The following are the outputs of the real-time captioning taken during the Twelfth Annual Meeting of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) in Geneva, Switzerland, from 17 to 21 December 2017. 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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(Audio connected after session start)
>> CARLOS AFONSO: To use encryption currency mining, because video cards are usually much more powerful than the central processor of a desktop. They use software using the video card to do encryptomining. As we speak, algorithms are used to decide hiring or firing, releasing or holding people in prison, approving or reviewing credit or offering credit due to a profile.
About half of today's jobs will be threatened by algorithms, and 40% of the top five countries use this. They estimate that between 2020 and 2060, super computers will exceed human skills in almost every area. People of the caliber of Bill Gates and Steve Wozniak warned that it is a serious threat to humanity, probably more dangerous than nuclear weapons. As we speak, Internet of things, IOT, one of the new fashionable talk topics is already present in our homes and pockets. For a long time, smartphones and smart TVs are examples. Hundreds of millions of devices have been deployed without property security protections. Most cases, they don't know who is responsible for the firm wear, the software embedded in the device. And there is a question that there will never be a firmware update of the device.
Here are the main challenges, how does it impact real life? Are they to be automatically accepted by decision‑makers as valid or true? Some analysts have provided abundant functioning examples of the dangers of trusting algorithms. The mathematician Cathy O'Neal is an outstanding example of the researcher pointing to the dangers of several operations of the systems. Today's social networking or transactional algorithms know more about us than our family or ourselves and they can even offer recommendations for decisions that look good, even if they are not our decisions.
A situation where we are increasingly remotely controlled. The more the systems know about us, the more our actions can be predetermined by others. It is something like going from computer programming to people programming. It is the algorithms of mass destruction or weapons of math destruction in Cathy O'Neal's precise expression.
What should concern us even more, as if we needed to be more frightened, is that the whole technicalan tangle practice is not the super reach manipulating governments or state systems of monitoring and fighting crime, but it is in the reach of hackers that are distracted from the White House, Equifax, NSA or take a whole network for ransom in the case in England's NHS, captured by ransomware. If you know the vulnerabilities happen in the United States, what to expect in other countries?
We're at a crossroad, if our algorithms are controlled by a narrow group of decision‑makers, reducing our self‑determination or human common sense, researchers say we will fall back on a feudalism 2.0. In here, I reach a topic I would like to have considered for this session. The challenge of preparing public servants, service, political decision‑making to better understand what is going on. We have seen the many targets describe it, for the sustainable development goals, that there are 15 targets relating to capacity development.
These targets seem to avoid the specific issue of the formation of the public sector. On several fronts we learn of new bills of law. Those bills of law trying to regulate the instances of technology for which the proposers have no idea what they're talking about. We have seen a glaring example of this in the debate of net neutrality of the U.S.
We have seen blocking censorship and that usually involves complete lack of knowledge of the functioning of the networking systems
As a result, politicianses may be manipulated to insert bias laws favoring their business. How to create mechanism which will lead to better law making or more informed decision‑making by the public sector. A problem for many, but particularly acute when it involves the complexities of the network, the systems of today and tomorrow.
So that is the main issue I pose to you and to our fellows here. I think Enrique has an issue that will touch on this issue. And I welcome any other issue you might stress in this panel.
So now I open for other participants of the panel, should I go left to right or right to left? Right to left. Okay.
Now the representative of Guatemala? Oh, Dominican Republic? I should read. Can you do a paragraph?
>> FEDERICA TORTORELLA: Good morning, I'm Federica Tortorella, I'm representing Dominican Republic. I'm a lawyer and I'm passionate about Internet governance. During this panel, the question was, what is the role in the NRI in harnessing technologies through the digital competency for sustainable development within the respective country. I will talk about Dominican Republic situation.
IGF initiative must follow principles, liking noncommercial, inclusive, and they must have multi‑stakeholder participation in both formulation of the initiative and other related events.
They must be seen as a tool or way to enhance the multi‑stakeholder participation and especially the government to submit proposals to regulate and accomplish the sustainable development objectives in the country. In Dominican Republic, there was three IGF since 2015. Every year, more people are interested in taking part in the events. The IGF made it possible to talk about the possibility for the first time with a multi‑stakeholder focus.
