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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>> ANNOUNCER: Please welcome to the stage, the moderator, Nikolis Smith.
>> NIKOLIS SMITH: I hope everyone was able to get a bite to eat and their stomachs are replenished and ready for more IGF 2025.
So, today's session, the title of today's session is "Safeguarding Democracy in the Digital Age: Legislative Priorities and Policy Pathways."
This session gathers members of parliament from across the globe to discuss how digital technologies are impacting democracy and what legislative and policy actions are being taken to preserve democratic institutions and trust.
Again, my name is Nikolis Smith. I'm the Founder and President of StratAlliance, supporting public-private partnerships and technology policy engagement.
Now, before we call our distinguished panel to the floor, we have to start by recognizing a familiar face that I am going to call out in just a second. He's been an advocate for the IGF since its existence. Please welcome Junhua Li, Under-Secretary-General of the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs.
>> JUNHUA LI: Distinguished members of the parliament, dear colleagues, good afternoon. It is my great pleasure to welcome you all to the Parliamentary Track of the IGF 2025 in Lillestrøm. As we convene this important meeting, our purpose is very clear, to bring legislators together with all the other stakeholders to shape digital policies and legislative frameworks to ensure that an open, inclusive, and secured Internet for all. Under the overarching frame of the IGF 2025, building digital governance together, we will focus on the critical need for the international digital cooperation to address today's digital challenges.
Among the most urgent of these is the imperatives to protect the freedom of expression, while combating the rampant misspread of misinformation and disinformation. The ability to speak freely, access accurate information, and engage in an open online discourse is the backbone of the democratic societies. Yet, these fundamental rights are being tested not only by the disinformation and censorship, but also of the rights of the powerful technologies like the generative AI, further aligns between the fact and fiction challenges our very understanding of truths.
We face profound challenges from the forced narratives that are in the partnership institutions to the disinformation campaigns that threaten the peace and stability. The digital environment demands new approaches that uphold human rights, while preserving civic space.
At the same time, we must ensure that the responses to these threats do not infringe upon the very freedoms we seek to protect. Navigating the terrain is pivotal. You have the authority to craft the legislation that safeguards the freedoms of expression and access to the information, promote media and the information richer and strengthen the resilience of democratic discourse. You can foster a digital environment with the right to express diverse views is protected and respected. And the reliable fact-based information is prioritized over the manipulation and distortion. This is how we can ensure that the innovation and inclusion advancing in lockstep with human dignity and safety by actively engaging in this forum, you are not only contributing to a vital global down lock on the digital policies, but also shaping the national frameworks that reflect these shared values.
I appeal and urge of you to carry the outcomes of our discussions here in IGF 2025 back to your respective parliaments, driving continued momentum and policy coherence at both national and regional levels. We have seen encouraging progress while expanding the parliamentary engagement in national and regional IGFs from West Africa to the Asia Pacific. Conversation is essential. We are eager to learn from your insights and the national experiences and identify the new avenues for collaboration. Let us strengthen this engagement and champion digital governance that respects the freedom of expression, addresses the information integrity, and supports open, inclusive, and rights-based digital space.
I extend my sincere thanks to the Interparliamentary Union, the Norwegian parliament and our partners for their invaluable collaboration on the parliamentarian track and for their commitment to integrating the parliamentary voices into the UN processes. I wish you a very fruitful exchange and impactful outcomes. Thank you.
>> NIKOLIS SMITH: Thank you very much, Mr. Li. Thank you very much for those words of encouragement. As we go through the challenges with Internet Governance. Now, this would not be a proper parliamentary track session if we did not hear from a very respected person that we all know, Mr. Martin Chungong, Secretary General of the Interparliamentary Union and is a prominent advocate for resilient democratic institutions. We have a video message that we would like to show you now.
>> MARTIN CHUNGONG: Mr. Under-Secretary-General, distinguished parliamentarians, and IGF participants. I have great pleasure in welcoming you to this parliamentary roundtable at the 20th Internet Governance Forum. This session provides a unique platform for parliamentarians, policymakers, and the governance experts to build consensus on one of the most pressing challenges, safeguarding democratic institutions in the digital age.
