The following are the outputs of the real-time captioning taken during the Eleventh Annual Meeting of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) in Jalisco, Mexico, from 5 to 9 December 2016. Although it is largely accurate, in some cases it may be incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. It is posted as an aid to understanding the proceedings at the event, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.
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>> OLEG LOGVINOV: Good afternoon. It's a pleasure to see everyone in this room. We have a very interesting that is about to start. The session is entitled, advancing solutions for Internet inclusion. What does it really mean? How can we advance those solutions? There are three dimensions in which we work. It is a connectivity as a physical layer or technology that enables us to be connected and the framework that allows us to be connected. A lot of people in this world still don't have Internet connectivity. We hope to solve this problem. The problem is not just technical but it is an interaction of policy in the space of Internet connectivity in general with issues of privacy and security.
As you probably know, a lot of issues today that are being involved and work in progress stem from the fact that policymakers often make policies as a reaction to the new technologies development and they development implementation and solutions what policy implications may be created or what policy it may be stepping on. It is a disconnect between the camp of technologists and policymakers and the third dimension is technology is in most cases a global, spans the globes, bits and bytes don't know the boundaries, electrons flow through any wire or space we can give them. Policies are localized, not only on the level of countries but smaller than countries. An example, I live in New Jersey in the United States and I learned that New Jersey has a special law that governs information availability on ODB connector of car. Why I don't know. Apparently there is a law that exists in New Jersey. What we're trying to do in Internet Initiative. Connectivity among people and among camps, policymakers and technology developers, connectivity among various regions.
That's a brief introduction of what the session will be about. I come from private sector, technologist, and I worked in I.T. space and Internet as an enabling platform and that is a key to us. I'm Oleg log any November. Business is much more difficult to develop than technology. You can put together an implementation but find a marketplace for it is a most challenging task you can imagine. And policy enables or disables technology proliferation in most cases. I started paying attention to that type of issues and found a very interesting place called Internet initiatives that I have been sharing for the last three years that focuses on those three dimensions and helps us all to come together. I happen to chair IEEE standard focused on standards paying attention to privacy and security issues and I'm very pleased that together with the panel we have here today we'll be able to dive into this multi-dimensional task of trying to discover what solutions we can bring to humanity to essentially proliferate the Internet that we can use to our own benefit.
I would like to go through a brief round of introductions around the table and after that we'll start seeing what we have done in this initiative and we have done a lot. We actually put a lot of discussions that exist today in local environments on the global stage. And becoming connected does not really mean only becoming connected through the means of technology. Becoming connected also means connecting in our own efforts and doing something together. That's why we have gone around the world and created a number of events where we brought technologies and policymakers together, created vibrant conversations which you will hear about today and so those conversations will expose the issues that need to be solved to the global stage. If you go to our portal that is available today online you will start learning about wonderful pieces of information that you can find but it is also visionary pieces of writings that people involved in this initiative have created. It is a tremendous creativity that can be harnessed here and put to work so we can actually create connectivity in all three dimensions. Chris, start and we'll go around the table.
>> CHRISTOPHER ________: Good afternoon, I'm Christopher --, the executive director of the IEEE -- Society. That's my day job. I serve as a technical lead to the IEEE Internet Initiative. My job in that capacity is to bring to bear the members of the IEEE societies, 40 of them each with a different technical focus. I bring that to bear on the Internet Initiative so we have all these various technical disciplines represented by the IEEE. Almost all of them touch Internet policy and governance at this point. So all those technologists that we represent and those groups can help inform policy and conversely can also be informed by policy so that as they are doing their work as technologists they understand the policy implications of the things they develop. As you will hear with all the other panelists there is a great diversity of technical expertise we bring to this. That's really what we do at IEEE. We try to bring all technologists together in a forum where we can advance technology of the benefit of humanity. I'll pass it to my next presenters.
>> OLEG LOGVINOV: Thank you.
>> MIN JIANG: I'm Min Jiang. I am an associate professor at communication studies at UNC Charlotte and a researcher with the Center for Global Communication Studies at Penn. In addition to that, I'm doing work in the space mostly writing and researching in the space of Chinese Internet. Very interested in Chinese Internet technologies and policies and that's why I think I was invited to become part of this initiative. And so I'm also a member of research community. We gather every year for a conference called the Chinese Internet research conference talking about anything from technology topics to policy topics and so on and so forth and involved in multiple societies. Interested around this topic of Chinese Internet.
