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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>> Okay everybody, it looks like church. You are not supposed to be in the back row, you should come on up. Go on! It's all right.
[Laughter]
>> We have people from around the world today. We only get to see each other once a year.
>> Thank you for being here. With the IGF, this is something we do. Returning from room to room.
This is a great time that we will spend together. [?]
Before I get there, we have two very inspired speakers with us today. The first one, what is her mission. (?)
>> Can you hear me? Is that loud enough? Is that a yes? Okay. Thank you everyone. Thank you for being here with us this afternoon.
Idea -- I like to see everyone when we come together from other parts of the world. I like to see members of the society remembering it takes all of us to do what we are here to do as a society, and that is to ensure that we have an open and globally-connected Internet for everyone. That's why we are the Internet Society and everything we do is to ensure that that happens.
There's a large group of us. There's almost 100 staff, 24 countries. Volunteered around the world who, themselves, are creating opportunities for people to be connected to the Internet and who are working to preserve and ensure that a secure Internet is available for everyone everywhere.
The opportunities that our chapters and organizational members provide the club I things I though you can see more clearly with the new website we got up this year. And I hope you are all looking at that, the features and looking for information that's on the site.
Over the last year we spent a lot of time about the future. The future of the Internet. What about the Internet do we worry about? And what about the Internet are we excited to be part of and want to see more of?
So if you haven't already looked at the report called Pathways to the Future you can find it on the website.
What it tries to do is to create the scenario, the idea saying well these two things happen. One or the other, or the other outcome could result. What is our choice? Where do we want to be? What is the policy choices we are making? The technology choices we ought to be making? What are the conversations we have to have in order for us to get to the future that we all want to get to? I would hope that you spent a little time with this.
The things this organization worries about has to do with the digital divide that results from not only geography and autonomy, but also from gender, from other kinds of social things that we need and weren't to be aware of. We know there are issues around security and safety. We know there are issues around new technologies that we don't understand, whether it is artificial intelligence and the Internet. And we know there are personal issues around how do we want to use the technology.
So there are areas of concern that this community has highlighted, and there's a lot written here and talked about.
In my mind there is a rich, rich data here compiled by a group of staff which comes from all of you and a group of Internet experts in the community, engineers, scientists, philosophers if you will, and government-types. So take a hard look at that. Meanwhile what they are focusing on is access, that everyone get access to the Internet and the issue of safety and security. So I know that you're going to do a lot of talking about that over the next couple of hours. We'll have a couple of roundtables and will you have thoughts about that yourself.
I want to bring to your attention two things.
>> I have the branding one.
>> That's do the branding one. I want to you see what we are showing the world on our website and in our communications. You are going to see this film and I thought it would be perfect to share with you all because this is to represent us. Why don't you roll that film.
[Film playing]
[Music]
[Applause]
>> So a lot of what the Internet site does, standing up and making itself heard, with the community we do so much of that. And we do so much of that through our chapters.
So in the last how many weeks?
>> Five weeks.
>> Five weeks we've had a little contest about how we can bring the digital tolls and the digital content that the world is mapping into our schools.
And so how many do we have? 31 different chapters have competed in kind of cool ways with very, very -- every one of them in the videos, every one of them is inspiring about how you're thinking about doing this work. And I hope we still have the videos posted so you all can go on and give a little click.
You are going to play the one video that is actually the winner.
>> Yes!
[Laughter]
>> Hold on, here it comes.
[Video playing]
[Music]
[Applause]
[Video Playing]
[Speaking non-English language]
[Music]
[Applause]
>> Sonja Harring can you come up and accept the award for the 2017 digital school that they proudly present to the Turkey chapter, and for making a valuable contribution for development of the Internet, Congratulations!
[Applause]
>> And Congratulations to all 31 applicants here. A fabulous job! What you have done is a huge contribution to the Internet, so thank you.
Do you want to say one thing before you sit down?
>> Thank you very much. We are very happy.
>> Thank you for this so much and thank you for the entire team on the Turkey chapter. We are very, very happy and honored.
[Applause]
>> I know you have a couple of hours work to do and I will turn it over to Frederick. I wish you a very good meeting and I am off to another room and I will be back later, bye-bye.
>> FREDERICK DONCK: Thank you very much and Congratulations. Yes, we have some work to do. It is not just about fun, but as you said you will help us with what we are doing next year. Before this we have a chance where the commission is also embarking of course on the plan of how they see the future of the Internet. If you can say a few words. Thank you very much.
[Applause]
>> Frederick, thank you very much and good afternoon. (?)
