Keynotes & Q&A – 2016
10 June 2016 | 9:00-9:45
Programme overview 2016
Video record
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Transcripts
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>> EMILY TAYLOR: Take your seats, ladies and gentlemen. We are going to be starting in five minutes.
>> Ladies and gentlemen good morning, could you please take your seat. We are about to start. Thank you.
>> EMILY TAYLOR: Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. I’ll just wait for the last couple of people to come in. As we do that I just wanted to say what an amazing evening that was organized by EuroDIG last night, the ’70s extravaganza. I felt 17 again until 2:00 in the morning when I felt like 117. But it was I think it’s also a really important part of these events, these dialogues that we are all meeting socially as well and having a good time together so that’s great and congratulations to the team at EuroDIG. Thank you. This is a very we are absolutely thrilled to introduce the next three speakers at EuroDIG here in 2016. So just to reassure you about the format of the session it’s going to be 45 minutes long, we are going to hear from each of the speakers and they’re going to join for a very short question and answer session and then we will go straight into the panel. Questions and answers from me?
>> (Speaker off microphone).
>> EMILY TAYLOR: But we hope to maintain the spirit of dialogue at EuroDIG. It’s my great pleasure to introduce Andrus Ansip, he’s the vice president of the European Commission, he’s also Prime Minister of Estonia. Commissioner Ansip, the floor is yours and welcome.
(Applause)
>> ANDRUS ANSIP: Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, I’m pleased to join you today to discuss Internet governance in Europe. As the world becomes ever more interconnected and globalized there is little that the Internet has not much transformed. How this global resource is current in the future will affect how we use it and how it evolves. The Internet is a common good for the benefit of all humanity and everybody who uses it on an equal footing and not subject to the control of governments. It should be a single non fragmented resource base where people enjoy the same rights as they do offline and have the same degree of protection. Everyone who is involved or who has an interest should have a say on how the interest is current, governments, companies, organizations or individuals.
It is why the multistakeholder model of Internet governance is one that we champion and should defend. Europe needs a strong presence and voice in international discussions to make sure that we do so. This year’s EuroDIG is an occasion to help us to develop a common European approach as input for the global Internet governance forum that will take place in Mexico in December. The Internet strength comes from how it is open and reliably distributed. The world needs it to be stable, secure and robust. It needs to be accountable and subject to the rule of law. A good test of that model success will be this year’s transition of the function from its super region by the U.S. governments to a global multistakeholder model. The European commission is committed to a successful and timely conclusion of this transition with no unjustified delays. Ladies and gentlemen, the role of the Internet and its governance have never been so high on the political agenda. Good governance is vital for keeping the Internet operating properly. Without it, the digital sing market cannot provide your people and businesses with the full opportunities that they deserve from the digital age.
It is essential for the continued development of the digital economy, especially as numbers of Internet users around the world continue to raise dramatically. The first billion was reached in 2005. The second billion in 2010. The third billion in 2014. And as discussed at the G 7 ministerial meeting in May we need to bring an additional 1.5 million people online by 2020. Our single market strategy aims to make sure that all Europeans, people, industry, businesses, get the best from the online world. To open up digital opportunities to make Europe a world digital leader, to remove barriers to increase access to get everyone connected across society and all sectors of the economy, building the digital single market will take time and will not be easy. There is one aspect which is essential for its success and on which everything else depends, an open Internet which is robust, reliable, and secure. And it goes way beyond Europe. The Internet should remain a dynamic source of growth. Let us make sure that it does. Thank you.
(Applause)
>> EMILY TAYLOR: Thank you, very much, Commissioner Ansip, please take a seat. I think what we will do is ask the speakers to come up and then have a conversation together. But I want everybody to keep in mind those remarks about the digital single market, particularly after the conversations we had yesterday about geo blocking. Next I’d like to invite to the stage the Secretary General of the Council of Europe, Thorbjorn Jagland. He’s also another former Prime Minister; we have several here today, of Norway. And was chair of the committee that awards the Nobel peace prize so I believe it’s correct that you awarded the noble peace prize to Malala (phonetic), is that correct? Secretary General, please take the stage, the floor is yours.