>> LIMOR SHMERLING MAGAZANIK: I am Limor Shmerling. I'm a regulator of technology from the Israeli privacy protection authority. I have been in this business for the last nine years or so. I've spent a few years at the Israeli hi-tech industry before that and my main interest in this initiative is realize in order to create regulation that actually is implemented and is actually followed, it takes more than just enforcing at the local level. So my first interaction -- or interest in this IEEE initiative is the fact that I can bring my powers to create policy and to frame policy to the industry, to engineers and to learn from them what may work and what is reasonable and what we should be doing instead of just sitting in my own ministry and thinking of ideas that may not be even feasible. The second interest I have here is the fact that I could have been doing this at the Israeli institution for standards, but the fact is that we have here a global issue. It is not enough that at the local level in Israel I may introduce privacy protection into local standards. I think the job is to come together with international groups and try to influence standards internationally. This way we may have influence over the whole global environment. So I really appreciate the invite and look forward to our discussions.
>> OLEG LOGVINOV: Thank you very much. Juan.
>> JUAN GONZALEZ: Hello, everyone. Thank for giving me the opportunity to talk to you today. I would like to ask IEEE for organizing the panel and to the host country for the amazing hospitality. My name is Juan Gonzalez, I'm with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and I'm the senior strategist and director for cybersecurity standards for Homeland Security. I lead the development of standards for international organizations, for the U.S. government, especially the Department of Homeland Security and we work together to build the best practices and build capacity and provide those areas, share those areas around the world with the stakeholder community. So we engage domestically with the private sector and the public sector to be able to share the expertise that we develop internally. But we also take the opportunity with these forums to be able to provide the information that we gather and share the expertise at the local level and what we do in terms of cybersecurity and securing devices, specifically within the IOT area. I will expand more on that later. Thank you.
>> OLEG LOGVINOV: Thank you, Juan. Ning.
>> NING KONG: I am Ning Kong and I work for China information center. This information in charge of the CCRT Registry. So my job is follow on the Internet protocols and ICANN policies and name systems and I.P. address and I'm very happy to be a panelist to discuss with you guys today. And another point when I was a Ph.D. candidate my research was focused on the Internet of Things. I tried to make clear what kind of new change of the Internet of Things to the named system and whether it was suitable protocol for the future Internet of Things and I think I can share some understanding to the panel today.
>> OLEG LOGVINOV: Osama.
>> OSAMA MANZAR: I'm Osama Manzar, with the Digital Empowerment Foundation. We're an organization who work in the remotest part of the country to provide connectivity and digital linkages in India. Thank you for getting us on this panel. This is interesting connecting the unconnected. That's what we live for and live day in and day out. I would like to highlight three points in the introduction before we get into the detail. The two aspects of connecting the unconnected. The unconnected people are always subjects to policies and technologies that they do not understand and they do not know and always being talked about without really becoming part of the discourse. In any kind of discourse really all over the world. And the second part is how connectivity itself is creating a digital exclusion and we need to talk about it. Various policies are taking us online and everything is going online without really provided access to the people who really need it. And subject to the online exclusion. So these are the two or three points that we would like to talk and if you want to have fun, we can also talk about net neutrality, Facebook and other things, how they couldn't do well in India and things like that, yeah. Digital Empowerment Foundation. My -- Osama Manzar is my handle.
>> OLEG LOGVINOV: Thank you very much for the great introduction. We have a very diverse group of people presenting pretty much a lot of places around the world. The discussion today will be very interesting. As I mentioned in the beginning. We started from the concept of evidence that bring local conversations to the global stage and that is very key because issues we're dealing with a very unique regardless of where you are. And people have a lot of interest in solving them in the local stage. What is very interesting is when you start drawing parallels and learn from expertise that has been developed in one place and can be shared with another place, you discover that there are more commonalities than differences and we can draw from each other's expertise and collaboration help overall progress to accelerate immensely. What I would like to do through the next phase of our discussion to go around the room and explore a little bit personal takeaways from each one of our panelists, from each event that took place, as an example, in Washington, D.C. and San Jose in U.S. or Tel Aviv in Israel and what was done in India, and what we have done in China as an example. Draw the parallels among the discussions and ideas and thoughts and problems and solutions that can potentially be brought to the table that we can share and benefit from. Chris, maybe you can start. Dimensions of connectivity as enabling component to drive elimination of the digital exclusion and allowing everybody to connect to the Internet. We've done it events under IEEE to think of practical solutions the move it forward.
>> CHRISTOPHER __________: One of the most important things we've done with the Internet Initiative. When we got into it we realized an integral part of Internet governance ensuring there people there to be governed and take advantage of the Internet. Connectivity Rose to the top. Working with the U.S. State Department, the White House Office of Technology, World Bank and other groups. We launched and took part in a Global Connect Initiative with U.S. Secretary John Kerry. And really what came out of Global Connect was the sort of global issue of -- that you mentioned earlier, Osama, the digital divide growing and how we need to eradicate that. Global Connect seeks to do that and we've convened first in Washington, D.C.
