 And welcome to the Open Technology Institute. My name is Sasha Meinrath. I direct the Open Technology Institute, and I'm vice president here. And I feel very privileged to have an outstanding group of folks who will entertain and astound you with their wealth of information today. OTI sort of has three different areas that we work in, spanning community and field operations, policy, wonky work, and technological development. And I feel like they're well represented here. We have everything from Rebecca and her work on the medicine project, collecting a lot of information. We've got an open internet tools project. We've got Ben Scott, who come out of the State Department and is now holding down our work in the EU. And of course, we have Gene's team. And it's to Gene, I want to point your attention. This gentleman right here will be emceeing the rest of the event. He's a truly remarkable individual. He was VP at Consumers Union, did a stint at the US DOJ, working on antitrust at a time when the AT&T T-Mobile merger, one of the largest mergers in telecom history, perhaps the largest, was pending before that very body. He spent a time as chief counsel for the Senate Judiciary Committee, was legislative director at the Consumer Federation of America, all of this coming out of a long stint, maybe a decade or so at Public Citizens Congress Watch. So he has been a veteran in these spaces fighting the good fight for many, many years. And so when he first approached me with this notion of creating an internet freedom and human rights project here at the Open Technology Institute, I can only say I was utterly thrilled to have him in the mix. His vast expertise, his wisdom, a lot of his geopolitical acumen, having that in the mix has really been transformative and wonderful. And so I'm really glad to see him then reaching out and bringing in another cadre of experts to add into this space and to be working on ramping up a number of new initiatives and interventions through that work. So I'm particularly excited to have you here and am seeing this event. I'm also particularly excited to have Frank LaRue and Carolina Cynthia and Rebecca here as well. I'm going to turn it over to you now to introduce our speakers in more depth and grab one of the few remaining seats here in this space and look forward to what's about to transpire. Thanks. Thank you, Sasha. Thank you, New America. Thank you to everyone in the audience for coming out on this lovely day. I want to particularly thank Sarah Bernhudgens, my assistant, who helped put this together along with Carolina Rossini, more about her in a minute. And my colleagues at Global Partners Digital in London who can't be here today but who helped galvanize the ideas behind this. We're really honored to host Frank LaRue, the UN special rapporteur on the freedom of expression. And more about Frank in a minute. I'd like to first introduce my colleagues here who are going to lead off some of the questioning and commentary before we turn it to you in the audience and those online who can tweet using the hashtag Q for LaRue, Q as in the letter for the number L-A-R-U-E. First, our guest, Cynthia Wong. Cynthia is a rising star in the movement. She's at Human Rights Watch now, focusing on internet and human rights with a vast knowledge of technology from her days running the Center for Democracy and Technologies project on global internet freedom. We have Rebecca McKinnon here at New America, author of the fabulous book Consent of the Networked, who is now putting the world's most powerful technology in communications companies under a human rights microscope in her ranking digital rights project, something over time you're going to hear quite a bit more about. And last but not least, Carolina Rossini, who is running our Latin America Resource Center for Global Partners and New America. Carolina is a brilliant Brazilian lawyer, veteran of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and currently coordinating work with NGOs across Latin America who care about human rights and the internet. So why in the world would we have invited Frank LaRue here? Well, as all of you know, there's been an unbelievably furious debate about surveillance and monitoring over the last few weeks, focused substantially around the US, around the US Constitution, laws, the impact on citizens here, residents here, led by wonderful groups like the ACLU, free press has jumped in, a whole variety of national security NGOs, CDT. But what about all of those law abiding citizens around the world whose calls, emails, web activities have been implicated by surveillance and monitoring? What about them? Well, a few weeks ago, my colleagues at Global Partners Digital and a broad coalition of informally gathered NGOs describing themselves as best bits brought together more than 150 human rights organizations and NGOs around the world raising significant questions about whether the United States, multinational couple corporations and other countries have violated human rights principles. As we speak, Privacy International, Access, the Electronic Frontier Foundation are starting to circulate a set of surveillance principles. And I'm sure all of you will be hearing quite a bit more about in the coming days and weeks. And I know on Thursday, the Center for Democracy and Technology is hoping a deeper discussion about the implications under international law of all these surveillance and monitoring activities. So it is this global perspective that we wanted to highlight, and we're fortunate that Frank was available to visit with us. He's here for a very, very simple reason, besides the fact that he's so generous with his time. Frank has been dedicated for more than 25 years to fighting for human rights, starting with creating and leading a human rights group in Guatemala. And then most recently, and probably most importantly for our endeavors today, serving as the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression, where he has single-handedly galvanized interest in human rights and the internet through his landmark reports on freedom of expression, surveillance, and privacy. So we welcome Frank to give us insight from all of this work and to provide your views on how human rights principles are necessary to address these recent revelations about surveillance and monitoring. Welcome, Frank. Well, thank you, Gene. And I thank all the organizations that had put efforts in this meeting and this event. The best thing for a Rapporteur is to see that a report presented to the Human Rights Council or to the Third Committee of the General Assembly actually gets discussed. And it actually provokes some degree of reflection and deeper thoughts of everyone. And it can actually be developed by other individuals and organizations. So the more we can debate these reports and these issues, the better we feel about the work we do. There's nothing worse than having a report and seeing it go by in silence. Let me say, as Gene was mentioning, that the reports of the Rapporteurs mention different countries and examples. And we mentioned our country visits. But you also pick a topic per year to highlight certain issues in regards to specific rights. And the idea of a Rapporteur is to try to introduce new elements into the definition of rights or into the discussion of these rights. So in 2011, I presented my first report on Internet and Freedom of Expression to the Human Rights Council in June. You can find it in the website of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. And then in the General Assembly, I did a follow-up for the same topic but with new information and new ideas. And basically, what I was trying to say, and this was an ongoing debate, is that Internet is a new technology with new challenges and new dangers, very serious dangers as well, but doesn't necessarily bring in the need for establishing new rights, that our classic Freedom of Expression rights, Articles 19 and 20 of the ICCPR or 13 of the American Convention of Human Rights, are still valid. The principles are the same, except that every time you have a new technology, that new technology will challenge the interpretation of those principles and how we apply them or will challenge the responsibility in which we work. We'll put new challenges to the media and to ethics and professionalism. This is what I was trying to say there. There was a couple of debates going on in the UN which I wanted to address. Number one is the impact of Internet around the world and what it does in terms of stereotyping. Some countries wanted me to include the concept of defamation of religion. This was right after I became rapporteur in August of 2008 and was right after the cartoons, the Danish cartoons came out, which I think were relatively mishandled in terms of the way to explain them. I was forced to defend the cartoons and I always will because that is a form of expression and a form of expression with a certain degree of mockery, which is legitimate. But I do think there is a difference in handling things appropriately or just letting them go. It was very important for me to define that defamation of religion does not exist. Defamation itself should be decriminalized and it's only something related to individuals and not to religions, ideologies, schools of thought or any other way. All this I presented in my report in 2011. But in the general assembly, more importantly, and