The following are the outputs of the captioning taken during an IGF intervention. 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, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.
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>> MODERATOR: Good morning, Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen, we resume with the next session for today. It's a pleasure for me to moderate this panel of experts. As you may know, the next session is going to be on collaborative approaches to address online harms. My name is David alomas, I'm the chief of parliament engagement Office of the United Nations Office of Counter Terrorism that we settled three years ago to work inclusively and, basically, with the parliamentarians and with member parliaments, national parliaments and parliamentary assemblies and it's a double hoon for me to be here had moderating this session. We have been talking about the previous sessions, yesterday and today, about the importance of a multistakeholder approach in all the relevant matters. So I really think we have now a session which absolutely exemplifies this kind of approach. We have representative from the international parliament. We have also from the executive branch, also from the civil society. So I think this different angles and perspectives are absolutely needed to be discussed at the same time to come to common solution.
So, I will in sake of time, I will go directly to the questions, to our distinguished speakers and I would be grateful if when you are taking the floor, please if you can just briefly introduce yourself so that we are all familiar with your bio.
The first question I would like to address to Mr. Jordan Hadfield, of legal at chai of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and to Mr. Brand Brand, Australian ambassador for cyber affairs and critical technology of Australia.
The first question is, please, this session focuses on collaborative approaches (brendan Dowling) to address online harms. Mr. Hadfield and Mr. Dowling, what are the benefits of multistakeholder approach to five risks and harms in the online space. Please if you could also provide concrete examples. Please, you have the floor.
>> BRENDAN DOWLING: Good morning. Thank you so much for the introduction. Thank you also to the IGF and for the (?) for hosting such a wonderful event here. My name is Jordan Hadfield, I'm the legal attaché for the U.S. embassy in Riyadh. And talking about multistakeholder approaches and collaborations, the Federal Bureau of Investigation handles both criminal and national security matters (this is Jordan) so when we discuss national security matters and open forums, things become very complex and difficult to talk about things. So, I am going to shift to more of the criminal element right now and specifically looking at child exploitation matters. I think that's probably one of the easiest things for us to discuss in open forum.
But looking back just contextually, the Federal Bureau of Investigation categorizes a lot of the threats that we are dealing with in this space, as TTLs or threat to lives. The threat to lives might be an eminent threat, imminent attack, violent extremism. It might also be a specific threat against a child or an adult due to at a domestic dispute, also due to online harms. And specifically looking at that in the child exploitation realm, looking at producers of child sexual abuse material across the board and discussing what does that stakeholder approach look like.
The FBI works in two novel ways that are equal but has plenty of international partners that we work alongside to kind of accomplish this goal.
The first thing that we have is a violent crimes against children international task force. This task force is law enforcement led but is open to law enforcement, it's open to industry, it's also open to prosecutors across the globe. There's over 70 nations that have been represented on this task force, the focus is every single year it will be a week long operational meeting somewhere in the world, different place every single year to be able to discuss new operational concerns, new challenges in the realms of end to end encryption, also looking at online harm.
The long term goal in this is to develop better relationships amongst law enforcement prosecutors so that we can discuss, sort of, the latest and greatest complexities with the work that we do. Part of this development or part of this task force is that on an annual basis there's a month long training for new additions to this task force. You have prosecutors, law enforcement officers going through four weeks in the United States, seeing the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, getting time at Nick 96, getting time with with other elements inside the United States, some of our regional teams as well to better understand the challenges we face.
It could be a small local regional sheriffs department and a small rural community in the United States or it could be something happening in the Kingdom here, something happening to a major city anywhere around the world and the challenge could be the same because we cannot get access to something that law enforcement or prosecutors or Justice Departments have legal authority to access.
So, it's an ongoing complexity.
The second thing, I will end on this, we participate in interpole specialist groups for crimes against children. In France every single year this is a huge opportunity, week long event to develop relationships with other law enforcement partners, other members of the industry, tech industry, electronic services providers. It's typically the sphere head conversations in an open dialogue but also an opportunity to have the more sensitive conversations behind closed doors.
So, success in this realm for us and the way that we try to approach it has to look collaborative and we try to do as much as we can to open our doors so that other folks and other nations can learn from our challenges as well. Thank you.
>> ONSITE MODERATOR: Thank you very much, Mr. Hadfield, for the vision on the experience of the FBI and how are you proceeding with this multistakeholder approach also (moderator) also working together with RSO.
Please now, Ambassador, Mr. Dowling, please, you have the floor.
>> BRENDAN DOWLING: Thank you. And I'm the Australian ambassador for cyber affairs and critical technology and it's wonderful to be here with all of you today. Australia has been quite active in addressing online harms. We have been very active in passing legislation that drives greater accountability for social media platforms, for technology platforms to take more serious action to address online harms.
That has all been driven by multistakeholder approach. We were the first country in the world to establish an e safety commission. The driver for that was concerned about cyber bullying, about the harms that our children were being exposed to through issues around online grooming, around abuse of children online.
So, it was driven not by government imposing a top down solution, but by a sense of concern by our community, by civil society, by children's rights groups, by other advocates to say, we need government, we need our parliament to take more action to address the spread of online harm.