It was really a wonderful event that brought together people from all over the world to talk about not just the issues and the challenges of connecting the unconnected but actual get to action. We tried to have a bias toward action. That was really something that is critical in an initiative like this. And so one of the things that I think came out of this that was so important and if you want to learn more about it you can meet the students who are making this happen on the ground. We met with a group of students who were IEEE members at our chapters in Tunisia. A great example of Oleg's point of local people doing global issues. We had students working at their local chapter at their university in Tunisia realizing the importance of connecting the unconnected in the rural areas of Tunisia and they set out to do it. A group of a couple students working with the IEEE and we really helped them coalesce a group of folks nationally to fund and give them the support they need to make this connection happen. They've already got two schools online now. Their goal is ambitious. To get all the high schools done by 2020. This is a massive effort run by a couple of college students. All undergrads.
I think this really to me is at the heart of what IEEE does. It showcases many different things. One our global reach. We have as many members in Asia as we do in the United States. We have members in South America, Africa, Europe, all over the world. We have thousands of chapters all over the world. We represent all different technical disciplines. All these things are coming together through this effort in Tunisia to connect all the schools to the Internet. We'll learn things there that we can replicate. There are lessons learned and we can use it across all these other projects and that's what global connect is to me and what the value of the Internet Initiative is and would encourage everybody here to go to the IEEE booth in the hall. Meet with the Tunisia students, how they got it started. What they're doing and happy to talk about connectivity projects around the world. We have a lot of resources. We have 400,000 members in IEEE. Volunteer army. You couldn't ask for more experts in any field that deals with electrical engineering. I think that's a great example of why we're here today. With that I'll save the rest for later and I'll pass it along.
>> OLEG LOGVINOV: You participated in the events where we brought experts and technology together. What is your takeaway in our discussion?
>> MIN JIANG: The point about connectivity and I'll say a few words first about the Chinese contacts and move on to talk a little bit about the point of technology and policy. So historically China actually connected to the Internet in 1995. In about 20 years, China has propelled itself into a global economic powerhouse as well as a technological powerhouse. So technology -- economy-wise 500 million Chinese people have been lifted out of poverty, right? And give people the country the base for technological development. It's also home to a lot of Internet companies, all these now recognized as global powerhouse. And today China has roughly 700 million Chinese Internet users and over one billion people having mobile phone access. So this is sort of the context for Chinese Internet connectivity. Next I will speak about sort of the recent policies and debates that I think are important for us to think about, larger issues of connectivity and Internet of Things that framed our discussion earlier. I will speak about the three aspects.
First aspect is sort of the idea we've -- Internet globally and China-wise has come a long way. But I think we have also seen some shifts about how we think about the Internet and what it is meant to be. 20 or 30 years ago I think -- China has this particular phrase. We call ourselves Citizens of the Internet. It's a separation that Chinese people hold for themselves and for generations to come what Internet means to them. And I think in the past 20 or 30 years we've come a long way but recently there are different frame works for thinking about the Internet and what it means to China and Chinese people. There are two phases. One is Internet sovereignty and the other is information sovereignty. These are ways of thinking about the Internet that have been framed by the state for sure for thinking about what the Internet should be. And of course sovereignty emphasizes control over data, control over its people as well. So these have different connotations and can be read quite differently. And second, I would highlight the fact that there is a centrality of policy-making power with regard to the Internet. We used to joke that China there were so many different ministries and entities making policy about the Internet, having too many cooks in the kitchen, right? We probably have this problem everywhere else. In recent years there is a trend of centrality or centralization of policy-making power related to the Internet in China.
Third, I will say a few words about privacy and security. Since this seems to be the theme that we wanted to tackle. One of the things that concerns me a little bit as I do research on Chinese Internet, there is a very profound lack of concern for privacy. For instance, if you browse through the kinds of meetings in China on Internet of Things. There is a glaring absence of the word privacy. It is not something, I guess, we research and we talk a lot about, but I think this is a sort of very visible gap of discourse and conversations. And in addition to that, I think a big initiative that has been rolled out recently in China is of interest to many people on issues of privacy and security. That is the system called social credit system. They might be given a credit based on the credibility and elements of online activities being taken into consideration for this credit score. So I will leave it right there and so perhaps have more opportunities later for discussion but this is the sort of current landscape of Chinese Internet.
