Sixth Annual Meeting of the Internet Governance Forum
27 -30 September 2011
United Nations Office in Nairobi, Nairobi, Kenya
September 29, 2011 - 11:00AM
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The following is the output of the real-time captioning taken during the Sixth Meeting of the IGF, in Nairobi, Kenya. 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 session, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.
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The internet in the post revolution phase: Addressing challenges of political engagement and safety of citizens.
>> Ladies and gentlemen, I am wondering who is supposed to chair this session. We don't seem to have one, but, ah, unless someone is the chair and had forgotten. But if we don't find someone soon since it should have started ten minutes ago, we seem to have panel members here. How many people are her ‑‑ believe they are here for acting as panel members? Anybody? No? So, I think we're sort of gathered here without a leader. Is this ‑‑ is this intended to be a panel discussion or is it merely a discussion?
>> This is Keith over here and there's been confusion in terms of the discussion. We're looking for a page. The meeting that was originally scheduled in this room was the one about the post revolution. That according to the latest version of the downloaded schedule that was lated the 28th yesterday, that's not on the schedule anywhere now. It's not scheduled for this time. It's not scheduled for this room and it's not anywhere on the schedule that I can find. The one that was supposed to be ‑‑ no. It's missing. From the one that I downloaded today that was dated yesterday, it's missing from the schedule entirely. Now, on for today, according to that schedule, they're supposed to be something called SOP219, privacy, security and access to rights expression technologies. That was originally scheduled for this room at 2:30, but it may be that the panel for that session didn't get the word that was moved to this time.
Only it got some confusion here.
>> [INAUDIBLE]
>> There's a hybrid of conversations and we can just have a conversation of that because I think we have enough different experts and I think we can improvise. Take advantage. So, the question is who's here for the originally scheduled panel on the post revolution? So maybe I'll just try to be a moderator of sorts and have a conversation. So my name is report Guerra. I'm with freedom house. I'm direct offer of their Internet freedom program and so I've been following a lot of these issues and, you know, let me just maybe scope out things that are here. Maybe different perspectives that folks have had on the great changes that have taken place in the middle east and different social media and the role of companies and NGOs and some of the challenges. And I would say something that's greatly needed from my perspective is best practices for folks on the ground to stay safe and what's the most effective type of media that can be used. Maybe start with that and go around with those in the room to maybe say who they're with and maybe we can get an idea of some common threads and then have a discussion around that. I will start with that and just get the floor to the next person that may want to spinning.
>> It would be more fortunate if ‑‑
>> If people want to introduce themselves, I would say who you are organization and what you see as being the key challenges and what would be helpful going forward if something like that were to happen again and how that affects companies, um, how they can best help either publicly or behind the scenes for, um, sales society. What are some of their challenges and I would say the role of what people think the role of governance maybe as well. So, I'll stop that and the floor to whoever wants. You have the floor here.
>> Okay. Hi. I think I'm just happy for such miracles. They really happen. Um, I would like to talk about some study I had done on the use of social media for citizen policy engagement. Yes I'm coming to that just now. That was in west Africa. It was a study done this year and because I live in that country that had elections and two presidents, two governments and I was looking into the use of Internet for citizen participation and I would love to talk about first on policy and second on the use of Internet for humanitarian purposes in post crisis situations. I work for myself for an organization called NNENNA.ORG, which is a consuming platform for the use of Internet for development in Africa. That is also my name. NNENNA. So my e‑mail is [email protected].
>> I'm sorry. I thought we would have a more extended intervention. I'm Vince Surf. I am Google's chief evangelist. My history actions to this topic are that governments that are afraid of regime change or that don't have a mechanism for let's say peaceful regime change, will be made more afraid knight social media especially in this series of incidents that have been called the spring. Aside of that is in those regimes will be a heightened intervention to interfere with the use of social media for political participation. So des pilot the fact that those of us who love democracy and applaud the idea that citizens should be able to participate it may be that their participation will be made more difficult as a consequence. I also want to point out though that regime change, which is violent and even when it is not can sometimes lead to very complex situations and possibly serious consequences. There's a book called the Jcurve by E.M. Brenner and he talks about movement from the systems that are autocratic to democratic. In the course of that change, sometimes you have significant economic effects. So, while we may be celebrating participation, the government participation if it leads to an unplanned regime change, there could be all kinds of other consequences. This is not to argue against the use of media, but it is simp three recognize there could be consequences if it's not taking place in an environment that's friendly to participate ‑‑ citizen participation.
>> I am Richard Allen and am the director policy Facebook for the mideast and Africa. So, um ‑‑ I was the first point of contact I think in the company for a lot of the events that took place over the last year and have been trying to deal with that. NGO partners and making sure we can respond appropriately. I was the first point of contact for the British government when they recently proposed turning the Internet off in the U.K. We had ‑‑ I also lived through and rest extensive coverage the at time. So it's been a very core part of my debate.