So, we have always come at this from a multistakeholder approach. We have always applied legislation to address online harms through a parliamentary review process, subject to judicial review. We have always sought to design legislation in consultation with industry.
But our parliament has been driven to act by that sense of concern from our community that we have seen this enormous proliferation of child abuse material online. We have seen terrorist groups seeking to radicalize our young people online. We have seen cyber bullying spread rife throughout our schools so there has been a sense that parliaments and governments need to act to drive more accountability, because, let's face it, technology platforms will not do that by themselves.
They have had 20 years of expectations of addressing online harms which they have vowed to take seriously, prioritize commercial interests over community safety and well being. So, there has been a strong push by the Australian people to say, this is an area where governments need to act, where parliaments need to act, we need to do it in a sensible, considered way, we need to engage the stakeholders, we need to engage the industry but it is an area where governments do need to act.
>> ONSITE MODERATOR: Thank you very much, Excellency. It's very important, as you said, very collaboration with parliament and government. We need to be accountable and to respond to this kind of threats that we are exposed to and, yeah, let me now move forward and pose a question to Mr. Rajnesh Singh, excuse me if I am not pronouncing that. Singh. Chief Executive Officer of APNIC Foundation. Mr. Singh, the APNIC Foundation advocates for a global, stable and security Internet. How can members of parliament contribute to this vision? What collaborative approach could you recommend for parliamentarians to take? Please.
>> RAJNESH SINGH: Thank you. Thank you for the opportunity to the organizers and it's great to be here in Saudi Arabia as well.
So, my organization, we invest in Internet and digital development across 56 economies in the Asia Pacific region. We come from technical groups so that gives us a bit of credibility when it comes to the technical nature of the Internet of what we talk about and why we talk about what we do.
In terms of the question itself, I think we can all appreciate that the Internet over last 30, maybe closer to 40 years now has completely transformed human kind. You have see the positive benefits of the Internet across the world. One of the reasons that's been the case is because it is open and it's interoperable, which means you can build anything you want and you can connect to the Internet and you can sell your services or your application or whatever it may be to anyone else in the world, theoretically at least anyway.
So, what that, of course, allows is creativity, it allows innovation, it allows all these technology companies and nontechnology companies to do what they are able to do with the Internet. I see a lot of people in this room right now busy on their phones. You are able to do that because the Internet is there allowing you to do what you are doing on your phone, right.
That brings me to one of the concerns that I have when it comes to how parliamentarians and policymakers look at what the Internet is. I think you also have to be very clear on what the Internet is not. And what I mean by that is that the Internet itself is the core infrastructure that makes all this happen. Applications and services, the things people use on the Internet are a different thing. And I think too often we conflate the two, when regulation or policies are put in place, the implications of what that will do to the core Internet infrastructure are not taken into account.
If there's one message that I would give to parliamentarians and policymakers, consider the implications of what you are trying to regulate or not trying to regulate. Things like AI is a big things these day. But fundamentally AI is an application that works over the Internet. There's nothing more than that. If the Internet infrastructure that exists around the world, the core global Internet infrastructure doesn't exist, none of that is going to work.
So, when you do consider, you know, how you look at legislation or how you develop legislation, I think it's very important to consider what exactly are you trying to legislate. Is it the apps or the platforms or what runs over the Internet, or are you also potentially impacting the Internet itself? So, stop here. Thank you.
>> ONSITE MODERATOR: Thank you very much, Mr. Singh, for your intervention and for highlighting importance of in very precise with the development of legislation that has to be furthermore implemented by everybody.
So, let me now move on. I would like to give now the floor to Mrs. Jehad Abdulla Al Fadhel, she is the member of the Oversight Board and the question is, please, the Oversight Board plays an important role on Meta social media platform. How do you collaborate with other stakeholder groups to guarantee a safer online space? Please, you have the floor (fadhel).
>> JEHAD ABDULLA AL FADHEL: Thank you so much. For folks in you don't know about the Oversight Board it's a very unique body, the first of its own experience that, basically, Meta tried doing it and I am very proud to say that we actually have become an institution over the last four years. We were established in 2020, and the idea was to have an independent body which can independently hold Meta accountable on their content moderation decisions, so users can actually appeal to us against the Meta's decision on leaving or leaving up content or removing content and what we do as a board is, basically, select the most relevant cases from around the world.
Our main focus is, basically, centralizing human rights framework while we decide on cases, and also on users' rights, like protecting users' rights by actively engaging with stakeholders to appeals and public comments.
And so far we have received 10,000 comments on the cases that we have selected. We received these comments, we deliver we process them and then we deliver it on our cases.
One of the examples, just recently is the case that we decided is over the phrase on river to the sea, which was, basically, users around the world had this complaint that it was overenforced on Meta platforms and we looked into it. And we received 2000 comments just for that one particular case.
I think the comment process and engaging with stakeholders around the world, basically, give us an opportunity to engage with diverse groups of people, but also with stakeholders and civil society that if they cannot reach out to the tech platforms themselves directly, they can reach out to this third body which is independent and which has an authority of binding decisions over Meta.