this is still a point I'm trying to make today and that I'm actually gonna begin sort of with other organizations and individuals that are interested in mapping out, is the question of accessibility. It is very clear that internet only makes sense if everyone has access and we don't make this the benefit of a small privileged elite, whether it be a technological elite or whether it be an economic elite. Of course everyone disagreed with me at the beginning, especially if I mentioned this in Geneva of all places in Europe. Finland has 99.5% of connectivity. I think the highest in the world was Iceland. But when you look around the world and I said, even in the US, if you look on certain regions and states of the US, connectivity is not necessarily accessible to everyone, nor by the cost, nor by the service or the service providers. And certainly if you're going to the developing nations less, we used to talk with Cynthia on the experience of China. China discovered the power of internet and is growing rapidly in connectivity. But for me, the access to internet was related to content and to connectivity. In China, you have the connectivity and it's growing. The country was the 375 million when I wrote my report. Now it's probably many more. But with very little content, except that that was approved by the government and the party. In India, for instance, the other way around, very free content. This was in 2011. Now there's some regulations they're trying to introduce, but very free and open content. But only 7% of that year, now it's about 10 to 11, maybe 12% connectivity. In the country was greatly developed technology. So those were the issues and we can talk about that if anyone is interested in the questions. But what were the pitfalls? And this is where people began to ask me, but there's dangers in internet. And sure enough, last year we had the tragic events of Oslo. So in a way, again, events were forcing me to deal what happens with the power that internet has of disseminating news so fast, but also of making it in an interactive way with all the other forms of communication in the past have been unilinear. You had a communicator sending out a message and many people receiving it. Over here you send a message, but many people receive it, respond, connect between themselves and organize. And that can be used well, can be used wrongly. And clearly it was used within the issue of hate speech and we had this tragedy of Oslo which forced the world to less now rethink our democratic models and where does freedom of expression and where does the internet in particular fall into that? And of course, my position has never been censorship does not solve the issues. There are certain elements of protection. We have to protect children. We have to protect national security, yes, but within very clear boundaries by the law and a very reduced framework of exceptions. Then from that issue of hate speech, which is my report to last year's General Assembly, it was inevitable that I had to fall into the question of surveillance and privacy. Why? Because it is happening around the world. I had no idea, by the way, I swear no idea about what was happening in nor the national security, nor the NSA or in any other country for that matter. I just knew that it was happening and everyone talked about it and we related with NGOs around the world that were saying, look, the technology is moving so fast which is in a way is great because it is the way this is one of the debates we've had at the IGF is, what about the governance of the internet which can be the institution governing? And I'm not in favor of sort of easily establishing, even I'm against the UN sort of general position and some countries moving into the ITU. I work in the UN system but I don't believe the ITU would be the right institution at all to play a role in this. This is the technical institution with other different mandate. So again, I believe that this freedom of the internet, the speed which the technology grows and how fast it moves is really one of its basic sort of standards of benefit to the world but at the same time with the speed comes the problem of not being able to catch up. So the new technologies can easily be used to create easy alternatives for monitoring and we began to discover before this, this was way before the scandals that what is actually happening, that same way the phones were being monitored in the past, now internet communications were being monitored. I remember in my own country, people said, I have you speak over Skype, Skype cannot be monitored. Everything can be monitored. There's not a single form of communication that cannot be monitored with the new technologies. So what is the rationale of all this? Number one is I say in my report and I'll give you just two or three elements and I'll leave it to the questions but number one is national security is a legitimate concern by all means. I don't want to, I'm not playing games with the topic. I don't want to be simplistic because I know that there's some people who say, no, no, no, let's not let people scare us with that. No, I think there is a danger and the events in Boston prove them. Things do happen and not only national security is the right of states, more importantly is the obligation of states. The states have an obligation to protect all individuals, citizens or not, who live in their territory. But that protection has to be done within a democratic framework. Even the ICCPR has regulations for states of exception. Yes, a country that is being invaded or there is a state of exception for a natural disaster still has certain human rights standards. So it doesn't mean that a danger eliminates all responsibility and this is what worries me the most. That because there is a serious problem of security, then yes, we can jump all the standards we had. No, I always said to everyone, this I can even mention this because I said it in the Senate in Thailand because I was kind of challenging the less magistar laws in Thailand. They said, you don't understand our history. You don't understand our culture. This is cultural relativism. And I said, this is exactly what I disagree with. Human rights have to be equal around the world. This is what's called universality. Why? Because they're a minimum standard, not a maximum standard. And this is what people forget. Human rights are the minimal elements that every state has to guarantee to protect the life and the dignity of every single human being. And it's that basic network that we're trying to guarantee. And no country can say, oh look, I have a different culture, I have a different language, I have a different tradition. In my country, we equip women when they disbehave where in my country, we have a tradition of beating children so they grow up in a different way. No, this cannot exist. This is unacceptable. Well the same argument we can use with monitoring, illegal monitoring of communication in illegal breach of privacy is not acceptable anywhere in the world. Now yes, communications can be monitored if there is a criminal investigation. If there is a judge ordering it. If there is judicial supervision. And more importantly, if there is Congressional or legislative supervision at the same time. Now the way that many countries got around it, I mean some countries, there's one particular country I won't mention, but created a tribunal for this purpose which is the military tribunal for surveillance. But it's basically to allow blanket surveillance and to guarantee the right of these people. So it's not a case by case basis or not even a situation by situation basis. One could understand maybe in a certain region a certain moment, there may be some moment of crisis. No, it's yes we will allow of such and such a group of people. Now the problem with this type of surveillance which could be the blanket surveillance is that it goes behind profiling. And profiling in a way, in a way is going back to the old forms of discrimination. Yes, you can talk about profiles, but essentially, and I shouldn't even mention this in this place because it's not relevant to, internet but certainly relevant to the way that we see, we have legal cases like the case in Florida, just recently decided, which I think is a big tragedy, where people make a profile then, yes, surveillance is acceptable, then violence is acceptable, then to see anyone as a potential danger can sort of ultimately allow us to do many things that normally we should be restricted from in the protection of basic standard human rights. This was my position, this was the motivation. What is the general conclusion that I make in my report? Number one is that, yes, there is a legitimate concern on national security and it should be addressed, I'm not high. Secondly, there are other concerns. In Latin America for us, organized crime is a concern which includes national security but also includes other elements. Is the growth of organized crime like a cancer in states that can be overcome by organized crime. And bought out, judges, members of Congress, anyone. So it is important to combat that. This has other elements of trafficking of people, of trafficking of children, of sexual exploitation and child abuse and child pornography. Yes, all those things happen and have to be challenged. I work on children rights in my own country as well. So I understand the dangers but again in order to