(Applause)
>> THORBJORN JAGLAND: Ladies and gentlemen, dear friends, I would like to start by reiterating what Commissioner Ansip said right now which is something we have to repeat again and again, namely that strengths on the Internet lies in its open and free nature. This is a source of its immense power for positive change. Socially transforming the way people connect, politically creating an entirely new means of spreading information, empowering the voiceless and holding the powerful to account. Intellectually we have never seen such a space for the free flow of ideas and therefore innovation. And of course economically there is no economy without the Internet. According to one study I read recently, if developing economies had the same access as developed ones, it could generate up to 140 million new jobs. And yet I bet that as you wander around listening to today’s debates, you will hear as much about what shouldn’t happen online as what should. Because the Internet like all technology has a dark side, too. It is exploited by criminals, terrorists, pedophiles, by nasty individuals who hide behind the cloak of anonymity it provides. So I wish to pose a question today, how do we protect all that is good about the Internet while containing all that is bad? I believe we must the Internet relies on trust. All of the benefits I have described depend on citizens, entrepreneurs and companies believing that it’s a safe space where their interests, their privacy, their children and so on are protected. And while I don’t believe that the Internet will ever go into reverse, people will never stop using it, I do believe that if it weakens, people will use it in more guarded ways than they otherwise would diminishing its potential for good, for democracy, for social evolution and economic growth. The answer to misuse on the net is not of course heavy handed regulation. This would kill the Internet. But equally a free Internet is not a free for all. An open Internet does not mean completely open to abuse. And I believe that there are two key plans to trust the Internet will continue to command people’s confidence. The first is standards. There has to be some rules for what kind of behavior is and isn’t permissible online. We are inching towards a system of global governance incrementally piece by piece that we are a long way from harmonization. Different companies employ different approaches. These imbalances are something the Council of Europe is trying to correct. We are Europe’s largest intergovernmental organization with 47 member states spanning from Ireland across the Russian Federation and Turkey and all 28 EU member states. We have a number of legally binding treaties to protect Human Rights and the rule of law online. This includes to protect children from sexual abuse and exploitation, including grooming to combat cybercrime to protect personal data. Now we are in the process of negotiating clearer rules for criminal justice access to economic evidence of Cloud service and we have a series of recommendations on for example, e democracy but there are gaps and they need to be filled. A big one is freedom of expression. We don’t currently have one clear set of international standards on what governments should do when faced with illegal material. We all agree that it is their duty to take down or block websites which aid terrorism, for example, or contain indecent images of children. But we also have to ensure that the power to remove content is not misused. Therefore, I resent the commission as study to what currently happens in all 47 member states and the picture is very worrying indeed. Censorship is a real problem. Some governments are delegating the responsibility for filtering and blocking content to administrative authorities which can interpret widely. Some have used counter terror laws to silence their opponents. Some governments are leaving the decision about what to filter and block almost entirely to private companies who are not always the best place to judge the difference between free speech which may be offensive but it’s still a person’s right. And hate speech which includes inciting others to violence and maybe a crime. For this reason I will be that the European commission’s new code of conduct to remove hate speak content with case law indispensable in the record. This patchwork of responses some of them counter to fundamental freedoms is not good for justice. So the Council of Europe is now going to create one set of common standards to empower European governments to tackle illegal content while safe guarding free speech. And as with all these things its impact will depend on political so urge your governments to give this full support. Second in addition to the right rules we need responsibility and here I want to make a direct appeal to industry. More than anyone the tech companies and business operating online depend on trust on Internet users. It is in their clear self interest to maintain it. And if they do not, they must beware the reaction and heavy hand of interference if and when things go wrong. Regulating the Internet is much like regulating the press. No one wants to see governments or even independent bodies impose themselves too heavy. The best way to stop this is if private actors are seen to act in the public good and on that point before I finish there’s one specific issue I would like to highlight relating to child abuse online. At the Council of Europe we have a body whose job it is to evaluate the degree to which member states are meeting their obligations. One issue they are looking at is persistence of website addresses which openly refer to child abuse material. In its annual report the Internet watch foundation says that last year it found new domain names being used to share sex abuse imagery for the first time. Many appeared specifically for that purpose and of course preventing abuse itself is the priority. But the fact that these criminals are able to parade their wild acts so shamelessly is unacceptable. An important part of taking a zero tolerance to child abuse is saying no you can’t advertise your horrific crimes. In someplace domain names registries taking an approach to maintaining domain names of these offenses. I know that ICANN has also taken steps in this direction in recent years. This morning I spoke with their CEO, Goran Marby about what can be done. It is important that more can be done in order to take on this because it is about trust in the Internet itself but it is also about horrific crimes being con out there and also incitement to crimes through that kind of website. I think it will send an important signal about the kind of place we want the Internet to be if more public authorities and bodies involved in the registration process now take a clear and united stand. And with that I finish, I’m lucky to share the floor today with two speakers who agree with me that the Internet should remain open and free. The question for all of us is how we protect the best bits while mitigating the worst. How do we establish the rules and responsibility needed to maintain trust? I think this is the crucial issue. Thank you, very much.