>> What I want to focus on, we needed to (?) yesterday you heard speaking on the issue of trust we need a collaborative approach. We cannot do it from top-down we have to work with stakeholder groups with commonly-held objectives. Work with those involved, but also work with those who don't necessarily consider themselves to be involved but are increasingly affected by the issues. Talking about the service providers, infrastructure development, those involved in standardization and the developers of the software and hardware.
Also the civil-sided communities, people who have particular issues major concern of them in civil society and elsewhere, those working on health issues, those working with specific groups of socially excluded, so on and so on.
That is what we are now speaking to do bringing some of the top-down work on the research policy, for example, funding research every year under the community research framework programs and want to actually marry that with bottom-up initiatives including the search and innovation and technology development. Also increasingly as we see from everything that's been discussed today, yesterday and tomorrow we need a governance structure around that.
The next generation Internet initiative combines several of those things. We are at the stage of doing consultation studies, but also within the European Union building up stakeholders. The champion and himself or herself going on to find other groups.
One thing we are conscious of we tend to talk with the same people. Certain groups that are very important to us assign activities and innovators, but tend to have really established communication. And even when we say the next Internet will come from whatever is the 21st Century version where the first generation of platforms is developed. We have to be sure talking to the next generation including social innovations, those who can use the power of the Internet for social good, for community causes.
And that brings me back full-circle, one of the things we need to do today to shape the fund, funding and financial, but also projects and collaborative communities is in building trust we have to put the citizen, the user at the center.
So our next generation Internet has as its objective to create a human-centric Internet. We have to have concrete actions and can't just impose rules and assume that everything is okay.
Specifically, we can have concrete actions putting the human, putting the user at the center of the Internet. What are we doing with regards to technologies that defend personal identity? In other words enabling the secure use of personal identity? Using the control of personal identity as the way an individual will access services, but will be able to filter and decide for self -- themselves how it works for them. How do we have artificial intelligence to make sure users have not just sense of, but have control of the interest net -- Internet environment and not are involved by it.
And in the commission we also have hard-nosed economic policy goals. We have some economic development goals for the European Union for all of its economies and sectors. And it is absolutely clear that if the users and small companies do not have confidence in the Internet, in an artificial-intelligence-driven Internet, they will not use it, reluctant to engage fully with us. From an economic view that is also a bad situation to be heading towards.
Of course, that is why we feel it is such a good objective, by putting the human first, we actually make it easier for these technologies and services which we know can have a huge benefit for society and the question. We can actually then fully exploit their potential.
Those are the identifying we are working on with our stakeholders. We have not reached out enough. Using the organizations, particularly the community concerns we don't know about, and of course with start-ups and new enterprises these are the stakeholders we need to make it reality. Thank you very much.
[Applause]
>> Thank you very much for those words. You can see and hear we share a lot of comments about what the commission is about to do and the future of the Internet. And we are very glad we can contribute with your objective.
And thank you for the many miles you a spent in the past few days.
And now it's back to us and what it is that we're going to do. I am afraid I won't have time for people to have question for you, but I trust they will react certainly to what you have said. Okay.
In a few minutes I will ask each of the staff responsible to give you a better view or sense of what it is that we are going to do. We are four campaigns you will hear, and three of the major campaigns is the set of initiative with a very global focus what it is that we try to achieve in those respective areas. One is governance, one is community networks, and then what we call trust by design.
We will do that in a few minutes, and then we will turn back the mic to you and you will have to work with some staff divided by three groups and reflecting some critical issues for us and tell us how you would do and what you will commit to do with us.
As I said, we have very ambitious objectives but we won't succeed without this community.
And I will start with the only have a pleasure to meet, and by design it covers this, any questions how many will be on the market worldwide? Any guess? I did it on purpose to confuse, it is by billions.
I will give you some of the answers. Some of the closest beings is 20 billion by 2050, and others that I hundreds billions. And let's say 20 billion devices with very poor security and poor privacy will be on the Internet soon.
And when it's on the Internet, it means it will be part of the Internet. So we decide how we should tackle this.
The problem is known, but there is few that has been so far to fix this. Here is the plan and the objective, as I said very ambitious.
What we want is suppliers of the consumer grades to have privacy and security in the devices, no less than this, very ambitious.
How we want to get there is three objective I would say to fulfill this goal. One, you will heard about the OTA, the Online Trust Alliance, the strategic sets of principles if the manufacturers embed it in the device it is will offer the minimum security, safety and privacy we can't from the device.
The second objective is about users. Users are aware of the risk of IoT. And we have seen figures where I understand that 97% of people globally believe the IoT device are the mobile phone. See the word ahead of us we have to convince them there is something else when it is about that.