combat those dangers in a way that strengthens our society, we have to establish the due process of law procedures. There has to be, like I said, and essentially my recommendation is there has to be a judicial oversight and a legislative oversight. I focus on the need for both. Some countries only want to have the legislative oversight. That doesn't always work because members of Congress have their own agenda depending on what party I'm talking about the world. In general, depending on what party they belong to. So I think, yes, there should be an intelligence committee in all Congresses of the world to supervise, but there should also be in a specific court procedure. So what's important is that the decision should not be made nor by the executive branch alone in an arbitrary way, much less by security agencies on their own, whether they be police, military or in general national security intelligence agencies. This is the crucial element. What I'm trying to do as Rob Portour, which is my obligation, is to take the arbitrariness from the decision. Because I think many of these things happen with the best of intentions, but if you allow national security agencies to make a decision, if you allow police agencies to make a decision, inevitably, because of their mentality, their logic, inevitably those decisions will lead to some form of abuse. And here's where you create a democratic system with checks and balances. This is what it's all about. There's nothing new in what we're doing, except that this time we're applying it to internet and to communications. This was my report. And what I say at the end of my report, by the way, is that the safest society is the most democratic society. Because what happens is if a society begins to break down in its own principles, then it begins to crack and create sort of crevices that can actually weaken its own structure and its own state and security. This is what happened to the military regimes in Latin America, where I come from, and what we were able to see. Of course, they were justifying their actions by the Cold War. They keep on saying they were defending the Constitution and the nation. In the meantime, they were disappearing people and torturing people in my country, committing massacres and genocide. And this is non-acceptable. No excuse can be acceptable, because where does it end? This is the problem. And the reflection, I mean, obviously, in many countries is where does this lead us. Maybe one last word, and with this I finish, is because this is a debate here in the US, is what happens between nationals and foreigners? Because obviously, I like the First Amendment, and I clearly see that the US has a standard of freedom of expression that goes way beyond the rest of the world. This is true. And there's sort of a jurisprudence to accompany that that has been well put in place. Sometimes, excessively, I mean, to the extent that some issues, like having a cuckoo's clan be legal, are far beyond what other countries would allow, certainly what I would allow. But again, I understand here the way that this nation was built and the principles around the communities that came here first made this very important. But the problem is that then is this valid, is this principle valid of freedom of expression beyond any limits, valid only for US citizens and not even everyone else around the world? And the same way for the other rights, is privacy different in the US than it should be anywhere else? Or in Britain, where now they discovered that the G8 meeting had also been monitored. It also actually makes you feel good because it's a state of being monitored or everyone else can be monitored. But it's absurd. I mean, so then who's going to trust anyone? Yes, and the intelligence agencies share information. Do they really? Do they share all their information? I mean, this is where the game falls into you kind of trip yourself in your own tail, we say in Spain, because you begin sort of going in circles and eventually you fall into the trap of allowing anything to go through. This will inevitably weaken a democratic legal system. And this is the big principle. Freedom of expression and privacy are two different rights, very distinct rights, but have to go hand in hand. You cannot have full freedom of expression if you don't fully guarantee privacy because people will be scared. There will be an intimidation to speak. Certainly not only in the US, I mean, certainly if you're talking about Syria or Iran or North Korea or any other country, then even worse. I mean, their privacy is a fundamental necessity. So we must keep in our mental sort of concept of human rights now that we're basically at the 20th anniversary of the Vienna Declaration, why we decided that all rights are equal, all rights are universal, all rights are interdependent and interrelated because they strengthen each other. And this ultimately is what strengthens the democratic society. Thank you. Well, I was just thinking through some of the things you were saying, Frank, and I just wanted to pick up one thing that you said at the end there, which is about the universality of rights. And it's one thing I'm struggling with here. When you look at how the US and the UK have defended their laws, they said, don't worry, we're not spying on non-Americans or we're not intercepting data from people in the UK itself. I looked this up and there's about 2.5 billion users on the internet now and only about 12% of them are in the US and the UK, right? And so it's a big problem in the sense that there's all these people who do have a privacy interest. Their data is flowing through the US and sometimes the UK. A lot of their data is stored in the US. So in the long run, it doesn't really seem like a workable legal theory to say that you really should only protect the rights of people on your soil and no one else. We're only gonna become more connected. And so how do we really give meaning to the rights of privacy under that legal theory that the US and the UK seem to be putting forward? So I'm kinda curious to get your thoughts on what are the obligations here of these countries to the people outside their country and what should they be? And you're also raising a very important question which was already raised. By the way, this report I had a great series of conversations at the State Department. I must thank the State Department for being very open. And I also shared it with them very openly and this was very good, I'm very pleased. But precisely that point came up and some people in the legal department were telling me that the law was amended, the Patrick's Act I guess, that it was amended because now, because US citizens could even be surveilled if they were communicating from abroad. Now there was an amendment where no, not even being abroad, US citizens cannot fall under surveillance unless there is a court order. Well, yes, this is great. But what happens if a US citizen is communicating with a foreigner? Because that's the typical case. I mean, you may have a friend in Europe or you studied with someone there and you communicate or what if you were doing human rights in Pakistan and you went to follow up with them and with NGOs over there. I mean, it's not such a simple thing. It probably works well in terms of a press sort of quote in the US because when I discovered it only, I think 7% of the population in the US have passports to me since most of the population in the US don't travel abroad, but so it'll make a lot of people happy in the US to know that their communications inside are not being monitored. But for those 7% that have traveled or will travel or planning to travel, I'm sure it won't because I think number one is this is an issue with everyone. But more importantly is the question of why do we have human rights to begin with? And we have human rights because we came out of the Second World War with the idea that the atrocities that were committed abroad, that were committed by the Axis countries by Germany, Italy, and Japan should never happen again. So we were trying to create this basic bottom line standard like this minimal standard. Now the only way it works if we all agree that this is a worldwide consensus. So if we break the consensus, we are weakening the whole concept of human rights ourselves. And I think this is what's happening with communications. By the way, it also happens with the use of torture and a couple of other issues that are not in my mandate which I didn't get into because of that. But I think it is important to go back to the debate of universality. And I fully agree with you. It makes it untenable to talk about privacy if everyone doesn't have it, then how can we guarantee it even here? If I could just follow up on Cynthia's question and maybe put an even blunter point on it, as is my want. I mean, what we really have here is a clash between sort of US, the application of US constitutional law which protects American citizens who are holding the American government accountable. A conflict between that and international human rights law under which all human beings should enjoy the same protections everywhere on the planet. And this conflicting with a sort of an interpretation of the Constitution that only applies to American citizens, which is residents, which is problematic. And so when we have a situation, I mean, those of us in the human rights talk a lot about conflicts