>> OLEG LOGVINOV: Thank you, Min. Limor you have a unique perspective in terms of similarities you discovered and unique elements of privacy-related issues.
>> LIMOR SHMERLING MAGAZANIK: I would really like to share with you the experience and start by saying that we started looking at biometric access control systems and databases at that event. For me it was a good opportunity to share my experience in the past if you years as a regulator, since we had an Israeli project to deal with the identification, the smart identification in Israel and there were various elements of privacy involved of decisions that needed to be made in the technological part of the project that had to do exactly with the point of bringing together the people who are doing the I.T., who are doing the design and making the decisions and us, the legal people, the privacy people, and decisions made during that project are decisions that decide whether we would have less privacy or more privacy. At that event we also had a participant from India who shared with us his experience from a similar project that was going on in India at the same time, and we finished by having a very practical list of recommendations for engineers, for designers, for the people in the industry, how to incorporate privacy in that type of project.
For today I actually did a similar experiment on the topic of IOTs that I would like to share with you through a simple examples, several simple examples. One of the principles in privacy protection is transparency, how you communicate to the end users and consumers what is being done with their data and information. If we're looking at IOTs, they're meant to be very small, low in power consumption, low in computing power, we -- in order to introduce privacy protection and in order to create some form of notice to consumers who use their interface, this is something if it's not done from the start, there is no way to communicate with this device in order to make it available to let consumers know what is being done with their data. Another important thing is purpose limitation, data that is collected from individuals can only be used to the purposes that they agreed to, to the purposes that were told from the start. Now, if the defaults of IOTs are transmitting all informational data back to the processors, or they're collecting all data that was created during the process, we have a conflict. How do we limit the purposes to which the data is being used? This is something that for me as a policymaker and as a regulator who does enforcement, I was responsible for enforcement department for the last eight years, this is something very difficult to come and enforce and sanction companies for doing that when they say but by design this device, this product, this chip cannot do what you are asking me to do. So this is very important and crucial, I think, to start and talking from the start, privacy by design is meant to be part of the process where we bring together the people who make the design, the people who make the policy, and we try to think about how to actually implement policy inside the product.
Another example I can give you the opt in and opt out decisions. In my type of regulation, it is very important whether the consumer or the person opt in or opt out. Again, without a user interface, without something to be able to interact with the devices, with the IOTs, you don't even have the chance to decide how you do that. I can tell you about a recent case that was settled with the FTC, the Federal Trade Commission. My colleagues in the U.S. They charged a company that deploys sensors in stores and shopping centers, etc., not even the shop itself, not even target or whatever, Macy's, it was the company that was deploying the sensors and they were hidden in a way that people did not know that information about them is collected inside the store and also from passersby outside the store. And they were charged with -- by the FTC and they settled the case and they have changed their practices. So these are all instances where I think that if we address these issues beforehand, we can make better solutions.
Just last example for you to think about for the rest of the discussion, security, a big part of privacy is security. It also correlates with cybersecurity requirements and it is very important for privacy if we look at the CCTV camera recorders. They may have passwords and administrators that cannot be changed. Even if you want to make the product safer and not be part of botnet attacks, how do you change passwords if you don't have it built into the system from the first place? So I think these are just a few short examples of things that may be better for all of us as a society. Things that we need to address right now in order to create the infrastructure for better privacy protection.
>> OLEG LOGVINOV: Those are excellent points, Limor, what you said makes a great starting point for you to talk about. The Department of Homeland Security participated in two of our events in the United States and brought a fantastic contribution talking about a system level, big picture approach to security and privacy by design. I hope you can reflect on that.
>> JUAN GONZALEZ: Within the United States and Department of Homeland Security we have a lot of work to do domestically and with other departments and agencies to develop the right policy to be able to adapt with the newest trends of technology such as IOT.
We encourage a thriving and vibrant marketplace for our initiatives in a multi-stakeholder environment with all the work that we do to share best practices and the development of standard for solution. We have systems of security and reliable capacity for the building and private security and to develop those solutions that are shared for -- be able to give us the capabilities that we need to go on with our lives. We also work to increase community and consumer awareness and the understanding of security challenges that we have to be able to build those common solutions. So picking up on the last point in the previous forums within IEEE, we're constantly looking for promoting that multi-stakeholder environment and within the Department of Homeland Security we work with other private sector entities, other stakeholders, departments and agencies to development cyber defense, a very broad initiative within the department and some of the other departments and agencies to be able to develop the right architectures and concepts to help owners to detect and defend cybersecurity systems and be able to adapt to the cyber threat in a relevant time to be able to detect and protect at a machine speed. So we developed different products and services that help us within those areas.