>> I am sorry to intervene, but representative from the secretary spoke to this point earlier in the session and said that was misreport unless you have personal experience with the government asking you to shut down something.
>> So I will clarify from the discussions. What hand was that the prime minister made speech to say that we must make sure that people come access social media to caused [INAUDIBLE] during the riots and the people who were spitting that message to the press did imply that it would lead to matches where they can turn social media off and they didn't instruct it at time, but they would seek [INAUDIBLE] to do so. A lot of people explained to them why this was not a very good idea. Then they came back and realized that position.
>> I can also give you a small anecdote that is quite amusing. Someone tweeted that we should all go to this place and Rob that store. The police were on the tweet stream as well and they said fine. We'll meet you there.
>> Exactly. It brings me to my point which is, um, a lot of the attention is paid to social media when it is a forcing of opposition or a force of disruption. So what you actually saw in the British riots was for example a very small number of people, a very handle number of people encouraging people to break the law and that content was removed and then you saw millions of people getting together to organized groups like let's have a cup of tea instead of rioting. Let's go and clean up after the riots. Let's go and spend money with the shop keepers. I think in the political world, um, you often have millions of people take part in normal elects through social media and very rarely does that turn into violent incident. So the reason to come to the workshop to wrap up I'm really fascinated by what will now happen in countries like Egypt when they enter electoral processes in the normal course of politics rather than very powerful revolutionary effect. That's an exception and the norm is use media for regular politics. I am fascinated they have spectators in this group.
>> Apparently at state department working on Internet freedom programs for some time before coming to the state department worked for 10 years in the national democratic institute that promotes democracy and their technology interventions. I wanted to add to some of the points I am excited to see how it is used to rebuild. I think it is a different set of approaches to technologies for engaging mass protests and tear down structure that will need to rebuild new instructors. I think we still need to develop the new approaches and you're right. Some of that is going on already. Particularly in places where they're the void of new institutions and it provides new opportunities to really increase the engagement and the amount of the tools to create that link between citizens and government. So one area they would highlight that seems maybe an area to be wear sufficient that there's a lot of, ah, attention on the power of citizen media or tools that empower tool. There's a fly side of political power. There's work to empower people and make their voice heard, but the receiver side to listen to those voices and do something about them and manage the conversations that are coming in and deliver services or manage opinions and create legislations isn't hang as well. There's allowing people to release their frustration, but only to be more frustrated when they don't see that contributing in a meaningful way. So that is ‑‑ I'll leave that for the conversation.
>> Thank you. I come from Cairo.
>> [INAUDIBLE]
>> Yes. For the past 5, 6 ‑‑ 7 years I've been working within activist and journalists and creating work to be the prototype of what we have seen recently. And in other countries, we're using the Internet as a publishing platform, but also a platform for an organization. At this stage, at least, I would like to draw the attention to two days that Egyptian cost of event. The trip of the journey was people tens of thousands of people may have responded to an event that was sent to facebook to [INAUDIBLE] and the 12 million people who three days later have responded to the crack down on that. The difference between the 50,000 and the 12 million people is the same difference in my mind between, um, facebook and zero or the same difference between twitter and, um, face to face communication. The social media at least let me at this stage the social media is good for creating situations and creating crisis, but it is not really constitutes all the reasons and all the elements you need for a purpose like we have seen personally the most use of technology that have used, ah, this year at least where blankets, stones and sticks are not Facebook and Twitter.
>> Thank you. I'm [INAUDIBLE]. I have three opinions and observations to share. One is that you never ‑‑ there will always be a group of people or people discontented with their government or political industry. And that is a fact. However, politicians in less democratic and less effective governments and societies are threatened. They are besieged and they're worried about this Internet facilitated political engagement. They will respond by cramping down on Internet services that is facilitated demands. They made mechanisms of counter in these activities. That brings me to my second observation. Governments and especially political leaders also developed their own counter faceable debates through up their functions and basic demands through the same forum and through the same debates. We know China has its own version of facebook. China has the version of facebook that is not the user facebook that we're using and it is ever controlled that facebook by making sure that if their mobilization activities on that facebook can be deleted weekly so it is not used as a means of mobilizing people against government. But the other idea to point out is that sometimes just [INAUDIBLE] and sponge developments may be spread through the same space, through the same systems. And must every demand and every expectation for instance lead to the demonstration like we had in London and a violent one for that matter? So the expectation that people should have rights should be ‑‑ should be balanced with rights and responsibilities so that we don't expect that whenever we have rights, they [INAUDIBLE] on facebook and then they go in the streets and become vile end. So, now we are shifting from the internet originally space to space of political contestation and as someone already point out, I knowledge we are heading toward an Internet question will we be using it for political authorization and we have to see this take place in the developing countries, but Obama is really using it very effective for his political activity. I think they have already started as of now. Thank you.
