Digital Diplomacy - Reinventing foreign policy?
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Transcript: English(auto-generated)
00:14
Okay, so, as introduced, the topic of this last panel here on stage two is digital diplomacy.
00:25
How does the digital world, ICT, actually impact on foreign policy? So we decided not to wear suits here, and we are now diplomats at all, but all of us actually have been related, or we are related, actually, to the boring world of politics, of foreign politics,
00:47
but we, yeah, would like to take the chance, actually, to discuss with you at some point here, and a bit, actually, so to introduce the issue, which is somehow came up the first time to me, actually,
01:00
in the curse of the Green Movement 2009 uprising in Iran. So, at that time, I used to work for another think tank here in Berlin called the Aspen Institute. We did a conference program on civil society dialogue, and one of the countries we focused on was Iran,
01:22
and I was in heavy contact with bloggers, Internet activists in Iran from 2007 to 2009, and we made it happen to invite some of these folks over to Germany to have discussions behind closed door about what's going on in this colorful, mysterious, Iranian civil society where everybody was talking about,
01:43
but nearly nobody actually had really a clue who are these guys. So one of the guys actually we invited was Ehsan. Ehsan Arusi is an Internet activist from Iran. He lives since 2009 in Germany, because things change in Iran and times get harder for Internet activists. I think he will tell a bit about that.
02:03
We have next right to me, actually, Mariette Schacke, who is a member of the European Parliament from the Dutch Liberal Party, and she was called or awarded last year by the Wall Street Journal as the most wired politician in Europe. So, I think that's a very interesting title these days, and, unfortunately, she's very unique with that because it's not really a big thing
02:28
still in the Parliament world, actually, despite a couple of parliamentarians who would explore what you can do with Twitter, and they usually crash at some point. There are more than one scandal on this.
02:43
But if you talk about the concept of what can classical foreign policy do with the Internet, with social media, with ICT in general, then one has to give credit to our friends on the other side of the Atlantic, the United States.
03:01
The State Department was the first foreign ministry who came up with a comprehensive approach on digital diplomacy. It's called the 21st Century Statecraft, and we are happy to have Dan with us, who is not here as an official State Department employee,
03:22
but he has a lot of internal Washington-belt insight knowledge to give us some insights, actually, so what these guys are about and what experiences he made so far in that world. Okay, so that's the introduction. Let us start. Where's my little piece of paper?
03:45
So I wanted to start with Marietje, who is on a daily basis in contact with all these foreign policy guys, with politicians in general, with people from the administration in various countries, and I would like to ask you, what is the special thing, what makes digital media, what makes ICT so important for foreign policy,
04:09
which is normally, as I said, not really considered as somehow linked to this medium? Well, personally, I think it's very important because new technologies impact our daily lives,
04:22
the lives of people across the world in almost every aspect. It has allowed people to break through monopolies, technologies can help enhance human rights, such as access to information, freedom of expression, press freedom, freedom of assembly, the documentation of human rights violations and sharing them across the world.
04:41
So there's a lot of issues that are in the human rights field or in other foreign policy fields where technologies become a more important subject or element of this. But if you look at this field of foreign policy experts traditionally, I don't think people in Europe on the whole consider it to be such an important topic yet.
05:04
So one of my ambitions is to ensure that people have sufficient understanding of how technologies work, both in enhancing people's opportunities, freedoms, rights, but also in the threats that people face. Because the other side of this is, of course, that all across the world we see mass censorship,
05:23
surveillance, targeted attacks, tracking and tracing of activists, the use of GPS signals coming out of our phones to disperse 10 people on a street corner. We all know the examples. We hear of people who are tortured for their passwords. We hear of activists who have been presented with transcripts of all of their email and mobile communications in prison.
05:47
So the torture for the password wasn't even necessary anymore because with viruses and other technologies, entire private conversations have been stolen anyway. So it's a constantly moving field and for all the great stuff that democracy entails,
06:08
our policy making is slower than technological developments go. So we have to be smart and see how we can have adequate policies that guarantee people's human rights, but also allow for business opportunities to flourish in the context of technologies developments.
06:30
And I think we're running behind the ball now and it would be my goal to get ahead. Okay, thank you very much. Dan, I already mentioned that the U.S. State Department is maybe a bit more ahead of the Europeans
06:42
in regard to how you can respond as an official ministry and a government actually to these digital developments. So maybe can you walk us through this statecraft approach? So what is the State Department doing? So some concrete examples actually, so that we can have a better understanding of what digital diplomacy can mean in practice.
07:05
And again, I can't speak on behalf of the State Department. I work for a government agency that is an independent 501c3, so that's doing internet freedom projects. And the United States as a whole, from both a half inside and outsider, is definitely not doing it perfect.
07:25
And then there's a lot of space to do better. And as an example of a program that I kind of toot my own horn, the program I work for called Freedom to Connect is sort of a response to what the State Department and other government agencies funding internet freedom weren't able to do right.
