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Description
People around the world increasingly depend on digitally networked products and services, from broadband and mobile data services, to devices, to social networks, to cloud computing. These “intermediaries” mediate relationships between individuals and their communities, economies, and governments. It is thus vital that they operate in a manner compatible with the realization of human rights online as well as offline.
Meanwhile the fallout of the Snowden revelations has amplified stakeholder distrust, prompting governments to push for domestic solutions that are not interoperable while the internet governance ecosystem itself is going through a period of uncertainty. The creation of mechanisms that will allow intermediaries to act in a constructive way for the fostering of human rights is key to improving trust across the global Internet.
The proposed workshop will map and debate the impacts of different kinds of initiatives created to improve the level of accountability of intermediaries relating to human rights concerns, particularly regarding users’ rights to privacy and freedom of expression. From drafting human rights commitments into national legislation, to the creation of multistakeholder groups to propose soft law models, to self-regulatory initiatives, to mechanisms for ranking human rights policies and practices, to transparency reporting frameworks, the workshop will invite speakers and audience to debate the different methodologies from each kind of initiative, as well as their challenges, enforcement models and results.
The workshop aims to achieve a better understanding among stakeholders of how such initiatives may interact with each other and what are their advantages and disadvantages.
Agenda:
1. Panel introductions
Panelists speak briefly about different initiatives and methods for promoting ICT companies’ respect for human rights, highlighting successes, potential opportunities, obstacles and pitfalls of such efforts.
2. Audience input
Audience members and remote participants have an opportunity to highlight other initiatives and to ask questions about the initiatives presented.
3. Follow-up
Fostering comparisons between the initiatives, exploring their peculiarities and impacts, identifying other un- or underdeveloped options.
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Names and affiliations (stakeholder group, organization) of speakers the proposer is planning to invite
- Rebecca Mackinnon, Civil society, Ranking Digital Rights (Y, Y)
- Carlos Affonso Souza, CIvil society, Instituto de Tecnologia e Sociedade (ITS) (Y, Y)
- Ebele Okobi, Private Sector, Yahoo! (Y,Y)
- Moez Chakchouk, Government, Tunisian Internet Agency (Y,Y)
- Ihab Osman, Private Sector, former CEO of Sudatel Telecom Group (Y,Y)
- Cynthia Wong, CIvil society, Human Rights Watch (Y,Y)
- Stephen Lowe, Government, UK Foreign & Commonwealth Office (Y,Y)
- Susan Morgan, Civil society, Global Network Initiative (Y,Y)
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Brief substantive summary of the workshop and presentation of the main issues that were raised during the discussions
The workshop aimed at mapping the debate over the impacts of different kinds of initiatives created to improve intermediaries’ conduct relating to human rights concerns. The workshop focused less on the discussion around specific rights, such as privacy or freedom of expression, and dedicated most of its time to comment on the processes through which such rights should be respected. As different experiences and approaches to this issue were presented, the workshop featured a rich mosaic of initiatives, from drafting human rights commitments into national legislation to the creation of multistakeholder groups to propose soft law models. In this regard, the workshop tried to offer a good overview on how such initiatives interact with each other and what their advantages and disadvantages are.
In the first part of the workshop, panelists spoke briefly about different initiatives and methods for promoting ICT companies’ respect for human rights. The moderator, Mr. Charles Mok, highlighted that the products and services produced and rendered, respectively, by technology companies occupy a large part of people's daily lives and the intermediary role of these companies needs to be deeply researched. After the Snowden revelations there has been an increasing awareness of privacy and security issues, leading to a fledging trust among users and increasing regulatory attempts by governments. At the same time, there is a growing interest in incentivizing companies to be more transparent and respectful of users' rights.
Cynthia Wong, from Human Rights Watch, suggested the following components to analyze a companies’ human rights record: (i) external scrutiny of corporate behavior; (ii) external standard setting (UN Guiding Principles, GNI, Ranking Digital Rights, etc.), to be based in internationals standards; (iii) independent verification of companies’ human right policies and some grievance mechanism; (iv) the building of a process to identify best practices, separated from external standard setting; and (vi) the acknowledgement of the States’ role to regulate corporate behavior.
Facebook representative Ankhi Das stressed that dealing with these issues requires a shared role and responsibility with governments toward the rights of citizens. Governments and security agencies have to be part of this discussion. Ms. Das spoke about the importance of transparency reports, stating that every company would eventually embrace this as a default standard, it can be triggered by an event or happen as part of a company's own journey. She commented on an industry effort which was launched soon after the reform on government surveillance. This initiative adresses five fundamental principles in terms of how this needs to be looked at or addressed by governments and in an open letter to the U.S. President and Congress urging them to reform government surveillance.