(Applause)
>> EMILY TAYLOR: Many thanks, Secretary General. Thank you, Secretary General Jagland for those remarks and we will pick up some of the themes after the next speaker. It’s my great pleasure to introduce the minister of foreign affairs of Estonia, Marina Kaljurand. She’s a career dip Pat and also served as ambassador to Moscow. It’s a great pleasure to welcome you and as next host as well of EuroDIG. Thank you, very much.
(Applause)
>> MARINA KALJURAND: Thank you for a very kind introduction. And I have to eco what you said at the beginning. Yesterday evening was great. Giovanni why ever you are, you’re the best blonde Elvis.
(Applause)
And as I said yesterday in the audience publicly and I had like to confirm, yes, Estonia will host the next EuroDIG so you’re most welcome to join us next year.
(Applause)
Dear vice president, Secretary General, ladies and gentlemen, it is my utmost honor and pleasure to address the European friends of digital and Internet development here today. I would like to stress that the eyes of Europe are directed to us these days because EuroDIG is the biggest and most valuable platform for discussion on Internet governance and cybersecurity by all stakeholders together. I’m here today as a foreign minister as a country who will host EuroDIG next year but also the country which is currently chairing with 47 member states. And finally as a country that wants to ensure a digital single market based and led by respectful Human Rights and the fundamental freedoms of the people in Europe. The priorities of Estonia’s Chairmanship of the Council of Europe are dedicated to fostering the organization’s work of protecting human rights online, advancing children’s education and skills and actions against cybercrime. Estonia being also a founding member of the freedom coalition stands formally for European values. Democracy, Human Rights and the rule of law. As the Internet crosses our borders and opens up our economies at the speed of light making these core values fit for the digital age has never been more important. The Council of Europe’s Internet governance strategy calls on us to make the Internet safe, secure, open, and enabling environment for everyone without discrimination.
We have our work cut out for ourselves. A recent comparative study of 47 member states prepared by the Swiss institute of comparative law indicates that blocking, filtering and take down of online content without a legal basis remained common practices, including among member states of the Council of Europe. A concrete step we can take is to scale globally the council’s legally binding conventions such as the Budapest convention on cybercrime and convention 108 on data protection which strikes the right balance between sanctions and safeguards. We should not imagine that security and freedom are in conflict. Cybersecurity like the Internet itself may have grown out of the defense sector but cyberspace is so much more than a domain of warfare. For the purpose of what we value in Europe open markets, open societies, the private sector has a huge role in ICT innovation. Giants like Google and Facebook have enormous influence over the way we are using the Internet and mobile technologies. More than ever before we need to put an emphasis on communication and dialogue. We need a two way conversation with a private sector. As governments we cannot expect information sharing to be one way street from companies to governments. To build and preserve trust enhance security and share best practices as well as information about possible threat factors governments must also share information with the private sector which often guarantees the operation of our vital services.
Cybersecurity as such needs to become part of our daily life on all levels. We need to go beyond the thinking that any major development in cybersecurity requires a major catastrophe or incident. Security cannot be a luxury item. It needs to be a commodity. Most importantly, we should not forget that cybersecurity and industry is for people. We need to learn to listen to consumer and citizen to the point of view of an end user. Estonia has taken the clear view that governments should help citizens with the tools to keep their data secure. Our citizens can send each other encrypted documents using the national ID’s as the private key. Ladies and gentlemen earlier I mentioned Facebook and Google. Here in Brussels there’s a lot of talk about American Internet companies. So let me tackle the elephant in the room. Europe will not benefit from protectionism. Europe may lose too many of our entrepreneurs and unicorns to Silicon Valley including our very own Skype. But the answer is more innovation policies and openness. Nor can we afford to use cybersecurity as a proxy for protectionism. Technologies don’t have nationality. The development of new technology and technology driven innovation can only flourish in free market economy. We need to embrace innovative companies and we need to help them develop. When it comes to standards and industrial policy, we need to strike the right balance. Europe should contribute to standardizing key technologies but we need to do so in a way which is open and which is inclusive. We need to avoid making standards the enemy of innovation and competition.