07:44
And that is to respond very quickly to events as they happen day to day. So what they've done is after initially saying at the congressional level, all of these funds for internet freedom are going to be available to the State Department, which has a diplomatic agenda and has all these other reasons for making decisions
08:05
that are maybe not within the best interest of everybody within a country. How can we break that money up and make it more agile and nimble, so that it can be spent for people that don't have the ability to say, apply for $500,000 for an internet freedom project to the Department of State,
08:23
or that aren't an educational institution or a known not-for-profit that is comfortable to fund. And that's essentially what my role is in DC right now, is to go out and find these projects kind of through a different methodology. Okay, thank you.
08:41
So, Islan, as I mentioned, you have been an active member of the digital world in the Iranian civil society, so you're still in your capacity as a journalist at the Deutsche Welle, linked to what's going on in the ICT world in Iran. So, why do you think that democratic governments should be active in non-democratic arenas, actually,
09:10
and support people like bloggers, internet activists, actually, who try to fight for internet freedom? Well, as internet revolutionizes, as you said, our lives in many aspects,
09:24
it has also empowered people in closed societies. It increases the possibilities for participation, it improves education, and I think there is a common goal here in the countries under repressive regimes, the people are seeking for change,
09:41
and the foreign governments are also wanting change in these kind of countries, like Iran. So, in the countries under repressive regimes, people are really in need of help, because they are facing massive surveillance and censorship,
10:01
and that's what the foreign governments can do, they can help the digital communities, because they are the sources of change at the end of the day in these kind of countries, and in these educated young societies anyway, like Iran, the change is inevitable. But these days, the problem is getting more and more complicated,
10:22
because the countries who have the internet freedom on their agenda, or are promoting internet freedom abroad, are also increasingly planning for censorship and surveillance at home. So, what really matters here, the important point,
10:42
is that internet is simultaneously helping both sides, the good and the evil. So, that makes the situation and challenges really more complicated here. I think we will talk about it later, about the challenges that it is making.
11:04
But maybe one thing you could add is, if you could give us a picture, so what is the Iranian government doing in the digital world actually to the civil society? First of all, I have to say that Iran is having a multi-layered, sophisticated censorship system.
11:23
But the important point is that this system would have never existed without a foreign aid, without a foreign help. I mean, they wouldn't be able to do that. So, one very important point here is to control this current of exporting,
11:43
whatever you want to call it, it's like cyber warfare or digital arms or whatever. But this is something that is really, I mean, obstacles against change in any closed society, and also endangering lives of people.
12:00
I mean, it shouldn't be necessarily about torturing or detaining. But even my brother, for example, just because of having a Skype call with his anti-revolutionary brother living in exile, may be interrogated or detained for some hours even. And that is what is happening on the ground.
12:21
I mean, the Iranian regime is having one of the greatest fire vaults, and it's all made by the foreign corporates. And whenever you go after them or the information is leaked about these kind of secret deals, these mostly secret deals, they come and even in European Parliament, we have been there in a meeting about Internet and mobile phones impacting Iran,
12:45
they all come, they send their soldiers, articulated people, professional justifiers, to say that yes, we apologize, but we suspend all our cooperations with Iran or any other country like Syria.
13:00
But the problem is that these facilities, these equipments, are still there operating and spinning like the centrifuges of Iranians' dangerous nuclear facilities, but nobody actually cares about that. That's interesting. Dan, you have some experience working for Al Jazeera in Cairo,
13:21
and in Egypt actually during this Arab Spring time, actually. So one of your challenges was actually to secure safe communication of Al Jazeera journalists with the headquarters. So maybe you can tell us a bit actually how the system in Egypt worked. Yeah, to what you're saying, a lot of these stories come out unfortunately after.
13:44
And as we're seeing now, a lot of stories are making it outside of just the trade press and random anonymous pirate pads and ether pads of journalists that lost their sources and now know why. And that's because of a lot of the surveillance networks that existed in these countries
14:02
and a lack of information for journalists working in the field telling their sources that it's okay to text me, it's okay to call me, it's okay to use Skype, when the truth is, of course, all that did was lead to their detention and torture in many cases. And so Al Jazeera, one of their, I think, very forward thinking, they realized this pretty early on
14:26
and didn't do what I think a lot of mainstream media should have done and has done since, which is talk about it and say like, oh hey, but they did bring on people that were privacy and security centric that had a background in both technology and journalism
14:40
to really define the use case of what it is that a journalist in the field needs to secure their communication with a source. And equally as important, what do they need to secure and ensure that their conversation with their editor is private. Because if you have a secure conversation with a source but then you send an email to your editor about every single one of your sources
15:02
in an unsecure way, you just gave up 15 or 20 names in a way that you didn't know that they were looking at. So part of my goal is to engage with folks and not just say, okay, this is really cool, sexy technology that's going to encrypt, you know, 400, 4,096 bit blah, blah, blah
15:23
that nobody in the field cares about. But it's actually to hear what advantage does that do, if any, to you. If everybody's just using a regular, you know, lack of a better phrase, dumb phone instead of a smartphone, then no Android app in the world is going to make that communication safer and actually solve your problem.