In 2016, the Dominican Republic chapter submitted the digital rights principles and values in the Dominican Republic. And 2017, we organized a workshop about IXP to launch a local IXP initiative, which result in the interest from our local regulator.
NRI could use the tools existing in the country to submit draft bills at the parliament, dealing with ICT. The end would be to harness the use of them to reach the sustainable development objectives. Digital and to create digital inclusive communities and strengthen the one existing. In this case, for example, in Dominican Republic, we have the right of initiative. Finally, they should be capable to work directly with the government as assessors, as I mentioned, initiative on IXP, while implementing public policies that deals with ICT. They need to enhance the awareness about Internet governance issues. We created the knowledge of the SDO, we have discovered a lot of people, especially students don't know what they are.
So to harness digital tools to reach SDO goals, it is necessary to prioritize the multi-stakeholder groups. They are to measure the advancement of time related to the approach. We agree with Mr. Thomas Gas, assistant Secretary‑General for policy coordination that said sustainable development is about empowering and enabling people through transfer of knowledge and skills to make future generation. Based on the aid, the national initiative, agrees on importance to promote the adoption of the ICT to achieve them. And to make it happen, the multi stakeholder focus is necessary. NRI should work together to submit proposals and unify critiques, especially in the sustainable development objects, using digital tools.
In every case, the inclusion of different sectors, it is important to focus on the proposals. And they must afford to be interconnected with technical communities and international organizations.
>> CARLOS AFONSO: Okay. Thank you. One quick comment. You mention the declaration of digital rights. It seems to be similar to the Brazilian framework for the Internet?
>> FEDERICA TORTORELLA: Yeah.
>> CARLOS AFONSO: Good. Enrique is next, please.
>> ENRIQUE: My name is Enrique Fohaber. I am representing the ‑‑ I am on the private sector. I represent NCCIBVR, the I.T. industry in Brazil. This session today, we're talk about the ‑‑ I will talk about Brazil of course. I will bring the case of when CGI are moving forward in the issue of raising our cybersecurity issues.
Of course, the digital competence that we need to improve on developing countries are very general because we know that ‑‑ how the new jobs of the future needs to address digital competence in Brazil, we have maybe half of the population outside of the Internet, and, it is a problem, but these people are scamming into the new digital society very quickly. Maybe through the mobile system.
And of course, we know that to include those people on this new society, we need to work on the capacity building. I focus, as I told you, more on the specific digital capacity governance related to cybersecurity, because as you know, cybersecurity is big issue in Brazil and all over the world. Brazil, myself, I was involved as coordinator against spam. Brazil was ‑‑ we start this project on the 2009. It has continued, but it has a result in 2012. Our intention there is to take Brazil off of the list of the five countries that spent more spam all over the world.
We discovered through analysis of the situation putting honey pots ‑‑ I mean computers that try to study where this spam comes from. And that Brazil was the first or the second country that sent more spam to the world. But we're not the original senders of the spam. We are like a hub because our network was unprotect, much of the computers in Brazil were compromised and used for all over the world as hub, a middle, I network that can be abused to send spam through Brazilian equipments and compromise it all over the world.
We develop this as a work done through government. I mean, the telecommunicational agents, through the private sector. I mean, the ISP in telecom industry. And involving the government. And sometimes in a specific period of the project, some complaints are put from the Teleco operators in order to be prepared to receive complaints from the consumers because we ‑‑ we will stop when it was not supposed to be blocked on the countries with the users. We did this project using a moot stakeholder format.
And we have been success because after we project, Brazil was not the first or second country that send more into the woods. And now he's between the 25 or 30 country in that context.
But I explain about this project to talk about the importance of education. And in order to implement a project that make the network in Brazil more reliable. We did that from the beginning. We have to show to the users the importance to change their program and not to use another port, not the 25 port, it should be used for the servers that provide e‑mail, not the user itself app ‑‑ itself.