>> So I think it's great we're going back and talking to the different stakeholders. So what I will do is take the intervention from over there and then I'll get someone who's managed to pull out of another workshop from Tanisha to talk about her perspective social media and then I will go back to this side. So, gentlemen? Okay.
>> Thank you very much indeed. Thank you very much indeed. My concern is that the parliamentarians are not ICT [INAUDIBLE]. They don't know anything about ICT. And they have all the facilities in parliament, but they know nothing about the ICTY. And the ones who balance in this country. So I don't know. How can we [INAUDIBLE] these people to getting into ICT. I don't know. What can be done? Thank you.
>> One of the things I mentioned in the beginning is one of the things I wanted to get out is what are some needs and what are some best practices and I think an Eco we have is education. I think it's key. So as we go forward, I would be interested in the panelists apart from introducing themselves to talk about initiatives or things they may have done to try to reach out to the different stakeholders in regards to just general use of social media, but then particularly of their particular issues and their environment how they relaid whether it's security or other things. Neigh have different concerns and you wanted to make a point?
>> Just quickly. I had the opportunity to work with a number of politician. They're not inclined to ‑‑ the risk of [INAUDIBLE] and they don't want to be the first person out there, but thing everybody sells doing it and it gives them an advantage, then they want to be on that train themselves. One technique is finding those few people who get it, the two or three advocates of the two or three members who really understand and help them to win. Help them to do better and demonstrate how this helped them to win elections better and serve the constituents and get better press and things that appeal to politicians and everyone will be coming to your door figuring out how they can do this too.
>> Hello. I am Mira. I work with censorships in Tanisha and right now I am running for the elections as a head of an independent list. So at the end of October, we would rewrite their constitution and that's why I am in these elections. To speak about the role of social medias, I have a vision. Maybe you would not like it. I think that social media and Internet really can help to change things if we use it to change things in real life. So, we have an Internet ‑‑ we used to spread the word to show what was happening there and to group people together to demonstrate in real life. I think that internets and social media and facebook help us to get spotlights on Tandonesia and on the revolution, which was the same thing in Egypt. So, do you have questions or something?
>> [INAUDIBLE]
>> Because this is an ad hoc section, I think the introduction is good. And if people have questions or comments of what other people have said, let's go around that way. So, there was a comment from you and then we'll go to you. So please. Sorry. There is two. So we got 1, 2 and then we'll go to the side of the room after words. And then we'll go there and then we'll go here.
>> Good morning. My name is Mohammad. So I come from my compatriots here and I would like it say that Egypt has experienced the social media impact in the biggest sense ever. For one, I never used facebook before the revolution and I started using facebook afterwards. We have seen how ‑‑ how, um, institutions like the armed forces, the cabinet of ministers and institutions that we would never think they could ever relate to people flew the internet are using their facebook pages to promote policies to inform people of changes in the ministers themselves. Like for example, the current prime minister, the decision to assign him or to nominate him was passed through the public through facebook. You turn on the turnover and find the state media news saying according to the cabinet of ministers, the following prime minister was assigned. So we have seen how institutions change their mindsets. On the other hand, we see the public. People are informing themselves on having a blood type problem and someone who has a disease. We found we have teenagers who have implement as sort of software which informs people of traffic flow and they have remote stations spread around, scattered around the city and they would inform people don't take this route. You can take that other route. So, people are using Twitter and facebook and social media in ways you can never imagine nine months ago. What hand in Egypt has had a lot of grass root, um, involvement from the Egyptian social society and the civil society. Of course what triggered the events was the great revolution of Tunis. I would like to thank the Tunition people in inspiring that and I would like to give a hand to the TUNICIAN people, if I may.
>> I was going to ask if that traffic flow system is coming tonight.
>> Maybe.
[Laughter]
>> Good morning, everyone. It seems that the social media focus is only for brutal aspect or maybe that's the area. As you know, they're prevailing disasters taking place in the five countries. And it seems in this aspect of humanitarian and disaster prevention, this is where you find the social media has failed. In case and extending the information that is take place in Africa. So, even the countries in the north seem to be focusing more on the political aspect on the facebook, on social media. What do we need to know? They become most hated on social media because it's a threat that to is that their existence. I think what we would like it see is on the humanitarian side on the disaster prevention informing and engaging in the western world. And this is the area that we need to focus more rather than just focusing on the revolutions taking place in Tunicia and Egypt. What has been done on the current fund. Thank you.
>> That's an excellent point. I will have a comment out to the room. If there's anyone here that can talk about how social media has been used in other parts of the world for Haiti or elsewhere will raise that. We have you, aviary and you Mr. Surf.