15:42
Well, and it also doesn't exist in a vacuum. I mean, I just came here from Cairo where as we speak, again, people are demonstrating against the military government. This is not all about technology. It's about people risking their lives. It's about people in the streets. It's about movements of people. And in Egypt, for example, encryption is illegal.
16:01
So let's say well-willing NGOs or programmers are making these tools and then trying to get them to people on the ground. The mere possession of these apps or tools is one, illegal, and two, could also identify your intentions. So this is a very layered challenge that we need to address, which involves issues of trade,
16:26
which involves accountability and transparency of our own businesses and our own policies, because you mentioned Iran and there's hardly any disagreement about what's going on in Iran. I mean, the whole world is pretty much united about the fact that human rights are repressed there.
16:43
But neighboring country Bahrain is a strategic ally of the United States, and there's a lot of challenges there when it comes to censorship and surveillance and human rights violations. And do we actually lead or have human rights lead our actions or is it strategic objectives that lead?
17:06
And this is a tension that we see getting bigger and bigger. And we also see that there's departments of our governments who are vocal for human rights, for example. But then there's other departments who have other interests to preserve and these are often not aligned
17:22
and even clashing within countries like the United States or European member states or what have you. So I think we're only scratching the surface of how these policies can actually be sophisticated based on sufficient knowledge of how things work on the ground and not just good intentions of governments pushing technology firms to deploy tools and get them to people
17:44
without knowing how they might impact people on the ground. And so I think it's very important that we keep looking at the real impact for people in the context of these societies which are changing on a daily basis and that we don't try to address this from simply technological angle only
18:02
and that we keep in mind over and over again that this is a complex but people-based issue that we're looking at and that we're in this for the people and not for the tech. And this kind of double standards are really important, a critical issue and I think it's really harmful for the internet freedom at the end
18:21
because for example the US is condemning internet censorship in Iran and it's actually helping a lot the users underground to find a way to circumvent and to bypass the filtering and online censorship. But when it comes to Bahrain for example, they don't even talk about it
18:41
or Saudi Arabia which is one of the most serious enemies of the internet and is doing also a mass surveillance and censorship, they don't talk about it which somehow means that be our friend, be our strategic ally and you can be also an enemy of internet and when you're not our friend, you cannot. So that in the long run I think tarnishes this face of democracy
19:06
and also questions the credibility of this approach. I mean when we are talking about internet freedom, it's very important even for the future of the world. It doesn't matter whether we are talking about the free world, the developed world
19:22
or the developing countries or countries like Iran under repressive regimes. I mean it really matters for the future of the world and we should avoid this kind of double standards which are absolutely harmful. Well and also this widely popular notion of speaking about open versus closed societies. I think we have to get beyond that because clearly the tools that are available
19:44
in closed societies like Iran come from open societies like our own. So I think it's time for sort of the next level of analysis of this challenge and really trying to be as a community of people who care about human rights
20:01
to really start changing the field in which we work from agenda setting to action because I've been in loads of panels and events where first we were all from different angles trying to push this onto the agenda but it's now really time for the next step.
20:20
We have to break through some of these words which have been used over and over which don't really relate to the situation on the ground anymore. Maybe be a little geeky about it too but you hear the State Department folks oftentimes talking about, not oftentimes, more recently mentioning things like dark nets as being the future for kind of getting around these closed societies,
20:41
circumvention, you know, or their surveillance networks but that's a problem, right? Because if you have a dark net that's only accessible to a few really geeky folks then you're creating a closed communication space that's not accessible to everybody. So while you may get around those surveillance, you're just kind of pushing an existing problem
21:01
further into the internet, I suppose, as opposed to really addressing what you're mentioning which is how do we maintain variant, you know, more openness. Talking about credibility and double standards, so it's of course an issue which is primarily addressed to the US, so Secretary of State Hillary Clinton… Sorry?
