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>>> In the 1970s, scientists created the Internet for the U.S. government. But by the '90s,
the Internet had become a global communication network for everyone. It grew fast, much faster
than any communication medium in human history. The Internet allowed people to communicate
instantly, and information that was once hard to find was just a quick search away. It served
citizens, businesses, and governments and helped create an explosion of economic growth.
But the makeup of the Internet posed unexpected challenges. People could reach across geographical
boundaries. Great for commerce, but some saw a threat to national sovereignty.
With social media, people could meet and organize in new ways, and they found a powerful tool
for political dissent. Some governments reacted by monitoring their
citizens online and build firewalls that kept the information out. Some even want to build
their own Internets, cut off from the rest of the world.
And now, Internet restrictions are growing in many parts of the world. The future of
free access to information is uncertain. Some believe an open Internet threatens their culture,
their stability, and their sovereignty. Others believe the free flow of information leads
to growth and fosters more open, prosperous societies.
Today, we all face critical questions about how to achieve the right balance between political
freedom and national security, between free markets and global regulations to protect
consumers, between respect for cultural traditions and the universal right to speak one's mind
and be heard. How do we ensure that the Internet remains
free? An open platform for progress and change? A place that's truly at liberty?
[ Video concludes. ] >>Bob Boorstin: Good morning. I'm Bob Boorstin,
and I'm Director of Public Policy at Google here in Washington, D.C.
I want to welcome you all to Washington and to the second Internet at Liberty conference.
A special welcome to the repeat offenders from Budapest. There are a number of you in
this room, and I appreciate your coming all the way here.
Happy to welcome our first-time participants as well and all those who are watching live
on CitizenTube. I want to thank, to begin with, Shelby Coffey
and everyone here at the Newseum for hosting us. And a big thanks to our staff from Google
and our events folks, who you will meet over the next couple of days.
A couple of housekeeping items before we move into this morning's program.
The agenda for the next two days and the map of the rooms that you'll be using is around
your neck. Today is Wednesday.
[ Laughter ] >>Bob Boorstin: Just to remind everybody.
And you have to pull it out and open it in order to see the Wednesday schedule.
This was told to me by one annoying conference participants who shall go unnamed.
Thursday is actually on the back, if you're looking at it the wrong way.
So, please refer to this map and these things without -- if you have any questions about
that, or ask one of the people who says "Internet at Liberty Staff" on their shirt.
The Twitter handle is @internetliberty, for those of you who need to know.
And the wireless is on this card as well. This event is open to the press. Everything
you can say will be used against you. And there are, however areas in this room and
all of the rooms where there are no cameras to be used. And they are marked by the "No
Camera Access Area" signs. So, finally -- and this is for those of you
who came from abroad -- some of you may see email messages in the next day or two from
Altour. If you want to go home, look at those messages. That's all I'll say.
Now, on to our program. You are surrounded here by some very interesting
people: More than 300 participants drawn from more than 30 countries; huge diversity in
life experience, in cultural backgrounds and age, he said, --
[ Laughter ] >>Bob Boorstin: -- as one of the older people
involved in the Google universe. But one thing unites us, and that is, we all
know that the future of the Internet is critical and the ability to express oneself freely
online has huge geopolitical, social, and economic impacts.
Over the next two days, we hope that you learn some very interesting things. But most important,
we want you to speak up, to participate, to -- and you'll excuse the expression -- freely
express yourself. I would urge you to do so, when you're asking
a question, in a brief, timely, and polite manner. Facts and data are welcome, of course,
but so are opinions. And if you hear something that you think is outrageous, shortsighted,
foolish, or just plain wrong, except if I say it, please speak up. Don't just whisper
to your neighbor, as fun as that can be. Stand up and tell us all what you're thinking. That's
what we're here to do. Over the next two days, you're going to witness
and participate in debates about some of the key issues facing us, and issues raised by
the video we've just seen. We're going to talk about the role of governments, the role
of companies, the role of NGOs, and the role of a lot of individuals in this room.
You're going to have a chance to attend workshops that are meant to teach practical skills in
everything from using video for political change to keeping safer while on a mobile
device. And right now, let me thank the unpaid, incredibly
hard-working workshop leaders and presenters. You know who you are. We really appreciate
your help. You're also going to have a chance to see
the latest in research and some really cool tools that people are developing in this area.
Feel free to engage with the folks at the kiosks which are in the next room during the
breaks. They have various research projects and ongoing things to discuss with you, and
they're here to talk. Most important, we want you to learn something
new and to have a good time. Although I realize that second idea may be a bit foreign to the
academics and government officials in the audience, --
[ Laughter ] >>Bob Boorstin: -- please at least give it
a try. Why are we here?
We believe that the ability to freely express ourselves is a shared value that crosses oceans,
national borders, culture, and history. And while there's never a bad time to talk about
values, this is a particularly good time, a crucial year for the cause of Internet freedom,
a year when the idea that information and data should flow freely across national borders
is under assault. First, filtering and monitoring is increasing.
Since we last got together in Budapest in 2010, about 21 million more people are living
in countries that systematically filter online content.
Second, crucial change is afoot in many important countries and in international organizations.
This is particularly true in the emerging democracies or what some call the global swing
states, places like India, Indonesia, Brazil, Egypt, Thailand, and Tunisia. Many of these
places are considering legislation and regulations that would gravely slow, if not strangle,
the flow of information. Third, there is a growing realization that
while we must never stop promoting human rights, keeping the Internet open and free is also
a critical economic issue. The Internet's impact on global growth is rising rapidly.
According to a study by McKinsey & Company, the Internet accounted for 21% of GDP growth
over the last five years in developed countries. And data is now beginning to be compiled that
illustrates that innovation and economic growth are related to the free flow of information.
Finally, in answer to the question, why are we here, we are had a technological arms race.
Yes, new tools emerge every day that help new voices to be heard, images to be seen,
and changes to happen. But in those tools, there is also grave danger,
a danger that many in this room know, a danger that repressive regimes may be using them
to track down those who use them. Your mobile device may be your best friend,
or it may be your worst enemy. So, this is some of what we'll be talking
about over the next two days. Your job is to stand up and speak out, complain and be
constructive, tell us when you're learning and when you're not.
When you leave tomorrow afternoon, we hope you do so armed with new information, better
prepared for what's down the road this year and in the next few, and certainly more inspired.
Now, in the spirit of involving you all from the start, I'd like to call on a few people
in the audience -- in this case, I did warn them -- to tell us in a single sentence why
they're here and what they hope to learn. So perhaps I'll start with Sanjana from Sri
Lanka. Where are you?
The mike is right there. >>Sanjana Hattotuwa: I'm Sanjana Hattotuwa.
I'm from Sri Lanka. I run a dissident journalism site called GroundViews.org, which is one
of the country's most-read alternative news sources. I'm here because all of us in countries
that are repressive seem to believe and very often are isolated from even the shared challenges
of activists and citizen journalists in our regions. It's very interesting to come here
and speak with a lot of you to find that the challenges we have at home aren't actually
unique, are shared, and to be able to get a sense of solidarity.
Thanks very much. >>Bob Boorstin: Julie, where are you? Over
there. The mike is coming. >>Hello, I'm Julie. I'm pleased to be here.
I am Cameroonian, and I'm currently living in Paris. I am an author for Global Voices
Online -- hello, Evan -- and I write on sub-Saharan African issues mainly. And I am really happy
to be here to exchange ideas and share experiences on how freedom of expression is dealt with
in other parts of the world. And I'm pretty happy to know that I'll be able to learn on
how I can foster freedom of expression on my continent, which is Africa, and specifically
in my country. So thank you for the invitation. And looking
forward to the exchanges. >>Bob Boorstin: Perfect. Thank you.
Smari? There you are.
>>Smari McCarthy: Hi. I'm Smari McCarthy from the International Modern Media Institute.
