 Right, welcome back everybody, thank you for being punctual. This second session is, in the first session we were looking at the report and the issues of big principle, freedom of expression, privacy, and how they relate to competing rights on security and elsewhere. What we're looking to do in this second session is to drill down country specific but also to show where organizations that are in some way involved with GNI and share our principles, how one can make a difference or at least highlight issues on the ground in specific countries. It's great to have the second panel with us, I'm going to introduce them as they, in the order in which they're going to make little three or four minute presentations of these specific case studies, Mike Newman from WebSense, Sara Norbrand from the Church of Sweden in what looks like my old office in London, Emily Butzler from Index on Censorship, and Greg Roggensack from Human Rights First. So thank you to them all and over to you, Mike. Okay, so the topic that I wanted to discuss today related to, or the example related to our company and a situation that took place in Pakistan a few months ago. For those of you who aren't familiar with WebSense or what we do, we're certainly not the same scale of some of the original company members of GNI. We are a leading web security, email security, and data security company and one of the products we provide with web security is software products that help manage access to the internet. And we sell these products principally to organizations to help them manage how their employees use the internet in the workplace and to secure organizations from web based threats. But one of the topics that always comes up with the nature of our product is the ability of it to be used on a national level in terms of managing citizen access to the internet. And as now stepping into a larger topic, I mean, as everybody in this room probably is aware, there are obviously governments who either themselves or through legal requirement insist that their local ISPs manage or filter or censor in some way their citizens access to the internet. Now WebSense has for a long time had a policy that we won't engage in those sorts of products. We won't engage in any projects that involve government filtering of the internet except for certain things like child porn and things of that nature. We had done so on a fairly quiet basis, it was on our website and things. But we seven months ago joined GNI because we had hoped that years ago when we adopted this policy that other companies in our industry might follow suit and they hadn't. And we joined GNI to be more public about it, more vocal about it and to hope to work with GNI to help make a difference in some of these situations. And then that leads me into the specific example that I wanted to cover which was the government of Pakistan wanted to ensure that its citizens access to the internet was going to be filtered in some way, shape or form. They didn't fully describe what content they wanted censored from the internet but they were looking for products to do so. Now when I first became aware of it through GNI, I checked with our local sales team and they of course had already been aware of this and had already decided that we couldn't participate it and weren't. And sort of in the old days of WebSense that would have been the end of it. But GNI and then one of our many competitors simply would have bid on that project. But in this heightened sense of awareness and through our involvement with GNI, particularly GNI more than us, was able to contact a number of other companies in our industry and used us as an example of a company that was very clearly on record as not going to bid on the project. And frankly many of these Western companies in our space, some of which were very large companies that have multitudes of product beyond just ours, actually did refuse to bid in this project. And these companies once contacted initially were, I think were hesitant to say no and to say they wouldn't participate. But I think as the visibility and the pressure increased, they ultimately did say no and these were several of these companies absolutely would have participated in this bid if not for in this project, if not for that pressure. And so I think our involvement and us, you know, you always have this prisoner's dilemma situation where, you know, nobody wants to be the first one to do something. And because somebody else is just going to swoop in and take it. And so we've been sort of the mover in this saying, okay, we're going to take this stand and be the first to say we won't do it. And I think GNI was able to leverage off of that to get others to say no. And going forward, you know, as long as we can continue to increase the profile and visibility of these sorts of projects, I do believe that some of the companies in our industry will continue in some respects, whether they like it or not, to agree not to participate in those projects. Thank you. Sarah. Yes, thank you. I represent churches and we are just as websites, we are a relatively new member of GNI. We joined as an investor member last fall. What we didn't know then was that these topics would be quite high up the agenda only a few months afterwards. Basically what happened in mid-April was that there was an investigative report on the Swedish television about telecom operator Teleasonara and its subsidiaries in Belarus and in countries in Central Asia and the dual use of the technologies provided. Clearly if you look at Teleasonara, it's a company who has clearly contributed to increased access to communications in the countries they are operating at the same time the regimes are really misusing the technologies which are leading to severe monitoring and severe effects of journalists, union activists and so on. I think it was a pretty good program but there were a lot of unanswered questions afterwards and there still are questions such as what are actually the possibilities for a company to push back on governments in these countries? What are the possibilities to truly enhance positive impacts when you are operating in repressive regimes and what are the possibilities to mitigate the negative impacts and also not at least to have the ability to engage also with local stakeholders around these issues where I know that Meg is going to talk more about that later on. But what happened was really very much that there has been an increasing pressure on the telecom sector in Europe. After this program a lot of investors have reacted and are pushing for action plans and so on not only from this company but from a lot of other European telecom operators and network providers. It was I think particularly interesting also in this case and which increased to the pressure was the fact that the Swedish state is a major owner of this company. It has a share of about 35 percent so the minister of financial markets also intervened and demanded a robust and incredible work around freedom of expression and privacy. So if you add to that also the work of the European Commission right now when they are trying to translate the UN guiding principles to the ICT sector earlier the work of the Council of Europe was mentioned. We clearly