between nation-state domestic law and international human rights law, oftentimes in the context of authoritarian regimes, but you know, here we are. And what do we do? What do we do about this going forward? Do we need, I mean, obviously kind of going to the UN or the ITU and getting all the nation-states to come together and coordinate their laws so that they're all going to be consistent with international human rights standards. This strikes me as perhaps an unlikely thing that would happen and we all have lots of problems with the UN and internet governance anyway. So what do we do going forward? How do we get at least those countries which have made public commitments to internet freedom have created something called the Freedom Online Coalition where they've all gotten together and claimed that they uphold internet freedom. It's very clear not only from your report but from the work of the broader human rights community for a number of years that privacy and freedom of expression go hand in hand and you cannot have internet freedom with unaccountable surveillance going on. I mean, it's pretty clear that that is a fact. I mean, if you believe in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Associated Covenant. So given that that's the case, how do we move forward? How do citizens of democracies whose governments have made these commitments get our governments to actually adhere to them? Yeah, you're raising a crucial question that we deal with all the time at the Human Rights Council in the UN in general. And by the way, I'm not pretending to think that the UN is this great, wonderful, effective institution by no means. Don't take my words and thus, it's what we got. It's the global world forum so we must have might as well use it and use it well. I even have a couple of anecdotes of how weak the UN may be. But interestingly enough, the constitutional question is important because it is true that there is a role for constitutional law in every country of the world. And that human rights are the minimum standards that all countries should have. But they can be increased by their own constitution. And this is the role of constitutional laws. Number one is to adopt basic human rights standards in every country. And number two is to actually make them better. Now, when I mentioned this to some countries, they even laugh at me. They said, I mean, we don't, just by mentioning cases like death penalty for instance, when in general, people in the UN recognize that that is giving their right to take life to the state is in retrospect something that should not exist. But yes, that may be a worldwide consensus but many countries don't want to accept that. So the idea is that constitutions should be built on the basis of human rights standards. And secondly, there is an obligation of all states to make their internal, their domestic legislation in coherence with international standards. And that is one of the most difficult issues that I find. To tell you the truth, I mean, we're looking at processes going backward and on freedom of expression, which is what obviously I follow. Hungary just passed laws that are a huge setback in terms of freedom of expression of their own people internally, not even foreigners, but even domestically. Ecuador just passed a law where they talk about media lynching or they create a superintendent of communication which is really a censorship authority. So no matter where we look at in different countries, we are looking at setbacks in legislation instead of moving forward in legislation and actually using the human rights standards to improve, some countries are putting in more restrictive and restrictive legislation. Now, this is a trend in the world, by the way. It's not only, I mean, I mentioned some isolated cases because I'm kind of shocked at the fact that these are happening, but the fact of the matter is that I think internet did bring one issue about which is the fear of political leaders and especially after the Arab Spring, regardless of what the final outcome will be in the region, but it did prove to many political leaders that communication is powerful and citizens moving now with their own forms of communication are very powerful. But that should be seen as something positive because I mentioned in my report that internet facilitates citizen participation which is what a democracy wants. But lo and behold, it seems to me that many political leaders around the world are scared about citizen participation. They used to talk about that, but they really didn't want it too much because now the people can actually have electronic government and transparency in your fingertips, can actually criticize public policies or public officials, then they're all scared. So the legislation in the world in general, in different degrees, is moving to more rigorous control. And this is what I find unacceptable, at least certainly not by the executive branch of any country. So clearly, yes, we must maintain constitutional order everywhere to guarantee democracy, but constitutional order must be seen as something going above human rights standards and never going below, which is not necessarily the case. I mean, there are many constitutions, we can mention from gender issues and gender equity to treatment of children, many constitutions that don't guarantee equality of rights of all its people in the territory. So I wanna actually make an invitation now, right? So first I would like to know from the folks here who is unknown American. Unknown American, unknown born here. What if you have dual citizenship? You are half Brazilian Sasha. So can you please put your hands up? So first I wanna thank you to be here with me and I wanna thank you the opportunity to be here with this panel, but I wanna us to invert a little bit the rationale of our conversation. So if you think that we are all known Americans, you guys are all known Brazilians, all known Germans, all known Chinese, right? And I wanna us to think about the consequences of the US acts in terms of legitimating a domino effect of increasing surveillance in known US, in other countries. So I come from Brazil and I'm working on legislation there for many years from more than 12 years in this area. So we probably guys heard about the internet bill of rights in Brazil. After this, that is stuck. You guys may have heard about net neutrality legislation coming from Argentina. After this, that's stuck. So we have to really think about many topics here and I have many others in my mind, right? We have to think about the consequences of that in terms of global geopolitics but also national geopolitics, right? And I think in the middle of all of that is the word trust, right? So I'm putting this to you because I would love to hear Frank talking about this but also my colleagues, Rebecca and Cynthia. You see, we did some mapping on some of the reactions around the world here with Jean's team, which I'm part of and we see reactions from Switzerland, we see reactions from EU, we see reactions from Brazil, we see reactions from China. We see a very different geopolitics, internet governance that we have been seeing in other topics, right? And these folks are pressuring for something that we all have been fighting that is the oversight by ITU, for example. So I think we need to understand the domino effect and the risk, right? So Brazil and US have the global partnership program on government transparency. The trust on that program is also very shaken right now. So I wanna hear from you like, let's take out the focus, oh, but by the way, right? US is a land of immigrants, right? So besides the folks not traveling abroad, you do have family abroad, right? So I wanna us turning the table and thinking from the side of the non-American. What does that mean geopolitically? And what are the risks we're gonna see in other countries that will feel legitimate to do this, right? Marco Su, the con-south group is thinking of colocation regulation, right? So what do we see now and what we should do? What is the oversight? What is the judicial and legislative oversight we should have to deal with that? There's a couple of things that come to mind in terms of what the effect of this nodding and all these scandals will be and the Britain, the G8 and all this is that I think it's a major setback. The clearly the countries that originate the technology which are the US and Europe are the countries that have the lead on internet and many other countries add elements of technology but if the leading technological countries are actually engaging in developing new technologies for monitoring without any supervision, monitoring that makes it easy to jump any judiciary oversight or legislative oversight, then it clearly creates a bad example because then what can you say, like you said to any other country around the world who may not have the new technological developments from their own investigation but can buy this technological development which by the way brings me to another point that I mentioned in my report is that there is a responsibility of states in this but there's also an element of corporate responsibility because many countries are buying this technology for corporations. Corporations that come initially from a democratic society but who have no problem in selling it to the government of city, for instance, to a monitor what's happening or what communications