Specifically some of the foundational activities that we do are automation to enable automated since making decision making response to providing realtime network defense within our enterprises. We also look into information sharing to enable that rapid share of indicators and analytics and effective responses between enterprises. We also -- one of the other foundational activities our ability to have integration across diverse products and services which is stepping back from the proprietary solutions and building products and services that can interoperate and build inner connectivity for sharing that trust and privacy that we need for getting more into the areas that we all care about.
So we do a lot of activities that are within the standards work and at the intra-enterprise level we do what is called develop message fabric to provide a foundation for supporting secure and reliable data exchanges for interoperability of those products within IOTs is a huge area that we are looking to how we connect those devices and how we secure those devices, how we embed the necessary mechanisms and security practices to be able for us to interoperate with that level of trust. Security, supporting common data models for command and control, simplify engines for more standardized network management platform. We see the initiative as a key aspect of what we are doing within the future and how do we create that multi-stakeholder level of trust and engagement at the domestic level, but also looking into the future on how we expand to forums like this for the international engagement.
The Department of Homeland Security recently released on November 15th, 2016, the strategic principles for secure IOT, a document that's freely available through the DHS website if you look into it. It lays out some principles. The first one is to incorporate security at the design phase for those IOTE licenses and advance security updates in management, the third one is to build on proven security practices. The fourth is prioritize security measures according to potential impact. Number five is promote transparency across IOT and number six is connect carefully and deliberately. Within those strategic principles we have four lines of effort. The first one is coordinate across for all departments and agencies to engage with IOT stakeholders in other communities, domestically and internationally. Build awareness of risk association with IOT stakeholders. Advance initiatives for developing IOT security and develop to the international standards development for IOT to help us get into domestically into the areas that we care about for security and privacy.
>> OLEG LOGVINOV: Thank you very much. A great contribution and I think what's actually very interesting to note, a lot of things you just said resonate very well with what Limor said before. Especially in the areas of transparency when we talk about consumers' rights. It is very interesting to see even at this table we're finding similarities and synergies and that bridges very well to the discussion I would like you to touch up on. There has been a tremendous support from the very first event in San Jose, California, now almost three years ago. I would love to hear your perspective -- thank you for that. I would like to hear your perspective, what you found almost like in a cross section of similarities and differences among those events and especially differences among countries.
>> NING KONG: The first task is try to make our root system be stable. So we have set up more than 30 DNS node and we developed ourselves a device to try to identify what kind of query. But we do think that is still not enough because D Dos is very hard to solve so I think maybe it is a big challenge for us how can we make some cooperated ways across the nations, across the institutions, and we can share our resources to anti-D Dos attack and try to make our Internet infrastructure be stable and make people to safely connect to the Internet structure. Not only because of the D Dos attack but the future Internet of Things. I think for the future Internet of Things I think naming queries could be much harder than nowadays for the Internet, so I think maybe we can try to improve such kind of infrastructures.
Another thing is try to attract more connections from the non-English speakers. So we support the internationalization domain names. The Chinese domain name and email address internationalization email account. Such local friendly identifier can attract more connection from the non-English speaker.
Another point because -- the forum and the Beijing Forum and we identify some common discussion is about the data privacy. So I think it is an interesting point that not only for the Internet now but also for the Internet of Things and how can we make sure that the data processed and stored, all of the process can protect the privacy. And it's -- I think nowadays is not standard ways. And the users do not know if he buy a service or if he buy an IOT devices, what kind of privacy protection level is.
So maybe in the future IEEE and other international organizations should think about to make some international standards to standardize the privacy, protection level and make some third party organization to evaluate which level of each device, of each hardware, of each software. Maybe can put some signs on the devices or hard wears and just like nowadays the electronic devices can have the signs about the energy cost, so for the future maybe -- the end users what kind of levels they can protect on the devices and it depends on the end users whether they want to use this kind of IOT devices.
And another big challenge is I think the new technology can challenge the privacy protection. The data analytics. A lot of new technology can identify the peoples from the anonymous datas, even anonymous data. So in the future maybe we should need to figure out what kind of ways can anti-identify the anonymous data. I think that associate big challenge.
>> OLEG LOGVINOV: Maybe that could be one of the points today. Let's try to define a standard. If the panel agrees, why don't we make that as a follow-up action item and try to work together to implement it. Makes perfect sense. That's a great contribution. Last but not least, Osama. We had tremendous events in India. But I think the most fascinating what I heard from you today was your opening statement about India as it is today. So I would welcome your discussion here.