But I would also say that one of the very important features of our work is not only independence, but transparency as well. What we do, we actually share with the world. They can also hold us accountable that if you are the independent oversight body, how you are holding Meta accountable and we do this through our reports, the performance on our decisions, and the implementation of how Meta is actually implementing on our decisions.
I would also say that the body is also interesting in a way that the power concentration around tackling online harms is not only with the platform and it's not only with the government, it should not be, there should be other stakeholders also who have a say and who can engage with the diverse groups like civil society. Thank you.
>> ONSITE MODERATOR: Thank you very much, Madam, and that of your intervention, how important it is really to have all the visions from law enforcement, from civil society, government and independenter body that is able to monitor and to oversight the platforms and the work.
So, with that, we have received many comments on the importance of legislation, how important it is that the development of legislation should be accurate and should be precise, specifically, and count on the comments of those that are, basically, facing some of the challenges on implementation.
For me it's an honour to move of ahead and to give to floor to members of the parliament, to Her Excellency, Auhoud Al Shehail, a member of parliament from Saudi Shura Council and also to Her Excellency, Madam (?) speaker of Bahrain. Excellencies, as members of the parliament I would like to ask you what are you confronted with when wanting to address online harms in the digital space, for example, during the legislative procedures.
And also, what support would you like to see from the private sector, the technical community, civil society, and the government on the work that you advance? Please, Excellency, Madam she hail, you have the floor.
>> AUHOUD AL-SHEHAIL: Good afternoon. It is an honour and privilege to be participating today in this session. It is such an important session and I would like to welcome you to Riyadh.
The rapid evolution of technology brings with it a lot of benefits but also brings different forms of what does harm mean. And the starting point, I do believe as a parliament member is what does online harm mean, because we keep talking about it, but we really don't know because as technology develops, those forums and those harms keep developing. So our understanding of harm keeps changing from criminal to ethical, from social, different backgrounds, they are affected.
So, going back to 2007 when the Shura Council first proposed a law that was concentrated on online crimes, the anticybercrime law, it was approved but at that time it focused more on illegal act and the whole purpose of it was providing and creating a secure protected society.
As time developed and technology and more interaction happened, more harm started to come on the surface, local and international.
So, this brings us to that different stakeholders have different perspectives and understanding of what constitute harm. It is such a simple question, but yet, the consequences of it are very complex.
So, if we can share a common understanding, it will help us in creating goals that we can actually achieve that are practical and effective.
Yesterday they were talking about the goals, we didn't even reach 20% of the goals that we hoped to reach.
The second challenge we are always faced with is balancing rights. There's a debate about it. But as a member of the parliament, I do believe that we have a role to ensure that all executive institutions do understand and are aligned in making the digital space a safer space that does respect human digital rights.
So, when looking at privacy, sometimes it does collide with security. And balancing those rights sometimes the consequences do interfere with each other. And looking at the digital world, it's related in all aspects of our life.
The third challenge that we are faced with is innovation. Innovation not from a technological point of view, but innovation and communicating with different stakeholders, also finding innovative solutions.
And also education. Education has proved and many fields and all fields of our life that it is a successful tool. So, doing research and also having educational campaigns that does equip our civilians and citizens with tools that they can have and navigate this digital world to make it a safer place.
I do believe that having a better communication, that's why I said in the beginning, I am so honored to be participating in this session, because it is a very important topic that affects all segment of society, from politicians to citizens to children, different kinds of harm also, from legal to psychological. So, thank you for the time. I think I'm on time. Back to you.
>> ONSITE MODERATOR: Thank you very much, Excellency. Of course you are on time. And thank you very much for the intervention. Thank you very much for also addressing the issue of the importance of education, I think it's a critical issue on this topic and many topics, but especially on this topic, which is really, like, without education, we will absolutely expose to all the threats online.
So, let me now move ahead and give the floor to Her Excellency, Madam Jehad Abdulla Al Fadhel. You have the floor.
>> JEHAD ABDULLA AL FADHEL: I will speak in Arabic, if you don't mind. I attend this forum which is very important in the capital of the Arab. Thank you very much, my name is Jehad Fadhel. I am the Council for Shura, the Kingdom Shura, the head of the parliament in Africa and deputy of the parliament net in African (?) (muffled audio). For the challenges that we are trying to face to deal with harm through the legislative work, I like to see that there are national level main please for launching any kind of initiative, legal or whatever it is. Parliamentarian to ask a parliamentarian is trying to diagnose and harm and to stop any kind of challenges, difficulties or try to mitigate it.
So, the most important thing that we are facing as members in the legislative bodies that these legislations that has to do with any activity, it will be going hand in hand with other developments that are taking place at the same time.
So this makes us obligated to have delegation or legislative delegation. We want to delegate the people who are executing to actual issue, ministerial decisions so that there will be flexibility in issuing these decisions. If you want to compare it also with any kind of amendment in the laws. This takes full probably cycle that could take long, long time maybe. So also we noticed that the last that (?) recently that there was a lot of fraudulent action on the Internet. So, that's why we try to improve the security for the individuals and different entities in the country.