Last year the European commission presented a strategy for the digital market under the leadership of the commissioners. An open Internet alone is not enough. We also need E Commerce and sectorial legislation that promote a market for e Commerce, an end to geo blocking and connectivity that support the economy. We welcome the announcements made bilingual European countries to end hate speech online. Estonia strongly supports the digital single market work. The objectives of the EU and the Council of Europe complement each other. Estonia would like to see the work hand in hand and in close cooperation with the private sector to create stability and property in the digital age. Thank you.
(Applause)
>> EMILY TAYLOR: Thank you, very much, minister Kaljurand, please take a seat. Thank you. Thank you, very much. I think we have just got time to sneak a few questions. If I could just take you in order. Vice president Ansip, there’s so much in the remarks we just heard, so much content. And I’m sure we can pick up a lot of the things in the panel session that follows immediately on from this. But if I just had to pick up one theme from your remarks it would be about geo blocking which here yesterday was a topic of great conversation particularly among the younger members of the group. They absolutely hate it. So what are you going to do in the digital single market?
>> ANDRUS ANSIP: Once on press conference I said that I hate geo blocking. Of course some people they were disappointed but I’m not the only guy who has problems with unjustified geo blocking. There are 35% of Europeans who spend at least ten days during the year in another EU member state and many of those people traveling in some other EU member states they would like to get access to their legally bought content in their home countries but because of copyright restrictions they cannot. At the same time, we know that 20% of Internet uses are use be VPN to get access to digital content and 68% in the European union said they are using free down loads so we don’t have to push our people to steal. We have to provide legal access to all people to their legally bought digital content and that’s why we launched last December our portability proposal. Just two weeks ago we launched our geo blocking proposal. We organized a survey and according to this survey there were two percent of those people who wanted to buy something from another EU member state who couldn’t get access to those websites. Two percent, let’s say almost nothing. But even 27% from all those people who got access to those websites they couldn’t register because they were from wrong country. Their IP address was wrong. And that’s why they couldn’t register. And then even 32% of those people who were really lucky ones and who were able to register; they’re faced with delivery problems. Well those are natural problems we have to find solution also for those problems and we launched our delivery proposal. But even 26% from those people who didn’t have even any kind of delivery problems, they couldn’t pay. We have separate in the European Union single European payments area but 26% of people they couldn’t pay because the credit cards were issued in wrong countries once again. All in all, only 36.6% of all those people who wanted to buy some goods or services from another country, they were able to do that.
And my question is, is this really about single market we have in the European Union when only every third person is able to conclude their purchases successfully in the European Union? Of course we have to fix this problem and that’s why we launched our geo blocking proposal and it means that sellers, they have to treat all the customers equally. They have to treat those customers coming from other EU member states on equal basis with local customers. In the end of September we will launch another proposal, this will be our second copyright reform proposal and with that proposal we would like to make it easier for our people to get better access to digital content. So once again I hate geo blocking. I don’t like those messages that this is not available in your country.
>> EMILY TAYLOR: Thank you.
(Applause)
>> EMILY TAYLOR: Thank you, very much. Again I think there are many aspects of this issue that we can pick up in the next discussion but just keeping an eye on time and wanting to hear from everyone, Secretary General Jagland, again there’s lots of things that I would like to ask you particularly about your remarks for the need to a light touch and the need to really go carefully with regulating the Internet. But I wanted to hear more about the study because this seems to be extremely concerning amongst the 47 member states of the Council of Europe what you’ve uncovered and perhaps you can just tell us a little bit more about that.