I'm mostly here to try and figure out what the problems that we are faced with in the
next couple years are shaped like so that we can try and raise the bar and figure out
proper solutions to all of the problems. And so both working from the bottom up and every
other angle. >>Bob Boorstin: And, finally, Lucie. Where
are you in the crowd? Right there. >>Lucie Morillon: Thank you. I'm Lucy Morillon
with Reporters Without Borders, Reporters sans Frontieres. Really glad to be here today.
I think it's going to be a wonderful time with a wonderful crowd. We look forward to
learning from each other. And as Bob was mentioning before, I think it's a very critical time
for a free and open Internet, and we need to show solidarity. We need to work more together.
We need to share experiences. And that's what I'm here for.
Thank you. >>Bob Boorstin: Thank you, all, very much.
Just to give you a taste of the people you're surrounded by here and their diverse backgrounds:
Iceland -- that's where Smari is from, even though he didn't say it -- Cameroon, France,
and Sri Lanka. Now I'm going to turn to the first debate
and introduce our moderator for that session. Susan Glasser is the editor in chief of Foreign
Policy magazine. She's an innovative editor and reporter extraordinaire. She has done
the impossible and made both the personal and professional transition from the so-called
traditional media to the digital media. She has spearheaded her magazine's ambitious
expansion in print and online at foreignpolicy.com. I will repeat that advertisement -- foreignpolicy.com
-- during her tenure, the magazine has won three digital magazine awards and was recently
honored for online general excellence by the overseas press club.
She joined Foreign Policy in 2008 after a distinguished tenure at the Washington Post.
She spent four years as cochief of their Moscow bureau, covered the wars in Afghanistan and
Iraq. We are pleased to have her preside over the
opening debate. Join me in welcoming Susan and the participants
in that debate. [ Applause ]
>>Susan Glasser: Well, thank you so much, first of all, to Bob. While everyone is taking
their seats, I'm very honored, of course, to be here. I can't promise you that I will
moderate this conversation with the same dry humor as Bob brought to the introduction,
but I will try. And I'm particularly thrilled, because I think
we have a great group of debaters for you today. And I've been told I'm not allowed
to take a vote at the end to see who won or not. But we are hoping and aiming to at least
change some minds this morning. So I hope all of you will not only be engaged by the
conversation, but participate. We'll make sure to get to your questions at some point
during this. So this is a formal debate that we have. And
I think we have a pretty broad mission this morning in what we're going to be talking
about. Just to lay out a little bit for you what
the parameters of the conversation are, think about this, according to the Open Net Initiative,
more than 620 million Internet users -- that's 31% of the world's total -- live in countries
where there is a substantial or pervasive filtering of online content.
Frankly, those numbers might even be low; right?
We're all familiar, of course, with the worst offenders, dictatorships and authoritarian
regimes that essentially attempt to limit what people can say and what information they
can access. But today, there's, of course, democratically
run countries around the world, including this one, that struggle with these crucial
questions about how to achieve the right balance between protecting individuals and their rights
and protecting national security, social stability, cultural traditions. That's the subject of
our debate writ large this morning. And it's a pretty broad one. Should laws and regulations
that affect the Internet favor the individual over the state?
Thinking of that video that introduced things for us this morning, I was struck by one phrase:
The challenge, says Google in the video, as to make sure that the Internet remains free.
Another question I'll be having for our panelists is whether the Internet is, in fact, free
even right now. If you remove the phrase, of course, "That
affects the Internet," the conversation that we're having today is an age-old one. The
line between the rights of citizens and the needs of the state is in fact at the heart
of political debate and has been as long as there's been a debate about political philosophy.
But it's also the stuff of everyday dilemmas, faced by all of us, and certainly everyone
in this room who comes here, bringing a variety of engaged and activist perspectives to the
conversation. The debate has never been more relevant. Right
now, the Internet reaches billions of people around the world. But it's not just governments
and individuals who struggle with this. Companies, NGOs, as well as individuals and the people
who are elected to lead them, struggle with this.
I can't imagine that we could have a better group of four people to lead us through this
debate. I'm hoping -- and perhaps you can help me in egging them on -- to make sure
that they really engage in a clash of ideas this morning.
So without further ado, let me introduce quickly our panelists. And then we'll jump right in
to the conversation. John Kampfner was a foreign correspondent
and magazine editor for the last two decades, until recently, he also served as the chief
executive of the index on censorship. He's the author most recently of freedom for sale,
and is now an advisor to Google on free expression. His debate partner is Renata Avila, a human
rights lawyer who leads Creative Commons in Guatamala. She coheads as well the technology
for transparency initiative. And like one of our speakers already, she's a contributing
writer for the global voices collective. On the other side, Stewart Baker was the first
assistant secretary for policy at the U.S. department for Homeland Security. He's also
served as general counsel of the National Security Agency.
In other words, he's been in the middle of some of the toughest debates that there are
about Internet security, privacy, and the like.
Today, he's a partner in the Washington alarm of Steptoe & Johnson.
His partner is Noomane Fehri, an elected member now of the Tunisian national constitutional
assembly, yes, that's the post-revolution Tunisian parliament. He is also an expert
on information technology. And I think he'll bring us a valuable perspective of a society
that's in transition on exactly these questions. For our format today, we'll let each of the
panelists make a five-minute opening statement. I'll then ask them a few questions, and then
we'll let them ask questions of each other. In the last 30 minutes, we'll open it up to
all of you. We're going to alternate our opening statements between the two tables, and we'll
start with John Kampfner. Thank you.
>>John Kampfner: Thank you very much, Susan. I have a win-win situation, because either
I get things going and stimulate debate, or you'll all think, well, things can only get
better after my presentation. So either way, it's great to be the first
speaker of the first debate on the first morning of Internet at Liberty.
I don't have a prepared speech. I have some thoughts. And these are broader societal thoughts
that play into the discussion of the Internet. And I hope by starting from a slightly more
ethereal level, we can think a little bit more about people's priorities.
There are, of course, no absolutes between liberty and security. This was the theme of
my last book, freedom for sale. And my question that I asked all the way through
is that why do people around the world, irrespective of the political HUE, the political systems,
or the cultures of the countries in which they live, why are people willing to trade
security and the prospect of prosperity, why they are prepared to trade liberty for the
prospect of security or prosperity. And, fundamentally, we need to understand
what is going on when we look at the Internet, which is obviously on the front line of this
debate with the competing rights of free expression, privacy, anonymity, security, and cultural
norms. I just want to give a couple of quotes, first
of all, from the book, which I hope sets the perspective, and then develop those thoughts.
In order to succeed in the moral void post-1989, the new authoritarians made a pact with their
respective peoples. Although the precise rules vary from country to country, the template
is always the same: Repression is selective. It is confined to those who openly challenge
the status quo. After all, how many people really wish to
rattle the cage? A distinction is created by clever authoritarians
between public freedoms and private or privatized freedoms.
Public freedom is the public space. It is the space that governments and states believe
to be their own. Private space is the freedom to lead your life the way you wish to, the
freedom to travel, the freedom to educate your kids the way you wish to, the freedom
to wear the clothes that you wish, the freedom to lead your own private life.
As long as the latter, the private freedoms, are guaranteed, states feel more comfortable
in accreting ever more power for the public space. And that is the clever lesson that
21st century authoritarian governments and many western governments are learning from
the mistakes of 20th century dictatorships, by giving people private freedoms, one can
more easily than one realizes be lulled into thinking that one is sufficiently free.
And that is the uncomfortable, that is in many ways the dark challenge that faces all
of us here. I led the U.K.'s main for expression organization
for four years. My journalism as bureau chief in Moscow and East Berlin when the wall came
down has always been driven by a propulsion towards freedom and seeing people break down
barriers. But all the way, since 1989, what I call a
new phenomenon, which is what I call consumerism as an anesthetic that dulls the political
senses has grown. And for all the fantastic work that free expression groups, many of
whom add index I have worked with over the last four years, do, there is an enormous
societal challenge facing all of us, which is to ensure that public freedoms, the freedom
to participate in the public realm, are valued at least as much as private freedoms that
many people have taken from the Internet. And it is those private freedoms that people
are enjoying. What is so important for NGOs in this constant push-pull with authorities
is to promote the right of people to be active in the public realm.