In the Kingdom of Bahrain, the legislative authority has issued a lot of legislations that organizes different things or actions that take place, like, you know, like electronic signature. So the Shura Council in Bahrain also has submitted a proposal about organizing the AI, and now there are revising it in different Council in the parliament according to the legal ways.
This considers the Bahrainy Shura is the first parliament in the Arabic world and one of the first in the world that agrees toward this type of initiatives, legislative initiatives that has to do with AI.
For the second part of it, that's about, you know, (?) I think the biggest support from the government and other entities is to commit implementing of laws, especially these laws that has to do with different fragile groups like children so that to protect them against fraudulent acts and also for the support that we are expect from technical companies that they will do their part in fighting, actually, threats that move from country to country and also have more cooperation in implementing the laws in their platforms and expecting different security standards is very important for these guys to sit, to get trainings to parliamentarians so they will understand things much better, especially technical issues and give them also excuse me, and also analytics so this will help the parliament in taking decisions, the right decisions at the right time.
So, we expect from the civil society and the media and the different of social media platforms is that they need to take their roles and having and having and having, you know, the big role in educating people and teaching them. Thank you very much.
>> ONSITE MODERATOR: Thank you for sharing with us the work of the Shura Council of the Kingdom of Bahrain and also for explaining the collaborative approach and importance also to engager with the private sector. Of course, the support and the collaboration with the government, but also with the private sector to really have enough information to be accurate with the work they should consider. It's advancing and importance for that, I completely agree with you, the importance of enhancing the capacities of everybody, including also members of parliament to really understand all the details that have to be taken into consideration when developing legislation.
And I would like to keep on asking you a second question, Excellency, because you have shared with us the work of the Shura Council of the Kingdom of Bahrain but you also have another very important role, which is as a member of the parliament assembly of the Mediterranean as parliamentary assembly and the work that the parliamentary assembly advance odd this topic is very important, especially the parliament (?) has gone through a very interesting and very productive actions (parliamentary of Bahrain) with regard to this specific topic, including artificial intelligence, of course, and I would like to ask you, Excellency, how does the parliament assembly of the Mediterranean contribute to undertake action in collaborative efforts to tackle online harms? Please.
>> JEHAD ABDULLA AL FADHEL: It was different governments and parliaments works to develop (?) framework that addresses the misuse of the AI and the information technology and telecommunications with guarantee of having tools to verify to achieve the social development and the current development and innovation. And also it works, the Bahrain parliament works with support from the centre for global studies, works (nighat first Jehad) closely with the other members of parliaments and social organizations to develop policies and strategies (?) strategies to prevent member state the Internet.
The (?) global observatory for the AI and the information technology and telecommunication and this observatory works to spread or disseminate daily brief which provides to its members and to other (?) organizations the upcomings and the updated trends about developments and development achieved in the AI sector of the information technology and telecommunication as well.
>> ONSITE MODERATOR: Thank you very much. Let me highlight that we are having as office of parliament of OECD fantastic alliance with the Mediterranean alliance in December this year, let me share with you that the parliamentary assembly of (?) became the presidency and the chair of the coordination mechanism of parliamentary assemblies that we are having on issues related to the depravation and encountering terrorism and this specific topics is one of the priorities that has been identified by the 17 parliamentary assemblies that are members participating in the mechanism and we have the honour to have a panel with us as the chair with an excellent experience in this topic.
So, let me sorry. Let me now open the floor to all the distinguished participants. Please, if you have questions, please just introduce yourself very briefly, please, and then pose the question. I think we have three questions in this part of the room. Thank you.
>> Sorry, I speak in Arabic, if you don't mind. Technology for all. This encourages innovation, competition (muffled audio) and also (muffled audio) at the same time. Some (?) disappears in many countries, and also just became the (?) technology and devices (?) with these modern devices what are the (?) to protect the community and (?) in particular and we are talking about today we are whether the AI or thank you so much. In this era of AI. Thank you.
>> PARTICIPANT: My name is (?) Council of representative of the Kingdom of Bahrain. In light of UNESCO orientation to literacy by adopting education strategy in early childhood and providing the necessary support and training of all people. Today the international gatherings suffers from digital literacy which is considered specifically a kind of damage on humanity.
The question is how the how can the parliamentary community achieve this kind of balance achieve the risk of digital space. Thank you.
>> ONSITE MODERATOR: Maybe we will take some of the questions and then I can give the floor to the distinguished experts. Please.
>> PARTICIPANT: ((No English translation) (captioner has no English translation).
(No English translation).
(No English translation) systemic obstacles, including in the digital world. As political decisionmakers, we have to rise to this challenge. So, the digital infrastructure and access to Internet is crucial for this connection. And also the technological enterprises need to create environments that facilitate the women interaction, especially in a lot of countries. Women and girls are encouraged to join this technological space so that this opens opportunities and employment opportunities for women in the field of technology training and education.
The imbalance or abuse not only threatens women, but also economic and social development. This is why the international community has to work (?) has taken a lot of measures to counter these harms against women and taken a lot of solid measures to ensure the participation of women in the technological space. So, the access to Internet is not a question of (?), but it's a question of innovation. We have to collaborate. So, for an inclusive Internet environment so that women, wherever they are in urban or rural area, must be emancipated and empowered. These topics priority for our activities towards women in 2025 and (?). I would like to invite (?)