At a time when democratic norms face unprecedented pressure and public trust continues to erode, global cooperation on combating misinformation is more crucial than ever. A fragmented approach to information integrity risks undermining the very foundations of democratic discourse and exacerbating the crisis of trust that threatens our societies. The rapid spread of misinformation through digital technologies has fundamentally altered the information landscape in which our democracies operate. Citizens struggle to distinguish fact from fiction, electroprocesses face manipulation through coordinated disinformation campaigns, and democratic institutions find their legitimacy questioned based on false narratives.
The rise of artificial intelligence has fundamentally transformed the misinformation landscape with deepfakes, AI-generated content and algorithmic amplification, creating unprecedented challenges for democratic discourse. Yet, within this challenge lies profound opportunity.
By working together across borders and political systems, we can develop common principles that preserve both free expression and democratic integrity. Parliaments as the voice of the people have a pivotal role in ensuring that digital transformation strengthens, rather than weakens democratic governance. In our response we are guided by the Global Digital Compact and emerging international consensus on information integrity.
And while the Global Digital Compact represents an important foundation, there is still much work to transform its vision into effective safeguards for democracy. I encourage all participants to actively engage in these discussions, recognizing that the frameworks we develop today will determine whether democratic institutions emerge stronger from the digital transformation. Together we can ensure that democracy not only survives the digital age, but emerges more resilient, transparent and responsive to the citizens we serve. Thank you.
(Applause)
>> NIKOLIS SMITH: Okay. Thank you, for those remarks. Now it is my deep honour to introduce our panel that's going to be with us this afternoon. First, we have Senator Catherine Mumma from Ghana -- from Kenya.
Then we have Rebecca Bauer-Kahan, California assembly member, chair of the privacy and consumer protection committee.
Grunde Almeland from Norway, member of parliament, Marsha Caddle from Barbados, also a member of parliament and former Minister of Information and technology. Zafar Alizoda, member of parliament as well.
I would like to welcome them to the stage.
>> NIKOLIS SMITH: Full disclosure, everyone, made the first mistake, said that our up -- one of our first speakers is actually from Ghana, but she is from Kenya, my apologies. I want to get that out to her, first and foremost.
Okay. So, here we are. We are back, this is the parliamentary track session. We have a lot to talk about over this next hour. So, what we are going to do is we are going do have our distinguished panelists here, we will go through a series of questions, we will also leave time for the audience to ask questions because that's very important. And then we will have some closing remarks as well. Okay?
So, let me start first with the host of this year's IGF, Grunde Almeland. Recently you just concluded an expert group on AI, an elections was recently tasked with this. What are the biggest challenges that you see, Grunde, from the Norwegian democracy, in terms of how it faces and what are those challenges, what are you doing exactly in parliament? Because I know we think of AI, it's at every intercourse that we see, from not only just the IGF, but other bodies. But I know that it's very important for Norway and the parliament. So if you can just enlighten us in where you guys are at this point.
>> GRUNDE ALMELAND: First of all, it's an honour to host this event this year and it's an honour for all of us in parliament as well, that this event is taking place here in our country. But to your question, I think, you know, what worries me the most is one of the key findings in the report you are referencing. And that is that truth is becoming less relevant. And with that, the report that went through all these different elections in 2024 and saw how AI is superpower in content, creating so much more content to engage with for people, we see that truth is becoming less and less important because what you engage with, what you look at is things, content that is already confirming your beliefs and are kind of helping you stay in this comfortable bubble that it's hard and harder to pierce with factorial debate and true, and, well, facts, so to say.
And I don't want to be all doom and gloom because there is a lot that we can do. And one of the key -- you know, they look at a lot of different measures in that report. They look on how you can build competency, how to implement stuff in schools. How you should advance research. But one of the key measures is supporting and strengthening independence media organizations, and I think this is the measure that I want to focus on in the beginning now, because it is such an important measure in order to have something that can kind of combat this reality that is being created in a lot of different bubbles.