>>Susan Glasser: Thank you very much. And on time, too.
We'll go to our next opening statement, from Stewart Baker.
>>Stewart Baker: Thanks, Susan. On behalf of the guys in ties, please don't vote against
us for that reason. [ Laughter ]
>>Stewart Baker: I think just looking at the question, we have to win, because the question
is, should laws and regulations that affect the Internet favor the individual over the
state. So the principle is, always favor the individual over the state.
You know, as Susan said, we've had this argument for hundreds of years. And you just imagine
if the question were, should tax laws always favor the individual over the state? You'd
say, well, -- or how about reckless driving laws, should they always favor the individual
over the state? Again, you're not going to be comfortable with a question like that,
because the answer can't be yes. And the same is true, I would suggest, when
we come to laws that regulate the Internet. Should libel laws always favor the individual
over the state? Now you don't know whose side the individual is on. The state is enforcing
rules about the protection of people online or off. Should child *** laws always
favor the individual over the state? Again, you kind of say, you mean the defendant or
you mean the kid? And that is, at bottom, the tension that I
see in this question. We have stated a principle which sounds pretty
plausible until you start breaking it down to say, well, what does it really mean in
specific cases? And I think one of the interesting questions
is how we got to a place where this principle would sound plausible. And I would suggest
it is in part because we all celebrated, as these old clunky 20th century authoritarian
states ran up against nimble tech-adapted dissenters who just took them down because
they couldn't keep up. And it was -- it was exciting. It was a thrill. It was a joy to
watch. And, you know, we can only hope that Bashar
Al-Assad meets the same fate. But the fact is, people could do things in
revolutions, they come together and make self-sacrifices. They voluntarily organize in ways that don't
make sense for a long-haul organization of society.
And we're watching as the enthusiasm of revolution all across the Arab world turns into a little
bit of doubt about exactly how to organize the society that has been freed from the authoritarians.
And that's the hard work. And I would suggest that the real fight is, actually, what John
talked about, the 20th century authoritarians will fall. The effort to build quasi totalitarian
states will not succeed, given the threatening of this technology. And the construction of
soft authoritarian states, 21st century authoritarian states is the struggle that we will all live
with. But I would submit that we are not advancing
our goals here of fighting 21st century authoritarianism by trying to defend principles that at the
end of the day are indefensible. There is no way to say the state should always lose
when it tries to regulate the Internet, because sooner or later, in a properly organized society,
the state is representing us, because who else will do it? This is how we make the rules
that we want to be governed by. And when we make those rules, we ought to be able to enforce
them. And instead of fighting the idea of enforcing rules, including regulating Internet
activity, we should be looking for ways to distinguish between the kinds of regulation
that are offensive to democratic values and those that support democratic values.
>>Susan Glasser: Thanks, Stewart. All right, Renata, your turn. Disagree with
him, please. >>Renata Avila: Well, before I start my statement,
I want to remind attendees that not far from here, in Alexandria, a secret grand jury is
investigating Internet activists from at least four different countries in the world after
the publication on the Internet of a video by WikiLeaks, which exposed serious human
rights abuses and crimes against humanity, crimes against children, crimes against journalists.
And the crimes exposed in the video remain an impunity, but at the very least, we know
about it. Everyone in the world knows about it. And that's one of the virtues of the Internet
nowadays. So the Internet has become a public tool to
make -- to let us know about serious breaches to international humanitarian law, to let
us know about corruption, about bad governments or bad individuals doing bad things around
the world. And national and regional security issues
of the U.S. and the European Union are threatening -- are actually threatening fundamental rights
of citizens outside the jurisdiction of U.S. or E.U. And in countries like mine, which
is a good example to make my point, I will explain a little bit about the situation in
my country. In the '80s, Guatamala survived one of the
most brutal armed conflicts, justified by the national security doctrine to protect
citizens, to protect us, the government surveilled, harassed, and disappeared up to 40,000 people.
And communications were at the very core of the military strategy. They had the most advanced
technology to do so at the time. The Army was -- by your readings, they will follow
you everywhere. They will find a subversive book in your flat, then you will be killed
or disappear. Belonging to a group or supporting a cause will be enough to kill you.
Can you imagine such a scenario nowadays, with all the tools governments have access
to, and all the tools that private companies provide?
That is extremely important in the United States, where the most important companies
controlling the key layers of the Internet are based.
In Latin America nowadays, the region I come from, a region of democracy, highly corrupt
governments in bed with Mafias and parallel powers, they have access to such technology.
So nowadays, the Internet is the only tool left in many contexts, is the only tool that
journalists who are often silent have to break such silence. And anonymity is crucial in
countries like Mexico, for example. It's the only protection an individual or a group might
have to organize, inform others, and expose crime and corruption.
So my invitation here in this conference to global citizens is to defend our right to
know, our right to express ourselves in an anonymous way as part of our freedom of expression.
Our privacy and our future as free human beings, because we are heading towards a society of
total control that is very similar to totalitarian regime, controlled by some powerful governments
and powerful corporations who are totally ignoring human rights standards and who are
totally using the argument, "Oh, we want to protect our citizens, our citizens, not the
global citizens," to irrespect citizens outside the areas they want to protect.
So no one has -- Another topic that I want to raise quickly is the bad use of copyright
laws to censor us and how it is not even justified and it is on national security, I mean, but
it is used to prevent people from expressing themselves, and it is part of the national
policy and the international policy of many countries.
>>Susan Glasser: Thank you very much, Renata. Okay. So rounding off the introductory statements
is Noomane. >>Noomane Fehri: Hi. So I'll give my part
of this tie divide. Firstly, I'd like to say that our -- the people
who elected me rather than the Tunisian government, so I'm an elected member of the Tunisian assembly.
And I think the main question is, the main thing which we need to be careful with is,
government is not the state. And this question is there because a lot of
people and a lot of governments, they consider themselves as the representative, as the sole
representative of the state. Therefore -- and they put those in favor of government rather
than those in favor of the state. That's the real question.
I'll talk to you about Tunisian before the revolution, before 14th of January, where,
frankly speaking, laws were there to favor the government. My children didn't want to
go back to Tunisian because that was no YouTube. And that's a real statement, because the kids
wanted to share information, to express themselves. They didn't have any problem to move back
to Tunisian if they had a way to interact with other people in -- who they shared the
same experiences with. So, however, when Facebook was opened in Tunisia,
which was roughly a couple years before the revolution, if Facebook was there, the revolution
wouldn't have happened. Maybe not at that time.
When we started to share information, when we started to look at -- to receive real information
about what's happening next door in the other town and when we started to have -- to build
a citizenship feeling that we have to do something about it, until the 14th of January, when
naturally, without any person having organized it, we all went into the street, and we all
demanded that the current regime -- I will use a proper word -- leaves.
And the -- and then it happened. And that was an incredible feeling. It wouldn't have
happened if we didn't have a free Internet, I'd say relatively free Internet.
Then what happened after? After, we had people who started to bombard each other with information.
First the information was really reliable, and people were sharing information, what's
happening, because time was really -- in one day, we were doing things which we wouldn't
normally do in a month. And there is overload of information.
And, suddenly, the information becomes unreliable. And that's the problem now: The information
is unreliable. Before, the space of information was controlled by government. Now the space
of information is controlled by group of people who -- who we cannot guarantee the reliability
of information, and the space of information was guaranteed by lobbyists, by lobbyist,
by political parties, et cetera. And that's where -- the result of that, that people will
not go back to that place as a source of information. So what we are trying to do is to in the -- as
you know, we are writing our constitution right now. And we would like -- a lot of people,
a lot of us, I hope, that we will be the majority of us would like to make sure that open GOV
principles should be in the constitution. We are trying to make sure that we have a
constitutional commission for transparency, to guaranty the right to access to the information.