are occurring there or to North Korea and I think this is a very serious issue that is being brought about. I would like to engage and I have mentioned this to friends in different corporations that deal with ITs that this is the right moment to have a serious sort of moral, ethical, standard issues in terms of corporations. Even in my report we go as far as to say the same way you have export licenses for weapons facilities that some countries would control. There should be some form of export licenses for this type of technology as well to at least generate some degree of image of some control. Now the opposing view to that what people told me is that you can always monitor weapons when they're being exported. You can not necessarily monitor communications technology or internet technology when it's, you can't monitor software when it's being sent to someone else but I think that you can eventually find out where the origin was and for me this is an important point. If a corporation registered in a particular country is exporting this technology there should be some form of notification and authorization to the state because of the sensitive nature of this. But beyond that the fact is that already this scandal has created a tremendous impact in terms of who responds to whom and where do you establish the legal standards? And ironically as I was saying I don't agree with the ITU being the governance body of internet because some countries that are pushing it to the ITU what they're trying to do is just simply to reproduce the vote of the General Assembly. So yes you will have the vote of all these countries that don't necessarily produce the technology and don't necessarily have the most democratic forms of government. That is not exactly what you want in internet. You don't want the control of those that are powerful either and just the control of the powerful but you clearly don't want a simple control by vote. Internet has to flow in a different way has to be a more multi-stakeholder type issue which is what we have been dealing with at the IGF and other forums before but with no easy solution. But the precedents being set now which was your question I think are very bad and I think our stopping programs I don't even know if the Lady Marco Civil was approved in Brazil at the end or not but for instance it was so the idea is that this issue will provoke a setback in many countries in terms of what could have been a more progressive and open-minded approach to internet issues around the world. Just to pull together some threads here I mean Rebecca brought up the Freedom Online Coalition which is a coalition of about 20 governments. The goal really was to bring together a much broader base of governments in support of the idea that human rights apply as much online offline. So it's to build a broader base of governments that support that notion. Fast forward to today, we have two governments who are incredibly increasingly afraid of the power of social media. So Turkey the past few weeks have shown that the government has become very hostile to social media and they're now talking about how can we force internet companies to hand over user data more readily in our country and what regulations do we need. And then in April India started rolling out a huge centralized monitoring system that would allow direct monitoring of both telephone and internet networks. It's really hard for me to imagine now that the leaders of the Freedom Online Coalition being able to push back against some of these more problematic trends now and I think that's one of the biggest issues that we really need to grapple with in terms of the precedent we've really set. I just feel like in a lot of ways governments are gonna look at what the UK and the US are supposedly doing and saying look, there's a roadmap for what I can do if I want to better monitor social media and better monitor the internet in my country. And I'm not entirely sure what the answer is to Rebecca's first question to all that. Just to add to that, and even Brazil, right, that is democratic, the Dilma pronounced last, not this Sunday, the Sunday before that that she wanna do the same, right? So everybody leaves their room with screaming, we need to do something and the first thing that needs to be done is more control and this is terrifying for us Brazilians because we are still fighting to open up archives from the dictatorship period, right? When I was five, we had that. So how are we gonna deal with that? Yeah, I mean just speaking to this issue of international reaction, I'm co-founder of something called Global Voices Online which is an international bloggers network and I can tell you people are really concerned about the way in which their governments are taking advantage. Exactly, exactly. Of the moment. Of the moment, you know, Russia, you're seeing okay, well now we need to demand the same access of foreign operators that the U.S. is demanding and a lot of concern also about the citizen, not just in authoritarian countries but concern in Europe that European country governments are sort of going on the high horse about oh, the U.S. is doing all these bad things, we must therefore kind of create, protect our own industry and have our own parallel structures yet most of these governments too are, one can list a number of very problematic surveillance related developments going on in a lot of European countries or proposed laws, et cetera. And so concern that the internet is gonna get Balkanized and that this is gonna be an excuse for governments to actually obtain more control over national networks that's not going to ultimately benefit citizens. Although there is some hope I think in some quarters in Europe that they're at least on privacy laws and some privacy standards and protection, data protection that this might be a moment to push for a bit more rigor in that regard and weaken some of the corporate lobbies that have been trying to water down data protection laws in Europe which kind of speaks to, brings us to the corporate accountability piece that Frank raised that's really important that I'd love to kind of emphasize which is Egyptian activists will point out that the technology used in Egypt to monitor activists was produced by Norris, which is owned by Boeing which we learned from whistleblowers long before Snowden was being used and probably still being used by AT&T in the NSA secret room and in its facilities in a number of places around this country. And this is an issue that you have surveillance industrial complex that is developing technologies for our government agencies and then they're selling those technologies around the world in a way that is deeply troubling, completely unaccountable, unregulated in any way. But going beyond those types of technologies that kind of the end user is a government agency but just as consumer technologies, right? So there's an issue around, a broader corporate accountability which we've got three people here from the global network initiative or four people today. And so hopefully we'll be able to hear from them directly but maybe you can control Norris's technologies going to Egypt but can you control Telia Senera selling mobile phone network equipment to Azerbaijan and do you want to, right? But at the same time, it was found by investigative journalists that Telia Senera played a role in the fact that people were questioned by police after they sent text messages voting for Armenian singers in the Eurovision contest. And so that companies are being found, companies that, and there's been a lot of issues around Blackberry and a whole range of different companies that have been acquiescing to government demands, surveillance demands. And a lot of questions of are these companies doing everything they can within the context of these imperfect legal and political situations they're operating in to mitigate harm, to make sure that their users and customers understand what's being collected, what's being shared with whom. So their users and customers can make more informed choices about how and whether they're gonna use certain services. And the global network initiative has done great work on developing free expression and privacy standards for companies and implementation guidelines. The UN guiding principles on business and human rights make it very clear which governments and have signed on to make it very clear that companies do have human rights obligations. It's not just businesses, businesses, business. Just as they have obligations toward the environment and labor and so on, they have obligations when it comes to human rights related to free expression and privacy and that companies need to take that seriously. They need to be held accountable and they need to make that commitment. And we need to move forward in some kind of, as you were saying, sort of multi-stakeholder process that involves companies making commitments, governments making commitments and civil society really holding everybody's feet to the fire. But the question is how we get that started when even my own government and a number of others who are leaders of the Freedom Online Coalition obviously have trouble kind of being leaders on this particular issue. Maybe one of the things that worries me is that I have no doubt that many governments were already monitoring. The technology is so good. And we knew that. And we knew that. The problem