21:20
In Germany. I would say the EU too. Yeah, of course. So in public actually it's mostly at the moment actually addressed actually to the US because Secretary of State Hillary Clinton came up with this internet freedom speech, the big one in Washington and if you look back in this three years ago now
21:41
actually it reads a little bit silly actually, so it's very naive, very pink. The second speech was different actually because she already received some of these questions about these double standards and it's not really an issue which is just limited to the activities
22:02
of the US government in cyberspace, it's also of course something which is an issue for the real hardcore analog foreign policy of the US. What are the reactions in Washington if you talk to people in the State Department or other institutions? Well of course it always comes up whenever you want to talk about internet freedom
22:22
and you're American about surveillance because the truth of the course is there's surveillance in Iran, there's surveillance in Syria and then there's surveillance in America and the capabilities of their surveillance network in America are far beyond I think the surveillance networks of anywhere else and you're not going to hear anybody in America
22:41
try to say that that's not true but unless they don't know, it's just much more passive and so I think the general opinion is the State Department's a really big organization and I can talk about it from the outside and so I can kind of tout a little bit of what I hear from the outside
23:02
which is there's a group of folks that are really trying to change the way the surveillance internet freedom are well I guess the problem with surveillance is it's in my personal opinion in America it could probably get scaled back a little bit and then it wouldn't have this ironic problem
23:22
of where we're trying to support the ability for people outside of our country to get around the surveillance networks in theirs while at the same time you know billions of dollars go towards their surveillance contractors in the United States but to a certain degree you have to move past it when you're talking about political conversations
23:41
and you can't talk that way when you're in front of Congress or you're trying to allocate more funds for internet freedom without necessarily reducing the funds that are going towards the folks that are doing whether you say it's controversial or not, lawful interception which is that every single one of our countries developed or underdeveloped
24:01
have surveillance technology built into and some countries arguably could scale back how they use it and some countries, well most countries I think need to scale back how they use it as opposed to misuse it so that's kind of like the non-answer Thank you
24:21
When it comes to credibility though one of the notions we really have to challenge is this lawful interception one because there are a number of countries where on a foreign policy level, on an official government level the government of the United States or of our EU member states have already condemned the lack of the rule of law in country A, B or C
24:41
and then we would still allow or we don't even check because that's the reality we don't even have any idea of what kind of technologies are traded with these countries and perhaps technically speaking the tool that these technologies provide or the kind of service or capacity that these technologies provide
25:01
would be called lawful interception technology but what does lawful mean without the rule of law? Nothing in my opinion because if we're officially condemning the lack of rule of law then people can't challenge the fact that they're being tapped or that they're under surveillance 24-7
25:22
and it makes no sense anymore and I think that we have to align those kinds of goals and those kinds of concepts with how things work out in practice and again here you're mentioning mass surveillance capacity in our own societies which is troubling of course
25:40
but who's to say that these are not the same technologies that are traded to these countries and it's funny because whenever I talk about the EU to varieties of people they often remind me that it's such a bureaucracy that there's rules for everything you know how straight or how bent bananas can be and cucumbers and everything
26:02
we have rules for almost everything and we don't have any or hardly any rules for the export of technologies especially when they can hurt people I mean we have rules when they may be applied in nuclear facilities or in water facilities for example so we're completely behind the ball here and it's endangering people's lives and that's why it's a bad thing
26:34
is now actually on a listation, a blacklist and since last year in the EU
26:40
yeah well last year for the first time after we pushed very hard there was a reference in the general dual use technology regulation to human rights to begin with so the concept of dual use, the idea is that technologies exist out there which can be used for neutral or good activities and for bad
27:02
and the nuclear engineering tools are the most prominent issue here so maybe a pump which can be used for a water filtering system or a nuclear facility and it depends on who it goes to so the context is important and for the first time human rights were mentioned in here and dual use technologies were also framed in that way
27:25
but it's a very very superficial and unsophisticated set of rules yet so we have to update this and we're still waiting for the European Commission to come out with their update and at the moment we don't even have a person employed in the job that deals with dual use
27:41
that position has been vacant for a while now so we're actually running behind and the other aspect is that sometimes you'll hear about ad hoc sanctions to countries like Syria, to countries like Iran and when we look at the announcement and then the implementation there's a huge gap there so I encourage all of you to look more closely at the difference between the letters of statements
28:06
so the text in statements or the letter of the law and the implementation of the law and you'll see a shocking gap there I'm sorry, real quick, more transparency from both the governments and what any of those technologies that could be used for surveillance is definitely needed
28:23
and if you're an activist or a technology person there's a lot of interesting stuff going on on transparency that can be done by people that are non-government actors to fingerprint what surveillance equipment is going on there's a tool called UniProbe that's just coming out which is a way for people to identify what censorship is happening in specific places
28:45
and ultimately this could lead towards a real track back to the company, the country that this equipment came from so that we can hold them accountable, not just the government in a black room in a confidential file somewhere knows that that deal happened
29:01
because I mean that's really the answer otherwise we're just making policies, you're kind of in the cyber security scare of like oh this reactive policy sounds good, it's going to make us feel like we have control when in fact we don't know anything about what it is that we're making policy about so both governmental folks and non-government people, more information will create better policy