>> That's what I want to share because I was part of those who use social media before, during and after political crisis in [INAUDIBLE]. I would try to be as short as possible. One order on the general point, I think if you think that policy makers are a waif social media, you are dead wrong. I have to interview a whole lot of them during the study. I'm not talking about what I think. I'm talking about data. Across west Africa, I went to seven countries. Every single policymaker is aware of it. Whether he like it or not is another thing. Engagement is increasing. From my experience, it was not just the Arab bring, but before, during and after, engagement and social media is increasing and a hat is [INAUDIBLE] on that. It is wrong to think that those were children, delinquent. My study shows that most of the people are highly trained people who have the capacity to encourage others. So people and social media actually have a multiplier effect. That is important for every policymaker. If you don't know it, know it now. Now the of the thing that [INAUDIBLE] is that engagement is increasing. There isn't going to be any single election in Africa that will take place that social media is not able to play a major role. That is sure. You can quote me on that. Now, coming to our experience, what did we do with social media before crisis came? Basically we started a citizen watch around elections. Have you collected your voters card? What are the issues with the voters card? What are your impression so far? Are you going to vote? What will do you after you voted? When will you arrive? How will you dress? Will one day to hype up the citizens just to get the champions going. That was what we did. Take pictures. Who has a better publicity. Who is doing better and then in there was the face‑to‑face presidential debate. I remember I did it for three hours handing and analyzing the dressing, how we're standing. I like tweeted. That was fun at beginning. And now when crisis hits, the lockdown SMS. A lot of communications. So Twitter became the only way we could communicate with ourselves and, of course, Twitter all of a sudden became flooded by the side and [INAUDIBLE] side by the left and the right. We have been putting four or five Twitter accounts and sending the same messages. We have people change their Twitter [INAUDIBLE] and Twitter handles because they're beg tracked down. We have people disappearing because we're hosting facebook pages for X and Y. People likely one time I mean you are sitting down 10 minutes and you get 100 followers. Who's names are not their name us and get names like [INAUDIBLE]. You will soon die. In that case, I pick up my stuff. I buy the next available ticket and I leave the country. When I get there, I'm roaming and you are calling me on my number and I pick up the phone, and you're still threatening me, but I am out of the country. What we did at that time is services. Someone needs dialysis. Someone needs blood, someone needs to be picked up, you want to know which doctors are on. Basically people could have called. So we tell thank you is our number. Just give us a missed call. Do you it in Africa. You flash and you beep and we will call you back. We're doing phone conferences. She pregnant and you and the doctor, her husband beeps us. We call you. We'll caught husband. We'll put you on a phone conference and we have you trying to leave that way. The hiss have to help the wife deliver. We have lots of things like that. Which maternity is open and we're calling red cross and we tell them this person has been shot. You need go there. We talk on the phone and I thought my head had doubled, but I think it came back to normal. That is what social media could do. We had a group permanent. A permanent group on Skype. We had a permanent group on blackberry messenger and a twitter and a permanent group on facebook and once something is happening, everybody is sending ‑‑ we didn't sleep for two weeks. We never slept for two weeks because messages were going around and people were dieing of hunger and we called someone to tell you that your neighbor downstairs has no food. You can put some food and pass it through the window? We did all of that and went and paid for it. Now, let me stop that and talk about what happens after the war is lost. Now, you need to begin. We started with something called CICO. It was the hash tag for recovering stolen vehicles and all of it. The car is parked here. You need to pick it up. What's color, who knows who owns it. So we started that. Now we started CIV next. What else can we do? Reconciliation messages, given correct information, giving news, encourage people, reminding people of all the good things about the country and basically rebuilding until one day I saw that the prime minister of the new government shows up on Twitter. And then I said someone was following me. That's the prime minister. And people ‑‑ because they're used to keeping vigil already, they're saying is that you, sir? Yes. That's me. The guy who used to be his media advisor has now become the minister of youth. He told them guy, you better come over because the country is all live. So every time he comes on, they flood me with questions, how about this, how about that. Now we have ongoing consultation with government. We've talking about the minister defense, the prime minister and the youth minister and you are saying you understand there's truth and reconciliation. They told us you have followed this. Who do you think should be on this truth reconciliation. It was from our site. We wanted to draw it in there and today he's in. I think there's quite a number of things that social media can do. It is not social media that does it. It is the citizens who do it. We have a concept of [INAUDIBLE] which means the citizens who are citizen reporters, we are not politicians. We just report what we see and by and large, the politicians have come to respect people like us. Granted that it will be submersive views. But I know it is up to human rights activists to stand and [INAUDIBLE] that line. Every day they still contact me. What do you think about this. What do you think about that? We are neither to the left nor to the right. We say we're not practicing, but we can be neutral because of development. Thanks.