>> THORBJORN JAGLAND: Well the study is very broad country wise it is a document of I think 6 or 700 pages. So it goes into details on how the member states are doing this. And as I said, there are so many different practices, so many policies that they apply and so many ways of taking down content on Internet. And what worries me is that, well, some countries are going much further than we would like to see because it harms freedom of expression. One can use, for instance, fight against terrorism for many things to fight terrorism but one can also fight political enemies under the cover of fighting terrorism. And so there are so many practices. And I would say also abuse of freedom of expression which worries us and that’s why we on the basis of this study will start trying to work out common standards for member states. And these standards have of course to be built on the European convention on Human Rights and the case law or the court of human rights which is a very good guide. I would like to ask to say to everybody that whenever you are in doubt, look at the case of the court from Strasbourg and it will guide you on what kind of laws and what kind of practices you should have on the European continent. It is of course a very complicated thing all this because there are different countries in Europe also, different historic backgrounds. Some countries accept one kind of content, other countries it will be not natural to accept it. And the reason also why all this is difficult is that there are so many things which we dislike, the dark sides of the Internet, they all agree this shouldn’t appear, shouldn’t be there. But the danger is when using this in order to go further than blocking and filtering and so to say covered by the standards in the European convention so it’s an extremely I mentioned, for instance, the fact that we have found all these horrifying domain names. For instance one domain name that existed but was taken down after we actually reacted, one domain name was rapeachild.com. This existed. What do we do with this? It has to do with the whole way of how you can obtain a domain name. We would not of course like to block people’s right to establish the domain name because that would really harm the Internet and access to information and knowledge. But at the same time we should find ways of well not letting that kind of thing be on the Internet. And I would like to say that as you refer to Malala (phonetic) of the peace prize for her struggle to education for everybody, we should understand the importance of Internet for getting access to information and knowledge worldwide. And if we are doing something which may harm the open Internet access to Internet but also access possibilities to have these domain names then you really will harm these basic rights, for instance, education for young people on the global scale. So we have to be very cautious but we need to take on things that obviously will reduce or tear down the trust in the Internet. And the only way to do this is in direct cooperation, interaction, with the private companies because they have always been the driving force behind the Internet. We do not want to harm it. And it should be in this private company’s interest that for instance people like us that are concerned with Human Rights and we have the same interest to safe guard the openness of the Internet together. Thank you.
>> EMILY TAYLOR: Thank you. Minister Kaljurand, your remarks actually brought up the security and human rights and these are often pitted as sort of mutually exclusive or in opposition to each other. And as we heard from the Council of Europe study there’s a lot of these practices of taking down and blocking in some ways are done often from well intentioned motives. How do we get the balance right in security but are they this opposition? And what is your view on how do we actually get the most of the Internet for Human Rights while also keeping people safe?
>> MARINA KALJURAND: Emily, thank you for the question. Very challenging. I agree absolutely that these two notions, security and freedom, do not exclude each other. But we have to find right balance. Estonia was among the first countries to recognize human rights online equal to human rights offline. Full stop. That’s the basic. At the same time we are a country that has benefitted most from ICT development in all spheres. Political, economy, culture, Civil Society, name one, everywhere. So I think we can lead by example showing that a country that respects human rights can benefit the most from ICT and cyber. And as to the right balance, sorry for using this word second time, but I think we need discussions, we need dialogues. Today we don’t have a solution that is 100% acceptable to everybody. There are different thinkings of different cultures of different countries as Secretary General just pointed out but we have to talk. We have to talk among countries, we have to talk among organizations and here I would like to mention we are talking about EU and the Council of Europe but of course OSE is doing a great job in that field. And conference like this one is extremely good for provides platform for all stakeholders to participate.
>> EMILY TAYLOR: Just one follow-up to that. The security community does tend to meet separately from the EuroDIG type of community. So on a kind of let’s think about next year in Estonia, how are we going to bring together get this dialogue really going and getting the security community in the same room as the EuroDIG community, the human rights community so that we can all share that dialogue?
>> MARINA KALJURAND: We don’t see too many people coming from security services or security field here but they are included in these discussions that are going on. Being security people from private companies, national security services, they do participate in the dialogues. Maybe they are not always on the stage, they prefer to be behind the stage, but yes I agree with you that we have to talk to them more openly, more open and I can’t make promises on behalf of the next EuroDIG but at least we will try, we will try to have a good dialogue there. So finding the right balance.
>> EMILY TAYLOR: With that, thank you very much. (Applause)
>> EMILY TAYLOR: I would like to thank all three of our speakers this morning. It’s been tremendous to have your participation and to have this dialogue with you so I would like us all to thank everybody. Thank you, very much.
(Applause)