To answer strictly the question, filtering, filtering information? No. We should not filter
information except in few cases. Child ***, as we mentioned and others. Monitoring the
Internet? No. Except following somebody who is unlawful, known to be unlawful, And accessing
individual information? Absolutely not, except in very few cases. And the difficulty is in
what are these cases that we will need to access and deliver information. But let me
remind you again, if the -- we didn't have access to free Internet, the Tunisian revolution
wouldn't be there. Gadhafi would maybe still be in power. The Yemenite, and the Nobel Prize,
would never be there today. Today, as we speak, we have an election in Egypt. And Internet
and free internet play a big role in that. Thank you.
>>Susan Glasser: Thank you very much. Great opening statements. So now we move into the
question round. I am going to go back to each of our panelists. They will have four minutes
to respond to each question. So, John, I'm going to go back to you since you led off.
Here's my question for you. Not everybody on the Internet is a good guy, right? Not
everybody is a liberal revolutionary. I want to probe, what is your sense of what limits,
if any, are appropriate given that? >>John Kampfner: That's a very good opening
question that allows me -- I mean, just by way of introduction, I mean, when Noomane
talks about information, the reliability of information, there are two words that always
put a chill down my spine. One word is reliable. And the other word is responsible. Who is
to determine notions of reliability and responsibility? And with all due respect, if it is politicians,
governments, or other people in suits determining -- I'm in a suit --
>>Stewart Baker: With ties? >>Susan Glasser: Dress code is outside of
our speech rules. >>John Kampfner: When he talked about is it
legitimate to follow people who the state knows to be unlawful? Again, that puts a chill
down my spine. Now, any advocate of free expression knows the original shouting fire in a crowded
room, get out. You can say, well, as soon as you state that there are exceptions to
the rule, then there are no absolutes and, therefore, there are no principles. Everything
is relative. Well, of course, everything is relative. Child ***, the issue that,
while being absolutely crucial for any parent or any -- I almost said it myself -- responsible
citizen, and always thrown as one of the great catch-alls. It is a catch-all. There is a
bad, bad world out there. There are bad, bad people out there. And you should feel very,
very scared. We have had it here in this country with the laws passed not just since 9/11,
but prior to 9/11, whenever there are issues of national emergency in my country, U.K.,
we have all series of laws including, perhaps, the western world's most hideously repressive
libel laws, that thanks to the lobbying that we were doing, the government is introducing
changes to that. But you have an absolute -- you have official secrets laws. You have
a whole area of legislation that is designed to militate against the free flow of information.
That was even before all the new filtering and surveillance issues. I'm talking not about
authoritarian states, I'm talking about western democracy. My fellow Googlers will, I think,
corroborate this fact. It is Germany that has more take-down notices requirements than
any other country. In the U.K., 600 public bodies -- I'm not just talking about the domestic
and international securities services -- have the right to snoop on your e-mail traffic
and your phone traffic for issues of irresponsibility that involve illegitimate reading of your
dog fouling on the street. You have this sense of notions of responsibility and notions of
security. And just one thought for people to ponder, when can a state ever promise total
security? Promise you that, whatever happens, we will keep you safe. Once you go down that
route, just as there are no absolutes in free expression, but there must always be a presumption
toward first amendment principles of free expression. When you restrict those principles,
you almost knowingly do so, so the state can do what it can to preserve your security.
But when it secures or demands for itself or when people, as is often the case, demand
of it the right to be kept totally safe, CCV cameras, whether it is the only way to keep
you totally safe is to watch you all the time. It is to read all your e-mail traffic, to
read all your text traffic. Because even if you are not doing something that is irresponsible
or unreliable, you might, inadvertently, know somebody who is. On this issue, of course,
the Internet is a reflection of broader society. There must be a presumption toward the individual
and where the state seeks to limit that, whether it is through surveillance or any other issue
relating to the Internet, it must do so almost apologetically and in as narrow a set of parameters
as it is possible to construct. >>Susan Glasser: Stewart, I'm not going to
argue with you about the whole tax thing. So let's just leave that aside. I want to
pick up actually on this point that John has just made. Here's my question to you. The
United States and other western governments, do you view them as unequivocal good guys
when you are looking at prioritizing their roles when it comes to insuring rights of
minorities, for example, as you pointed out in your opening statement? What about the
ways in which the United States and other countries not only have imposed a degree of
surveillance on their own citizens -- John mentioned Germany. What about the U.S. role
and that of U.S. companies in supporting authoritarian regimes that censor the Internet around the
world? We mentioned Assad. Do you believe the United States should be doing more to
regulate and stop that kind of behavior? >>Stewart Baker: Compared to what, would be
the fair response. You show me a country that has a different approach to the Internet that
is better and I'd like to hear the defense of them. But, in fact, on the whole, I think
this is not a technology issue. It is not a question of do you regulate the technology
and, therefore, you're evil; or, do you not and therefore you're good. Everybody does
which suggests that maybe you can't really organize a human society without some regulation
with what people are doing on the Internet just as you can't run a society without regulating
what people do on the street. And to say, well, there ought to be a presumption against
regulation, that's probably true. That's probably a reasonable response to almost any assertion
of state power. Show us why the state needs this authority before you undertake it. But
the fact is that that argument been made to democratic populations around the world and
they have said, yeah, do that. On the question -- and the problem with that is, that takes
you back to talking about something other than technology policy. You can't say I have
a technological solution here and the solution is to introduce this technology or to withhold
another form of technology. That's simply not going to be a plausible response and it's
not going to get at the question of whether the rules are being set with the consent by
and large of the governed or self-appointed elite or authoritarian government. I will
give you one example that I am quite familiar with. Wiretaps. Every mobile switch sold around
the world by every company comes with a wiretap feature built in so that the government can
tap calls. It requires that they do it one at a time. But every switch of that kind can
be wiretapped. Why? Not because busher AL-Assad asked for it, but because of FBI asked for
it and German and British interior ministries demanded that any switches sold in their territory
allow them to carry out wire types of criminals who otherwise were going to be very early
adapters. And they did do that. Once they did it, it became available to everybody.
The idea that you're going to then say to Assad, you can't have that, it is implausible
both because of technology has already been built and because Assad can say, as the FBI
can say, we have crooks too. You might not like what we do with all of this. But you
can't determine what we do with it by setting a technology policy. This is much more fine
grained and much more about governance than about the technology.
>>Susan Glasser: Renata mentioned Wikileaks. Not everybody will use the same way Wikileaks
has, what about al-Qaeda, which has the tools Wikileaks has to interrupt and disrupt information
to support their cause but in a way to support terrorism. Do you believe there is an absolute
right for groups like al-Qaeda to freely and openly use the tools of the Internet in the
same way that you or I might have? >>Renata Avila: Well, I think that any use
of the Internet shall be governed by international principles, human rights, international human
rights standards and that -- I'm quite concerned about this terrorism label. Okay, in the case
of al-Qaeda, it is undeniable. But the use of the terrorism laws to suppress dissent
and I think that this preemptive censorship is dangerous. I was recently reading a case
of someone who was researching some topics and was academic and was surveilled because
of the terrorism laws. We shall agree on a community of set of principles that all governments
should stick to and that -- I mean, a national problem with security shouldn't ban citizens
from the Internet. Of course, I am totally against prior censorship because I think that
it is better to know what they are doing, what they are discussing and what is going
on open to the public eye and open -- the more people who can read and access such information,
the more people who can rise the alerts. If you ban groups like al-Qaeda from the Internet,
what will happen? I mean, they will still communicate with each other but they will
do it in absolute obscurity. You will not see the possibility to see their points and
to analyze their movements. >>Susan Glasser: So, Noomane, in Tunisia,
the Bali regime was a leader in censoring the Internet and really making an extreme
case of restricting people's individual rights. Since the revolution, there have been new
calls by different groups of people to protect, for example, what they call cultural norms
or traditional norms. You see Islamist groups saying there should be more regulation of
the Internet in Tunisia reconfiguring a new and different kind of democratic government
in the country. How do you balance that? Is it only wrong to censor the Internet when
you disagree with the regime? And as you are drawing the constitution, do you believe that
the first amendment is a model that would apply to your country and to others, or is
that something that would exist only in the context here of western political freedoms?