>> Thank you very much. I think I was just making a couple of points and before I go to the next speakers, we have half an hour left. I want to make sure we get some responses from those who have spoken, but also some new voices as well. So far what I heard in terms of the role of education, um, highlighting that social media is not just for upon advocating for political change, but in some cases and one was illustrated that it can also be used for both that and also, um, I wouldn't say disasters, but emergencies that take place in the country that the issue of call centers has been discussed and many other groups in terms of is there a best practice around that can be done in a sustainable fashion. Something that wasn't mentioned is for everyone to be on twitter and facebook. There needs to be an enabling environment. That's a way maybe the government is using it. Then there's no way to reach and the government may not be able to communicate itself. Go to AVRI and then I will get another question from this side and go back.
>> AVRI DORIA: I'm a research consultant not really connected to any group. I have a question and a concern going forward. And that's whenever I'm meeting like this, some people governance meeting that includes many people allows people from the country to get involved. It sort of owns up a brief window where social media and other methods can be used for people to speak more freely. Once the circus leaves town, once the meeting leaves town, it then and this has been seen several times in several meetings then allows a degree for repression on those that took advantage of the fact that there was an open window when communication was freer. One of the things that therefore, I look at as these meetings go ahead as perhaps these meetings go to places where the window of freedom isn't quite as open and that window does open briefly. Is there a way taking things like Ben said already to prepare for what will happen for when this enable event leafs town. And now we're going to do it, but basically how do we set something up so that the shutting of the network is circumvented and the processees for communication are left open and is there a will to actually spend the 12 months before a meeting happens to actually prepare for that opening of the window of expression and the repression invariably comes back before the circus leaves town.
>> Do you have any action items as a result of this action, maybe an open letter and more importantly, um, if there are different multi‑stakeholders that in this room, there's probably some governance, are there ways that we can work together to plan ahead in terms of even participants who may not feel safe to a particular place or cannot travel there to create that space in preparing for this session, but participating in a more robust way. So I agree with you. I think that remote participation is also something that we should be cognizant of pursuing. I wanted to mention one other thing. In addition to the social media that had been mentioned in humanitarian crisis situations, we found a Google three things that had been very, very helpful. One is Google earth. Another is Google maps and another one is people finder. All of these are not social media applications, but they are in many cases geographically oriented applications that allow people to take information they have and make it visible to others. So, where is the fire now and where are the evacuation centers? Where can I get food? And temporary shelters and things like that. In the case of people finder, it was a very helpful way of letting people know you were okay or in some cases discovering that someone was okay. It not only draws your attention that the Internet is richer than just social media.
>> Sorry. I will take one speaker here. Over there. And then, um, someone can talk about some of the work in Haiti. So let's do there, there and then here.
>> I'm the city advisor for [INAUDIBLE]. I just wanted to ‑‑ the aspect of social media. It talks to people through Twitter. He has 29,000 followers. And he actually has a very, very live [INAUDIBLE]. For the partition as well, it actually is a very good way of reaching out to the people directly and getting what people actually want. And to [INAUDIBLE], he basically mostly have very, very heated discussions in the twitters as well. He responds to that. So that I think is a very, very [INAUDIBLE] use of the social media for the partition because often times, this is questions I wanted to ask. I think traditional media sometimes sell sensors. They do actually a lot of, you know, like the back that's editing. A lot of traditions, Z is giving the opportunities to directly talk to their constituents and directly actually asking what is your real problem. For example, like my President got a feed from a student in a university. He said my intern connection is social. What can you do about it? And only he had [INAUDIBLE] and calls several people. What is going to go? We had to spend so much money on investment. But, of course, it takes a long time to fix it and at least he's aware of this problem. That's the use of the social media and the questions about what we can do about traditional media and censorship. How can you teach or how you can empower to also be able to, ah, to basically, you know, more space on reporting. And the final things, my colleague from Japan was saying, ah, going back and commenting with the social medias for social development. We in Japan during the course of the course of Japan, we have actually greater use Twitter and also as a social media in Tahiti. And we are currently conducting a solo studies on how the social media was used and mitigation situation. I just want to comment on that. Thanks.
>> Interesting you're saying you're in Japan and you're from Rwanda as well.
>> Know I have not shown my prime minister in Japan.
>> We had a comment in the back row, please.
>> My name is [INAUDIBLE]. I work as the assistant director ICT with administering information. Yeah. I do as the ministry as ICT ministry when we have a major role in providing the ICT infrastructure and this is by providing and facilitating the deployment of submitting table and the teams. We also deploy the cables and with this, we've seen a growth in the usage of ICT because broad band is not a problem now and I'm sure you are appreciating it now. Road map is not an issue and, of course, this has provided an environment for the usage of social media. And then even in the political sites, we have seen them engage in the use of social media especially like this year during the budget. Our ministers for finance was using social media to give the [INAUDIBLE] on the status of the budgets and it was even in getting with the public. You have seen social media. We have seen partitions when they are doing their things, launch campaign websites. With this, they are able to do much more and reach out to communities. Also the government as used SMS. SMS facility to reach the citizens. This year when we had family in the country, the ministry engaged call center and the citizens were able to give responses about their family, about their status and the government was able to reach the citizens using the SMS. So there is the positive side of social media in the usage of the government to reach its citizens. The environment is right in Kenya and I believe everywhere else we enter the discussions. It's like now we are moving ahead, but what I suggest is that we now need to look at the policies because where else we believe it's very good. It's very good on the side of it, but we also need to think of what policies because everything needs to be governed. We need to look at their policies to make sure that it's not abused or it's done in the right way. Thank you.