29:21
and if you look at the reactions of repressive regimes like Iran and China to this censorship and surveillance in other countries and to the initiatives like SOPA, SISPA, PIPA or transnational acts like ACTA they're hugely covered in Xinhua or Iranian hardliners news agencies
29:42
and they have recently even the Iranian authorities come up with this idea of calling the censorship in the US for example dictatorship and their own way of censorship a democratic one so obviously when we talk about censorship in Germany or in US or surveillance in Western countries
30:02
it's fundamentally different from when we're talking about Iran justifications are totally different but at the end of the day censorship is censorship and surveillance is surveillance and the best version of a destructive idea remains a destructive idea okay maybe that's a good point actually to open up the discussion to all of you
30:23
who has an interest in interviewing one or all of the panelists actually on this subject there's one mic left, don't be shy and maybe you can just introduce you and say if you belong to a group, company, a government
30:48
my name is Jens and I belong to me I would like to open up the digital diplomacy to the cultural diplomacy field I mean it's very important that we talk about the export control of surveillance and censorship software
31:04
and I think I remember there was something in the federal parliament from the opposition about this so hopefully this we have to get tougher on that but for me always digital diplomacy is cultural diplomacy because diplomacy is for me like the fight of the narratives a little bit
31:23
and so we had free radio, I mean every culture is having ways to export its culture and to impress other cultures and that's diplomacy thing but now we have, I think it's a DARPA project that American soldiers can have sock puppets
31:48
like one soldier can control 12 social network fake person accounts, sock puppets and they're only allowed to create them to speak in Farsi and Urdu
32:00
and they're not allowed to speak in English because then an American soldier could lie to an American citizen but they are allowed to make fake accounts on Facebook lying in Urdu or Farsi but not in English because then, you know, so that's one thing and the other thing we have religious and political extremists to getting a platform
32:20
so the whole thing of the narrative is becoming very fluid and I would like to, if you have some thoughts to hear how is cultural diplomacy which I think is a very important feel of diplomacy is counter intelligence working against the massive fluidity of narratives
32:41
Thank you May I hand over to Maietje who is one of the rapporteurs actually on cultural diplomacy in the European Parliament and came up with a very important piece of legislation I wrote a report or I led the effort in the parliament on a report on the role of culture in the EU's foreign policy but I think you're talking more about sort of information wars
33:05
I think we can look at this in different ways cultural diplomacy wise we can also see how technologies have given individuals more of a platform or a voice where maybe previously they were simply a bureaucrat, a diplomat in a larger hierarchy
33:24
now they can have their own Twitter accounts, their own Facebook accounts and I don't know too much about alter egos or the kinds of situations you're talking about but I think really on a people to people level this is very interesting and I see the facilitation of this as well whether it is planned or not planned
33:43
I mean you can say that cultural diplomacy through artists, through exchanges of students for example or entrepreneurs simply brings people together who may not agree with their government's statements at all but who will challenge them and the fact that there is space to challenge this
34:00
also is a reflection of an open society I mean the fact that we can have such discussions that you can find ten people with ten different opinions about how the EU is doing or how the Israeli government is doing or things like this shows just by being open that there is a diversity of opinions and that people do not get arrested for this
34:24
and on another layer I think this is also embedded in the technology so the question will be whether the way technologies are programmed are actually democratic or open enough to be inclusive
34:42
because on the one hand certain platforms like Twitter facilitate a number of voices but there are also ways in which you can manipulate them and there are also ways in which they impact the way politicians think there is a risk that there is more of a dictatorship of the majority for example like if I want to get reelected as a politician I have much more of a sense where majorities lie
35:07
and where minorities are so if I want to have the winning argument it is much easier for me to calculate where that might be but the strength of a democracy is also found in the way in which it deals with minority voices so I think this is bringing a whole new field into visibility
35:24
and one short comment about the notion of extremists who have also found a voice I personally do think that the open debate about ideas is more healthy than suppressing certain ideas we have laws that limit hate speech or incitement to violence and they can be applied online as well
35:45
but with or without internet, with or without new technologies, extremist ideas have always been around and I would prefer to see them challenged with arguments than to be banned out of sight and usually to ban ideas we need to only look at Egypt where I was this morning
36:06
hasn't made those ideas shrink but rather has made them more popular and grow I don't know if I fully understood all the points you were trying to make but as an optimist generally I think this is kind of a good problem to have
36:21
because this is only a problem you can have when you start seeing the cultural relevance of these technologies when access has gone so far and so many people are able to be part of the debate that you start to have a concern of I'm this newly connected group online and this older connected group online is now, because they were there first, imposing their kind of way on me
36:44
now that's like something to come over but that is a great problem to have because that means that enough people are getting online that we have to address that and I think it's great the work that you're doing and on the geek side, think about this back in the 70s when these protocols were written that were still completely dependent on TCP IP
37:05
which was written by a bunch of geeks funded by DARPA in the middle of the American cultural hippie revolution and that's why they came up with this what they thought was a completely flat decentralized protocol to run everything but maybe that doesn't work today
37:22
and so I think again I'm not saying that it doesn't work for everybody out there like it totally works but I'm saying in general like you can go up to 19 in the 90s when the Clinton presidency said that hey telecommunication companies in America you need to have surveillance built in and that ultimately led to every country in the world having surveillance built into their communications equipment because the United States was the biggest manufacturer of that equipment at the time