>>Noomane Fehri: Thank you. First I need -- I would like to thank John for agreeing with
me on the fact that we need to narrow the sphere where to access information to people
as narrow as people. >>John Kampfner:I'm not agreeing with you.
>>Susan Glasser: We will come back to that. >>Noomane Fehri: The second thing is this
notion of good and bad. This notion is a religious notion and I can promise a secular party,
it's not up to the government or to say these guys are good, these guys are bad. It's up
to the individual when they interact with them to say, do I like to interact with these
people or I don't like to interact with these people. It has nothing to do with absolute
value. These are good. These are bad people. The third remark is the Arab democracy. You
cannot imagine how proud I am when I say Arab democracy -- maybe it will be slightly different
from the western democracy. Maybe they obey 80% of the rule but not 100% of the rules.
It doesn't mean that they are not democracies. So to come back to the question of how do
we deal with the religious people saying that we need to censor the Internet because of
our religious beliefs -- >>Susan Glasser: Or cultural norms.
>>Noomane Fehri: Or cultural norm. I want to tell you that they lost the case. There
was a case by the government to censor the Internet. It went to the tribunal in Tunisia
and they lost. Internet in Tunisia right now is still free. It is up to you and me and
other people to make sure that it continues to be free with the norms that we will agree
on. Now, the question is which norm we agree on? Should we prevail the interest of the
-- should we define the rules by having the majority of the people decide on the rules?
Or each individual can keep its freedom to whatever he wants without bothering the others?
That, I must admit, is not found yet. It will be -- we have another six months to debate
it, I hope. But one thing is sure, that transparency and
civil society involvement and the right to protect the people we disagree with are the
way to go. My role is to protect, if I was in government,
is to protect the people I personally disagree with. And if it gets to that state of discussion,
then we can move forward. And we will -- but we will go -- be away from
the previous regime. I'm not sure if I answered all of your questions.
>>Susan Glasser: The First Amendment, yes or no, applies to Tunisian? Is that a good
model for your new constitution? >>Noomane Fehri: I wouldn't know the First
Amendment, your policies for that. >>Susan Glasser: It's very simple, Congress
shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech and expression.
>>Noomane Fehri: Absolutely applies. >>Susan Glasser: Quick point of personal --
>>John Kampfner: I wanted to come back on something that Stewart said, absolutely right,
mobile technology being used, whether in Syria or elsewhere, it has been installed at the
request of western governments. You look at leaving aside the rights and the
wrongs of the WikiLeaks case, and one could argue that in great detail for a very long
amount of time. The somewhat hysterical response of the Justice
Department when the fracas was at its peak was manna from heaven for Putin, for the Chinese,
for any repressive governments in the Middle East or elsewhere.
It gave them, as did David Cameron's initial response to the riots last August in the U.K.,
his initial response was, "How did they happen?" "Oh, Prime Minister, it was BlackBerry Instant
Messenger." "Well, close it down."
And then the foreign office said to him, "Well, actually, that would make the propagation
of our foreign policy -- encouraging open information, encouraging instant communication
with people -- a little bit more difficult to sustain."
Whenever western governments reach for the security agenda above all else, whether it
is legitimate in individual cases or not, it gives a wonderful get-out clause for authoritarian
leaders to harbor on. It may be entirely illegitimate, but they use the perception of moral equivalence
to pursue their own agendas. And that is just something policymakers here and in other Western
governments should be more conscious of than they currently are.
>>Susan Glasser: Okay. All right. So we're in the asking questions of each other phase.
You've already had sort of half of one here, John. So, Renata, why don't you jump in, and
you can ask either one of your colleagues. >>Renata Avila: Yes. Well, I was very interested
in this surveillance by design included in any and every mobile phone, tracking everyone,
and putting in danger everyone, or maybe saving from the bad guys, criminals.
So I was wondering if Tunisian government is thinking about adopting the opposite, model
of privacy by design instead of surveillance by design, like sticking to -- and protecting
the privacy and the security of citizens, or not?
>>Noomane Fehri: So -- may I? I think, again, I'm from the opposition, not
from the government. However, what we -- what we all agree, at least most of us, I think,
agree on, that access to information, freedom of expression is the norm, transparency is
the norm. Even in our debates inside the constitution, we insisted that it's 100% transparent, access
to the media, et cetera, with the exception, and the exception is, if there is a reason
why we should, privately, we decide on it together. So the freedom is the norm. Access
to the information by the government will not be the rule, definitely will not be the
rule. Did I answer to your question?
>>Renata Avila: I was more concerned about privacy of the citizens. Because too often,
governments now are -- because it's so easy to monitor citizens. There are, like, implementing
not only this -- deploying technology, but implementing laws that allow them -- that
give -- >>Susan Glasser: Basically, you're asking
if there's going to be a law to protect citizens' right of privacy as well as their right of
speech. >>Renata Avila: Yeah. And mechanisms to monitor
the -- those watching citizens, yeah. >>Noomane Fehri: I hope so. I hope so. And
we'll fight for it. However, we need to be very careful. For example,
I tell you, the French does not give the electoral role to political party to do advertising
or the -- in U.K., they give the electoral role, the list of people who are to political
party to use them. So which way? Should we -- And both are democracies.
Which way to go? Should we forbid the small parties to get access to the electoral role,
therefore, we favor the big parties who have more access? Or should we not?
So the problem -- it's quite difficult question. But definitely the privacy is the norm. However,
there are some things to make sure to protect the -- we need to protect the right of minorities.
And to do that, maybe we need to give access to people, to some of the information, to
use them to promote democracy. >>Susan Glasser: Stewart, question for your
opponents? >>Stewart Baker: Okay, John, suppose I took
to heart your suggestion that reliability and responsibility shouldn't be the province
of government, and I said, but we surely have to have reliable statements, responsible people
and action online. And I've got this brilliant idea for crowd sourcing it. That is to say,
everybody will get a reputation for telling the truth or not telling the truth. They'll
be held responsible for the things they say and do online. Only one thing we have to do:
Get rid of anonymity. Where do you come out? How -- how are you
going to maintain responsibility for behavior without holding people in the real world responsible
for what they've done online? Okay.
[ Laughter ] >>John Kampfner: I think you've had a crowd-sourced
response. [ Laughter ]
[ Applause ] >>Susan Glasser: Okay. Next question.
>>John Kampfner: I'm not known for my brevity, but I think that's the answer.
>>Susan Glasser: John, it's your turn to ask a question.
>>John Kampfner: Right. When -- Okay. So on -- when -- Noomane, you
were talking about 80%. Now, this issue of, I think, giving percentages to levels of democracy,
whatever, I don't think it's necessarily effective. But the issue of cultural specificity which
I think you were alluding to is a very interesting one.
I -- In researching my last book, I spent a little time in the country of my birth,
Singapore, and it has always been Lee Kuan Yew's contention that in order to preserve
the social fabric of an inter-ethnic society and stability and wealth -- highest per capita
GDP in the world, certainly was at the time -- you need this sense of societal restraint
and responsibility otherwise known as the lack of free expression.
But being -- it is an absolutely -- It is an important point. And it's more an invitation
for you to flesh out what it is. I mean, I look -- This issue of, in a different
geographical context, Asian values is an intensely interesting one. I also think it's an entirely
spurious one as well. Every country, every region, every continent, every part of every
country has its own specificities. Communities have their own sensitivities, and they're
entirely right to have them. Are you saying that free expression should
be curtailed over and above existing standards and existing generic laws in order to cater
to these real or perceived sensitivities? >>Noomane Fehri: Absolutely not. Freedom of
expression has to be guaranteed by constitution, by law, by activism, by everything. Freedom
of expression is the only way to guarantee an equilibrium.
However, regarding the question of cultural specificities, I know that that argument was
used by Singaporean government to maintain an authoritarian regime. Then people will
ask themselves -- and I know the argument, having read some books about it and having
lived in Singapore for a year -- did the Singaporean government achieve what the people of Singapore
wanted to achieve in a good sense? Probably in a lot of cases.
