible) can give us an experience that she had in the region, per se would be amazing. Thank you.
>> Hi. My name is Serene from Asia. I am glad they am ‑‑ the SIM card is required in my country and some part of asian countries as well. And we have national identity card. Our identity card is linked to a whole lot of things. So for instance, if I order pizza online, I will need to key my mobile numbers and they have all my details. My address, my address. From your computers, you are found liable. So the burden of proof is on you to be (inaudible) of that offence. So I think it's an issue that we need to look into as well. Thank you.
>> I am Luis Fernando Garcia. Pedro mentioned two things about Mexico. I have two quick updates about that. The required law is decided by the supreme court recently. If anyone wants to (inaudible) brief, talk to me. We need all the help to get that out of the law because it eliminates anonymity for journalists. This law requires to have names associated on two counts and also location tracking. For two years for all devices, you can know my sources, which is another right that's been recognized as part of expression to protect your sources as a journalists and we go to cybersecurity and I agree with what she said. While we're discussing this here and we have David Kaye and coming forward for anonymity and proof of privacy, there are other ideas as well in the OAS that have added cybersecurity agency that's promoting totally the reverse discourse and it was promoting this law in Mexico that hopefullyd update is thanks to all the people that announced it on the Internet. The Senator that recalled the proposal one week after he presentd it. People try to shame people that use Facebook or Youtube, but I agree with you. Sometimes you need the audience that is there. For example, are you really thinking because it is still difficult to use tool. Still really difficult to pose an anonymous video because you need authentication of an e‑mail. It is very difficult. So are you really thinking about this? Is there a way in which you and other companies is it possible to have an account to use Twitter to really facilitate and integrate your services into twitir so we can use your services anonymously? Sometimes you don't have a choice. If you want to have a video, you will go to some place where people will see videos. Are you thinking about this? Can you make any commitments to that? Thank you.
>> CLAUDIO RUIZ: Thank you.
>> Hi. My name is Egan and I have a question. We know that anonymity provided the right to have freedom of speech is good for journalism. But here in Brazil and in other countries they have some problems about anonymity because some people use this right to ‑‑ how I can say to offend other people to say speeches of hate and we have a lot of victims of these speeches. I want to know how we can separate it? There is good anonymity and bad anonymity and how do we punish these hate speeches and how we can ‑‑ how can we ‑‑ how can I say. How can we (inaudible) in a global way so I think that's my question. Thank you.
>> CLAUDIO RUIZ: Thank you. it is not required to sit.
>> I am Paulo from an electronic field. I am proud to say we're starting this project where weaver bringing (inaudible). I think that's something that could be encouraged in all the countries that actually agree that anonymity is a good thing. That's all.
>> Hello. My name is Victor. I'm a researcher from the University of Sao Paulo. I have a question. Do you think that states ‑‑ the states and opinions of espionage because I think the intelligence agencies states are trying to not abolish or reduce espionage, but to reduce it from the United States and I think I would like to know what your opinion is about intelligence in anonymity.
>> CLAUDIO RUIZ: Thank you. Please.
>> There's a question from Maria in Costa Rica. The relationship between (inaudible) and the creation and uses of these identities should be protexted on the day of anonymity.
>> CLAUDIO RUIZ: Is that the only question from remote?
>> Yes.
>> CLAUDIO RUIZ: Some are you mentioned the retensions, but I think it will be super interesting to hear some thoughts from all of you in terms of personal data to fight against anonymity. The profiling of social media by police or by criminal agencies I think is a very important thing in our countries. And even though it is very important as well how the increasing technology using public transportation can also be a very good tool for police or enforcement agencies to profiling dissent especially in regions like here in Latin America. So there's a lot of poison. I don't know whether you want to tackle this down, Joanna or the same order. The floor is open for you.