(audio fading in and out)
Which is the assembly for the (?) with the support of
(audio fading in and out)
And this is why I would like to have comments related to the paper related to women's participation in artificial intelligence and the technological space. Thank you very much. Thank you very much, Excellency.
>> PARTICIPANT: Thank you very much, my name is Hawley Mansour, I'm a member of Meta Oversight Board. I will start with a personal note because of the last speaker, as an Arab man I'm very proud that the two representatives of parliaments on this issue are women. We have come a long way. It's a pleasure to see you sitting and speaking to us.
Now, coming to the hard part, because my question is also to you and to other people in the panel, which is, how can you guarantee that you put legislations to fight harm, I'm not talking about crime, but to fight harm with a good definition as your Excellency have said, without curtailing freedom of exhibition, without curtailing the advice of people to express themselves. Without the definition of harm that not only governments can decide on, but also other stakeholders, how can you guarantee that these definitions actually participated in by as your Excellency said as well, civilians and citizens, by everybody? Because this is the field of the civil society that anticybercrime laws, that cybercrime treaty that's been internationally negotiated, work by the FBI and others would curtail the rights of people to express themselves. Thank you.
>> ONSITE MODERATOR: Thank you very much. Please.
>> PARTICIPANT: Thank you for all panelists for the very nice talks about harms. My question more little bit technically for Mr. Jordan, maybe Hadfield or Mr. Dowling or Singh or anybody can answer, please. Agencies and governments around the world are working hard to ensure safety and security of people and agencies. But on the other side, you know, we have the bad guys, really they are using also AI to harms, you know. We know the big companies are using AI to protect cybersecurity and others.
So, and they are working the dark side. Nobody, almost nobody are doing there.
The question is, how will the harms will be even, I think it will be even worser on bigger; but deepfake and other IT apps. In the future I think we will not be able to distinguish reality and the real things are not real things.
So, I wonder how to pass such very important and difficult crimes, maybe some of. So, it's really, I think, tough task. Thank you very much.
>> ONSITE MODERATOR: Thank you very much. I think we have one more question here. And then we move to the other oh, we also have okay, sorry.
>> PARTICIPANT: Thank you very much, all panelists. Abdulla a (?) in the Mediterranean parliament, in fact, I was very interested my colleagues who speak in other language and (muffled audio) so I will speak in Arabic. Dr. Jehad talked about the AI and in fact, we are living in a reality (?) and future that requires more flexibility and resilience (?) whereby everywhere there is new innovations. Algeria also have proposed a law to control the AI uses which is under consideration by the legal committee. And I think we are going to vote for this laws on time.
However, we have to coordinate within this parliamentarian different (?) after the European parliament legalize the European Act. As you know in the USA there is an open space and not to control or not to take the innovation especially for innovation. And challenge China, some (?) which is not well coordinated. So the challenge how we can coordinate and harmonize this (?) while maintaining flexibility which is required in such. Thank you so much. Thank you very much. Excellency. Yeah.
>> PARTICIPANT: Hi. Thank you. My name is ah Stein ooh I'm in ARG and I work at the chamber of the APTs, I will be asking my question in Spanish (argentina). Regarding why you need an Oversight Board if the universal rights are exist already and this is present in every country, how do you balance this, first of all? Because I don't think we need one organization that decides what's right and what's wrong because every country has different laws. That's one thing.
On the other hand, in terms of Australia and the parliamentary from Australia, away like to know for the provision of people younger than 16 years ago for the usage of social media, what was interaction with the youth regarding this? Because we know young people have rights to access social platforms. So, how was that conversation with them so that they could keep their rights? Thank you.
>> ONSITE MODERATOR: Thank you. We have one here and please, mic also there. So please.
>> PARTICIPANT: On the same subject. I mean, we are on Internet, we work on borderless countries. In the old days we used to protect our (?) as related from Argentina sake, we used to protect the society through the borders. We managed that. Today everything is done across border.
So, the question is, what is the role of the companies in protecting each society and how would they know the values of each society to protect and the value of the other society which we assume are wrong where other society are not wrong.
Really there should be a forum or standard or an organization or a body to help each country with those companies to protect community from what we believe is an L information to our community which is not an information for the other community. It is a difficult situation, but I think each one of us here as parliamentarians, we have a responsibility to protecting our (parliamentarians) community and maybe the companies, the president of the companies here could really answer the question, how we can work with them to protect our society and community.
>> ONSITE MODERATOR: Thank you very much. Please.
>> PARTICIPANT: Thank you so much. I do have comment. So I will address in Arabic. I am a member of the (?) consortium in Saudi Arabia, I would like to thank (?). This was a very informative session. I have a comment I would like to point out that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia government has recently two initiatives to protect children from the service security to empower women and the civil society as well so I wanted to declare last October and many countries joined this initiative, I would like to encourage my colleagues here (?) to join these initiatives which the name of the companies (?), and all broad initiatives and as the speaker said, children and women are the most vulnerable groups in the cybersecurity.