Could -- did they reach a level of where freedom of expression needs to be much better than
it is? Absolutely, yes. And the -- to be back to the question, I do
not know the answer of what are the specific -- cultural specificities that we will have
in our democracies, because we are on a journey that we just started and we are looking for
it. We need to find the equilibrium that maintain, maintain the -- maintain the -- not only the
social stability, but the moving forward of the people.
I -- The answer is, I don't know, but we will discover together with our opponents. Our
opponents in the country are from the -- are more from the Singaporean trend, if you like,
or even more. I am more from the western trend. But I know that the -- the end result is somewhere
in between, that we don't know what it is yet. But if it is different from the western
democracy, so be it. It's not -- it is not an issue, as long as the end game is to serve
the need of the people. And here I need to add one sentence. It's not about culture only.
It's about education. When we reach a level of education of one country, naturally, the
culture becomes very open. Therefore, you accept every -- a lot of different cultures.
When the level of education is low, you tend to be protective of your own culture. So our
only way is to keep banging on helping education, people to get educated, to reach that level.
That I do not know what it is yet, that equilibrium. We don't know. Thank you.
>>Susan Glasser: It's your turn as well to ask a question of your colleagues.
>>Noomane Fehri: So our -- ask our -- question to you in return now.
The -- In which cases you see that we need to access information -- that the governments
need to access individual information, which strict cases we need? Does the government
have the right to access it? And in -- if so, in which specific cases?
>>Renata Avila: I think the access to information of citizens shall be the exception and not
the general rule. If information of a citizen is required to perform a public activity,
then it is valid. For example, I need to have a number to get health care. But I do not
need my government to have complete and absolute access and make public my health records,
for example. I am very worried about this, because countries
are -- for example, in Latin America, in many countries of the world and citizens in my
side of the world, they don't even know, they have an ID card, or they have an ID card with
minimum data on it. The trend in Latin America is to get more and more information about
the citizens, from fingerprints, to the iris, to all the biometric information possible.
And this information goes to hands that are not exactly reliable.
Do you have the experience -- Now you have a democracy and a good government. You don't
know in the future. So every time that I give away my data, I don't know the hands this
information will be into. And information is such a powerful weapon, I mean. It's such
a -- in the wrong hands, I -- Now there are even systems can track my face if I am at
a demonstration, for example. My anonymity that I want to keep, it is not possible anymore.
And one more thing. It is not only my government holding my information. They like to share.
They love to share it. It is very different. They have a war against sharing, citizens
sharing information with each other. They put barriers, copyrights, and blah, blah,
blah. But -- [ Laughter ]
>>Renata Avila: -- they love to share information about us. And we don't even know who they
share the information with. Like, every time that we visit a country and
we put the fingerprints and the camera, then, immediately -- or every time that we pay with
a credit card, every time that we check in to a hotel, all this information goes to -- to
the same pool. And governments who are -- which I do not necessarily agree with or who I don't
even know have complete access to my data. And we don't have mechanisms to protect ourselves.
So the less we give away, the more that we can preserve our sphere of privacy.
>>Susan Glasser: Well, it is amazing how much our conversation converges these two debates
about speech and privacy often end up as one discussion.
Renata, we're going to do a final lightning round of questions among the panelists, and
then we'll get to the questions of the audience. So you have a question for Stewart.
>>Renata Avila: Yes, I have a question. [ Laughter ]
>>Renata Avila: Yes. So too often, international security issue is raised. And, yes, national
security for the citizens within one state, without considering the security of citizens
abroad. I would like to know how can we move towards
an international standard to protect the security and while respecting the rights of a global
village, a global world? So how can we all agree as community without sacrificing the
rights of some country to protect the rights of other countries?
>>Stewart Baker: So wish there were an easy answer to that. I don't think there is an
easy answer to that. We are slowly seeing the emergence of some norms. Companies that
provide Web mail services insist on seeing court orders and providing information in
response to particular crimes. In some cases, they store their data in countries that are
particularly demanding about the kinds of crimes that can be investigated. And that
is slowly building a kind of international understanding about when you can and cannot
get access to certain kinds of information. But, you know, we're going to run into the
problem I described earlier. Everybody has criminals. Everybody has a legitimate basis
for arguing that they have a security-based reason to monitor certain kinds of communications.
And it's very difficult certainly for private actors to say, "Oh, no, you have no legitimate
basis for doing that." And so as soon as you set a ground level for security, you're going
to have abuses. >>Susan Glasser: Okay. No, we're going to
run out of time to get to our audience. So I want to encourage everybody to give short
answers. Stewart, you have one final question to the
other side. >>Stewart Baker: For Renata, and I'll come
back to -- probably imprudently -- anonymity. [ Laughter ]
>>Stewart Baker: You -- you were enthusiastic about WikiLeaks as a human rights issue. Some
of the people whose information was disclosed had been promised by the U.S. government that
they would be protected from their government when they came into dissent from what their
government was doing or to provide information about what their government activities were.
Some of them were farmers who were reporting on the Taliban's activity in their village.
So is it that their anonymity isn't worth anything? What's the human rights side of
this issue? >>Renata Avila: That's a very good question
to ask the government of the United States in the first place.
[ Laughter ] >>Stewart Baker: No, Julian Assange published
it. Is he a human rights hero or an anonymity-busting bad guy.
>>Renata Avila: I want to go back to the original question that was, okay, I think that the
responsibility was on the government, these people that went to the embassies, trust,
and the fact that it was a huge security breach on the system, and the fact that this information
was already shared with more than 4 million people. I mean, information shared with 4
million people, how -- what is the reasonable level of privacy that you can expect? I mean,
I don't know if these people that went to embassies were informed that the information
that they were providing to an ambassador or to a secretary was shared with four million
people. I mean, I think that that's confidential information. The duty to protect is in the
government and not on citizens making publicly available if the government was not careful
enough. >>Susan Glasser: Okay. Good question. Good
answer. John, final question.
[ Applause ] >>John Kampfner: Just one little -- if I can
be permitted, one little cheap shot and then one question.
>>Susan Glasser: Can you form it -- can you do it in the form of a question?
>>John Kampfner: I'll try to do both in the same question.
Stewart, your -- when you say every state has a legitimate right to go after criminals,
that's what the Russians said -- the Soviets said when they went after Andre Sakharov.
That's what the Chinese say when they go after AI Weiwei.
And if it is through the definition of a criminal code, however legitimate --
>>Stewart Baker: Precisely why this is a hard problem, not resolvable by first principles.
>>John Kampfner: My actual question goes around on the issue of transparency as maybe an interim
measure to build confidence in the benign nature of the accretion of information by
the state. I put "benign" in reverse commas.
Five European countries are in the process of developing transparency reports, obviously,
not naming names and not giving information they wouldn't want to give, but about the
levels of surveillance, the amount of surveillance, whether it is mobile surveillance, email surveillance,
whatever, raw numbers, everything else. Would you recommend the United States joining
that course of action? >>Stewart Baker: The U.S. does disclose a
fair amount of information about its wiretaps by law. There's a report that they have to
do. I've never thought it was all that useful. It's very hard to get deep into these things
without getting into information that shouldn't be disclosed to the targets of the intercepts.
But there's nothing wrong with discussing this -- Google has actually probably the best
set of data on national practices in this regard. And my guess is, wherever the U.S.
came up on that standard, it would be one-tenth of level of Italy.
>>Susan Glasser: Okay. Final question, and then we'll get to the audience.
>>Noomane Fehri: Really, the question, if government does not go after criminal, who
does? >>John Kampfner: Absolutely. One government's
criminal is another government's freedom fighter. >>Susan Glasser: Okay.
[ Applause ] >>Susan Glasser: On that note, I know there's
a lot of questions in the audience. Please give us your name. Tell us where you're
from. And try to make it a question as well as a statement.
>>> Hello. Tom Risen with New American Foundation. This is for Noomane and Mr. Baker. First of
all, Noomane, congratulations on your work in Tunisian.
You said that your government would not surveil citizens unless they were known to be criminal.