>> JOANA VARON: Yeah. You mentioned the cameras. That's exactly what Brazil is doing in preparation for the olympics. They're all over the buses of Rio. There has been ‑‑ people that uses buses are also loving (inaudible) people. There's a social clash about that. That is going on. I want to tackle two of the questions. One is research and how to interpret anonymity in the online environment. As I mentioned before, I think the online environment more and more we can talk only about (inaudible) anonymity. I don't know if they agree because of all this policies. SIM card registration, back retention, access to user data file are court orders and the encryption that's not used by default in most of the service. Real name policies and we can list will ‑‑ the list goes on and on and it's getting worse and worse. I think we also need to signify the context. That's hard. And the other question harding cybersecurity, I was in Geneva when you presented your report and I thought oh, my God. This is so hard because the countries that could be considered more total tearian were against freedom of speech in countries involving surveillance, mass surveillance Scandals would be against anonymity and they were there like whoa. So it's hard. So then, of course, that's a good job, but then I'm not answering any question. I'm actually putting another one. How do we deal with this jail pol tings to stop things. But the jail politics is contrary in all the sense.
>> CLAUDIO RUIZ: So, Pedro, you have a lot of questions to answer. I would like you in the same way that Joanna would like to make things more confusing. Something that came up in the question I think is very important from the private sector point of view, which is the connection between back doors and collaboration with enforcement agencies. I think there's a great responsibility there. I would really like to hear things as well.
>> PEDRO LESS: There's been discussion about whether who has the (inaudible). We in fact have a track record of challenge this kind of request. We stand up to any ‑‑ around other revelations, the only way we comply with government request was either through judicial order or other kind of judicial orders that are under the Visa process. Don't know if you're familiar with that, but this is the way that the U.S. Department of justice basically could request information about users that exclude foreign intelligence, civilian act request. Those requests have been otherwise kept confidential and we have been suing the U.S. government in order to be able to provide more information about the amount of the request that we received. In February of 2014, we want that litigation and we were able to put in our transparency report the amount of requests that we receive. In fact, you see they're not as large as everybody thought. This kind of request even we don't agree with some of the procedures. They're having issues by the congress, respect due process and we have to comply with them; however, we continue working in terms of what we do to reform the civilian laws in the U.S. Basically a key piece that we have actively supporting is the U.S. freedom act. We try to preventd collection of communication metadata. And also we are pushing for more transparency with our users in the broader public. Another important battle that we are having right now is that we need to have comparable privacy from U.S. citizens and non‑U.S. citizens. This is another thing we have been fighting a lot. And also another part that is ‑‑ if a government needs information, they should come to us. You know? And not try to have the back row collections through interception of telecommunication facilities and try to intercept any kind of traffic. Now, we have been including in all the traffic among our servers. Even if traffic between two servers of Google we still encrypt that because there could be a reason that connection could be interceptd as well. But the problem is not every Internet company has the ability to do that or the resources. So governments need to go directly to the source and not try to intercept that. Usually the man in the middle or service provider or telecommunication provider to do that. So this is more or less what we are doing.
>> CLAUDIO RUIZ: Let me continue. It's very good to answer the questions.
>> PEDRO LESS: Gustavo, with your first question, I think that part of this, I agree that it's important to redefine anonymity. It is important to redefine the law. It is important to think about how ‑‑ what we can do for, you know, modify in Brazilian law and in India as well. I think one important thing is usually anonymity has been associated with your identity. Now, anonymity needs to be associated with your location. We always associate anonymity with who you are, but where you are is much as important. Not only because someone can get you, but also someone can attack you through electronic means as well. So this I think is another part that could be important to take in. In connection with the second question about what is happening in the other room and this is ‑‑ I have been working a lot with civil society for this passed years. I think also you should do more on the proactive side. You're accustomed to also be reactive and go and fight for freedom and fight for differences, but you need to start to be the ones that are doing the capacity building civilian agency as well. We have to do the same. I think sometimes we have limited resources, limited time, but it is important to something at best to teach those guys how to do the things in a way that does not violate our human rights. Then question. First of all, thank you for your great work in Mexico. And second in connection with (inaudible). Can I not commit without talking to our engineers. Unfortunately, I don't know exactly the status of Thor.
>> CLAUDIO RUIZ: You Google it.
>> PEDRO LESS: I Google it. The only thing that I found has been that Thor project in collaboration with the frontier foundation has been taking part in the Google summer code for almost seven years. So they have been working on, you know, finding coding solution for this. I don't know if there is any outcome. I don't know if anybody from our Google technical team could give any kind of update on this. That would be great. Here is that. Wonderful. These guys know a lot about it.