37:45
all these things are heading to where we are now which is massive amounts of access interconnected, you have Wikipedia, you have these things that are causing people to confront these things so that's a non-answer but I think it's a great problem to have
38:00
Maybe one additional point to the question of who is represented in the net I think there's a very interesting example if it comes to the Arabic world as well as the Persian world the Bergman Center whose representative I think are frequent guests here on the Republic came up in 2008-09 with two very interesting studies on the Persian blogger sphere and the Arab blogger sphere
38:24
and the stunning fact was actually that if you look in the Iranian digital community so it's not like it might seem from looking from outside it's only this liberal secular freedom fighting bloggers who are using the internet
38:46
so you could see there's a whole group which is even a majority of clerics actually like some media would say who are blogging, who are discussing religious things it doesn't mean immediately this is an extremist but actually it's used by much more people
39:05
than in this political debate we are covering here actually it is being considered, so would you agree? What the Iranian government is doing, I mean what they declare as their goal is occupying cyberspace they obviously see it as a territory to concur or to occupy
39:23
but unfortunately it's the view that a lot of politicians also have in the developed world so I think it's a really big problem these days because it's putting the internet freedom at risk almost everywhere
39:41
the internet that we know as a network of networks is global and it is a driving force for change and innovation all over the world because it is global but obviously there are a lot of groups or politicians in different countries who are working or at least thinking of vulcanizing the internet
40:03
and this is the worst case, I mean this is the worst thing that can happen for the future of the world because we will lose a lot of things if we lose the globality of the network Thank you, sorry for letting you wait No problem, maybe regarding the one point that Dan had, I'm Daniel of SecoShare by the way
40:25
I think the decentralization on the lower layers like TCP and IP is already there it's pretty decent, it doesn't rely on authorities or hierarchies and I think we have to only rebuild this decentral behaviour on the higher levels
40:41
like HTTP and the address resolution protocols and the content delivery and if we have the technology that really the people see in a decentralized way and we also work on the political fronts, I think we could go into a much freer internet than right now
41:02
and I think this is really the problem that somehow in almost every system that is built some hierarchies emerge after some time and what could we do against this with foreign policy I mean there are forces against these flat hierarchies because flat hierarchies are non-conservative
41:21
and power has to be conservative to preserve itself what can we do there maybe to further the flattening Again I'm an optimist, so when it comes to technology the answer is always yes which means that the hard part isn't the technology but making sure that smart policy people and people that represent folks on the ground
41:43
and maybe a technologist when needed are all talking together so that they know that the answer is yes and that it actually can be developed in the image of what you need rather than what a bunch of geeks in X, Y or Z developed country think is a great idea for people on the ground in an oppressive society
42:05
I don't know if I understood all the technical suggestions I'm sorry I'm only a representative You can't say that anymore, it's not acceptable I need to take a hacking course I will teach you Python
42:23
I think it is a joint effort but we have to be realistic also about how even this is On the one hand you see smart individuals who are pushing the boundaries of what's technically possible and some people are using those technologies to help people
42:41
but I've also seen it at the CCC meeting last winter here in Berlin where somebody stood up in the audience and I thought that was actually very honest to also say one of the hackers said, look we were the ones who were creating all these technologies just because sometimes we're caught up in the technological possibilities
43:03
can we hack this, can we encrypt this, can we do this and we don't always have control over whose hands this technology then falls into and there's a lot of unintended consequences sometimes of technologies I always use the example of the patent that Apple filed for shutting off microphone and video tools in restricted rooms
43:26
so for example if there would be a concert here this technology would enable the shutting down of our microphone and video on our cell phones to prevent tapes from a live concert to be put online which helps Apple presumably in their bargaining position with the record industry
43:42
etc. So this could be useful from one angle but if you imagine the availability of these tools on Tahrir Square or elsewhere in the hands of governments exactly or others who seek to repress and control their people what does that mean? So we have to have a comprehensive view and also understand that there are some very small individual
44:07
limited funding, big brain power oftentimes but limited funding, limited power platforms, limited accountability also that are doing things versus governments who are throwing millions, hundreds of millions at something
44:23
sometimes transparently, sometimes intransparently so it's not always an even field but there should be much more contact, I agree, between programmers human rights defenders, policy makers, businesses, etc. So anyone who feels that their voice is not heard, come find us.
44:42
Voices we want to hear. I'm Toby Schwartz, I'm an occasional blogger at FistfulViewers.net and I have a question about the way that social media narratives shape the language and possibly the content of individual states' foreign policies
45:03
I'm thinking a couple of years back when foreign policy was actually one of the main sparks for the development of social media blogs in the US a lot of people started blogs after 9-11 and a couple of years later as a reaction to the US foreign policy
45:23
the social media blogger's fair really took off and the Atlantic Rift was a big topic for the first five years or so until George W. Bush was no longer in the office so I was wondering if you have any idea how this social media discourse
45:40
the frankness of the language is shaping or changing the diplomatic language that states are using or if the pervasiveness of information is making it harder for politicians to speak to their own audience like, say, George W. Bush in Texas
46:02
and it is impossible for him not to be heard in France, for example and someone in France commenting on that from the French perspective so is that, in your opinion, changing the shape of foreign policy? Yes.