And we have raise users' awareness and helps us to have leverage on the manufacturer side and policy side this is the third. Engage the policymakers creating the legal regulatory environment so IoT is being secure and safe and privacy. And I mean regulation may be part of the solution.
With this in mind I have my three questions for you guys. In a few minutes I will call for one group to reconstitute and I will tell who it is. Please, take note.
My three question is question, first, do you agree that IoT is a threat to the Internet and how.
And consumer awareness, what do you do? How do you see your role as a community to just raise consumers and users awareness?
And I want to see positive information. I don't want to scare the user, that may be the immediate reflex. Come up with positive narrative we can use in these endeavors.
And policymakers, what is their role in the world? Enough with the IoT trust by design company and calling Jane to talk about the second. Jane is there. The floor is yours.
>> JANE COFFIN: Thank you, Frederick. And welcome everyone, we are so happy you're here. As mentioned before, the futures report she spoke about was a product of listening to the community. This is something that Pierce also alluded to, the importance of listening to our community, helping our community and broadening around the world. The importance of global connectivity, global device, inclusion, sustainability. It is all on the website and the campaigns we are focusing on this year. One and community networks.
And community networks, a quick definition nor some of you. The communication infrastructure deployed and operated by citizens to meet their own communication needs, increasingly deployed as a solution to connect the unconnected, a critical issue for the Internet society since our inception.
Community networks are a critical way to shape local digital futures from the bottom-up from a local perspective.
However, many parts of the world, little is known about community networks and the role they are playing, so our campaign, the Internet Society and our some of our key partners around the world focused on four key things. Deployed. Flag projects around the world. Capacity building, training at the local level. Local experts, local-local with that. Community building, scaling the community of interest and building trust across communities, mentioned again by and Kathy. And policy-related issues. And remote and underserved community. And nothing is done without our great partners around the world. Whether it is our chapters, organizations like APC or community networks with us today. And there are partners in Native American communities, and folks from Brazil.
What we want to do today is hear back from you in three broad questions we would like your feedback on. My colleague, Maarit, sitting here is on the discussions. The three very broad questions are: One, how do you engage marginalized communities to engage themselves? How do you take a community network from a volunteer-based model to volume-tier-based business model. How do you work with others to fund community networks.
>> FREDERICK DONCK: Thank you Jane. Last, but not least, Dawit will introduce.
>> DAWIT BEKELE: Thank you, Frederick. One of the four campaigns is governance or call it sometimes stakeholder campaign.
Why do we have that campaign? One of the findings of this report is that governance, the environment has changed. There are new forces in that one, and there are challenging emerging issues which are cyber threats that endanger the future of the Internet.
And online life is becoming important, if not more important that offline life. And it is a big part of our life. So governments are increasing their interest in regulating the Internet. And this is coming, some of the things we thought were, you know, achieved like we taught that this is going to be the model but it is changed.
So there are some governments that are now wavering their support. Some that never embraced it are now saying maybe we should go to that model. So we thought that this model is really very important. We will not have an Internet that we want, that we have always wanted, without the government. So we are going to push for the adoption, use and endorsement of the Internet model by governments around the world. How we do it? Demonstrating this model is still valued, that it can solve some of the new information about many of the challenges that we about IoT.
Community networks, artificial intelligence. All of the new problems can be solved using the old multi-stakeholder model.
And want discussions around the world. But others where we continue to engage. And we would like to build on capacity building. We know that ISO alone cannot do that, we need people who understand the model. And for that we need to have more capacity.
And, of course, we need communication. It is important that Internet governance is understood by more people. A study done that even though several of us in this area think that there is governance is well known, there is very little discussion on Internet governance. This has to change so it becomes something that everybody.
So we would like to discuss this campaign, the objective of this campaign, and some the strategies of the campaign.
The first question we have for you is who do you think are the current leaders in the multi-stakeholder discussions and who do you think will be the leaders of tomorrow in this area?
And who is going to, which stakeholders will take the back.
And the second question, all areas would benefit from this model. There will be some areas that government will want to discuss in a multi-stakeholder manner, for instance. Which areas do you think are most appropriate for the multi-stakeholder model?
Last, but not least, what are the threats that the multi-stakeholder model faces today?
So here are the three questions. I will be sitting around there and if you want to join this group to discuss those issues, please come with us.
>> Thank you. This is the fun part starting and it is how we can move a room of 200 persons to move into three different groups, right? This is a beautiful process in action.
I have here Jane and Maarit, please stand up. And you guys will represent what Jane has exposed in in community network. People interested in discussing those issues, please move slowly to that part room.
In front is Nicholas and stand up in the model this is about IoT trust and questions raised.