And the second comment is that (muffled audio) combat (?) and use online who have another global initiative (?) which is concerned with combating terrorism and also to combat all harmful materials and all social media. Therefore, thank you so much, Mr. (?)
>> ONSITE MODERATOR: (?)
(No English translation).
(No English translation) employed so that's my question. How to deal with that.
>> ONSITE MODERATOR: Thank you very much. Please.
>> PARTICIPANT: Thank you, I'm (?). I'm from Nigeria and Shura committee on ICT and cybersecurity. Thank you for the very insightful perspectives you have shared.
I have two questions, particularly for the oversight organization. Apart from the digital content moderation with the problem globally, two things are specific to Africa that are concerning. First about the content militia itself. What you consider to be less harmful in the western world sometimes such publication is harmful in Africa. And therefore, what will pass the test of harmlessness in Europe or America may not pass the test of harmlessness when it comes to Africa. So, that's one concern I would like you to address.
The second concern is also about transparency of the algorithm. Again, we do believe sometimes some of the big technological companies, they do not operate with the same standard they operate in their home countries when they come to Africa. So, how do you hold them accountable? And we also want to be sure that oversight function as well, this concerns the nuances of the values of the culture, of the requirement that are specific to African environment. Thank you.
>> ONSITE MODERATOR: Thank you very much. I think we have one more question.
>> (muffled audio) I am a member of the Algerian assembly, arbitrator of the parliament. First of all I would like to thank my brothers in Saudi Arabia for a wonderful version of this event and also the IGF for wonderful version of this event throughout the three days.
I would like to encourage my colleagues and my members of parliaments to use the (?) diplomacy to encourage all (?) and international organizations to promote the Internet in other countries and the affected countries as well because we (?) lack of coverage for the (?) of these countries and also to use the parliamentarians in this area would be useful. And also we have as members of parliaments, Arab and African parliaments, we have to enact laws to protect the Internet bodies, (?) bodies to protect them from as you know the cyberattacks which they face, the website face, and if we can protect the data, additional data of the users.
And also the (?) plays major role in enacting laws as my colleague said also in the assembly before. We are Algeria, we have bills tabled at the parliament within this context and (muffled audio).
>> ONSITE MODERATOR: Thank you very much. I don't know if we have any other questions. Yeah, I think there is one more. And then I will give the floor to the experts, please.
>> PARTICIPANT: (No English translation). I am a coordinator of the parliamentaries for the digital and identification of individuals. And my question, I would like to complete what was asked by Cameroon, who talk about the threats as per an employment and also looking at AI, we develop a lot of threats besides in Africa, Africa is a continent that is the poor, very poor comparing to the countries of Europe. And we in Africa, how, for us, how to deal with this question in order to consolidate between south and north. Thank you.
>> ONSITE MODERATOR: Thank you very much. If I may, I will give back the floor to the distinguished speakers so that we have maybe a couple of minutes, please, to respond to the question that you have been addressed with.
I would like to start with Her Excellency, Auhoud Al Shehail, member of the parliament of from the Shura Council of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Please.
>> AUHOUD AL-SHEHAIL: There were two maybe issues that I would like to address. Number one was the education question. And number two was thank you for the question, because it's a very passionate topic that I do also study and that's my specialty.
Guarantees, to be very honest, there are no guarantees in life. Okay? But when we talk about Internet, it is a never ending evolution. At the same time we also have to be on the same mode of being in a never ending evaluation. We always have to be in dialogues that are in different fields and sectors to have a very like being very open and honest, just like I said, there are no guarantees.
But at the same time, having this balance of when a certain law interferes with another or when local laws interfere with international laws, I do always remember, there's a saying, I am being very local here, but the prophet says, your freedom stops when the freedom of others start. And this is, I think, where our motto comes from, when we talk about freedom of expression and the guarantees of having the rights online.
Talking about education, we do have to invest more in education and not just in research and but understanding it. Because, to be honest, I could see a lot of comments that really thinks differently about AI or thinks differently about governance, because our backgrounds does affect us.
So, investing in awareness and investing also, our kids have different views about artificial intelligence than we do. We think that artificial, maybe I'm being very naive here, but it's going to take our jobs. In some cases, it is going to open other jobs.
I talked to one of the youth kids and I was telling him, why don't you get into artificial intelligence? And he said, why do I have to study it? I don't have we look differently at it. I mean, 10 years ago, studying artificial intelligence was then you think. They look at it as a regular thing (the new thing). So, we have to think, not for today, but for 10 years ahead of us and it's also very hard to have a balanced policy that regulates security and regulates societies and thinking about harm, at the same time giving space and having it an open spectrum for all citizens to give their opinion.
So, it is very layered, but at the same time, very simple. And we have to look at it from a very balanced way that education and media interferes with each other. So, I hope I didn't exceed my time.
>> ONSITE MODERATOR: Thank you very much, Excellency. Let me now give the floor, please, to Her Excellency, Madam Jehad Abdulla Al Fadhel, please.