>> OSAMA MANZAR: Thank you very much. It is interesting, because you, you know, we are 1.3 billion and always a center of attraction for consumer goods and for selling products, including technology. And technology is a great part of -- digital inclusion. Digital without technology is nowhere. I would like to make some background, since we're talking under the framework of connecting the unconnected.
We are a country of 1.3 billion and give a lot of example of how connected. We're the tech highest most connected country and the second highest in social media. These are great numbers. Something like everybody thinks India speaks English. Only 5% of India speaks English. That is enough for the world to count them as one of the highest English speaking country. Similarly in connectivity as well, we are only 400 million people connected and second highest but we have 800 to 900 million people not connected and also one of the most unconnected countries. And we have great examples of how digital inclusion. I would like to share three examples. We have 400 to 500 million people-paying 250 rupees. 250 times the cost that you and me pay in town. It is a serious digital exclusion example. Life of unconnected people only because of policy and technology. Because policy says that you have to be online. Therefore all the government documents are online and therefore a poor person cannot have it without having a print-out and they have to go 5 or 10 kilometers and you can't go to work for the day. It all costs 250 rupee and we pay less than 1 in towns.
That's a side of policy and technology both and the reason I'm mentioning it. We talked about biometric. About India example. We all have national identities and so we are a part of it. So when you go to get your ration, since you are entitled for a ration for the month, they ask you to put your finger on die metric and there are about 500 million people in India who are daily wage workers whose finger do not match to biometric machine and you do not get your wages or ration for the month. It is a digital exclusion and why it is interesting is a piece of biometric machine is a piece of technology which become part of the policy we make which became a part of exclusion it has created to the people who have no choice.
So it is something like policy is technology and technology is policy, you know? And people suffer in between policies and technologies. Because all the policies are made by the government to serve the people. But all the technologies are made by the private sector to sell them as a consumer. So there is a huge interest differentiation in both. And so this is -- and the masses suffer and the rest of the world, which is half the rest of the world which is suffering because of being not connected is not actually the only one serve not being connected but another 70 or 80% of people connected are suffering because of being connected. Connectivity is something that is still a piece of technology, still a piece of policy but still -- hasn't become a consumer good. It hasn't become a mass consumable product without understanding the technology and without understanding the policy. That's the challenge that we need to understand extremely well. And I will give you last example which actually makes all three. We work in remote areas and we started trying to license the spectrum and wireless mess technology to connect the poorest of the poor. Telcos don't go to remote areas because it doesn't solve their purpose. We started trying to technology and very successful in terms of connecting the people at a very low cost using wireless technology and unlicensed spectrum. The fact is I cannot serve the people without having a license in a larger scale. I can have a few communities and a few examples but cannot do it at a larger scale. So one of the things that organization like IEEE or the people who sit on the policy, it is very important to see how last mile connectivity is not just a subject of Telcos or large spectrums but also a subject of micro-enterprises and also a subject of civil society where the civil society and micro-enterprises get a license to connect to the people. It is like a product, you know? So I get connectivity and I further distribute it and manage in my community. It is not available on a massive scale. That's very, very important to see that how technology and policy merge together to think from the perspectives of people and social enterprise perspective rather than only large scale enterprise perspective.
>> OLEG LOGVINOV: Those are great insights and well, we have only a few minutes left towards the end of our session so I would like to suggest if there are any questions from participants here in the audience if you would like to ask a question, you are welcome to do so. Please.
>> I'm Mike Nelson and work for Cloud Flair, a web security firm based in San Francisco and I do global public policy. In China we don't operate but we have a partnership with buy due. They operate our equipment and datacenters with the same service we use. So we're very interested in how we can work with China and how we can understand the new Chinese cybersecurity regulations. One of the problems we see around the world, not just in China, also in India, also in the United States, is that regulation gets written and it can be interpreted in five different ways. I would ask our two China experts if they have any advice on how to interpret Chinese regulations and any sources of insight we can get on what those laws really mean. There is both a new law on domain names and registration and another one on cybersecurity and what companies need to do to operate in the Chinese market. And if you want to talk about Indian tech policy that would also be useful.
>> MIN JIANG: To a language extent without a lot of consultation. There are a lot of questions being raised at the moment. To be honest, it's very hard to read the minds of Chinese policymakers. I guess one of the most direct way is to ask them to clarify exactly what is meant. And I think there have been many iterations of drafts and translations already. And the details are always -- what's difficult is the details and how it is implemented. I think how it's drafted is one thing and how it's implemented and interpreted is quite another. You can talk about this high level abstract concepts but when it comes to implementation I think it creates more problems, I think. So I think the law is drafted often in a way that is abstract and how it is interpreted and implemented is really where the rubber hits the road.