>> Thank you very much for your intervention.
>> I'm sure people have talked about the growth of mobile phones. These other devices that people have in their pockets. So, with services that can be accessed on mobile phones, you have the ability to provide services that can help you crowd source or, um, aggregate data from people on the ground. Take that data, organize it based on location and that ‑‑ obviously there has to be some verification. Speaking about governance and sort of finding the truth. It's really important to also listen to the crowd because when you have something going on, they invariably have something to say. Often times with our experience, we found that some of that information is actionable or can be actionable. The question here is: Are we supporting the systems that bring that information and, um, make it available so that the people who are charged with actually acting upon this and alleviating poverty or alleviating crisis situation have the most recent information that they can. Just to give you a bit of context on how we've seen this come to fruition first was around the Haiti airport ache. It had been used in Kenya and around elects and a few other places, but with the Haiti earthquake, we partnered with digi cell. Again that kind of goes back to the idea of not only thinking about governance, but also thinking of the partnerships that can come in at ‑‑ during a crisis situation. What sort of partnerships can make the situation better. In our experience, that was the Internet community of volunteers. It was the mobile service provider and the casing of Haiti, that was digi cell. It was other organizations like from SMS. Those are organizations that banded together and works together to gather information, verify geo located and presented so that first responders could ice some of that information in addition to the other sources that they were getting. And we've also seen this progression of the idea of crowd sourcing not just in crisis situation. More so even in elections. I was recently in jambia where there were elections and, ah, by and large it seemed to go fine except for specific areas where the lids for the ballad boxes were missing. The citizens were able to use an SMS number and quickly say look. This is what's going on here. And if the EC zed and other organizations can listen to the crowd, they know that they need to act in order to make sure that the process is free and fair and people actually see them being responsive. So I think I'll stop there.
>> My name is Simon Peter. I come for a past Africa that is Uganda. Now, I'm taking you back to the part of education. When you look at developing countries, we have a challenge in education. Education is always done a month before the election takes place. Immediately after elections are over, you don't see [INAUDIBLE] getting involved in education, which means that it's a little tiny ticket to educate people on how they can take admissions in terms of making sure there is no violence. We need to realize we have tools that we can use to educate people online. The difference [INAUDIBLE] let us engage people to make sure that even without funding we are still able to educate people because I've seen even [INAUDIBLE]. When the lectures are near, you see less and less of core deposit. I think where the us bring this up by make sure we educate our people even five years before an election takes place. Thank you.
>> Thank you.
>> I am human lives activities in Kenya. The issue of social media in Kenya has been of [INAUDIBLE] interest of [INAUDIBLE] because you have two on that issue. On the one side, you have the human rights with a set of groups and get the data on how best social media can be used to reflect political and social economic change. But on the other hand, you have the government which is more concerned with the issue of head speech because in the post election balance that you have, um, there was a lost head speech that was spread around and I think the feeling right now is with the election coming, social media might be used for that. So the country grappling with how to balance the positive aspects of social media and the negative aspects of social media.
>> Yeah. I just wanted to make a couple of comments on things that were said. From Uganda, you're right. There is an interest in recognizing the democracy goes past elects and in particular using technology to build institutions which sort of goes back to the comment I made in the beginning. We need to figure out what those methods are. In Uganda there were tools for reporting even year out, but that's not enough. We need to expand. The comment on using events to sort of expand the window, I think that you're right. It is good pay attention a year or more in advance and Robert had some good ideas. What are the types of things that can be done. Often the events have an agreement that can be one mechanism for trying to make space happen, but there are a lot of pieces that are involved in that. And then I wanted to go back to something that was said in the beginning about this new wave of repression 2.0. People have instilled something and they talked about in very real terms in the way people were attacked online that services were cut off. I think these sorts of forms that we need to really ban together to push back on attempts to control online space to manipulate it in a way that does not facilitate this sort of expression and empowerment. One thing focusing more particularly when it equipments to building democracies there's a lost attention in the panels that I've been on freedoms of expression and privacy. Less on freedom of ‑‑ it's been important in the stories that I heard. So it matters because if you're paying attention to association and assembly, there are other sorts of technology that you might protect or things that you might build. For instance, how you manage spectrum in order to preserve unlicensed bandwidth for community mesh takes on a greater level ever importance when you're really trying to preserve the ability of people to associate with their own communities. So I want to throw that out there and make it and see if we can keep that in mind as well when we're thinking about online rights.