>> JEHAD ABDULLA AL FADHEL: (No English translation) are women as (?) have mentioned. We are legislators. We need to determine the legislations and renew them and update them, in fact, so we will be working hand in hand with technology and they should be a partnership between and cooperation between the parliament, the government and the private sector and civil society so you can attain a safe environment and where there will be development, there will be improvement in every respect, in order to build also a parliamentarian knowledge probably or knowledge so this will help us actually in finding an environment that is legally accepted regulated more type of, you know, life.
That's why also this you can avoid the question of (?) the question from our colleague from Algeria. He talked about unifying the legislations. I think it will be suitable probably for us to have an international network that has to do with the governance of the Internet and the security on the Internet. And so these, so the recommendations here could probably improve such organization so that it will be formed different countries and have its own legislations in each country.
Last point I would like to make, we have to also punish civilians or those who are actually misuse the Internet for bad purposes and for harm of people, especially crimes that has to do with drugs and money laundering, et cetera.
>> ONSITE MODERATOR: Thank you very much. I now give the floor to.
>> JORDAN HADFIELD: Thank you for the wonderful question. Thought provoking questions from everyone. From an FBI standpoint, when we look at investigate itself at anything that comes our way, a lead, an investigative lead, a threat (.), we want to know what is real (jordan), what is dis or misinformation, what might be part of a larger narrative of a threat or what is a threat and so you have to be able to define those things is what is an online harm, but what is a threat, what is considered threat to life to a child or threat to life to a city.
You mentioned deepfakes. You mentioned generative imagery which all of those things grow in the last couple of years, we are now seeing hoaxes on the rise, not sure from many of you if this will cross the boundaries but I remember being in grade school and someone would be able to pull the fire alarm to get out of classes. Today you go to jail for that and there are serious consequences. If you are an adult and you are a juvenile, you are in trouble.
It's much easier for someone to pull a hoax or to have a phone call with a threat than it has ever been. And so the thing that we know is true is that the law, certainly in the United States is evolving, and ask the evolution of those laws to be able to better provide our industry, but also our law enforcement with tools to be able to actually take law enforcement action to help our prosecutors take Proce curatorial action so that we can go after the real threats and not the fake ones.
You know, we are guided by, certainly within the FBI and our agents, by the constitution, First Amendment freedoms and so every single time we receive a threat, we have to put it through that lens of does this violate some nature of, is it a First Amendment right, is it a First Amendment freedom, is it someone's freedom of expression or speech or religion or what it might be, before we then move to the next level.
When we discuss what that looks like, we discuss should it be an investigation, should it be a disruption, because something has been violated, or should it be a prevention activity. And I think all of those those three things don't always necessarily end up in prosecution, in someone behind bars, in someone paying some sort of, you know, justice for some crime.
Ideally, I think in our world how law enforcement might be shifting in the future, we want to prevent as much crime as we can. So, if we are able to recognize and identify an online harm that hasn't passed its way into actual criminal activity, we want to do whatever we can to prevent that before it does become a crime. Thank you.
>> ONSITE MODERATOR: Thank you very much, Mr. Hadfield. Let me now please give the floor to Mr. Singh from APNIC foundation.
>> RAJNESH SINGH: Thank you, and I echo my fellow panelists' comment that there are some great questions that came from the floor and I wish we could sit here and debate a few of those but I don't think we have that much time.
Just a couple of things I would like to pick on. There was mention about the need to bring greater diversity, not just in the tax base but in society in general when it comes to women and the role they play.
One of the bodies of work that my organization does is all about empowering women, particularly in the tech industry. We have a fairly substantial programme that's been running in East Asia for a number of years now. And to that end, I can talk about that, but I know we don't have much time but if you are interested to know more, we have a session on that actually at 4:30 p.m. today in workshop Room 1. And the title is breaking barriers, empowering women in network engineering so I will invite you to come and listen from people who are doing that work and see the difference that can be made.
Second, there was talk about how to ensure that we get more females and gender diverse people as well online. One way to, perhaps, address that is trying to build safe spaces. There are social, cultural and economic reasons that that cannot happen. So, creating the safe spaces for them maybe one way to approach it.
And the last point I would like to make, there was talk about, you know, how their global or multinational tech companies and they are all over the world. We use the services. But there's nothing stopping a local company from developing that either. That's the beauty of the open Internet model, the multistakeholder model that's been used to develop that Internet means that anyone can, basically, create any application or services. Whether it's successful or not, the market will decide.
But one thing that I do see missing and this is, perhaps, the message to the parliamentarians in the room and online, is that you should look at how your citizens can become creators and not just consumers of what's available on the Internet. And to do that, you could look at how do you actually support our substantial local digital ecosystem nots just depend on the following digital ecosystem that you are consuming stuff overseas. That could be the way through innovation hubs to getting education programmes in place, to digital institutions. Lots of way to do that. I will leave that as food for thought. Again, thank you for the opportunity.
>> ONSITE MODERATOR: Thank you very much, Mr. Singh.
Let me now turn to ambassador Dowling from Australia, please.
>> BRENDAN DOWLING: Thank you. A lot of the questions went to balancing innovation and rights with measures that governments take to address online harms. I think because we are at the Internet Governance Forum, I want to underscore your point, Raj, that when we are talking about content issues, there is a sovereign right for governments to take measures to address online harms, but what we must do is preserve the technical underpinnings of the Internet.