see that the pressure is increasing and of course we are well looking for as an investor the companies that will do the most and that will actually design the most credible and useful work within the space. It will be very interesting I think to follow this part of the value chain the coming month and the coming year to see where it will end. As you know today we don't have a telecom member within the GNI and I hope to see that. What we do as an investor is still that we use the GNI and the GNI principles to benchmark companies to benchmark ICT companies instead so that to really stress that it is the standard that we think present best practice today not at least the multi-stakeholder approach but also the higher level of transparency and the independent assessment. So yeah I think I'll stop there. Thank you very much. Just first Emily Batsalara in London just we had problems with the video link to Bangalore an hour or two ago with Sunil Abraham. So just first of all can you just say hello or say a few things first of all? Hi can you hear me? Is that a start? Hi can you hear me? We can hear you very well. Great. You can hear us as well good. Fire away. Hi I'm Emily Batsalara I work for index on censorship here in London John's old pressure group we look at free expression issues. We were already dealing with quite a few challenges to free expression and privacy in the UK but today the government released their draft communications data map which Cindy Cohen from EFF who's here today described as a new low for Western democracy so it's a win for us. It's going to require the details of internet using the UK to be stored for a year to allow the police and intelligence services to draft this 117 pages long so I just wanted to brief you on it because it's quite hard to pack in for three hours as long as it's been out and we don't have data yet on the technology that's going to actually make it work but the idea is this 1.8 billion program is designed to compel our poor eyes please to log communication data for every website visit as well as access made to customer's email accounts Twitter, Facebook, Skype, peer-to-peer communications we don't know how they're going to do it the suggestion is it's going to be used via a black box the government says it's actually going to include HTTPS and crypto and we're not quite sure how but it's going to be the details of everything you send over the internet Thank you just Emily's first words were a little bit hard to discern Emily can you just repeat at the beginning the jurisdiction we're talking about which is the UK I think some of my old colleagues and your colleagues were talking loudly behind you or there was feedback on the line Okay well the details that the government are looking to collect for 12 months include messages sent by social media, web mail, web messaging voicemail calls over the internet, online gaming, email, phone records the data that they're collecting or requiring third parties to collect is the time, the duration the originator, the recipient and the location this information can be accessed without a warrant provided a police officer or one of the designated agencies specifies that they're investigating a crime or protecting national security now the only thing it doesn't include is the content of the message officers still need a warrant to see that but in reality is there a distinction here between content and traffic data is that distinction archaic, is it a revelant what are the privacy risks going to be as these databases become vulnerable to theft who's going to be responsible for the expense of storing and maintaining these databases who's basically going to be responsible of the information leaks how are they going to force how are they going to track Skype, Google, Facebook, Twitter there's a lot of unanswered questions the original intention was to fold all this information into our gigantic database but now individual communication providers will require to track it thank you very much indeed Emily as ever the technological gremlins have slightly intervened but we caught that Emily was talking about the UK data communications bill that was formally announced today and what NGOs and specifically index working with GNI members are seeking to do to tackle the worst elements of the proposed legislation thank you Emily we'll come back to you with the question session Meg thank you I was asked to talk about Russia's selective enforcement of anti-piracy laws to staple this scent we first became aware of this when an NGO partner that we worked very closely with was raided and its leader subject to criminal prosecution for allegedly using unlicensed Microsoft software and we had an established relationship with Microsoft because they're both co-founders of the GNI and that was extremely important because we had an open channel of communication an established level of trust and through the GNI we also had a framework for thinking about the problem itself what exactly was the problem how to frame it what would be some principles that we might use to solve it because on its face although this is sort of a dry area of IP enforcement it really the broader question is what do companies do when operating in repressive environments how do they avoid getting enmeshed in abusive enforcement and what strategies can they adopt that protect only their operations and their continued business presence but also protect the rights of their users so we we began to research this question because we wondered was this an isolated case or not and we quickly determined that in fact it was not that there was a broader pattern of ten cases over about three years we worked with a number of Russian NGOs we have a pretty broad network there we our organization has been there for many years and we also learned that some of these cases directly implicated Microsoft agents on the ground in Russia uh... it was also clear that the timing and the targets of these cases weren't random or uh... the result of any rogue officials there was real purpose behind it and you may think that you know ten cases doesn't sound like that many but in fact the impact on civil society was enormous because five of these cases took out independent news organizations another case took out the leading environmental organization in the country and then another several took out election observer groups on the brink of monitoring elections and anti-hate speech groups all of them before key events that had been planned so it was clearly a campaign to stifle a dissent in the country so we took that information to Microsoft shared that information with them and then help them with their own investigation and we made a number of recommendations to them but the core recommendation really was you've got to remove the incentive for the Russian authorities to use this as a tool against civil society members we recognize that Microsoft had a very legitimate uh... reason to promote IP enforcement in Russia IP privacy is rampant but uh... Microsoft recognized as well as we did that these cases were an abuse of that authority and really were eroding their ability to uh... promote uh... appropriate enforcement none of these groups uh... were in any way involved in trafficking