>>
>> I'm an activists and create freedom of the press and freedom online. I want to speak about experience we have seen when the social media has been used. First they have been used to engage people and the protest and activities. But later we have seen they ever being used for repression of the people. We have seen especially the crack down on the protestors on March 2011. The government has been using facebook and Twitter to crowd source people to identify the protestors. There were groups created where some government official would post image and [INAUDIBLE] protestors calling everyone to identify them and then we would just hit about them. We have seen people on facebook changing their names all the time because they were very aware their content would be used against them Simple things would be where I went on their social pages, be used against them to convict them and to very ambiguous charges against their [INAUDIBLE] involvement and illegal activities. We have seen even people going into very extreme censorship when they have started to just close their pages. And get away from the social networks. I know that many people have been trying to connect with facebook and to report these pages to ask them if it's acceptable to have this kind of crowd sources that this ‑‑ that's being [INAUDIBLE] and arrest also involved giving torture and being able to [INAUDIBLE] other rights, but those pages have been not close not until test on Twitter. I know this kind of resource pages are still there and still why the government agencies. Thank you.
>> Thank you very much. What I want to do is maybe take ‑‑ if there's any companies that want to respond to the comments and if, Richard, you want to respond to things in terms of how technology has been used positively, negatively and what you can say in terms of what processes you all have in place to deal with it. Thank you.
>> First of all, I think what we just heard underscores the importance of either anonymous or synonymous speech, the ability to speak freely without necessarily being identified and I know there is often pushback on that point. You heard very clear reasons why that is still very important in some parts of the world. I think at Google we are proud of the fact that platforms that we have available can be used freely. And business model that let's us build those platforms and make them accessible not only for social expression, but also as a means of improved GDP, opportunities for people to create businesses is important. I think many of the sources often lie in the midst of poor economy. It is tied [INAUDIBLE] and I hope that we can continue to participate in that effort.
>> Thank you.
>> I know I think we're meeting later and we'll be able to talk in detail about the borrowing situation, but I know we have been acting on some of those pages that have been reported. As a general approach to this clearly is a service provider and you don't wish any harm to come to the result of doing so and there are a number of measures we have been putting in place. The first sort of major push around this was eye result of the situation in Egypt before the January situation. And the challenge would be ‑‑ the challenge is when you have 100 million people using this service, how do you identify those that are important amongst all of that noise that's coming in, how do you distinguish aggressive reporting versus genuine cries for help and so and so. That's a challenge we have to accept in order to protect the interest of our users and I don't think we're perfect yet, I think we may consider progress over the last year and we can talk about that in detail. A lot of it we necessarily wouldn't talk about in public not because anything to be ashamed of, but then it compromises the distance of the channels we have. We can talk more about it. Individually if you want to talk about that, I would be happy to do so. Common themes. We just make tools. That's really important. In the Internet government form, it is actually about the people who use those tools and what they use them for. The theme from Kenya versus a political speech is absolutely common throughout the world. We have lot of countries and a recurring theme. You can ‑‑ when people are able to speak freely, a lot of this speaks is made offensive. It just haps they do this offensive and if you try and remove all of that speech, you end up destroying the platform that engages the speech to take place. Where you set that limit is debate happening in every society around the world is not a particular country. I think it is fundamentally important to all of us. There is some understanding. How offensive can one be. I get calls from politicians sometimes to say this speech should be taken down as offensive and I look at it and it is really, really offensive speech about that politician. It's a view point. It's a political view point. It's not a hate speech. They just don't like that politician for often very good reasons. So that's a very important thing. The second one is multi‑channel is really important. But let's not got obsessed and two screens marriage. Television is keen. Television is the mass mobilizer. There are countries you can't access. Social media b more important because you have no easy is to television, but when you have good easy is other what social media often does is drive television. It gathers up the video and gets broadcast on television and that's why it has dramatic impacts and people do use it in a 2‑screen way. They're sitting over with the laptop and the TV. All the channels they use whether it's telephone, TV, and Internet is really important. The last reflect was a big challenge. I think it's the important one about the real test for social moo media is can it drive interest in humanitarian crisis or situations that really ‑‑ politics matters, but politics it doesn't matter as much as suggests. So I think my question about that really important test is the extent to which we can do that. Getting millions of people signed up to something that says I want to stop famine in Africa means nothing compared to perhaps getting 10,000 people actually doing something about it. Interest, you know, those are ready to go. Social media getting millions of people. A test is still there to see if we can still get the thousands of people doing the actual actions that will make a difference.