I would like you and Mr. Baker to talk about the definitions of data collection. Because
the Utah data center, correct me if I'm wrong, is collecting data on U.S. citizens who have
no criminal record. How are you going to define who is known to be criminal? And I would like
Mr. Baker to comment on that practice by the (indiscernible).
>>Stewart Baker: Yeah, you're wrong. You asked me to correct you if you're wrong.
[ Laughter ] >>Stewart Baker: That article was one of the
weirdest that Jim Bamford has ever produced and full of kind of innuendo rather than facts.
What he knows is that it's a big data storage facility. And he intuits that somehow it must
be about us. There's really not evidence about that.
It is important to save data. I mean, everybody is saving data. Big data is where we're going.
And it has helped us to catch terrorists in the past, and it will help us in the future.
So being able to sift through large amounts of data to find patterns of behavior that
alert us to terrorist activity is part of what we're going to end up having to do.
>>Susan Glasser: Did you want to answer? >>Noomane Fehri: Very quickly, I have no problem
for collecting data. My problem is who accesses it and in which condition you access it. That's
the question, the hard bit. That's where we need to be extremely vigilant, who and how
you access this data. But accessing data for research, for hundreds
of things needs to -- you need to put the -- the right level of anonymity, if you like,
on it to use it for research and statistics, et cetera. But to use it for government issue,
again, we need to be extremely, extremely strict, and there should be a constitutional
commission outside the government who observe and monitor the behavior of any government,
how he access the data. That's what we are aiming to do. But it is not the case now,
because we are writing the constitution as we speak.
Yeah. >>Susan Glasser: Okay. Thank you.
Questions? >>> Hi. I'm Mary Joyce from the Meta-Activism
Project. And I'd like to propose a standard for legislating the Internet in democracies.
And then if you -- short, agree and disagree. The digital medium should not be used as a
legislative opportunity to roll back civil rights protections of the analog era.
Okay. So particularly privacy protections, due process,
for example, SOPA, PIPA, and CISPA, which I would say are rolling been civil rights
protections. First of all, do you think that's legitimate
that we can roll back civil rights protections in the digital era? Legislatively? By civil
design? >>Susan Glasser: We're quite a ways in before
our first reference to SOPA. So, Stewart, do you have a response?
[ Laughter ] >>Stewart Baker: Yeah, I'm proud to say that
I threw the first stone in the avalanche that took SOPA out. And I objected to it on the
grounds that it was going to break DNSSEC, it was inconsistent with DNSSEC, which was
important to securing communications on the Internet, which is the real human rights-civil
rights crisis that we face. So we've got authoritarian governments in our computers, watching us
at our computers, listening to us turning on our mikes and our cameras and recording
our keystrokes. And, you know, the privacy guys keep thinking that the threat is somehow
arising from efforts to control break-ins to computers.
But I did fight SOPA and take it out, or at least it got taken out. It was sort of like
a villager threw a stone from a mountainside, and the column of tanks stopped because of
the stone, and then an avalanche took them out.
But it was a dumb law. It was a bad law. And I'm glad it's dead.
I don't agree about CISPA. What CISPA does is undoes two kind of dumb privacy rules that
have turned out to be bad for security. These are rules that said, essentially, that
you can't share information if you're an ISP or a Web mail provider about your customers
to the government without a subpoena. You might say, well, that sounds reasonable,
it did sound reasonable about the law when it was passed. But it turns out that many
of the people who are sending us malware and using that in our computers to affect us and
attack us, are customers of the Web mail providers, of the ISPs. They are customers. You can't
share that information unless you determine individually, oh, this is it is a crime. Let's
give you a subpoena. Instead, what we should be doing.
As soon as we know there's a bad Web mail address sending malware, everybody who does
not want to receive malware should get the word and be able to put up barriers to being
to receiving that email. That's the only way you're going to keep that malware from being
opened on your systems. And if you can't share that information because of a dumb law from
the '80s, we ought to get rid of the dumb law from the '80s.
>>Susan Glasser: Any thoughts on this? >>Renata Avila: Yes, I totally agree with
Mary Joyce. But I will also add something. It is not only about local legislation, but,
actually, I think that countries should commit not to export bad laws. And the free trade
agreements now that are being negotiated around the world are exporting CISPA-plus models,
like, really pushing tiny governments in the areas of free trade to implement locally laws
that will be very bad for their citizens. So I would like to add --
>>Susan Glasser: Questions? >>> Good morning. My name is Mohammed Al-Abdallah,
an activist. My question is, is the Internet really governable? Could anybody really regulate
Internet? What Mubarak did in Syria, shutting down the Internet, pushing people to rely
on satellite Internet, they don't go through the ISP in Syria. That's another evidence
that nobody can regulate the Internet. If you want to comment about the -- it's clear
with al-Qaeda, what U.S. consider terrorism is not which is the case in a lot of Palestinian
groups, for example. Let me give another example of Google today. Due to U.S. sanctions in
Syria, some Google products are not available for good users in Syria. Blocked today is
Chrome available for download in Syria. As a U.S. company, we remain committed to full
compliance with U.S. export controls and sanctions. What is your opinion where there is a good
cases where good companies like Google comply with good governments, if I may consider the
U.S. one of those. [Laughter]
>>Susan Glasser: Everybody is against Stewart on this one.
>>Stewart Baker: So I -- the sanction regime are licensed through a system of licenses.
The United States government can license Google to sell their products if they think that
is going to have a beneficial effect for the people of Syria. You have to remember, that
Google Earth could be the immense value to people you wouldn't be quite as enthusiastic
about using it in Syria. So it's a hard question. But for sure we should be -- we should license
the use of, say, Gmail in Syria. >>Susan Glasser: Any response?
>>Noomane Fehri: Just one. I recommend Google not to comply with this.
>>Renata Avila: I think what you said is very important. I will quote an example. This terrorism
label to shut down networks is so tempting for governments. For example, in Panama, there
were some demonstrations of indigenous community. They were fighting for the rights. They were
publicly demonstrating against the government. And what the government did was to shut down
the mobile network because they quickly, without the trial, without anything, they say that
they are terrorists and that they were causing instability in Panama, and that's yet another
network to look at. For example, most of the people in Latin America,
they access the Internet by mobile phones. That's the way to create networks and to communicate.
What the result of that was, was community. They couldn't organize. They were without
mobile service for fourteen hours and the government achieved their objective. Their
objective of censorship of restricting the right of organization and the restricting
the freedom of expression of this community. >>Susan Glasser: We have a long line of questions.
We will try to get to as many as we can. Be brief.
>>> All right, my name is (saying name). My question is based on Stewart for the chairman
parliament, not effective to seek the criminals. Based on this, we need to know, the position
about this issue and let me show a short case that occurred at Brazil. Two guys develop
-- now we know it was two guys. Maintaining the web site with all kinds of criminal use.
***, other cases. These guys use the only kind of anonymity to keep their identity
secret. Two guys forget one interesting issue. We developed for ourselves one kind of investigation
that found two guys. The two guys are now jailed, arrested. The crime was stopped without
any kind of retention. What can you say about that?
>>Susan Glasser: Good question. >>Stewart Baker: So that's -- so the data
retention debate is an interesting one. It is an European debate more than an American
debate. We have never had data retention and we probably won't whereas Europe adopted it
after 9/11. It's -- one of the themes of my blog is that there are privacy victims all
over the world because of the unintended consequences of privacy laws. Data retention is an unintended
consequence of privacy laws because only in Europe under European laws is it necessary
to destroy data the minute you're done with it economically. You have no further use for
this data for your own business, you have to get rid of it right now. And you can't
keep it for 30 days even though you know predictably that's about when the police will realize
there's a *** site operating in this location and you won't be able to identify
the users without keeping the data for 30 days. In the U.S., it's much less demanding
in terms of getting rid of the data. Therefore, there isn't the need to mandate massive storage
of data as the Europeans do. >>Susan Glasser: Stewart, quickly, I think
he was asking, they could solve this crime through other methods and didn't need data
in order to crack the case. >>Stewart Baker: That often happens. Data
retention makes it easier. It doesn't guaranty you're going to solve the crime. It isn't
always necessary. And in my view, increasingly it's going to get harder and harder to disguise
your identity because the data is stored everywhere in massive amounts. And we can use that in
place of data retention as long as we don't have a bunch of data protection authorities
running around saying, You haven't used that data for five minutes, you have to get rid
of it. If we leave a little bit more discretion to the people they will be able to respond
to requests. >>> Hello, I'm (saying name). This debate
as many others of its type have evolved into the question of personal freedoms versus national
security. I have a question for Stewart Baker. >>Susan Glasser: I'm going to prioritize the
next question, anyone who has a question not for Stewart Baker.