is that we're moving into areas of cynicism now where if the US is doing it, then we should all do it and we should do it openly and we should also enact legislation that legitimizes what we're doing. So there is a trend to make a bad situation worse. Because it was being done before but at least it was considered illegal. If you were found it would be criticized, it was illegal. But now, now it all of a sudden becomes if you feel threatened and your national security threatened, then it feels legitimate. The other day I heard a program on television which I thought was very interesting is issues of national security are real and terrorism is clearly a threat in the world. But if you look at the amount of people that die out of predictable disease or infections and the investment that should be done into preventing those deaths and look at what is being invested in anti-terrorism, there's a total disproportion there. So is it really the right to life that's being defended? I mean, is really people concerned about defending the citizens? I mean, because if that were the case there would be much more investment in health and preventive mechanisms. And maybe finally on the question of corporations, the other issue I raise in my report by the way is that there's also the question of surveillance for commercial reasons. And that is even very preoccupying. Yes, profiling can be done politically because there's some people who've seen as a threat but profiling is also being done for commercial reasons. I have a friend from South Africa, Henriette, who was telling me that she put her photograph in Facebook. And she never, she happens to be on the heavy side and she began receiving all these ads of diets and lose weight drinks. And she never requested any of that. She had never subscribed to anything of that. So clearly someone just by looking at her photo decided that this may be what she wanted to buy. So this is terrible. I mean, this is really the commercial use of data banks that any corporation can just sell off. This link to the famous clouding, which I think is also a fiction because that generates the sense that it's neutral territory, it's extraterritoriality which doesn't exist because it is in the control of someone, a corporation, which is gonna be based somewhere anyway. Then we have to break all these sort of false myths being used with the consumers or the users of internet service providers. So I think that these are the challenges of today in terms of the surveillance and monitoring. I think we have to build a question of transparency into that and certainly go back to the regulations of protection. This was essentially what I said, not to eliminate monitoring. I say in my report, monitoring can be done if it's done legally and properly but to limit it to the real extreme necessity cases. Actually just one footnote to the last two points which is I think another major fallout from this is that we're members of the Global Network Initiative and we've done a lot of work in pressing internet companies to resist government requests for user data because it can have such harmful outcomes, right? If internet activists are identified and are put in jail, that's a real harmful outcome and companies to have a responsibility there. I think this is gonna make it much more difficult for companies all around the world to push back against government requests for user data, especially over broad ones, right? If they're seen as completely complicit in massive surveillance in privacy infringement in the US, how can they say with a straight face to other governments, no, we won't do for you what we're doing for the US? And I think that's another thing that we're gonna need to grapple with both as the human rights movement and the companies themselves. And I think at least one first step in all of this, which I think both of you have already mentioned is transparency and a lot more disclosure over what's actually happening so we can have a rational debate about it. I want to open this up for the audience, those online as well. There's a microphone in the back. Let me start off though as we prepare. Frank, you've suggested constitutional standards, legal standards that are above the minimum human rights standard. And we know in this country there's a very heated debate about the Fourth Amendment, about the Patriot Act. How do you think, does the world paying attention to that? Does it matter to the world? What do you think the image from the outside is? That's not a difficult question, but a sensitive question, but in a very direct answer, Gene, I think there are some countries that for good or bad are being monitored constantly by the world. And clearly the US is one of them. And whatever happens in the US generates a trend and it can be a positive trend. Like I said, I think the First Amendment, although goes beyond what many of us would accept, has been, I think, very positive because it put the standard very high and that was very good. But the same way, I think, whenever the US does something that challenges principles of human rights, it has a very negative effect. This has been pointed out by several rapporteurs. Philip Alston did it with the use of drones and Crystal Hines now, or Juan Mendez now with the use of torture. And I have now said it was the use of surveillance, of technical surveillance. I mean, not referring specifically to this incident, like I said, because this happened after my report. But essentially, I think, yes, typically whatever happens, especially in some countries, in the big countries of Europe, and in the US and Canada, will always have an impact in terms of what happens in the rest of the world. And in this case, very tragically, a very negative effect. Thank you so much, Gene, for organizing this. My name is Susan Aronson. I work with the World Wide Web Foundation on Professor GWU. And what we're trying to do is to monitor, excuse me, to measure, over time, governments adherence to internet freedom and openness. Pretty hard to do. We're gonna do it by surveying, though. I wanted to ask you, though, about a different tactic, if you will. Clearly governments, including my own government, are really struggling to balance various rights. And they're not new to these rights, but the balance is new, right, because the internet is so new. So the US, on one hand, is great, giving all this money to new American others and trying to empower people to be able to use the internet, right, with Tor, et cetera. And the US is terrible in its own balance. So what I would suggest to you is, is there any way you could spell out? And obviously, what's right for Kenya is gonna be different from what's right for the United States, let alone China. But is there any way you can spell out how nations can balance, for example, privacy and surveillance, the right to privacy and intellectual property rights? So you deal with Hedopila, et cetera. Could you talk a little bit about how you might describe a roadmap for countries? Instead of saying these are the rights and this is what governments are doing, maybe spell out, here's how you can find the right balance. Thank you. Yeah, I understand what you're saying about the roadmap. And I would, and I like the idea of trying to be put it on the positive side. I wouldn't use the word balance. I don't think one balances, I think privacy is a given, and we should have it all the time and the times when we lose it is for exceptional reasons that have to be clearly identified. One of the issues that I'm struggling for my next report, which is access to public information regarding human rights violations and the right to truth, is what happens, I mean, every victim has a right to request information when the rights are being violated. But what happens when there's a leak? And is there any liability and in which cases is there a liability, which is not? Which deals with many of these other cases that we're now handling because many of them were leaks in terms of the information. And my position is that there, the balance has to be, or the balance or the definition has to be in whether there is a harm or a benefit in the leak. Here again, the point I'm making with privacy is privacy exists for a reason, which is to protect freedom of expression. We want to be able to be free to say what we want to say because only the person we're speaking to or sending the message or several people should be those that are reading it. And this is what allows us to speak freely. Now, if we lose that privacy or part of that privacy, then we're also losing freedom of expression. This is why I say there are two different rights, but they really very much go hand in hand. And in countries where you risk your life, or your freedom, like in Thailand, there was this old man who, 80 years old, literally, and was sentenced to 20 years in prison because he had four messages criticizing the king, and you get five years per statement, and he did four. So he got 20 years in prison for SMS messages criticizing the king. This is absurd. So someone was obviously monitoring these communications. So here's where I, again, I don't find an easy solution because I don't think there's a balance. I think human rights have to exist, period. This is the principle of human rights. This is why I keep on insisting that they're minimal, that they can't be different in Nigeria than they are in the U.S., or they cannot be