>> I want ‑‑ we only have five minutes left. So the one thing about the IGF that I think is keen and I probably should have done this earlier is the importance to keep this conversation going on. We should not just have it once a year and so whether it's through the, um, the hash tag or the hash tag of this ad hoc workshop and conversation, but let's try to do that. So people want to stay engaged, you know, please post it on Twitter or facebook or just let me know afterwards and we'll try to keep this conversation going forward. So because we have five minutes, I want to get somebody who hasn't spoken before from the back and I'll ask that your intervention be really short. To go back from the beginning, we will have one of our first speakers from Egypt to maybe wrap up. So please, sir, on the back, please be as short as you can and then we'll finish with the fellow from Egypt. The floor is yours.
>> I work [INAUDIBLE] social media and I am also a blogger. So I want to say something that's very important for us if we're tracking what's happened in the Arab revolution. Before 10 years, we didn't find any place to talk about our [INAUDIBLE]. We have any [INAUDIBLE] we cast this thing. But the revolution and people turn to social media and you see the number of media they use in facebook and [INAUDIBLE] in 2011. So the knowledge of using social media is something that's very important. I agree with you to have continued discussion about this thing because it's [INAUDIBLE]. You have go hours in this discussion, but I am agreeing. We do research and power revolution, but I think we should [INAUDIBLE] between [INAUDIBLE] and Egypt and are the revolution. Because in each country, there's, ah extracting from the environment and each environment they use some tools. There are other [INAUDIBLE] they didn't use it before. So this is something and I am very happy to have the discussion after that issue.
>> Thank you.
>> Let me start by agreeing that actually social tools ever just that. So they can be used for any set of purpose you want to. But there are people also who are running those two and therefore, they become community managers, if you will. And that place is [INAUDIBLE] and that responsibility on them especially that working tools are highlighted so far. We don't know as users on those communities, on those tools why a page disappears and why it comes back and when I file a complaint that there is something, um, ah, wrong about this video or that note, ah, there is no clear channel of follow up. There is no ticket number. I cannot really find out. The only way that we can when [INAUDIBLE] page disappears, which is about the most important page that is ever appear in the facebook is kind the connection to you personally. And that shouldn't be the case because this only means that the privilege and the high profile people are the only ones protect. That's not what a democratic meeting should be about.
>> We have two things. We have a comment. We will go a little bit over. I also have to run to another meeting, but I think take home for those that are speaking and I will say this myself, what are some key things that going forward we want to report on for this session, but also that are key. So we talked about call centers that it's not about activism. But it's also humanitarian issues. Another point here which is call centers, but in the sense that activist and others need a mechanism to report on issues and then at the variety of different stakeholders that can help in some way to get that to them. And if those don't necessarily scale now, um, figuring out ways of developing best practices so that quarterback shared. So I'm all with you that is a very key thing and I know a variety of companies because of the developments over the last nine months have found out that those processes need to be improved. It's good for it. So we'll do a comment from Richard and then from you and then unfortunately, we'll have to close this session. So please a brief intervention.
>> I am just to say we hear you. And that's something we're working on now. We can talk in detail about what we night be doing in that space.
>> Thank you very much. I know we're wrapping up here. My name is Keith. I work at Verizon. I want to sort of acknowledge the importance and the value of this session, the one that we just had. I came into this meeting by accident. We ended up ‑‑ there was some confusion of the scheduling whether it was going to happen or not. So accidently or otherwise, I found this to be an extremely valuable session. I am so happy that we continued even without a panel. I want to say that this has been my favorite session of the week so far. I am pretty confident it will be my favorite session at end of the week and I want to personally thank all the people who shared their personal experiences because I personally got a tremendous amount of value out of this. I think this type of a session where there is a free flowing exchange of information and experiences from people from all sectors, we have government representatives, people that are involved in business and academia, civil society. I think it's been a really, really available lesson. I just want to also say that I think this is one of the reasons, this is a perfect example of one of the reasons that Verisign values IGF as much as they do. We will exchange the views and have this dialogue has been ‑‑ has been really just fantastic and I'm going to recommend to the people that I know that are involved in the coordination of IGF meetings that we do more section without a panel. So thank you.
>> I thank you for your comments. I think it was also the use of social media to bring people to this room while it was convening. So I sent a couple messages out. So I wasn't as responsive to all the hangs, but was able to mobilize and bring folks here. I think I would say what's key about the IGF is make sure we get stories from all the stakeholders. What are the best practices and maybe some copy things that we can all work on going forward. Our time is up. But the discussion should not finish. And I'm really keen. I'll stay here for a few minutes and if there's a way to engage this going forward and I think one of the things that AVRI maybe able to inform us is what is a mechanism that some of us can talk about this in whatever reporting process there is.
>> I think we can probably just report under working group 95 which I think this was. I think just because the meeting was cancelled doesn't mean the opportunity to report on it wasn't there. Somebody needs to write up and if someone wants to do a hash tag ‑‑ oh, you already have one? Okay.
>> It has been important.
>> Okay. If that works for you, okay.
>> [INAUDIBLE]
>> With that, I thank everyone and I look forward. I will stay here for a few minutes. Thank you.