>>> As somebody who during this debate has used U.S. internal law enforcement policy
as investigating the activities of the Al-Assad regime, we reject all anonymity except Afghan
farmers, I would like to hear whether you make any distinction between the security
of the state as an institution and security of the people living in the state and what
that distinction is. I'd also like to know if others on the panel have a distinction
on that. >>Stewart Baker: Thanks. I will start by saying
you've obviously misrepresented my views but I think everybody got that. Is there a difference?
Yeah. At the end of the day, government has to be protecting people. Government is fundamentally
inconsistent with democratic values. You can't protect yourself and the people or you shouldn't
protect yourself and the people who vote you in. It may be necessary to protect the confidentiality
of information for the government to function effectively in certain circumstances. But
the idea that the state has some independent justification from the value that they provide
to the people they serve to confidentiality strikes me as odd.
>>Susan Glasser: Was there any other thoughts on the panel?
>>John Kampfner: I was thinking on the previous question, the issue of data retention. Of
course, you could device a system where there is complete data retention for as long as
there is capacity. You could throw into that telephonic, CCTV video regulation and DNA
database retention. Throw them all into the pot, I guaranty you will have a far more secure
state and really, really bad criminals, who otherwise might not have been caught, will
be caught. If that's the price people wish to pay for better security, then that's a
legitimate point of view. It's just not one that I would share.
>>Susan Glasser: All right. So do we have a question not for Stewart Baker?
>>> I'm sorry, but my question is for Stewart Baker.
>>Susan Glasser: You're next in line. I will let you do it.
>>> My name is Nadim Kobeissi. My question is concerning what Mr. Baker said, what his
group has been discussing the domestic regulation of the Internet, and my concern is the domestic
regulation of the Internet inevitably will increase, the quickly already increasing,
politicization on a global level even when you regulate domestic. Examples of this exist
in the private sector, bluecoat, selling the Assad regime machine that is allowing him
to monitor his own people for nefarious ends. And you have policies in government initiatives
that also promote Internet freedom abroad, but promote Internet freedom abroad which
might be disadvantage to regimes that the U.S. government deems to be against its foreign
interests, which is fine. But these are examples in which the Internet is becoming more and
more politicized. If you start thinking it is a great idea to regulate the Internet on
a domestic level, this will just snowball into every government having fuller control
over its Internet and it becoming a more -- an area of more politicalization where governments
can just sort of have this sort of -- try to keep this upper hand on each other on having
the Internet as a playing card even, more of a playing card in foreign discussions with
each other as nations. Is that a danger? >>Stewart Baker: I think, welcome to the 21st
century. Yeah, this is where we are going. When you build something that becomes part
of the lives of everybody in Italy, they expect it to be Italian. They expect it to reflect
Italian values, to be part of Italian life and including Italian political life, and
the idea that you can somehow say, oh, no, I never meant to let you have views on this
technology gift that I gave you, you just have to take it, is unrealistic. This is inherently
political, just as all human life is inherently subject to politics. And the notion that somehow
the technology can rise above it and wipe out the politics, I just think is not realistic.
We are in a world where politics including international diplomacy are going to drive
a lot of things that happen on the Internet and resistance to that at a level of principle
is hopeless. >>Susan Glasser: We have time for one more
question. >>> I'm (saying name) from Finland. My question
is, while there are different aspects have been -- we have been speaking of. One is to
privacy, whether you can communicate in private. It is not what my question is about. It is
actually speaking publicly. As a politician, I am very interested on what you can blog
without getting into trouble and whether you can do that (inaudible) also. There have been
a lot of regulation on that. They want you to use your own name. They want to verify
that. And this comes to the question about your reliability. Whether people can trust
you based on your putting yourself on the line when you're using your own name. But
is it really required? Are all the people required to trust other people's writing based
on their prior reputation, based on themselves putting their name on the line? Where is critical
thinking nowadays? Is it really so that people cannot look at what is being written, use
multiple sources, just use their own thinking to figure out if that information is correct?
Why do we need to state the product -- they will give you one truth. If you want something
else, you have to read the Wall Street Journal or international media or blogs or something
else. If you read the Mirror, you get one truth. But good people have different opinions
and different facts and base their personal opinion based on multiple sources.
>>Susan Glasser: Thank you very much. So, John, you have been in the media for a long
time. The balance between anonymity and other sources of vetting and reputation and credibility.
>>John Kampfner: Well, I mean, I think -- if I understood the gentlemen correctly coming
from Finland, I mean, there's -- I can't see -- if you're writing a political blog in Finland,
I can't see the particular requirement for anonymity. I mean, I've always worked from
the assumption that pretty much anything you put in an email, if you don't want it to appear
in the pages of a newspaper, don't put it in an email. And the same with a blog.
I think it's entirely different in countries such as Guatamala, in countries where the
issue of personal protection and security are at stake. But the right to anonymity is
surely an inviolable one. But the politician who writes anonymously is probably not a politician,
in a Western society, who is very confident on their opinions.
>>Susan Glasser: Stewart, do you have any final word on anonymity here?
>>Stewart Baker: I'm going to defer to Noomane. >>Noomane Fehri: I think --
Thank you. I think nobody should be forced to write anonymously
anywhere in anyplace. That's obvious. And governments should ensure that.
However, we need to be -- we need to make the distinction between the law and the practice
of the law. For example, the gentleman from Finland, and
Finland, in your ID card is much more information than anybody in Europe would like to have.
And I'd like Tunisian to be like Finland, so I have no problem, I have no problem for
to put in the ID card the information you have, as long as we ensure that the use of
the information will be as strict as it should be.
So no anonymity. Write your name. And if somebody is -- will put you in jail because what you
think, we will be all for you, and we will go and get you out of jail.
I mean, it's obvious: We should not be forced to write anonymous stuff on the Internet.
And Internet should not be governed by -- internationally by politicians. But it should not be governed
by lobbyist groups, either. And I would recommend to Google as well for
the -- all the agreements they do with governments, with governments, to put on the -- to publish
the agreement, the details of the agreement, on how they deliver the data -- maybe they
are doing, by the way -- the data to that, in which condition they will accept to deliver
the personal information to the particular government.
>>Susan Glasser: Okay. >>Noomane Fehri: Maybe it's being done. I
don't know if it is being done. It's good. If it is not being done, please do it.
>>Susan Glasser: On that note, a challenge to our hosts to conclude this debate and this
first session. Thank you, all, so much. I think we're not going to take a vote, because
my guess is that, Stewart, you don't have that many converts here.
[ Laughter ] >>Susan Glasser: That's one takeaway I have
from a lively and important conversation. I want to thank all of our panelists and all
of you and wish you a good two days to come. Thank you.
>>Bob Boorstin: Okay? After half an hour or so, somebody will come
into the room and make an announcement and ask you to move to the second question.
As you move to the second question, I also ask you, while staying in the same room, to
change tables. Get it? >>Multiple Voices: Yes.
>>Bob Boorstin: Everybody got that. So that we change tables so that you meet new people,
you debate or discuss the question with new people, but you stay in the same room so that
we don't have a total marching band from an Ivy League college mess.
So let us again repeat this. January through June, 7th floor; July through
December, go to the 8th floor. We'll start with the question on cultural sensitivities.
And then about half an hour in, we'll change to the next one.
So let's take a short break. And, again, thank you to our panelists from
this morning.