>> NING KONG: Hello, Mike, I'm very sorry that I'm not the policy people and focus on the technology issues. So I am not very familiar with these kind of new regulations. But if you want -- if you like, I can try to make sure some kind of specific question for you, because I am the Chinese -- I can understand the language and I can ask my colleague or other friends to make sure what kind of is really meaning of it. If you like, we can contact. Thanks.
>> I would very much appreciate that. Anything from India how to make use of telecom regulation?
>> OSAMA MANZAR: It has to look for people, you know, to regulate things. But one of the things that recently came out of TRAI. The regulator of India, they floated a recommendation paper on public WiFi system and gave wireless and unlicensed spectrum as one of the examples, this is how you can connect people. And they took a lot of interest from civil society and others and looks like the government is interested in reaching out to the people and making it open to the people in the line of community radio, community radio license in India is open to civil society organization. They can seek a community radio license and broadcast 10 kilometer radius with a 50 watt transmitter. Similar philosophy to connectivity in terms of the Internet and broadband, there is a possibility it can happen at a larger scale.
>> I had the privilege of working on internet policy in the Clinton White House. Two simple rules. First, do no harm, the second was, when in doubt, allow as many options as possible. Unfortunately the Congress had a different rule which was write vague laws that result in lawsuits that last for four or five years. The good news, though, with that system is that even though it relies on lots of lawyers spending lots of money on billable hours you do finally get a clear, single interpretation of what the law means. I think that's what's missing in China. We just have no way to force development of solution. Of a clear implementation.
>> OLEG LOGVINOV: Maybe there is a path. What you just said gave me an idea. Maybe there is a place or an effort that can be cross-country effort and driven by all of us here at the table which essentially would focus on best practices. So we can come together and bring the expertise from all of the relevant countries and try to figure out. Technology is global and you want to leverage the economy of scale which the products you build and that's normal and benefits everybody around the world. Maybe it's one of the actionable items to take out of this discussion is an exploratory discussion of creation of this multi-country multi-stakeholder activity where we can bring experts in both sides, technology and policy, and see if we can create best practices for implementation.
>> I think I'm getting the lawyers talking to the engineers is what's really going to be important. You only answered half the problem. This morning in the Internet and jurisdiction panel at 9:00, they discussed the idea of a best practices database and a worst practices database. There is an example of this from a group called Net Choice. If you do a Google search for I awful and I awesome you'll get lists of laws in the United States developed at the state level that were either really good or really bad. And just highlighting how law is colliding -- bad law is colliding with technology and holding back some of these great new technologies would be something that IEEE could be and be a powerful thing.
>> OLEG LOGVINOV: I invite your participation. Let's take it offline and I think that actually would be something very interesting for everybody.
>> The engineers are the ones who run into the problems directly.
>> LIMOR SHMERLING MAGAZANIK: To add to the discussion. We actually have a practice of doing consultations before every piece of policy is rolled out. And we strongly would like the public to participate. I have to say that in practice we get many complaints of our policies being not attached to the real world and less comments on actual policies and legislation that has to do with technology that we're working on. So to be sure, you have to put your money where your mouth is, I'm sorry to be blunt. Because we're craving input and we're getting very little.
>> I wasn't complaining about Israel. You have some very good technologists in your policy process.
>> OLEG LOGVINOV: That is at the heart of the Internet Initiative. Be the forum for attorneys and meet to technologists with the cross pollination and information sharing.
>> Good afternoon, my name is Karen Katt, I work with Article 19, human rights. I wanted to touch a little bit on China's domain for -- focusing how to bring together people to make the Internet more inclusive. Something that has been very worrying and recently a joint statement by several civil society organizations has gone out is the fact that in this specific draft which very much limits freedom of expression online, there has been cooperation between -- an the ITF. In certain cases corporate actors are implementing national laws in a way that essentially violates human rights. And so I would be interested to hear to what extent this is something that factors into this discussion because it seems to be something we haven't really touched upon.
>> OLEG LOGVINOV: Anybody would like to comment?
>> More of a clarifying question. You noted Varisign is a corporation actor and the ITF. I don't know of the ITF doing anything with the Chinese government on this and as the executive director I probably would have heard about it. Clarify what you mean.
>> I am not one the working on the ITF section. The people who are working on it have verified it. Maybe discuss offline. We have run this by the ITF. They're aware of this statement being out there.
>> I'm on the IEB and I don't think I've gotten the message. Let's talk offline and maybe you're not accidentally talking about the advertising board, a different IAB.