or uh... or piracy of software on a broad scale that was not really uh... the object of this enforcement so uh... Microsoft took our information uh... announced a plan in response uh... which included plans to develop a temporary license which really responded to our core concern remove the incentive we thought that that was a really novel approach but that it would also benefit from some input from the groups that had been targeted because Russia is really challenging environment so with tremendous help from the U.S. State Department we brought many of the individuals who've been targeted by these cases to the U.S. they were across nine time zones none of them had ever been to the U.S. before so that was really amazing because we did it on a short time frame the Microsoft executives flew to New York to our offices and we sat down there to really talk about the license plan and some of the key concerns of these groups so one was you know how do you design a license to cover potential targets it's got to be pretty broad and how do you make sure that uh... both NGOs and also Russian officials are aware of the program this part of it is you just want to fend off and ideally anticipate and prevent these cases and then also what could Microsoft do to clarify within the country who is authorized to represent it in court which would also remove an additional layer or potential for abuse and then finally and most importantly we thought that it was really important that people at the headquarters level out in Seattle remain engaged because there was clearly some disconnects within the country about the problem and its origins and what to do and and we were gratified that headquarters did see an important role and also um... established at our recommendation a hotline so that if there was an urgent case developing there would be a fairly immediate way to notify people and get a response we also after uh... after this meeting um... Microsoft tweaked its license program and i think this input they felt was extremely valuable in two respects because it did really change the way they approach the license program but it also started to develop a foundation of trust and a relationship building at a different level than it had been possible before which is needed as this program rolled out we then suggested that when Microsoft launched the program that we go together to Moscow convene a group of NGOs talk through the program get them on board make sure they understood it and then also meet with the U.S. Embassy to help them understand what we were trying to do and integrated into their own outreach and IP enforcement efforts which they have been doing um... i'm really happy to report that i think we all consider even the Russians were extremely they were extremely cynical about this as you could expect given the history of government treatment of NGOs the cases haven't stopped but what's important is that um... there aren't as many and the response is pretty rapid what happens in all these cases the officials come in they close down the office they take away all the equipment and all the records and so pretty much puts any organization out of business that's not happening anymore and i think NGOs feel greatly empowered by this it doesn't mean that the authorities may not look at other ways to uh... use laws in an abusive fashion but what it does mean is microsoft's not a part of that in fact they're part of a solution and part of a dialogue and so in that respect i think we've all felt uh... pretty gratified by that and uh... microsoft is now working on a permanent solution which involves free software uh... donation and so there'd be some challenges with that but the idea is to take the lessons that we learned here and then roll them out in a more permanent way this program was not confined to Russia the company did announce a program that would cover thirteen countries because there were some issues in kyrgyzstan and other countries so it's really we thought a pretty innovative um... approach and i think it illustrates just the importance for all companies of taking a lot of the steps that gni prescribes of having some sense when you're operating in repressive governments of where the risks are coming from making sure your local people are well-trained their escalation procedures and their folks at headquarters paying attention and and giving those people either a playbook or and out to call back to headquarters or to a regional level to address the problem so i'll stop there for really really interesting uh... case studies about uh... the activities of companies governments and NGO input uh... with a direct set of quantifiable results or in emily's case with the the u k's new legislation what we uh... hope will be through concerted effort at least some form of mitigating uh... uh... act uh... activity and as ever daniel brian helpfully tweets and that if you want to follow uh... more discussion about the u k's new communications and the hashtag is cc d p uh... which uh... will give you more information which and we'll discuss i'd just like to ask all four uh... the panelists uh... or any of you and and emily if you want to come in just just wave your hand i think the best thing uh... the the fact of gni the the fact of this multi-stakeholder uh... organization how has that influence the way your organizations have worked or conversely how have these examples and other work that you do influence the work uh... of of gni the this kind of shared learning the fact that uh... from time to time you're sitting in rooms with uh... companies uh... very large and some and some smaller the fact that uh... you're talking to different types of people around the world in in different sectors how does that in influence your your work would like to um... uh... begin on that right now uh... so you know our membership in gni hasn't really changed how we do things internally because uh... we've already been abiding by our own policies which were consistent with the gni principles uh... but i think it has changed how you know we interact and how i interact uh... with others because uh... people view our membership as as with gni as as being action whereas before uh... they felt uh... frequently i felt like folks interpreted what i said as words but you know you're saying all the right things but you you probably don't stand behind them so i do think when uh... when i talk about the subjects and our membership with gni i do think it encourages uh... others to think more seriously about it whether it's within our industry or outside of our industry and not sure why that is quite frankly uh... because we haven't actually changed our policies but i think it speaks well to to gni's reputation and i think when i speak about being a member of gni it drives people to look at the website or whatnot and see who's involved see what other companies are involved and and and see that you know there's there's real movement of foot and to the others has it helped you in any way in the way you deal with companies because obviously they have they're completely different size they have different agendas different self-interest and knowing how to navigate your way around but from our perspective i think as i mentioned