Le 25 novembre dernier, en marge de l'Internet Governance Forum (IGF), à Berlin, un réseau d'activistes et d'intellectuels a publié un « manifeste (...)
Just Net Coalition: There is an urgent need to establish legal regimes that assert the rights and ownership of people over their data, both individually and collectively.
HISTORY OWKIN was co-founded in 2016 by Thomas Clozel, MD, a clinical research doctor and former assistant professor in clinical hematology and Gilles Wain
Internet governance is a complex field that covers the rules, norms and standards that determine how the internet – from the physical connections to the programmes and information that pass over it – works. Given the growing centrality of the internet in the work of libraries, libraries are key stakeholders.
The Convention for the Protection of Individuals with regard to Automatic Processing of Personal Data was opened for signature on 28 January 1981 and is still today the only binding international treaty in this field. It is open to any country, and has the potential to become a global standard. The 47 member states of the Council of Europe and Mauritius, Senegal, Tunisia, Uruguay are Parties to it, while Argentina, Burkina Faso, Cap Verde, Mexico and Morocco have been invited to accede to the Convention.
The treaty establishes a number of principles for states to transpose into their domestic legislation to ensure notably that data are processed through procedures set for by law, for a specific purpose, that data are stored for no longer than is necessary for the intended purpose, and that are not excessive in relation to the purposes for which they are stored.
An additional protocol requires each party to establish an independent authority to ensure compliance with data protection principles, and lays down rules on transborder data flows to non Parties.
in a syllabus from June 2017, The Supreme Court of the USA underlines the importance of the internet in relation to the first amendment to the US constitution. The internet's forums are decribed as "what for many are the principal sources for knowing current events, checking ads for employment, speaking and listening in the modern public square, and otherwise exploring the vast realms of human thought and knowledge."
COATI – the Collective for Autonomy in Interpreting Technology- was formed in Barcelona in 2009, bringing together people who had participated in anti-capitalist and anti-globalisation movements. We had supported the peasant farmers of Via Campesina in the creation of the movement for Food Sovereignty, and had volunteered as interpreters (sometimes in very precarious conditions) and seen the value of good alternative technology; we had learnt to organise horizontally and by consensus in the Do-It-Yourself culture of anarchist and anti-capitalist social centres all over Europe; we had built an understanding of technology in the squatted hacklabs and free software communities; we learnt about sound systems running hardcore punk festivals, street parties and independent, community-based radio stations; and it was those experiences, and the values of those communities, that inspired the project.
Over the last three months of 2017, EFF has been representing the interests of Internet users and innovators at three very different global Internet governance meetings; ICANN, the Global Conference on Cyberspace (GCCS), and this week in Geneva, the global Internet Governance Forum (IGF). All of...
Interview with lawyer Renata Avila from Guatemala. "so we can take back our public infrastructure, and build our own sustainable platforms for the future."
Review of Yasha Levine's book Surveillance Valley. The secret military history of the Internet. " It tells a story about Silicon Valley that really isn’t told enough, and it points out some really unpleasant – but, alas, all too true – aspects of the technology that we have all come to depend on. Google, the “cool” and “progressive” do-good-company, in fact a military contractor that helps American drones kill children in Yemen and Afghanistan? As well as a partner in predictive policing and a collector of surveillance data that the NSA may yet try to use to control enemy populations in a Cybernetics War 2.0? The Tor Project as paid shills of the belligerent US foreign policy? And the Internet itself, that supposedly liberating tool, was originally conceived as a surveillance and control mechanism?"
"Key provisions of the proposals which are not acceptable from the point of view of important public interests include: a prohibition of requirements to hold data locally; a prohibition of otherwise regulating cross-border data transfers; a prohibition of requiring a local presence for goods/service providers in the country; and a prohibition of requiring open source software in government procurement contracts. It is also proposed that there be no border taxes on digital products.
Furthermore, it is being proposed to effectively give the WTO jurisdiction to adjudicate whether a national technology or data regulation was “reasonable,” “objective,” “transparent,” and “not more burdensome than necessary to ensure the quality of the service.” WTO’s adjudication processes have historically tended to favour commercial interests, and giving them a blanket supervision of technology/ data regulation may go against governments’ obligation to ensure that services are operated in the public interest and respect human rights and freedoms
In addition, discussions in WTO and in so-called free trade agreement (FTA) negotiations are neither transparent nor inclusive, thus resulting in decisions that do not take into account the interests of all concerned parties. The processes are overly influenced by big business interests."
av Sally Burch; The data that we hand over in exchange for some apparently free services are the basic input of the new digital economy. As they are amassed and processed, they generate enormous wealth.
The Just Net Coalition -- whose membership roll includes leading human rights organisations from across the global south -- have written urgently to the World Wide Web Coalition and its founder, Tim Berners-Lee, calling on him to intervene to stop the Consortium from publishing its first-ever DRM standard, a system for restricting video streams called Encrypted Media Extensions.
Human Rights Protocol Considerations Research Group N. ten Oever
Internet-Draft ARTICLE 19
Intended status: Informational G. Perez de Acha
Expires: September 13, 2017 Derechos Digitales
March 12, 2017
Freedom of Association on the Internet
draft-tenoever-hrpc-association-00
There’s a new automated propaganda machine driving global politics. How it works and what it will mean for the future of democracy.
by Berit Anderson and Brett Horvath
"Targeted advertising allows a campaign to say completely different, possibly conflicting things to different groups. Is that democratic?"