>> OLEG LOGVINOV: I think this question more belongs to an offline discussion it sounds like. Any other questions from the audience here? I think we're running a little over time. Yes. How much time do we have? Okay. Fantastic. We can stay until tomorrow morning, right?
>> Until we get very hungry.
>> OLEG LOGVINOV: Another five minutes and we can go. Any other questions from the audience? If not, I would like to ask one finishing question. So we talked about a lot of great opportunities here. We talked about two initiatives that we can probably launch as a result of the discussion of this panel. Just a very quick maybe 10 second snapshot, we started this initiative three years ago almost. We brought multiple occasions technologists and policy developers together in discussions like this one. We discovered a lot of issues. From your personal perspective. The greatest benefit you see from those discussions so far. Anybody would like to start?
>> I'll start. From the IEEE we spend most of our time dealing with engineers in their society. Internet Initiative bridges in other people and other discussions we won't be a part of. For me that's what it's all about. When I am at a conference like IGF for me to talk to non-engineers. This is broadening for us. It's an opportunity for us to get other folks involved in what we're doing and help inform the engineering initiatives that we have going on within the IEEE.
>> OLEG LOGVINOV: It is about connecting the unconnected.
>> Yeah, in many, many ways, well said.
>> It's an opportunity for me to get connected to engineers and talk about, you know, ideas and values in a way I think that also are important to them, right? This is real exciting to me. The other aspect is connecting sort of the missing dots and unconnected people. I think people make things happen and I have to do my work and also get to know people who have shared interest and shared goals, yeah. So this is a very helpful for IEEE to be in this space to connect a lot of us.
>> LIMOR SHMERLING MAGAZANIK: For me also it is a great experience to be talking to non-lawyers. Lawyers have a really bad reputation. And being one I can tell jokes about them. But moreover, the thing is I was attending a privacy conferences and privacy workshops for quite a few years and it felt like we are preaching to the choir and we are all convinced that privacy is not dead and we are talking to ourselves. I actually figured out this past summer in Tel Aviv when I bought Oleg and the group I realized it is much more challenge to speak to people not convinced the privacy is still alive. To the people trying to implement our policies and for me it is a great experience to get these insights, to get other viewpoints, to talk to people from different disciplines and different ideology defaults and that's for me the main attraction.
>> OLEG LOGVINOV: Thank you. Juan.
>> JUAN GONZALEZ: I would say interoperability and integration for information sharing. For us to be able to look into what best practices there are out there. To commonly face the challenges that we see every day within the cybersecurity areas. I think that's very important.
>> OLEG LOGVINOV: Great. Thank you, Ning?
>> NING KONG: I think it's very hard to communicate with policy people and technology people, and these two sides maybe have a totally different ideology and language so it is a tough task for us but I think it really makes sense if the policymakers do not understand the technology, the policy cannot be easily implemented. And if the technology guys do not understand the policy, maybe they will create some kind of useless technology. It really makes sense and I hope the IEEE forum can keep on doing this great platform for these kind of two guys to communicate together further. Thanks.
>> OLEG LOGVINOV: Thank you. And Osama?
>> OSAMA MANZAR: Yeah, you know, IEEE can do it. That's the reason I'm trying to tell this. And just to add what he said that we don't understand the language of policymakers and technical people. I would like to just say one sentence we are looking at the whole world being connected, okay? But are we really looking at who will manage that connectivity? That's seen as a technical assignment or a technical job. Can we think of creating barefoot Internet net engineers all over the world and IEEE takes the responsibility to demystify technology as a household understanding of how you can run your own WiFi, Internet rather than running around my Internet is down and I can't do anything. We already think it is a technical issue. It is not a plumbing issue in my bathroom. It is not my kitchen issue where I can cook and make omelet, you know, or something like that. So can I screw tight or can we play around with technology to the level where it becomes a household understanding of management of technology. And demystify technology and policy for a simple person who is using it. Because if you are using it, we should know how to use it and should know how to manage it. As simple as that and then be able to participate in the discourse of whether it is good for me or not good for me. Thank you.
>> OLEG LOGVINOV: It's education. One closing question very quick.
>> Have you turned to the remote moderator to find if anybody has asked questions online or whether there is any interest in tweets?
>> OLEG LOGVINOV: We have nothing. That brings us to the end of our session. I with like to thank or panelists, exceptional job, thank you. You brought fantastic insights and the depth of the discussion was really exciting. And we have two actionable items as a result of it which we'll try to take forward and stay tuned. We'll essentially public something to everybody interested. If you're interested, let us know in participation and we'll get you involved. Thank you very much, great job, look forward to future discussions.
(Applause)
(Session ended at 1:15 PM CT)