i mean it has changed our behavior in that in a sense that we can use the the principles we can use the guidelines and they are very useful uh... but also i think the experience of working in a multi-stakeholder initiative is really useful we've seen it in other industries with great effects uh... but to have that experience and also to see how you may be in the future can build trust with with the larger group of companies within the sector uh... i think that is key in order to launch these issues uh... otherwise uh... otherwise i mean just to be able also to tap into all the knowledge and all the experiences of such a big group and such a diverse group is of course extremely useful so those are a few of the benefits that we've seen so far make sure you come sure so i think uh... there are a couple of sort of obvious uh... benefits from uh... gni our organization has uh... been involved in these types of collaborations for almost twenty years we began with the fair labor association we're part of the voluntary principles on security and human rights and we're currently elaborating a framework for private security providers so this strategy is one that we really believe is quite effective in working with companies both because uh... it helps uh... in a common issue framing and common understanding of the problem and then also an agreed upon set of principles in which to uh... think about solutions to the problem i think one of the big takeaways uh... is that you know companies can't go it alone in repressive environments and uh... what uh... the gni and multi-stakeholder initiatives like it do is enable us to talk to one another in a place that's respectful trusted and shared and bring to bear our our various areas of expertise companies uh... in this case uh... microsoft had relationships in russia but to some extent didn't have the same networks of human rights groups that we did so we could bring that expertise to bear and tap those networks to really delineate the scope of the problem and break through some of the misperceptions that the company may have been getting from its own representatives in the country which i think was really really uh... important and also that uh... they were able to explain to us some of the challenges that they would have in implementing this kind of program and we could work together to try to work through something that would work for both for both sides and and the gni framework as i mentioned was really important in thinking through you know from the standpoint of how does the company operate in an environment where the laws may tell you one thing but uh... in fact the result is quite opposite in other words in this case the abuse of a legitimate law for an illegitimate purpose and how does the company potentially extricate itself from that what are the ways one can think about that challenge and work through that so the gni i think gave us a framework and a set of principles and tactics to try to work through that solution uh... emily in london uh... any uh... thoughts about how gni can help index i can work with index and other organizations in uh... tackling in and in uh... uh... in your advocacy work with regard uh... specifically to this new proposal or in the u k well i think this bill it's going to be incredibly important to get international pressure not just u k pressure on the government and this is a new norm for for western democracies we know what happens when countries like the u k introduce this kind of legislation quickly spread throughout the rest of the world uh... so i think it's going to be enormously helpful to get uh... foreign uh... corporations and foreign NGOs involved in the fight against the legislation and for us that's the use of gni it's uh... drawing attention to these kind of issues uh... so making sure a local agenda has an international following emily can you hear me emily can you hear me it's gone right well i'll come i'll come back to it right uh... we have one uh... we have a question on twitter can sarin or brand ed al comment on the telco dialogue and it's human rights draft principles please tell you a scenario is part of it i know i i i don't have any updated information uh... as i think you're aware of the circulated a draft of principles about a month ago and i know that there was a follow-up meeting last week uh... to discuss uh... comments from from different stakeholders including the gni but i i don't have any information about next steps or or what will be um... yeah how they will make use of the gni comments for instance um so hopefully we will hear from them soon i know that they say that they are searching for a home um if that would be gni or or some other for uh... we don't know um i just hope that you know it won't be a gni light um that they will really um yeah focus on the core strength that that the gni is actually providing and and all the substantial work that has already been been done that they could actually just tap into if they join right i think we'll throw it yeah make and then we'll throw it yeah so i think you know one thing that struck us in looking at the principles is you know anyone can go out and kind of cobble together a set of principles and i know they took a lot of time they were thoughtful about it but what's missing is the multi-stakeholder piece and um i think the telcos are painfully aware that they do have some really serious issues they keep finding themselves on the front page they don't like it they don't want to be there and we know that a multi-stakeholder approach to these problems works you've heard some examples here doesn't mean that companies won't still have issues and problems and sometimes find themselves on the front page but it does give them the opportunity to work with other stakeholders in a framework that sets forth some rules and shared principles to find a common solution that is both you know business appropriate and rights respecting and i think that's the missing piece in their effort and hopefully they will hear and understand the value that a group like the GNI can bring to their efforts to ground it in a credible independent and rigorous and serious initiative i think that's the that's the missing piece in in the initiative that they have and that's what would distinguish their effort from you know a normal trade association endeavor which is which is completely siloed within industry right i think it's time to take questions and observations do we have the microphone ready on this on that specific question and on others Bennett do you want to go first i just want to pick up on Sarah and Meg's response to your question John about the telcos look GNI does not have to be the be all and end all for every ICT sector company trying to grapple with these tough issues and the telcos have every right in my opinion to experiment with a distinct and different approach that said I really believe that any approach to dealing with internet freedom in the ICT sector particularly dealing with right to privacy and freedom of expression issues must meet three essential tests the first is operational utility practical impact specific impact on the ground or in the cloud everyone wants to put it metaphorically and that's what GNI has second