Also, you need to explain how to be prepared to the moment that the Telecos, we need to avoid all the e‑mail that goes through the users ‑‑ from the user to another, should use another port, 587. We are in fact rewarded because the change was made to involve millions of users. We are aware about the impact on the hotline of the ISP and hotline of the Teleco companies, when the key was switch off. We promote abundant campaign, websites, press conference. We put this information that the people must be warned about this modification when the modification session was planning to be done. In fact, we are surprised, because the level of difficulties of the product on the call centers was much less than we are prepared to do. All of the preparedness and preparation in the campaigns we did before we turned the key. So CGIVR are involved in several initiatives, like on the problem of cybersecurity.
In fact, we have inside the CGIVR have a group called set VR. They in fact created the other sets in Brazil, the university set and company certs. And the cert is ‑‑ 10 years from now, they work with us in the project, when they had the central role, and we also produce, through the cert several booklets on cybersecurity focusing different interest groups. So we have booklets on cybersecurity for children. You have booklet on cybersecurity for teachers. We have booklets about bills, about phishing, about botnets, about spam, of course, about ransomware. So we invest a lot of our time and money raising the ‑‑ trying to raise the education of Brazilian society about the cybersecurity issue problems.
We believe that cybersecurity is a big concern. Much of the problem should be avoided by educating the people. Not even the children and the people who are newly included, but everybody. Everybody. So this kind of digital capacity that I choose to talk to you about today in the case of digital capacity in Brazil through (?) We believe it is a good example and effort that every country should be considering when talking about how to raise the digital competency in our society. Thank you, I will be here, in fact, we can talk about several aspects of this to my knowledge ‑‑ of this digital competence necessity, I will be here for discussions. I believe you will have during this session. Thank you.
>> CARLOS AFONSO: Thank you Enrique. I missed (?) You have a presentation, right? It is already online? Okay.
>> Good morning, everybody. I will speak in French. It is more easier for me.
(Speaking non‑English language)
>> CARLOS AFONSO: Now Michel.
>> MICHEL TCHONANG: Bonjour. I'm going to speak in French. It is the language that I speak more.
(Speaking non‑English language)
Thank you very much.
>> CARLOS AFONSO: (Speaking non‑English language).
>> ANA NEVES: May I speak in Portuguese?
>> CARLOS AFONSO: Well ...
>> ANA NEVES: Thank you for being the Rapporteur of this session. I am here to talk about the national Portugal IGF, but with the digital competencies. We have 26% of the population who never use the Internet. On the other hand, we have 28% that have advanced digital competencies. So we are a dual country.
So it is very interesting, because as I normally say, we can share our best practices or not so good ‑‑ our best and bad practices with developing and developed countries. Because we are in the same path of some developing countries and we are in the same path of developed countries. So to face this challenge in Portugal. It was launched by the Prime Minister on the third of April, a new initiative, that is called Portugal 2030. So encode, it is not because of coding, because of initiatives on competencies of digital competencies. And it is like ‑‑ it is not an action plan, but it has neighbors and actions that should be fought on the short, medium, and long‑terms. And one thing that is very interesting in this initiative is that it was launched bottom‑down. Sorry. Top‑down.
But the point is to launch and to boost bottom‑up initiatives as well. So it's not so easy to have like initiatives from the civil society to have this kind of life ‑‑ a lifelong term. So it was very good to see this initiative to be launched by the Prime Minister and another interesting thing is that it has six ministers that are on board and they are very committed. So I am not talking about the ministries, but ministers. It is very interesting as well.
So normally, all of these kind of initiatives, they have digital inclusion. So normally for access, accessibility. Normally they have the formal indication appealer as well and employability. So qualification and real qualification. So normally, we have this kind of initiatives all over the world to face these three problems. The news on these initiative, on this fort geese initiate ‑‑ Portuguese initiative is we have two other repealers, the advanced specialization and the fifth one is about research and the creation of new knowledge. Using emerging technologies. So it means that this initiative ‑‑ it is for the whole society. So all the society is ‑‑ will have a link with this initiative, so for instance, myself I could be on the circle lar for real qualification. We are launching this kind of measures and actions. Of course, everything is being done with the other stakeholders. So of course, it is not ‑‑ it's a government initiative, but it has already in it other stakeholders that are involved and where we have the measures and the appealers, when you read it, you can see civil society, private sector, academia, they are all involved. Otherwise, it will be impossible to change the paradigm. So we have the diagnosis, we know what is going on in Portugal, so we know what to do now. So we are in the stage where the diagnosis is totally made and we know where to focus. And we know that we have to encompass the whole society.