different in Kenya, or they cannot be different in Bangladesh. They have to be the same. If we were talking about cultural sophisticated issues, yes, cultures can be different. Traditions, values can be different. But there has to be sort of a minimum network, a protection of the bottom line. And I think this is where the mentality of human rights have to move into looking at human rights as the minimum, as the bottom floor, and not as the maximum. So now, Frank, that I see tremendous interest in you, I'm gonna ask if we can actually get a number of questions raised and see whether they create a theme. So why don't we have two or three right here. Hi, I'm Susan Morgan. I run the Global Network Initiative, which has been mentioned a few times. I want to ask you about, it seems to me that what we need to have is an entirely different conversation about free expression, privacy, and national security, and surveillance. And my observation would be that we're struggling to even work out how to have the conversation. I see discussions happening entirely in parallel. So there are meetings like the one today which will be very much focused on the kind of free flow of information, free expression and privacy. And then probably in other parts of Washington at the same time, there's conversations happening about the importance of surveillance and national security. And I know from the work that we've done in GNI over the last few years, it's incredibly hard to even get people in the same room together. But it strikes me that that's a prerequisite for the kind of conversations that we need to be having. And I just wondered if you have any thoughts on how we might make that happen. So let's do a few more questions here and then we'll go back to... Take up a slightly different issue, German Brookes also from the Global Network Initiative and a non-U.S. citizen. I'm just wondering how do you get governments to take seriously the kind of advocacy statements which are coming from the NGO community, from multi-stakeholder initiatives like GNI. In other words, how do we move governments and above all, because it is basically a U.S. problem, how do we move the U.S. government and why is it above all a U.S. problem because most of the information is either stored in the U.S. or passes through the U.S. or through U.S. controlled entities. So that has got the rest of the world very upset and I spent a lot of my time in Germany where there's a huge focus on privacy of information and there's a lot of discussion about, well, how about creating our own ISPs, our own internet companies? And I think why couldn't the general consensus coming also from the companies but supported by many others in the U.S. try to influence the government as saying, what you're actually doing is you're damaging the predominant international position of a high technology leadership position of this country and unless you can curtail some of the impacts of the legislation or lack of control over that legislation, then you won't be successful and gradually the dominance of the U.S. technology leaders will be diminished worldwide and perhaps because of the nature of the U.S. with its openness to business success, that particular argument might be stronger in political circles than any of the arguments coming from the typical civil society source. So we have one more right behind you and then we'll turn back to Frank. Hi, I'm George Lyle from Internews and my question is this, we talk about the dangers of surveillance and is the problem access to the equipment or the attitudes while using it because now, for example, your example about the gentleman in Thailand, states can go out looking for crime. They can just set the controls on the system and set it to alert them any time somebody does something wrong. Frank, did you want a rational response? I like this idea that Susan was proposing of let's think of a new approach and I've been thinking of that very specifically. For instance, what about having a meeting with security agencies? Because I normally meet with human rights groups and then it turns out into being a great conversation. But I'm not sure the governments are paying attention and obviously I do it because my role as a proper tourist to strengthen civil society and human rights organizations and fine, I'll keep on doing that. But I would certainly enjoy, I was telling a friend of mine who works, there were several friends who work at state. They would really enjoy having a conversation with President Obama one day and to look at the issues from his perspective and say, okay, I understand you're worried about national security. Of course, you're the president and you will carry the weight of whatever happens whether it be small or big and whether the press makes it big or small. I mean certain issues should not, this is against deals was also the response of professional ethics of the press of issues that should not be made big because they're not really like the Pastor Bernie in the Koran and Florida for instance, which was a non-issue to begin with and should have never become an issue. So I understand he must have all this weight on his shoulders, but it would be interesting to have one-on-one conversation saying, okay, what about having a different approach? What about calling on your own people, on the US people to really have a campaign, a national campaign for human rights, guaranteeing security from a human rights perspective. I'm not saying the US should be weak at all, no, nor any country by that matter. I mean, I think all countries should feel strong, but you feel strong making their democratic model stronger and not weak in democratic principles and democratic models and this would be great. So I've been thinking of actually trying to see, I don't count on the UN too much, I mean, to do these things because the UN always gets scared, you know, but I've been thinking of getting like, why don't we get a couple of intelligence agencies, the big ones together from the US, Russia, Britain, China, or India, Brazil and some of the big ones and say, okay, let's have a conversation. You want to guarantee national security? Okay, why don't you do it well but within the boundaries of the law? Why don't you establish a system that actually works? I hope this conversation is multistakeholder. Multistakeholder, yes, yes. Every people trust their own security agencies, right? So there is a... And the same thing happens with governments. I mean, I think Sinti was making, Sinti was making a very important point with the Freedom Online Coalition because the Freedom Online Coalition began as a strong movement of states and I like that. I like the idea that these were states getting together to promote freedom on the network. But all of a sudden, even those that began, like Turkey, are now having, are getting cold turkey. So I mean, they're getting cold feet on it and because they had a protest in the square, well, there is always the sense in politicians that they want to control things and they want to... And that the idea of control means monitoring. But again, I think this is the idea of breaking the model of just speaking amongst ourselves. I think it's important and I would take that very, very seriously. I think we should do a dialogue with security agencies. We should do a dialogue with foreign ministries which are what works in the UN or not necessarily those that make the decisions in the country. So they're probably not the best interlocutors. I think it should not be the foreign ministries. I think they should be the interior ministries or the security agencies or the military where we could have this type of conversation. And I think we've had conversations on human rights with these type of agencies anyway on other issues, not necessarily on communication, but I think this would be a moment to try this out. And certainly with governments, what is the reputation? I keep, I had a big discussion with President Correa to not mention names of Ecuador. And he was saying, look, I've been attacked by the press. This was on freedom of the press. So I have to be able to limit the lies they say. And I said, you seem to be a smart guy, I said. And I imagined that was the very flamboyant character was the charisma you have. I said, you want to transcend in history in your own country. How do you want to be remembered? And for the first time I saw him sit back. Because the way you're going, I said, you're gonna be remembered as the president who censored the press. So I'm not gonna remember you as a guy who had good ideas and was very progressive. No, you were the very irate president who got annoyed of any criticism and who was using defamation charges and who was closing newspapers. And this is what people are going to remember. I said, and this is gonna be your legacy. To many political leaders, it would be interesting to see that. To say, how will Mubarak be remembered in Egypt after 30 years in power? So anyway, yes, the answer Susan is yes, we have to look at different venues and different conversations as let's build other circles to bring this about. The message would be the same one, though. The message is, we have human rights as a worldwide consensus because we believe in it. And if the world is apparently losing interest, then we're in a real crisis, though. But the thing is that we believe in it because we want to have certain basic world order around