46:21
Can you be a little bit more specific, possibly? Yeah, very quick because I always saw the time thing come up and there's other folks with questions two-way communication is the way forward and traditional broadcasting and sharing of information from governments is a one-way street
46:42
and so, for example, in DC during the SOPA-PIPA debates you had congressmen and women saying, we need to get some nerds and geeks in here to talk about how technology works and saying this on what before was just C-SPAN one-way broadcasting where there was no two-way communication
47:01
guaranteed to come and hit them in the face while they were there but this very much changed because then another congressperson came up and said so if you're following Twitter right now you notice that that person's got an image on Facebook that makes them look like an idiot so we're not going to call them geeks or nerds and separate them we're going to call them experts just like we would call them experts in any other place
47:21
and we need more experts about technology involved in these conversations and not just geeks and nerds to say that we need more technologists but experts, people that have an experience dealing with technology as an activist as a human rights person and what are the implications if you create these ridiculous policies without any expert advice when we know how it works in any other situation
47:41
is you have months of debate and commissions with experts before you come up and speak publicly in a one-way system so I think that was really awesome to watch on television people that are policy makers referencing their Twitter feeds and other Blackberry emails that they're getting from their aides who are doing nothing but following social media
48:01
before a policy was enacted that would have been very bad so yes Okay, next question I'd like to, my name is Justus, hi I'd like to sort of go a bit further with that question but in the same direction Do you think that the fact that it's easier now for activists to get active
48:22
and help people that live in oppressive regimes Do you think that's a problem or an opportunity or would it be better if they would first come to people that tend to be more diplomatic because they know diplomacy better? I think that if people can find each other and help each other across the world
48:44
without government that's a good thing and it's something we can't stop and we shouldn't try to stop at all so in general if there can be civil society to civil society or people to people contact which is helpful for people's rights and freedoms
49:00
I think that's a great thing because it's easier for the experts or those who are seeking to help people in third countries to be away from government and it's certainly much less sensitive for people in those third countries if this can stay as far away from government whether in funding or association as possible so I think it's a great thing but of course people have to be able to assess somehow
49:23
whether this is actually helpful or whether there are sensitivities that are unconsidered and I think we all have a responsibility here In the beginning of this panel we talked about compromising calls and everything
49:41
there was a moment in time where NGOs were actively recommending human rights defenders to use Skype while Skype was already compromised so everybody has to be very responsible and bring expertise in and I hate to say that whether it's about technology or not that doesn't always happen so that should happen more often across the board
50:02
because it's very easy for people to just yell something or come up with some kind of policy for a short term gain or a quote in a newspaper instead of actually considering the impact on the ground so we all need to bundle this knowledge and keep advancing it because the reality is changing on a daily basis
50:21
more in technology than in any other field I would say And the interesting thing here is that in the German foreign ministry in the Auschwitz-Diegesamt actually so the operation by telecomics in Syria actually so while they were bridging the lack of connectivity in Egypt actually
50:40
so was something where the few experts or people who tackled the issue of digital diplomacy before and actually got a lot of phone calls so what's going on there? Who are these guys actually? So are they good? Are they bad actually? So and of course this is what if we come back to the beginning of the discussion so what does the social media or internet ICT world does to foreign policy?
51:07
Of course it changed the system so as it has been mentioned so it reduces hierarchies which are in place and I talked to a number in the recent weeks of high diplomats in the German ministry actually who are really scared so because they don't know what it's about
51:23
so they don't have a clue but they realized okay if my third man in the embassy in Egypt is more familiar with Twitter and Facebook actually and can make an impact so he might be all of a sudden more important than I am although actually sir I am the deputy secretary of state
51:41
so and this is something this is a cultural transformation process which is going on at the moment not only in Germany all over Europe and as I said so the US is a little bit more advanced and so despite all the bad things we said about the state department so they have regular meetings where techies train the diplomats actually
52:02
in what is going on in this world so and this is something I think we have to get yeah it's established here in Europe as well because things will move on and of course the grassroots movement here will not wait for the green lights by Mr. Westerwelle or actually to help this or that human rights movement
52:21
but to be honest actually of course it would be a perfect world if we could bring them all together at some point and this fabulous meeting between Cartier de Zugunberg and some guys of telecomics here and Franz Loberg actually was a beginning so if Gutenberg liked it I don't know actually so at least it was fun but I think so seriously it was something I think we have to from both sides reduce the hesitance in talking to each other
52:49
because I think we have to do something we should say to each other and we can learn from both sides yeah but just a side note though I mean I think a lot of what is success is it success when diplomats understand how to use Twitter or is it a success when people on the ground are actually helped by the actions of diplomats
53:05
and as far as I can see a lot of people that really matter who are activists whether they are actively online or offline defending human rights who run to the bathroom when they hear the word 21st century statecraft sure and others when they heard the word Twitter revolution
53:24
we have another question hello my handle is Guzi and my background is the German hacker community I'm a network activist engaged in anti-censorship activities and I agree with most what you have said
53:42