multi stakeholder credibility and Sarah underlined as to Meg the combination of not just companies but NGOs academic experts and investors and then third beyond those first two is public accountability and Meg made reference to other multi stakeholder initiatives that human rights first has been involved with over the years the lion's share really of the front line ones there are a couple of others but I just don't see how in the second decade of the 21st century you can have a an approach to business and human rights in this or any other sector that doesn't have a rigorous approach to public accountability so I think that the the telcos you know great you know circulate the draft but I would note that while their draft has some degree of potential operational utility it at this time is not combined with the structure that would lend either multi stakeholder credibility or public accountability and for I can say on behalf of Calvert and I'm sure that our colleagues among investors in the human rights NGOs whether in or outside the GNI process would not disagree we would be inclined to dismiss such an approach that did not meet those tests I do hope though that the telcos will see the merit of coming up with an approach that does incorporate those elements the door from GNI is open to engaging with them and our implementation guidelines while reflecting to some extent the interests of internet content providers yahoo google and microsoft there from the beginning were never intended to address exclusively that segment of the ICT industry and there is every potential for GNI to work with this this group of telecommunications companies to adapt and enlarge expand the implementation guidelines to deal with their overlapping but in some ways distinct or different challenges in the tough places where they operate thank you um right uh at at the back please and then we'll work our way forward uh Leslie Harris Center for Democracy and Technology so I just wanted to add can you speak the mic closer it's pretty close um I just wanted to add one thing to this discussion and I think that it is hard to see um the value of the internal dialogue from the outside and so I think it's something that the telecoms are missing a bit not just that it is multi-stakeholder but sort of the richness of that dialogue and the the exchange of frameworks for viewing this issue uh and and I think one of the you know while I while I agree that in in fact I think we ought to sort of own and take pride in the fact that now others believe they need to move into this space um that the ability cross industry sectors to talk in an environment that's not competitive where they put the competitive concerns aside uh is a value added that I know from CDT in our own way of working in our working groups that I think setting up another initiative will be both lost to GNI i.e. the benefit of really understanding the concerns of telecom they I think will will be poorer as well in terms of you know ultimately what an initiative can achieve so you know I think I'm hoping that's something that that they will take into account in thinking through where they're going to go. Thank you. In addition I'd like to invite questions relating to any of these country specifics or any other country specifics you'd like to draw our attention to lady there. Hi I'm Shelly Han with the Helsinki Commission and I wanted to ask Michael if you could talk about the economic impact of your business decisions and how how that plays into why WebSense decided to make those decisions early on and and then how it impacts your business today and perhaps maybe draw some lessons for other companies. Yeah sure so you know that question came up for the earlier panel as well and I obviously get that that question a lot and you know as a CFO of the company obviously my focus is the bottom line and and our shareholders concern is increasing shareholder value and I think that you know the the if I was going to be cynical about it I would say you know ethics are great but my job is to deliver profits and and those two you know are incongruous. I don't believe that's the case I think that the the reality is that people who think that way are looking very short term and they're looking at something like you know that's Pakistani opportunity as that's two million dollars that I could have this quarter that I'm not going to have because they can put their finger on it. I think there are lots of economic benefit to being a good behavior showing good behavior in this area I think it's just it's harder to put your finger on it and quantify it because one of the subjects that was raised earlier was reputational and I think you know reputational benefits and branding benefits have both a long-term and a short-term impact I think if you think over the longer term being a more positively viewed brand is going to have a bigger impact in different in other bidding environments and even in the short plan in the short term you know I choose to believe that we are winning business in other areas that maybe we can't put our finger on so specifically because no customer tells us that they chose our product primarily because we're a member of the GNI and this is what we do and this is the stand we take they tell us you know it's based on price features you know all those sorts of things because those are how they're supposed to be choosing products but they may look at us more favorably or all things being equal choose us so the fact that because of this involvement in our stance so the fact that they aren't telling us that's why they're buying our product it doesn't mean that they're not and then I think the another more difficult to quantify area is the employee impact that it has a morale impact on an organization I think in terms of recruiting talent top talent that has choices options to go anywhere they tend to want to go to organizations that they can feel good being a part of and working for and they tend to stay away from organizations that they don't and if you asked you know if you told you know executives and they believed you that you know if you take a poor socially unconscious stance on some in some area that you're going to lose two of your top 20 employees not two of your top 20 executives just whoever your top 20 employees are around the world you're going to lose two of them because they don't feel good about working here I think they would recognize that's a big loss the problem is is that they don't know who those people are they leave and that's not why they say they leave they can't put their finger on it we were talking about this earlier and you know one of the things I noticed is you know when we do publicly pass on a bid or an opportunity or do something where we're bypassing short-term economic gain I'll receive maybe 12 to 24 dozen two dozen emails from employees saying you know what I saw that we did that that's really great and I figure that you know if I've got employees who are willing to send an email to the CFO saying that there's probably 20 times the number of employees who feel that way but aren't really willing to send an email to me I'm very intimidating you know and so you know I think there is a lot of economic benefit and it's just