Next in the debate, Mr. Ihab Osman, of Blunai, also spoke about the respect for Human Rights from a private sector point of view. He articulated two elements that require attention to provide the enforcement of users’ rights. One is the implementation of actual policies, procedures, and documented activities of companies. These could be encouraged by a number of initiatives such as the Ranking Digital Rights project, having external standards put in place whether by governments or civil society or some agreed upon set of standards on what that behavior should look like. The second element is the human element, the people behind the companies. In this regard Mr. Osman commented that the behavior of senior executives have a direct impact on the level of compliance or respect of human rights of the whole company. There is a need to foster the positive behavior from these senior managers and executives and to discourage bad behavior. Mr. Osman also mentioned the Oslo-based Business for Peace Foundation with which he is involved, which is looking at individual side of actors.
Moez Chakchouk, from the Tunisian Internet Agency, explained the history of the agency, now in private sector acting as an ISP and rendering domain name services, and how human rights violations led to this scenario. In what concerns the connections of the Agency with the government, Mr. Chakchouk commented that they have encouraged Tunisia to be a member of the freedom online coalition and to host such conference as a good step to show to the community the changes the institution was going through. They also engaged with civil society, as usually civil society in Tunisia seems not to be as aware of privacy concerns as they are of freedom of expression matters.
Next in the debate, Mr. Allon Bar, from Ranking Digital Rights, explained the initiative and how it can encourage companies to improve their respect of human rights. Mr. Bar mentioned that companies constantly face choices in how they, for example, deal with government requests for user data; how to deal with private requests to take down content; how to enforce the terms of service, and how such choices have a real impact on people's human rights, especially in the freedom of expression and right to privacy. In this wider ecosystem of links between business and human rights and technology companies, the project aims at setting very clear standards that companies can adhere to that give succinct, precise ideas of what the best behavior is that they should follow and also assess how they perform looking at the standards. This will result a ranking listing the world’s major ICT companies on how to perform on these two specific human rights. Mr. Bar mentioned that the project will run a pilot based on the indicators that will be finalized in coming months and at the end of the pilot they will look at the methodology needed for the production of a full ranking next year.
Another panelist from the civil society sector, Mr. Carlos Affonso Souza, from the Institute of Technology and Society of Rio de Janeiro, commented on the recent approval in Brazil of an Internet Bill of Rights and how companies, civil society and government engaged in the debates that have led to the approval of the law. He explained how there have been some concerns from the private sector on whether to regulate the internet in Brazil through the enactment of a hard law was the best alternative. In the relationship with civil society and the private sector, Mr. Souza highlighted that there have been areas of agreement, such as the regime for intermediary liability, and areas of dissent, such as the enforcement of some provisions concerning privacy and data protection.
Stephen Lowe, from the UK Government, mentioned that in terms of business and human rights work, the UK has been in the forefront of this internationally as far as governments are concerned. One of the areas to concentrate in the ICT sector is very concept of supply chain, since in terms of risk, of human rights impact, the supply chain is almost reversed. That happens because in the production of clothing, for instance, the focus would be on where they get the materials from, the rights of their workers, the supply chain that gets to the product and so on. In ICT the supply chain tends to be not only shorter, but once the product is produced, the human rights impact may be focused on the moment after you've supplied the good. That makes it very challenging for companies. The UK is working on developing guidance for companies to assess their human rights impacts and to do due diligence about new markets and new products. Mr. Lowe also mentioned that the debates around external standards setting comes back to credibility and risk management, encouraging external verification mechanisms.
Susan Morgan of the Global Network Initiative (GNI) elaborated on several dimensions of what companies can do to protect privacy & freedom of expression. They can publicly commit to how to respond to requests they receive from governments; make human rights impact assessment when entering new market; and have escalation teams/processes in place if requests come. Companies can also narrowly interpret requests when they do come and make sure they come from official authorities. Signing up to GNI principles has helped some companies to stand by their commitments, since they have been publicly made, when under pressure from governments. Companies need to commit to be assessed in order to get verification that they are living up to their expectations
It is important for companies to have a forum/safe space, like GNI, to talk to other stakeholders with different expertise about how to deal with government requests. Cooperation also allows for advocating policy changes. Ms. Morgan emphasized the need for governments themselves need to be more transparent.
Audience members called on the panelists regarding various related issues. For instance, one person in the audience challenged the notion that government surveillance is the only privacy issue, and noted that companies, mentioning Facebook explicitly, also have issues with how they treat user data. Ms. Das of Facebook explained that the company has a privacy policy and that users have privacy settings to control their data. Furthermore, a number of different audience members brought to the fore the question why security agencies, law enforcement agencies and governments in general are not more prominently part of this discussion. Mr. Mok pointed out that in Hong Kong law enforcement has participated and has adopted a standardized form for the service providers to handle the data requests and removable requests, perhaps something that can be of use in other countries as well.
A different audience member asked whether local service companies in Philippines can also be encouraged to adopt positive principles, and also to sign UN women empowerment principles. In response, Mr. Bar highlighted the example of Thai Netizen Network’s work to document and stimulate security-protection by service providers catering to the Thai market. While a few panelists pointed out the need to focus on government laws that impose rights-undermining behavior on companies, others stressed that companies also need up to their own behavior that risks undermining those rights.
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