So it is a question of full citizenship. So it's to democratize the knowledge. Because the society, we have this new digital society where people interact almost every time online. So you cannot afford for people to not being involved in the society. That is what I would like to say on the national IGF. I am not talking about only digital skills. I am beyond that. Thank you.
>> CARLOS AFONSO: Thank you, Anna. We have not too much time, but we are open to questions.
>> (?)
>> CARLOS AFONSO: Please, please go ahead.
>> Good morning, I will be very brief. I will talk about a movement, national movement who has some similarities with encodes, but was set up by the national private sector. I'm talking about moda. You can check it online. I believe the contents are provided only in Portuguese. But even though, if you have time and patience, go to moda.PT. It stands for movement for active digital use. It was set up earlier this year like encode. The initiative brings together the private sector, as I said previously. The universities, foundations, the major companies like Telecos, banks, insurance companies. The Portuguese CCTLPT and the government. I mean, the movement is I'll say blessed by the ministry of the economy and by the Portuguese agency for the modernization. At the moment, we are running several road shows, going on around the country and we do have a very ‑‑ I would say, friendly place online. You can do your digital competencies, and we have like encodes, we are based in several peelers, like access, communication, legislation. I am particularly involved in the legislation movement in order to promote the digital signature, the digital archives and digital contracts. But health, security, freedom, but what I would like to focus here is the two peelers, in particular. Literacy and educate.
Like encode, we have the perfect mind‑set that we have to promote ‑‑ I mean at the national level the use of digital technologies and that we have to try to contribute in order to make citizens develop appropriate digital behaviors, so the two peelers, I believe they are more focused in the matter we're talking about here today.
Just to finalize, we're working together encode, we have outside the same big major goals in order to have a more digital and inclusive society in Portugal. So that's all for me. Thank you.
>> CARLOS AFONSO: I apologize to you. I didn't ‑‑ I had an initial list of participants, and I got confused. I'm sorry.
So now it is open to comments from anyone. Please.
>> MARINA MASSIA: You know I always have a question. This is Marina Massia from the foundation. I think you presented how public policies and multi‑stakeholder foundations can harness the competencies for STGs, I would like you to explore more how NRI national and regional IGF have included the discussion on the digital competency on the track of the program of your meeting. Do you feel like it is easy to do that? Has this resonated with your audience? Sometimes I feel that here in the IGF, we are speaking with STG and still feel we fail to integrate that in the program. How is that taking place in the national and regional IGF?
>> CARLOS AFONSO: Well, anyone that describe the national situation would respond, if you want?
>> ENRIQUE: Just to talk about that in the Brazil, we call it the Internet forum. The Internet forum happened last November in Rio de Janeiro. And it was pre‑IGF. This year, we follow the process that IGF use, calling for workshop proposals from the society.
We received about 70 projects and we select 21. I believe there are one or two workshops that we accept that are raising the question of digital competence. This year was the first year that we did the Internet forum as really trying to follow the procedures.
Maybe as critics we do focus on guarantee that each important issue as digital capacity could be represented. We judge by the quality of the proposals, but we couldn't accept different perspectives of the ‑‑ of the issues that IGF Brazil could address.
I believe we had one or two digital capacity workshops there, but maybe we could next year focus more on those points because we believe that digital capacities will be very central to make planning and make a national awareness about this important issue. But that's my contribution about the situation in Brazil on our IGF.
>> CARLOS AFONSO: Any other comments? People want to go early to lunch, I think. (Chuckling).
>> VINICIUS SANTOS: Well, probably we can explore ‑‑ oh, sorry. I'm Vinicius. I am here for a support for the organization of this session and making some report and everything else. I think that there is one last question that we can explore a little bit more, I think everybody talked about it. But just to close this session, I think it would be good to explore the topic of collaboration between NRIs. So envisioning all the topics that were treated here, which were delved into here. So how can the NRIs collaborate to enhance this sort of topics, this sort of capacities and digital competencies?