not as discreet as but you've just passed up on that opportunity but Mike I think it's bigger the risk of being skeptical if that logic was so incontrovertible why particularly about employee motivation why do mobile phone mobile operators and others like a certain ISPs whatever cooperate with unsavory regimes in the way they do if the the kickback be it internal or reputational damage was so clear cut I think you know there's two reasons for that you know one is and this came up with the earlier panel as well everything I refer to as benefits are not measurable so you've got a measurable tangible on one side and something that can't be measured quantified on the other side and you know the other reason is that people are prone to short-term thinking and the safe thing to do or the conservative thing to do is to make sure I get that business and I don't have to explain why I didn't it's a lot more difficult to explain why I didn't than why I did I'd just like to bring in Emily here in in London Emily index has been campaigning consistently now and successfully with regard to Belarus and censorship there and the collusion for one of a better term of certain western companies PR firms all kinds of organizations with that government what is your take on the extent to which lobbying and advocacy can name and shame and the effectiveness of that naming and shaming well it's certainly in a leverable we can hear you right I'll have to come back Bob and then gentlemen here and then lady that hike just want to add one more factor for telcos here and that is their origin I mean I think that people have to remember that the difference between telcos and other companies is that most of them were nationalized they were national companies it's not called British telecom or Deutsche telecom for nothing and therefore they have a completely different attitude and are born of a different sort of thinking than our internet companies per se or hardware companies and that is when a national government says do this jump you know jump here they say how high they don't say why and that's an extraordinarily important thing for us to remember I think as we consider their actions and why they might not be eager to join in the fun and also why they might not be eager to adopt standards and guidelines that work for different kinds of companies from them thank you um gentlemen here and then lady that yep no no behind you thank you stand back here so people everyone see me I'll create an X so my name is David Chum I'm just here as an individual and I'm delighted to see all this effort in trying to make the world a better place I wanted to just point out just one scientific fact and and just an organizational suggestion and and I can't remember how many times I've seen people stand up in meetings like this and make comments like this and I know many people won't like it but I just feel like I I should probably do it um so doing it for the for the common good maybe there's something great that could come from it may seem foreign but the fact is this that with today's technology it is an indisputable fact that routers could actually be a tor nodes in effect um and I say this with some authority because I'm the guy who invented the protocol that tor uses even though you know you don't see my name attributed as much as it should have been but that's another matter but you can just go back and look at literature and overwhelmingly clear um and these issues of traffic analysis that we heard about and so on if you can just pinpoint your your I'm sure I'll pinpoint my question just a moment yeah thank you want to make the backwards that's the background statement okay and I hope that's so that it's technologically feasible to solve all these problems of traffic analysis and protect all traffic on every link at essentially no additional costs nowadays encryption has become so inexpensive and routers are very capable pieces of equipment so it's it's a choice that we could make um and so my my policy and question for this group and suggestion really is just this that I guess that if there was let's say a honorary seat at the table of these multilateral discussions which I think multistakeholder discussions are very you know good for some kind of people that can't pay and and are representing maybe you know technologists or I don't know the hacker community or open source world or what have you they might that seat might be able to provide a really interesting perspective and you know in the end it might be something that helps the business interests that makes this multistakeholder activity even more of an interesting model that engenders other kinds of positive things to happen in the world and it also might kind of you know as a friend of mine says to sort of shoot the problem dead as opposed to having to kind of always keep you know to me it was incredibly ironic to hear that we're having this you're having this meeting here today I'm not really a member and that england just said that they were going to be doing stuff that's probably worse than than most of these countries could afford to do anyways because it would save every single record that's that's astoundingly intrusive so anyways that's that's my the fact is this problem could all be solved for free if people got organized to do that and secondly my suggestion is try to give a public participant to your force so that you could possibly consider these sort of alternatives thanks very much thank you lady here and then i just want to remember and then hi i'm jane larson from international media support in denmark uh i'm very curious to what you raised mech and i would like to de technify this conversation a bit putting it down to the level of what what is the usefulness of getting the activists or the non-state media to meet with some of the company representatives most of our partners in the former soviet union were actually in that film from the telia sonera investigation and it was really really evident you know how the technologies work a big question there is then what can telia sonera actually do to to to avoid having these rooms and black boxes installed locally where they go in and that's a big question and i don't have a clear answer to that but coming back to you meg the usefulness of bringing microsoft guys together with the local activists i feel that there is simply a complete lack of knowledge and and even imagination to to to basically understand what these local guys are going through they are being surveyed they are being threatened they have phone calls at night people come to their houses they threaten their kids etc etc and all this is backed up by the use of of technologies you know basically surveying their movements and actions and and communications etc so i think the whole issue of bringing local activists and and and human rights activists together with the companies to to make this sharing possible i think that is something that would probably benefit the knowledge of of people in the west and the rest and just to say emily we haven't forgotten about you so we're just going to take a answer this round of questions and observations and then just want to come back to this point of the effectiveness of of advocacy with reference to