"Cambridge Analytica isn’t the only company that could pull this off -- but it is the most powerful right now. Understanding Cambridge Analytica and the bigger AI Propaganda Machine is essential for anyone who wants to understand modern political power, build a movement, or keep from being manipulated. The Weaponized AI Propaganda Machine it represents has become the new prerequisite for political success in a world of polarization, isolation, trolls, and dark posts. "
, giving Britain the 'most extreme spying powers ever seen' | The Independent 29 Nov 2016
The Bill received large opposition from petitions, but not within parliament
The Times of India said officials at the news conference "spoke at length about close cooperation between China and Russia, another Communist country, in pushing for the "cyber sovereignty" principal at the U.N. and other international bodies."
Preface
Chapter I. Opportunities and Challenges
Chapter II. Basic Principles 1.The Principle of Peace 2.The Principle of Sovereignty
3.The Principle of Shared Governance 4.The Principle of Shared Benefits
Chapter III. Strategic Goals 1. Safeguarding Sovereignty and Security
2. Developing A System of International Rules 3. Promoting Fair Internet Governance
4. Protecting Legitimate Rights and Interests of Citizens 5. Promoting Cooperation on Digital Economy 6. Building Platform for Cyber Culture Exchange
Chapter IV. Plan of Action 1. Peace and Stability in Cyberspace 2. Rule-based Order in Cyberspace 3. Partnership in Cyberspace 4. Reform of Global Internet Governance System 5. International Cooperation on Cyber Terrorism and Cyber Crimes
6. Protection of Citizens’ Rights and Interests Including Privacy 7. Digital Economy and Sharing of Digital Dividends 8. Global Information Infrastructure Development and Protection 9. Exchange of Cyber Cultures
Conclusion
From Brewster Kahle's blog 29.11.2016
"The history of libraries is one of loss. The Library of Alexandria is best known for its disappearance.
Libraries like ours are susceptible to different fault lines:
Earthquakes,
Legal regimes,
Institutional failure.
So this year, we have set a new goal: to create a copy of Internet Archive’s digital collections in another country. We are building the Internet Archive of Canada because, to quote our friends at LOCKSS, “lots of copies keep stuff safe.” "
"Our mission: to give everyone access to all knowledge, forever. For free. The Internet Archive has only 150 staff but runs one of the top-250 websites in the world. Reader privacy is very important to us, so we don’t accept ads that track your behavior. We don’t even collect your IP address. But we still need to pay for the increasing costs of servers, staff and rent."
The newly tapped aide, Jeffrey Eisenach, is a known commodity in Washington tech and telecom circles. Dating back to his time as leader of the now-defunct Progress and Freedom Foundation, he's argued vigorously in favor of the FCC taking a hands-off approach to digital issues. While there in the 1990s, he also called for robust penalties against Microsoft during the U.S. government's antitrust investigation of the software giant.
If to date, digital technologies are principally visible in communication, they will soon be involved in almost all areas of human activity. If they continue under the parametre of transnational corporate control, it will be very hard to tackle these issues in isolation within each sector. It is not that these technologies are bad in themselves: on the contrary, managed by human communities, they can bring great benefits. The challenge is how to recover this control, something that can hardly be achieved with scattered struggles, nor by focusing only at the national level. "It requires a global and multisector approach, where one unescapable factor is the need to change the global regime of Internet governance. But there is little time left to set about this" (Sally Burch)
Benjamin Peters is assistant professor of communication at the University of Tulsa, and affiliated faculty at the Information Society Project at Yale Law School. His latest book is How Not to Network a Nation: The Uneasy History of the Soviet Internet (2016). You can read an excerpt here.
It is rolling out 376 small cells that will cover 1 million people who are currently without a signal and the roll-out is now underway. The cost of the investment is US$10 million. That’s US$10 million to cover 1 million people. Now Rwanda’s a small country and it would cost more to cover a larger geographic area but the potential is clearly enormous if it works.
If we want to understand the underlying concepts of the digital era, we have to revisit the opuses of five great thinkers from Vienna: Mises, Schumpeter, Hayek, Freud and Wittgenstein.
Paul Baran interviewed by Stewart Brand
Paul Baran conceived the Internet's architecture at the height of the Cold War. Forty years later, he says the Net's biggest threat wasn't the USSR – it was the phone company.
Parminder Jeet Singh, February 13, 2016
NET NEUTRALITY : As most public services go digital, it makes sense to ensure access to them free of data charges, as a citizen's right.
In its ruling on “Prohibition of Discriminatory Tariffs for Data Services”, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) has held that data services over the Internet are a commodity business whereby data cannot be discriminated on the basis of the content it carries. It also asserted its regulatory control over data services, which would be provided as a regulated public utility.
This is a historic decision setting a high bar for maintaining complete Net Neutrality, and thus sanctifying the Internet in the Indian law, as a model of equal and non-discriminatory communication, information-exchange and networking.
Zuckerberg-Telenor effort to bring Internet to the developing world is counterproductive
June 22, 2015 2:00AM ET
by Arzak Khan @internetpolicyp
Internet.org, the partnership between Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Norweigian telecom operator Telenor, seeks to make internet access available to the two-thirds of the world’s population who are not yet connected, and to bring the same opportunities to everyone that the connected world has today. The project was first launched in July 2014 in Zambia followed by Tanzania, Kenya, Colombia, Ghana, India, Philippines, Guatemala, Indonesia, Bangladesh and Malawi.