And the third agree will be that side of the room discussing governance issues. So one, two, three, please move!
>> Let's go. We have 30 minutes for this exercise.
>> Just a note, those in the IoT group, we will move a bit to the back of the room so it is a bit less noisy.
>> Community networks, are we all here? You can also join this maybe on that side if you want to hear, because the set-up is not ideal.
I am going to be rude and use the microphone so we can hear each other even those others might be a bit disturbed.
I would suggest we had three questions. We have limited time. But we pick two of them. And Jane will moderate this end of the table and I will moderate this end of the table and we have different questions so that we actually can have a proper discussion and everybody can contribute.
So the questions were, I am going to read them out to you.
>> Hi everyone we are going to try to get started. There are three questions and I will read them again and you pick which one we deal with.
[Group Discussions]
[Music]
>> Okay everybody, two minutes. Two minutes.
>> Ladies and gentlemen, I will ask you to wrap up. It means I will ask reporters to come to me.
[Applause]
>> Some group are more advanced than others, but I will ask you to wrap up and make sure reporters have some bullets to share, thank you. Quickly can I ask Goran for the IoT group and Cassandra for community networks and the IG group to come and join me on the stage, please. Please, please, come and sit next to me. I am missing one group, this community networks group. Community networks, please, send your reporter to the stage. Alexandra should be the reporter of the community networks. Is she? Alexandra. Jane will be the reporter. Come and join me, Jane. I feel a sense of frustration but that is good. Everybody is hungry to continue this conversation, but time being time I need to wrap it up now. I will start with whoever is ready. Just the start of the conversation, but I really appreciate having your first thoughts. Who wanted to start? You want to start? Say who you are. Which group you represent. And please, share your bullets.
>> Hi, I'm from Brazil and one of the ambassadors. The civil forum you will see me at.
When it comes to the discussion of Internet Governance models, the first questions who do we think are the current leaders on the model and who do we think will be the leaders tomorrow.
The group saying there is no one thing as a one‑size‑fits‑all model and we should also envision some stakeholders do the discussion definitely on the fora they are discussing. Take into consideration sometimes civil society should have a different position here and should be leading the same process in another forum.
And also we should take into consideration the need for transparent, inclusive and engageable process to everyone from the very beginning. Everybody interested in the multi‑stakeholder model should be able to get a voice.
Some people, a lot of people actually noted we should get rid of the main model. Find an approach that would be more like collaborative and people should be able not to be imposed with a situation, but to work with it and evolve from it.
From the second question, which areas do you think people will benefit more from the multi‑stakeholder model, people also discussed in this model every single person has a role to play, so it's important to grant participation from everyone and being horizontal.
Also in the same type of place we should be able to hold other stakeholders accountable.
Just to finish, was the name again, not impose models on anyone and think more about collaborative organization.
>> Thank you very much, and thank you to this group for sharing these thoughts. Second group.
>> With regard to ‑‑ I am representing the IoT Trust by Design group. The first question, whether IoT is a real threat we agreed that it is and it might have some serious real‑world consequences as a smart objects get smaller and closer to humans.
It might be even more risky.
And also IoT itself is currently evolving and it's up to us how to shape up the future.
With regard to raising awareness and shifting consumer device, most of the participants raise although it is useful, it wouldn't solve all the problems. And the focus should be on the developers of the smart devices. Some were reluctant to pay extra for security devices, however most of the parties agreed that certification mechanisms and trustmarks would be efficient.
With regard to the role of policymakers, everybody agreed they should be engaged but the process should not be top‑down and relying solely on the logistic processes would not be enough to keep up with the fast pace of technology.
And an interesting concern was raised regarding maybe the different approaches might be suitable when addressing the levels of countries with different development levels. So developing countries might be approached differently while trying to serve, okay.
>> Okay thank you, I am sorry, but you will see that we will be pushed out of this room soon. Jane, please, your two bullets.
>> JANE COFFIN: I will try to go as quickly as possible. One, we need to realize that the business model as uncomfortable as it might be, assess local needs, identify local champions, bottom up and local organizations and community needs.
And also work with mentors and champions whether it is kids teaching elderly or elderly teaching kids. And take advantage of those who made mistakes before you so you cannot make the same mistakes.
And time‑out, the other financing sources from the team down here took business model manual, external partners key, government, taxes, might have tax break, and community buy‑in, and relevant interesting interests.
This is fabulous community networking team, thank you very much.
[Applause]
>> Thanks a lot. I guess you can clap yourself as you did. It's just the beginning of the conversation. We continue next year, thanks a lot. Good luck.
[Session concluded at 16:09 a.m.]