baloo as a byjan and and elsewhere make sorry would you want to address any of those i just agree i mean to get um those kind of interaction and those kind of meetings in place i think that is is key um it's not as easy to to do it in practice maybe locally but yeah you mentioned you flew over a few people and and also um of course you can interact with representatives of certain groups that cannot meet locally and so on but i think that is really key that companies don't only consult and dialogue with with the most evident stakeholders far away but really to have local consultations as well i think in this case there were two sort of major benefits from that was that the obviously the folks on the ground were seeing this in a very blinkered fashion because you know everything told them look we've got a law enforcement request you've got to go in and do this and even at the level of headquarters in mosca was a little difficult to try to square what was happening in the country with what how that was being perceived outside the country and so bringing the activists together with senior officials outside that environment to hear that evidence and hear from these people we were in this trial this is what happened and this is how this charge got elevated to a criminal charge was because this was basically legitimized by the participation of your reps or because particular valuations were assigned that made this a criminal case or other aspects of that just the ways in which these proceedings play out but also informing the design of the remedy because again you know one challenge there was that the if you use local laws to try to qualify people you'd exclude most of the victims so how do you come up with something as flexible doesn't fly in the face of local regimes but is acceptable and can be useful to victims and give victims enough of a measure of trust in your intent to participate and to exercise that authority the authority that the company is extending so i think you're absolutely right it also broke down some barriers because they did have some relationships but not as wide or as deep and those conversations continue and i think it made a real difference in terms of their overall view of civil society there and some more long-term interactions which have been very good and i give microsoft a great degree of credit for the amount of attention that they've given at the highest levels and their commitment to seeing this through in a very effective way they continue to monitor this we have regular conversations with civil society and with with the officials involved so their commitment has continued at that level thank you emily could could you just come back in if you can hear us and we'll give it one more go on the the effectiveness of advocacy work with regard to Belarus as a by-john i think what's been really crucial there as some of the elements people have just mentioned about getting local activists in France local people from major corporations especially in our work in Belarus what proved crucial was to get local activists in meetings with facts like rbs who then pulled out of selling Belarusian bombs when they were taking part in capital raising it put pressure on the government and this was an aid from the activists we work with yeah just to to amplify that remark there was one remarkable success which was stopping three major western european banks from purchasing bonds and that was a really interesting this was from the Belarus government this was a really interesting and very specific success in in terms of advocacy which was an element of goes back to this issue of reputational benefit or disbenefit from collaboration it was in a different sector wasn't obviously in the ICT in this respect but it was it was a useful example Susan you wanted to Mike thanks i actually wanted to ask emily a question so i'm hoping that the the line holds up it was a couple of a couple of things i know that the the comms data bill that was published today in the UK i know that being it was announced in the queen's speech that been a lot of media coverage over the last month or so and i just wondered if you could say a little bit about your sort of initial reaction on whether you think any of the pressure and the skepticism that's been evident in the UK prior to the bill being published has had any impact on the bill that's actually being put out today or whether it's largely what it looked as though it would be a month a month or so ago and then i think secondly it would be great just to hear from you just some ideas on where you think there would be an opportunity to intervene between now and i'll say over the next six months as it as it progresses through its consultation phase thanks so far the public pressure has had an impact because we've seen very minimal changes between what was moved in the fall or what that's what's come to pass i've been only i've learned that there's been substantial change that we've been thrown a bone on it's local authority that's local councils other people who are responsible for your bins etc won't have information to this data i will no longer have information to your phone records other than that it remains fairly intact this has forced the government to give you additional you know a lot public additional scrutiny so the bill goes to an extra committee it was taken out of a much broader bill that they're no lucker who would have failed past governments so there is an additional element of examination but it's a huge amount of detail missing at this point and i think it's going to take a great deal of time before we get you know we get the information really about this draft in terms of what we can do to intervene i think it's quite important that we start to model the MPs now it's going to be incredibly important for them to be for them to be provided for those who are going to be forced to draw this information start to work out a way to to clear their own position i certainly are in terms of provided for cash to be provided they're in their own position but to tie together NGO and business community i think it will be essential in order to put the level of pressure that is going to be required to force this government to u-turn from yahoo do you want to come in at all on this i mean just a couple of quick observations from me i mean a standard tactic of of governments plural and certainly this particular government that has been pursued since time immemorial is to publish a draft bill that is so egregiously extreme that you then have this negotiation and it's almost a sort of face-saving thing then compromises are made NGOs and lobbyists and whatever feel pleased at the progress that has been made but the final the final bill albeit improved is still a bad bill but that is a sort of standard standard procedure to push the boat out and on this specific bill i mean it's it the the suspicion is that it will be seen as a template for other governments so the activity that g and i may wish to undertake on this will be really important it goes far beyond the jurisdiction of one country because it will the legislation will be seen as as a bit of a template that's just a comment patrick i'm patrick robinson from from yahoo public policy in the