>> Just to follow up on that, yes. It's been discussed internally. We have a real concern though about scale act. You two have produced us an enormous amount of data. The uploads into Youtube run into the many hours a minute. People are uploading data on Youtube at a faster rate than you can imagine. We're concerned if we made a hidden service available of the type that you described, we might actually bring down two itself. Just because the flow of data that Google creates is hell of a spicket to attach to that network. It's been stuff that's been discussed internally. Use iting Tour to reach a Google service should meet most needs and obviously there are concerns about as you pointed out, the need to do multi‑step authentication, et cetera. If you could contact me offline, I will be happy to work with you so I can understand those better. Thank you.
>> CLAUDIO RUIZ: Thank you. So Zoya, I think you pointed out some very important points, but specifically, we would like to ask you the connection between ‑‑ more than the connection. I think it is important what you said in terms to change regarding anonymity. The question is how to do it. I can feel several answers and I am very keen to hear yours. I think that is very important.
>> ZOYA REHMAN: There was a question I think previously in which there was this distinct between good and bad anonymity as well. The crime isn'ting about anonymous. The crime is the crime. It is a crime we need to look into. Say someone is responsible for hate speech online that can come under insightment to violence. That wouldn't come under glorifying the crime anonymously. Anonymity like I said again is not the issue here. As far as security narrative is concerned again in Pakistan because we have the upcoming cyber crime build and we tried working with the standing IT committee on it. We gave the legal redraft because there was this one particular section which was really draconian which talked about talking about online information. So the telecommunications by that virtue of that section can take out any content 52. Their response usually is because when you approach Facebook or Google because die taint take down the content and we don't have the ability to do that. They take down the entire site. In Pakistan, we would have to go to code for this. This is what I see at the moment as far as all the efforts are concerned, but right now considering the war on terrorism is being used. It is just resistance and it is offline efforts on the ground and as much awareness that we can create. So kind of grasping for straws, but also really, really trying hard to change the narrative overall.
>> CLAUDIO RUIZ: Okay. Leila, I am super curious between the narratives you mentioned in Latin American reality in the '60s and '70s and how it connects this somehow. It is a very important point because in our work in trying to address these issues in Latin America, this has been an issue popping up quite often in terms of how to actually we can address this issue when it was so important to fight for our democracy during the '70s and '80s. I would love to hear a little bit more from you regarding that.
>> Thank you, Claudio. I will connect that with what our colleague from Lebanon. I totally share her frustration. It is a very difficult thing to respond to the issue much how can we solve this in black and white terms. Because it is an issue that is bigger than us in the technical parts and the technical issues and there's this whole status quo that keeps coming back and gets stronger and stronger and keeps using more sophisticated tools. So it's a huge question and what we always insist is that in the need, our colleague was saying not only to be reactive, but also proactive. In terms of reactive, we already mentioned, you know, tools for anonymity that are non‑private owned and users have the control on how the tools are developed and what the features are. Then on the other hand, requiring companies not to require your own personal real identity and we did this huge compain against the Facebook real policy to try to convince them and especially because the response by Facebook is they require users to create profiles under their real names because they believe this encourages people to behave better. So wind Facebook logic that in many cases, it is easier someone held accountable for their actions when you know their identity, but assuming that there's a co‑relation. So using a different name does not make you behave badly. So there is nothing inherent about anonymity that leads you to behave badly. It's about the crime like our colleague was saying. Not about the anonymity itself. On the proactive side, construct the narrative where security is not understood and security is also anonymity and your personal integrity and personal safety from armed groups, from extremists groups and in many cases from the government themselves. That is a matter of security. So building where anonymity from research to capacity building to policy change and the need to protect your own privacy is the key of security. So if security is the word right now, let's not fall into the trap of associated security in the way that is narrated and let's build security in our own way through this course as well. What I found in the work that we do as well is that sometimes it's easier or more helpful to frame issues of anonymity and need for privacy for anonymity and I have seen this by working with ABC. When you do it with gender rights and also protection of ability rights, when you do it in the rights of political dissent. It is useful to find what are the frameworks that allow to push for those issues.