respect for human life and dignity and minimal standards. Let me see, in the second question on how do we get governments to have interest? A little bit like I was saying, no. We get governments to have interest by actually proving that it is important for them. I'm not sure about the commercial message. I have, yes, it is important to be competitive and to be effective commercially, but one of the reasons I think we have lost track of some issues that there is an excessively commercial issue. There are things that can't be valued commercially. This is happening for me specifically with the press. There's an excessively commercial perspective, so a lot of the press is going after the news that sells. And I find that very difficult. And I would like to believe, and ethics is not always commercially profitable, but it's very important for a corporation if they can actually prove that they have a transparent way of thinking. In some cases, yes, you can do consumer advocacy with some issues, but, for instance, this would be interesting with some of the social networks. Are they keeping that information? Are they selling their databases? Are they notifying the users, as Cindy had mentioned, what they're doing with that information? I think some of that could come from user campaigns and protection of consumers, yes, of the services. But I think also there has to be other pressures, and I think here's where we have to persuade the governments of those countries to have, like I said, the export licenses for certain materials, which are particularly dangerous in terms of the type of software and the type of, that can be done, no? Rebecca, once again, I wanna make sure others, if you let us know if you have questions out there quickly, Rebecca. Just quickly, I would really like to see the internet industry put as many resources into changing the law here in the United States around unaccountable surveillance, reforming the Patriot Act, reforming Pfizer Amendments Act, and so on, as they put into fighting the SOPA and PIPA at the beginning of 2012. Also, I see that there's a few government folks in the audience and a couple of company people and quite a lot of, but I don't see anybody from the national security side of things. We wouldn't let you see. We'd never know. There's, we will get it to you soon. The webcast for the War College. I'm Tim Libra from the University of Pennsylvania. One question I had came up really early on, you said states have only a right but a responsibility to defend their national security and defend their citizens, and I was wondering, does that extend to defending their citizens from surveillance, especially from other states? And I was wondering if that can reframe the conversation from telling the NSA not to spy to, as a sovereign government, should I find a way to make sure my citizens are safe? Hi, my name is Adriana Benedict and I'm with Public Citizens Global Access to Medicines Program. One area of our work involves working as a civil society stakeholder in free trade agreement negotiations. And as I'm sure you know, these agreements impose rigid, super national laws on countries that extend to many areas of internet freedom, including telecommunications and intellectual property. And I have two questions today. First, how should human rights obligations interact with these agreements? And to what extent can a human rights dialogue surrounding these negotiations ensure that countries like the US are prepared to establish and abide by robust standards concerning internet privacy? And how do you think that an environment of compromised trust figures into government's abilities to negotiate binding trade agreements such as the TPP, the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the Trans-Atlantic Trade Investment Partnership, which, for instance, are likely to seek broad internet service provider liability? Yeah, there was one question from before that we had left, which was is it equipment or is it the policies? I would say in reality it's the policies. But also the fact of the matter is that you have some countries that have a history of being more abusive of their citizens over the rights of people. So you also bring in the question of equipment because you certainly don't want the equipment to get into their hands. So again, just to summarize that I would say, is the policies because the policy of the government should be to respect basic rights, including privacy, and to monitor when monitoring is necessary but using the law, using the justice system and not jumping all the procedures. But again, I would make the point that equipment, you don't want, I mean, you would doubt twice to sell equipment to North Korea even if you didn't know in detail what their policy on surveillance was. I mean, you clearly have your doubts about selling monitoring equipment to them. So I think both of the issues would fall in hand and hand. I think it's a great question whether the obligation to protect its citizens includes protecting their basic human rights, including privacy. Yes, I mean obviously the answer is yes. But many states would probably think that their obligation, their first obligation is to protect their physical integrity and their physical safety. And I understand that. I mean, this is what challenges people the most. And I say this because I mean, again, I don't want to reduce the importance of terrorism. Terrorism goes by waves in the history of the world and we are in an increasing period and it is a real risk. So I understand states being worried about terrorist acts. But the problem is that number one is you can't do away with everything else and say I want to protect my citizens from terrorism and in the meantime become an undemocratic government and authoritarian government. And certainly you cannot use terrorism yourself, which is what other, I mean, authoritarian nations actually do to others. I mean, yes, the life of my citizens I have to protect but the life of others I can sort of eliminate or forget. This is a very dangerous proposition because it again breaks the universality of human rights. It's an anti-human rights question. So what we talk about in protecting citizens is you're not only protecting the individuals, you're protecting the democratic model of society you want to establish. And protecting that democratic model means that you want to protect human rights. I always say that the respect for human rights is the measure of democracy, the ultimate measure of democracy. Ah, trade agreements. Yes, very important. I think human rights should be brought in a long time ago. I used to follow some with the USTR, some of the trade agreements and labor standards. And yes, labor standards were brought in so as not to provoke sort of unlawful or undesired competition. But I think human rights should be equally important. There should be certainly human rights, clear human rights standards brought into play when signing trade agreements with other countries. One of the questions is the intellectual property issue is what sort of brings a little bit of a cloud into all this. Because although I believe in intellectual property, I think people should have a right to protect their creation. It oftentimes is perceived as what SOPA and people legitimately that they go overboard. I mean the legislation protecting intellectual property is certainly so aggressive that it actually stifles freedom of expression and the use of internet. And this is dangerous. There has to be, there, I can use the word balance, there has to be a balance. There has to be a protection for intellectual property but it doesn't have to be so aggressive or go too far because otherwise you will generate what's already happening, for instance, in Sweden. You now have the pirate party officially called that way with two members in the European Parliament whose only topic of agenda is net neutrality. Anything on the net is everyone's property and no one can actually consider it theirs. Now, I mean, this may be seen as extreme but I think it's the reaction to excessive attempts to protect intellectual property. Just when I add on the trade agreement issue and I think link to the previous question, right, one of the topics there is information flow in general under e-commerce chapters, not in the IP chapter there, there is ISP liability and other issues. And I think I've been talking to some companies and also with folks in the government that can be a shot in US on foot, right? That has been some of the most controversial provisions in those trade agreements which has actually blocked some of the chapters to move forward in the TPP for a while. So, if internet is really one of the most growing sectors in US, should we be paying more attention on how these revelations affect companies? In Brazil, for example, Ivo Correia who was the head of Google policy is being, which now is in the government, is being called the spy of Google in the government, right? So, you have a lot of implications that we need to think in many for us. So, because we're gonna need to wrap up, the room is moving on to another discussion. I need to end this now. I wanna thank you, Frank and our panelists. I think you've brought the Universal Declaration of Human Rights into a US discussion where it often doesn't reside. So, we thank you very much for taking this time. Thank you very much, yes. Thank all of you, the audience for coming.