This would be my question to the roundtable ‑‑ the roundtable that is flat. But it is a roundtable. What would be the ways to do that? How would these NRIs collaborate in these digital competencies?
>> ANNETTE: Thank you very much. I didn't introduce myself before. I am Annette, I am director of the digital society in Portugal. It is important, we should discuss. I am not going to discuss it, but I am going to raise a question to my colleagues here.
Do you have in your national initiatives, anything dedicated to digital skills or digital competencies or someone here in the room that have their own national initiatives, you do you have in your national discussions a session dedicated exclusively to digital skills or digital competencies? Thank you.
>> ENRIQUE: Just as I told you before, we didn't divide the asking for proposals in areas. Maybe we should consider that next year, because that way we can guarantee that certain topics ‑‑ all the main topics should be covered.
Because Brazil had about five or 10 sessions on cybersecurity. So maybe if you define it, you should submit workshops and include the topics, the main topics that will be covered, we have a more plural workshops on or national IGF. So it should be an idea that we can discuss this year.
>> Okay. Thank you. So I believe that the fact that we are here today, sharing our experience, it is first step of collaboration, even though, I would like to share with you guys that Portugal and Brazil now, I believe that other players will join us, we are planning to organize the first initiative of the countries who speak Portuguese, the countries who are members of CPLP, it will be the first initiative. We still don't have an official name for it, but it will be focused on digital competencies. And we are working in order to have a multi‑stakeholder participation. And in order to have all the countries involved and have a successful meeting, a successful forum, I believe it will occur in the end of this year.
>> And next year.
>> I'm sorry. End of next year. So if you are somehow interested in participate, please come to us and share your ideas and you will be very welcomed. Thank you.
>> CARLOS AFONSO: Thank you. Any more? Please.
>> MAURICE: Maurice from Madagascar. I am working on the STID unique MG. I am ‑‑ I would like to ask a question to the whole audience.
In Madagascar, we have had the CCTID since 1997. In the year 2000, we had the set up our first ISO chapter. In 2016, we have had our IXP, the first time, after almost 10 years of discussion with ISP and all of these telecom operators. But right now we didn't have ‑‑ we didn't manage to put up any NRI or Internet governance forum. I wonder if there is a roadmap to set up this group, to get it formalized? Who could start it first? Is it the government? Is it the civic society? Is it academia? What is the best place to start talking about the Internet governance with all the topics developing of competency, entrepreneurship on the Internet, cybersecurity, so on.
We are really in that situation. We are all attending IGF. We are all attending I can meeting, so on. Government, civil society, some technicians, but when we are back to our country, we are not able to set up something to discuss the very specific topics on Internet governance. Thank you.
>> CARLOS AFONSO: I will answer briefly. You know the Association for Progressive Communications, APC? The association has a stand here in the area of exposition, exhibitions, et cetera. They're just launching the new edition of a book which is the general name is just watch.
The theme for this year's book is how the national IGFs are organize. The history of the national IGF, how they came to be, what they did, what was the practice, so on. It could be useful for what you are asking for. So if you can take a look at the ABC stands and get a copy of the book, that would be great. I think Enrique has an announcement to make.
>> ENRIQUE: Yes. We bring some books about the project against a spy in Brazil. I have versions in Spanish and English. Any person that is interested on this issue and this project that we did in Brazil, of course, there are some chapters about the user education that I talk about in this session. So I have some copies with me, if anyone is interested, please come here and I will give you a copy.
>> CARLOS AFONSO: Mercier wants to do some final comments.
>> MERCIER: We have a free group of people, these other people and parents. We want to make for them training for parents in the social network that permit them to follow their child. Okay? And for a woman and other people in our country, in general, in Africa, people use a lot of mobile phone. So there are a problem to use personal computer.
So we have an initiative to make the training in the computer ‑‑ in the personal computer for them.
>> CARLOS AFONSO: Okay. According to our friend Vinicius, the time is over. So thank you very much.
(Session concluded 12:15 p.m. CET)