>> CLAUDIO RUIZ: I've been fighting with this all evening. But still. Yeah. It's okay. That's fine. David, you mentioned the issue of dissent not to be able to discuss quite a lot in this session. And I would really like for you to go deeper in that. In terms for me, it is very important and especially because the challenge we have on that monitor quite clear which are the cybersecurity or even the cyber language eventually. All the cyber stuff is eventually on hype today. And I think that's sort of challenge in terms of creating this. But I wonder where the policy opportunities that we have right now especially from developing countries.
>> DAVID KAYE: Can I ask you a question first? You're asking all the questions.
[ Laughter ]
We haven't really framed it around disent is entirely and I'm curious why you made it as dissent as sort of a framing issue. Maybe that will help me answer the question a little bit.
>> CLAUDIO RUIZ: You lawyers me. Challenge accepted. We are running out of time. That's very lawyerly anyway. No. The thing is for us it was important specifically in terms of that question that I gave to Leila. I think it is for human rights organization coming from Latin America work working on digital issues not to connect our history of disent is and our history to fight for democracy and to fight for policy framework in the last paths. It is better to create new policies without taking into accounts that fight. So the right to disent is that we created somehow in practices and durings '70s. They're a very good framework in terms upon (inaudible) and challenges we're facing today. But also most important work that policy approach that we have. So ‑‑
>> DAVID KAYE: That's really helpful. I think the hardest question for me at least that was asked was that Aza asked this. Colleague from Lebanon who asked the question about sort of best practices and sort of framed this cyber secured and best practices. It's hard because they're just not a lot of great practices out there that we can identify. At least in terms of cybersecurity and the issues of anonymity encryption and just freedom online more generally. But so what I want to suggest before getting into any best practice and we are running out of time, which is useful because I don't have too many examples anyway is to start with the issue of dissent. I think one of the problems is connecting to cybersecurity. As we know, at least under the international covenant where there's three part test ‑‑ covenant and it has to be a political objective which includes national security. We have to accept and sometimes unfortunately we might say that a part of the right to freedom of expression at least under international human rights law is a set of the restrictions. One of the major problems that connect cybersecurity to disent is is that states are just often using the international security exception and the public order exceptions or restrictions as wedges in order to restrict all kinds of dissent. And so as a legal matter, that's a huge problem. And we need to be pushing government to justify any time they have and are imposing a restriction. And that means as a matter of law and this is sort of all areas of law whether it's in whistle blower protection or it's protection of sources and source confidentiality that the default should be protection and then the burden should be on government to justify the restriction. And I think ‑‑ I mean, there are states that do that and that is a best practice as a matter of law because at least if you force states to make their arguments, it's at least one step in the direction of at least trying to protect these kinds of rights. We can talk afterwards about other areas of practice. We're running out of time. I want to say too quick things. One on harassment and anonymity. We also have to recognize that any tools that we use for expression can also be abused. And again, this is an issue of both framing and changing the legal default so that the default is ‑‑ the anonymity is permitted and that again it's up to the person or the entity that's seeking to restrict to justify why that might be and there should be a high bar for that. There's actually in British law, there's some good rules around harassment and guidance to prosecutors that I would share in terms of showing where the bar should be in terms of legal sanctions related to harassment. And then the last thing is more of a point on this issue of anonymity and whether it's different online versus the physical space. And I really agree. It's who and it's where. It's a kind of situational anonymity and I think we need to be realistic about how much anonymity we can expect. There was a very good book puck irvd within the last year by Julia Angwin. It's embedded in the U.S. experience, but I think it applies everywhere. It does seem to be nearly impossible to go off the grid and to be Amineimous. So we need to really just take steps to protect ourselves as well and recognize that in those situations, it's perfect anonymity is probably kind of a pipe dream that at least in those situations where we really need to protect ourselves and maybe more importantly protect the people that we're interacting with that we use whatever tools are available in order to insure that we're protected in some way.
>> CLAUDIO RUIZ: Thank you. It's a joke. Okay. So I would like to thank every single panelists today. I would like to thank Joana, Pedro, Zoya and especially thank everyone in the room and for the people who are following this discussion remotely. So I would like to thank you, everyone. It's been an amazing, amazing work. So thank you.
[APPLAUSE]