So, we need to separate these two issues and say, content moderation, online harms is a national jurisdiction in consultation globally, but the global interoperability of the technical layer of Internet is something that we must preserve and not interfere with through national legislation.
On how we strike that balance, it's difficult. It requires us to be considered thoughtful consultive to work with civil society, to work with industry. What I would say is every new phase of digital technology, be it software, social media, AI, immediately we see bad actors utilize this technology to conduct harmful activity. And every new phase see women and girls targeted by malicious actors using this new technology.
It's frustrating when we seem to be surprised by that. We see technology platforms developing AI tools and then saying, ah, turns out it is being used to generate abusive images of women online. We should know and expect and we need to talk about safety by design at every phase of new technology because we know how the technology will be misused and abused.
We have seen this year for the first time a reduction in women participating in public life, in running for parliament because they are subjected to so much abuse online.
Our view is the idea that the technology industry and social media companies have been saying for many years, don't worry, we have got this. We are taking care of our users. They have followed abjectly for many years to have true accountability to really prioritize safety by design which is why we see governments like our taking measures to better protect our people online.
The balance needs to be struck to say our legislation must always prioritize human rights, must always prioritize privacy, must always be subject to the rule of law. There is a right way to do this, but the days of just accepting the digital world as a free for all of the wild west are over. We need to be active in protecting our people online, as I said, it needs to be consultive, it needs to take into account the rights, needs to take into account privacy.
We are implementing a ban on social media accounts for under 16 year olds. The question went to the consultation with youth. This has been a long standing community concern that the documented and research harms of children from social media have not been adequately addressed by social media companies. We now have a 12 month runway to develop how that tool will be developed and implemented, that will involve significant consultation and work on what the technical solutions are.
I would say the responsibility through that legislation will be on the platforms to develop tools to limit use of social media accounts by children. It will not impact on the use of the Internet for educational and other purposes.
It is a big step. It's a world leading step. It's not without controversy, it's not without difficulty in its design but I think our movement on that issue comes from a sense of frustration that we have not seen adequate measures by technology platforms to protect the well being of children online.
>> ONSITE MODERATOR: Thank you very much, Excellency.
Let me turn now to Mrs. Nighat Dad from the Oversight Board. Please, you have the floor.
>> NIGHAT DAD: Yeah. There were two questions. One was related to why a platform company needs an Oversight Board when there are universal laws. And I would say that any powerful institution or entity actually needs an oversight. We do have oversight bodies and committees in the parliament to keep check on government actions as well and we do need these oversight bodies over Internet companies and tech giants that what they are exactly doing. We don't want bunch of white dudes sitting in Silicon Valley deciding for the rest of the world.
And if you look at decisions of Oversight Board, you will see that we actually have looked into the international human rights framework. That's our the central approach, while we decide these cases.
I think it's also important for us to know that while governments are legislating and initiating regulations around technology and tech platforms, let's just be honest. Many governments are also departing from human rights framework. And it's important for us to kind of see how we can hold not only tech companies accountable but governments as well. And that's why I'm saying not as a member of Oversight Board but as a civil society member working on digital rights in Pakistan.
With regards to your question, your Excellency, around context, I would say the board is very diverse group of people. We have board member from Africa, her name is Ms. Afia, and if you look at the decisions of the board, they are from all regions. One very small example that maybe people sitting in the room will relate to, Meta reached out to us for a particular term Shaheed, which is an Arabic word, this is the most over enforced word on the platform and they reached out to us asking us give us advice that how we can approach this particular terminology. And we all know, like, I am in Pakistan, in India, in Bangladesh, in Saudi Arabia, the word Shaheed, we use in different ways. There are different contexts so coming to your point of context, we actually deliberated on that particular issue for a year. And received comments from all over the world. And what we told Meta, that you should stop presuming that the word Shaheed when used to refer to a designated individual or unnamed members of designated organization is always violating and illegible for policy exceptions.
There is this context that maybe global does not understand word Shaheed understands, we understand. That is what we told Meta to do. They were implementing our recommendations. I would encourage parliamentarians sitting in the room to read the decisions that we have given because there's so much nuance in there. It is not only help the parliamentarians while they are drafting their own laws but also looking into seeing the it's a very diverse body, and we are making all the efforts to hold this company accountable and I feel that all other companies also need to have such kind of bodies.
Mr. Ambassador, I would like to really appreciate the e safety commission. The work that Madam Julia has done and also encourage commissioners all over the world. She also really appreciative our work and all the work that we have done. We are one of our priority now is to look into the well being of young people on the platform as well. Thank you.
>> ONSITE MODERATOR: Thank you very much, Madam Nighat. I would like to say that we have the pleasure to count on the room with the speaker of the parliament of (?), away like to give him the floor, please.
>> Thank you so much. I know (?) but I don't want to take this opportunity to welcome His Excellency representative of Kenya ba Raman and thank you on behalf of our Shura Council speaker, Dr. Abdulla, I thank him for his attending and I will pass the microphone for him, if he would like to say some remarks, please.
>> No problem. (No English translation)