uk i would absolutely agree with with what emily has just said about the the central victory of the lobby so far has been getting added scrutiny to this bill as she suggests it really was going to be kind of snuck into something else that that probably would not have got the level of scrutiny that it is going to get because of the activities of both businesses and NGOs and certain politicians in raising this as an issue um i i certainly hope that john is right and that we're going to end up with a negotiation that that limits some of the more egregious aspects of the bill i think the role that the g and i can play here is really i think it's very uncomfortable for western governments to suddenly find themselves uh uh bracketed with Belarus Thailand um you know russia etc etc when it comes to these kinds of issues and we find and i find that uh british politicians get very anxious when they stand up in international fora and are praised by the likes of the chinese for you know introducing a civilizing aspect to the internet so i think there is definitely a presentational aspect here that says that if the gni is intervening to protect human rights and freedom of expression in the united kingdom there is something very strange going on we've got time for a couple more questions or observations before we move into the third plenary yes of course right here my name's firiha um i'm from pakistan i represent an organization called bolubi which focuses on research and advocacy i'd like to um add to what mike spoke about um the national filtration software that the pakistan government um advertised for and um companies are going to bid for it now what gni and uh web sense their involvement did was gni helped us connect to a lot of people a lot of companies who would potentially bid for something like this and provide the software uh to the pakistan government and web sense was the first company to say that they would not bid for something like this so there was first company to take a stand that sets the ball rolling because then companies like sisco um and many others went ahead and said we will also not bid for it um so the kind of the public um our pro about this and the kind of strong statements that came in from credible uh reputable companies such as web sense and then sisco it it really made a difference simultaneously the president of the pakistan software houses association was speaking to government officials and what eventually happened is that um the deadline for um the bid it was delayed and the government was they delayed their deadline um when the company would shut the bid and make a final decision and what this has done is it's sort of gone into the background now we don't know what's happening on the back end whether they're still working on it but what they said is that they've shelved it for now and that really came about because of the public pressure that was created by all of these companies thank you thank you it's a very yeah very very do you want to Mike do you want to add to any of that with regard to pakistan um no i mean i i do you know i do fear that somebody will end up obviously providing the service as they do and and hopefully as it fades into the background we we can sort of keep that from happening um and have them engage with somebody through the back door after the public pressure period has ended time for one possibly two final interventions or thoughts or we can just allied effortlessly yep hi this is dunstan alison hope from bsr and this is perhaps a thought for the next panel as much as this one i've enjoyed the the case study approach and hearing about examples that have happened so far but of course they're all in the past and i'm wondering if there's value in more of a sort of scenario planning approach where we start to think about things that might happen in the future because i've found these case studies very illustrative but what's happening next you know what should be worried what should we be worried about in two or three years time so morning perhaps that's a question for the next panel about how the gni you know intervenes in upcoming events incidents event things that are going to happen over the coming years that was very helpful because my note for the third session is where do we go from here so um that is absolutely perfect but any quick observations from any of the four panelists about the next big challenges before we ask that of the final panel my view is that uh uh i think that i know the works under way to get more companies involved because i think that as is fairly common with movements of this nature organizations of this nature while there were three founding companies members um it's been very difficult to get more and to get a broader set of of company members uh you know big companies small companies um point companies and then broad based companies and you know i think that's where this needs to go next and i know the gni is initiated in observer status program which hopefully will help because i think that just getting i think getting more corporate direct corporate involvement i think you know getting that started you know one wave begets the next wave and then the next one and i think that's how ultimately you know we'd all like and this was a subject from earlier i mean we'd all like governments to change but governments change very slowly um i think that getting more corporate involvement um you know will will lend itself not only in the subjects that we're specifically talking about today but as technology and the internet and whatnot rapidly changes over the next couple years into unimaginable new ways i think having more companies involved will be helpful Emily very briefly any um sort of future thoughts uh identify the next challenges well i think the next challenge for the UK based organizations is pretty clear right now um in terms of international challenges we we are seeing a huge challenge to of religious and cultural censorship obviously arising in uh what's following the adversary so certainly to artists and local activists i think that's going to be really interesting to watch the next 12 months thank you um make so um i agree with mike i would just add two things i think that what we need to do is take these types of cases and lessons and extract from them at least some preliminary notions about what best practices look like and that could be both in areas like human rights impact assessment or essentially what due diligence looks like and then also with respect to our example effective stakeholder engagement how that can better be structured to maximize the potential picking up on what some of our commentators have said because that's an area where we in the NGO community i think can play a greater role so sorry that we need more best practice but also maybe more discussions around how companies and and and diplomats can complement each other within this space also to make sure that companies are not taking over the role of states and the obligations of the states so i think yeah great well thank you to our four panelists we're now going to move directly from the second panel to the third so if i could thank uh emily via um video link um mike newman uh sarah norbrand and may groggensack