And there is such a connection between our trust as politicians, trust in us as politicians, and people having access to true information and having access to also media or content that is being edited by a professional, well, independent media, edited media. To say they know what we are doing as politicians are being checked, that we are being transparent about what we are doing, and this is where the media comes in. And I think for Norway, independent media has been an important political issue across the aisle for a lot of years. We are number one on the press freedom index and it's partially because of what we are doing in parliament, but, of course, hugely what the reporters are doing every day on their work.
But looking at what the parliaments can do, starting with the strong legislative foundation, and that is having -- we are having an act that ensures independence, editorial independence, that ensures that owners of a newspaper cannot go in and challenge what the editor or the journalists are reporting on, making sure that we as politicians are not -- we do not have access, even though we do allocate a lot of funds to the media, we are not able to access independent decisions on what is being reported. And the owner of a newspaper cannot require to see a journalist's work before it's been published. These kind of legislative measures are really important to have a strong foundation.
And then comes funding, and we do quite extensively fund media in a way. I think this is very important in order to have all these not only national newspapers that would be there, that could thrive in almost any kind of society, but also having those small local news outlets that can also check what the politicians and staff is doing on the local level, and I think having this kind of built-up media system ensures that people in Norway can -- they know what they can access information on what we are actually doing. And there is a lot to be said for this. We have a lot to work on in order to become more transparent, especially when you see a shift in how we also communicate as politicians going from more simpler days of writing letters to each other and going on to all these different channels of technology.
There's a lot of things to be done. But I think this is a good starting point. And I will end on this note, saying that the report is also highlighting one last thing, and that is that we have to be level headed and not disaggregate the impact of AI. Disaggregating it and trying to fearmonger as politicians is also a way of making that kind of misinformation have a stronger meaning in itself.
>> NIKOLIS SMITH: Thank you for those remarks and you are absolutely right about keeping the level, right, because we don't want to approach everything with fear, right? We have to remember that AI is a tool that was invented by humans, right? But there's benefits to AI. And what we are going to talk about today will speak to that.
So, I appreciate those introductory remarks. I wanted to turn now to you, Senator. My good friend from Kenya. You are very well known in circles on the African content, you are very active in the regional things that are happening as it relates to the IGF. Can you help us, take us through what are you seeing as the emerging threats in Kenya, and what are the countermeasures that you are taking to this point?
>> CATHERINE MUMMA: Thank you very much, first, to say that the Kenya has embraced matters relating to digital technology in a profound way. We recognize that this is where the world is headed, not just on actually all democratic matters, including both politics and development.
So, Kenya has kind of anticipated this, and I would want to say that we have a good legal framework that currently supports the growth of Internet and digital technological advances. We have a very facilitative constitution that protects freedoms of expression, the right to access information, but also provides for protection of human rights. It is a very strong, very strong on human rights. It also provides for protection of consumer rights.
As a result, we have a number of laws that are actually guide or regulate issues relating to matters Internet and digital technology. We have the cyber, the Computer Misuse and Cyber Protection Act. We have the data protection Act. We have the Media Council Act. We have the Copyrights Act that protects intellectual property. And we have the National Cohesion and Integration Act that set up a commission to deal with matters relating to hate speech.
But we still have challenges when it comes to misinformation and disinformation using the social medias. And we don't have a law that specifically addresses misinformation and disinformation, not because the law is somewhere and it needs to quickly come, as you will appreciate from the conversations we have heard since this morning, hitting the balance between protection of human rights and regulating and also allowing innovation to unhinge, to progress unhinged is something that is beyond legislation, is something that sometimes is beyond the politics of the day. Because as politicians, a lot of the misuse, the disinformation and misinformation is particularly during electoral times. And for us in Kenya, every time is elections time. We actually finish elections today and the next day we are competing for the next, we are already campaigning.
There is a lot of disinformation, use of hate speech in our part of the country or a part of where our country is. We have been or we have suffered post-election violence following hate speech that was negatively, I mean that used negative ethnicity. And that's how we came up with the cohesion commission.