we need to get rid of this double standard there is no way why we accept censorship from Saudi Arabia or Bahrain but not from Syria or Iran we should not have like civilians or mandatory civilians interfaces in our own telecommunication systems
54:02
that we also sell to other countries if we say this is bad and this can be misused and you know every technology that can be misused will be misused so the best thing is don't put the technology in place in the first place but another remark is that a lot of those problems you talked about here are in my perspective social problems
54:29
and an old hacker wisdom says never try to solve social problems or political problems with technology because it will not work technology can help to get certain things done to give people a voice
54:44
or at least a possibility to be heard but it will not solve the root problem and what I think what we can do here in western countries is to fight against those politicians that have this double standards
55:02
that criticize China for the Chinese internet wall but in the same week they proposed a virtual Schengen border in cyberspace and things like that you know we cannot talk about net blocking within the European Union to block websites away or content away
55:32
and at the same time criticize it in other countries and I think that one big enemy here is those people that want to make the internet a commercial only one way medium again
55:58
you know that is one of the biggest threats
56:00
and also parts of the liberal party for example are in favor for this and push and press for it because their friends from the content industry pay them very well to do so and that's things that we should address here and if we address it here then we will also have a certain fall out on our actions here within the rest of the world
56:25
that it's not that easy to criticize censorship in country A but you know want to have it in our own country or propose it yeah that was all my remarks, thank you
56:41
Thank you I agree a hundred percent but the double standards are there and they trickle through to the technology level so there's also a supply of weapons like iron weapons that are traded to countries where we know they're used to shoot at people
57:05
I mean there's double standards in foreign policy everywhere and I do think the credibility of the EU and the United States is very important and I've mentioned this whenever I had the opportunity when it comes to IPR enforcement specifically and the role of the content industry
57:26
I've learned in working within the liberal group in the European Parliament for example in a workshop series this past year which was in house just to bring in knowledge about how online and digital developments are changing our economic opportunities
57:45
changing the way content can reach audiences and influence the free market for example that knowledge is really important when people don't understand what technology does and how it can help creators for example spread their work
58:01
then it's easier for them to believe the narratives of the content industry who claim to have a monopoly on what the arts and culture are in general for example and I argue from the angle of IPR enforcement being anti-liberal actually the way in which it's organized now
58:22
fragmentation and also making an obstacle in the free market so I think bringing in knowledge to people about this really helps first of all and second of all this double standard definitely has to be fought and I think we should use the argument that our credibility is at stake if we don't have our own house in order
58:42
but it's also not in a vacuum of technology only but I think we need clear priorities and as long as our priority is money and jobs instead of human rights and freedom we will not get rid of it
59:02
and I generally agree with everything too except that old hacker motto I don't know that I fully think I think more people that are making new technologies with socials is actually a good thing I do think that if we have people making a whole lot of really bad programs and applications
59:22
because they've been misguided I got cut off we're talking too much apparently censorship is a great problem to have again and that's just because I'm an optimist I'd rather see like five really crappy programs that are misguided for like the one really good program than none of that
59:41
but otherwise you're absolutely right okay we take the last question and then I promise you one of the most astonishing quotes I ever got from an Egyptian blogger actually on the question so what the West can do to help spreading democracy in the Middle East but you go first
01:00:00
I agree with you, and not also with him. I don't think we have a double standard. We have just one standard, and that is we are supporting human rights in Europe and everywhere in the world. But we have collateral. If you speak about Bahrain, you have to understand why the US acts like this. And definitely, it is because of Iran.
01:00:21
Because if you look at Tunisia, for example, the US supported the democratic system even if Tunisia was a partner of Saudi Arabia. That is politic, and I'm not agree with it. But in a way, I understand it. Using of the double standard, as Ehsan said,
01:00:41
at the end of the day, help the Iranian government. They use it. They go, oh, they say, look at us. Occupy New York movement. They are like us. They don't allow the people to speak. So please keep it clear. European support human rights. That's it.
01:01:01
Thank you. OK. Thank you. I think we agree with that. And so therefore, I give you the quote of an Egyptian blogger called Al-Abd al-Fattah, who said in an interview with another friend of us, Sami Ben-Habia, who's also been here, I think, one of the prominent Tunisian bloggers on the question,
01:01:22
so what can the US and others do? Here he addressed this to the US, but I think it also goes for Europe. And he says, if the US companies, or we say European countries, Western companies, and nonprofits want to support democracy in the Middle East, the best they can do is continue to develop a free, neutral, decentralized internet,
01:01:40
fighting the troubling trends emerging in your own backyards from threats to net neutrality, disregard for users' privacy, draconian copyright, and DRM restrictions, to the troubling trends of censorship through Kurds in Europe, restrictions on anonymous access and rape and surveillance in the name of combating terrorism or protecting children or fighting hate speech or whatever.
01:02:02
You see, these trends give our own regimes great excuses for their own actions. You don't need special programs and projects to help free the internet in the Middle East. Just keep it free, accessible, and affordable on your side, and we'll figure out how to use it, get around restrictions, and imposed by our governments and innovative and contribute to the network's growth.
01:02:22
With this happy note, thank you all actually for coming. Thanks for staying with us here on the last panel, and enjoy the weekend in Berlin.