But now with matters digital technology, we have heard a lot of misinformation that is used by politically competing groups to actually use demonizing language, misinformation around maybe national policies that are happening to try and demonize government or information to try and demonize an opposition leader, and it's happening to a stage where it's ending up in violence. And I would want to say that our challenge really is on how we can regulate that without looking at if we are overcorrecting or over enforcing.
There is also the challenge of the possibility of abuse of office, misuse by government of some of the privileges. How would we use, for instance, surveillance around matters, digital content to the advantage of the government and to abuse rights of opponents, political opponents. I would say we have a good legislative framework not complete enough in the sense that we still have to find ways of protecting rights, including rights of children. I think we have a lot of access for children on the Internet that is actually harming their health, including matters relating to pornography and so on.
We would need to think through to find out how do we, beyond the Kenyan parliament and Kenyan legislation, how would we think through a violator that is situated in another jurisdiction, what kind of conversation can we have in forums like the IGF to ensure that beyond national legislation, we are able to come up whether with it codes of conduct that would, one, hold accountable, those in charge of these platforms, as well as ensure that the freedom to advance in digital technology happens.
There is also, when you are talking about human rights, we also need to think about beyond the issue of information and disinformation, how do we include more people. In our area, I think one of the things we need to do is have greater investment beyond regulation, we need to give some financial investment in the necessary public digital infrastructure that would see those in rural areas to equally participating in the benefits of the digital space and technology, to see more women participating in this space, to see more other vulnerable and minority groups participating in this piece.
So, as a country, I believe beyond protecting against disinformation, there is the issue of also inclusion, which is a human rights issue that we need to look at.
So, as we discuss, as we discuss this issue, beyond just discussing the regulation, we need to discuss how best to invest more in order for more people to participate in this space.
>> NIKOLIS SMITH: Let me say that hats off to all the work that you are doing in Kenya, because as you listed a long list of laws that you have been able to implement, so that's progress, right? Obviously you made the point that there's still more progress to be done. But I think that Kenya is in the right direction. They are going in the right direction. And I commend you guys for that.
(Applause)
>> NIKOLIS SMITH: On this same topic, I want to move now to assembly member Rebecca Bauer-Kahan of California. I lived in California as a kid as well. So there is a little bit of priority here with that.
But California has been very active in this space, probably more active than other states in the country. Tell us, what are the approaches now, knowing what you did back in 2018 when CCPA was passed and we are looking now into the future. Where are we going forward? And when we think about regulatory approaches, what's being explored in terms of to ensure information integrity, right, because now as the Senator mentioned it's elections, right, and we just got through one election, right? And there's going to be more on the horizon.
In terms of integrity, where do we go now?
>> REBECCA BAUER-KAHAN: Thank you so much for this conversation. It's my first time at the IGF and I have to say one of my takeaways so far this morning is despite the fact that all of our jurisdictions are so different, we are really all struggling with this same issue and information integrity. And for those that don't know the law that was cited as our privacy law. We were the first state in the United States to pass a privacy protective piece of legislation shortly after the European Union passed their privacy laws. And some states have followed. But we are still not nearly as protective as the European Union.
And I should ground this in being from California, we are home to 32 of the top 50 AI companies. We are home to all of the major social media companies. So, these are the people I represent. They make this technology. They proliferate it to the world.
And with that, I think we feel a great responsibility and sitting there this morning listening to what is happening across the world as a result of some of this, it's intense what these companies are doing to change the global ecosystem. And we have the federal government. I have long believed the federal government is in the best position to regulate these technologies for us as a country. But they won't. And they don't.
So, the states are taking it upon themselves to protect our constituents and to try to push these companies in the direction of responsibility. But as I'm sure many people in the room are aware, we too have constitutional protections of freedom of speech. Our constitutional protections say that we may not stop people from speaking. It also says we cannot force people to speak, which is an interesting dynamic, because one of the ways that we have tried to combat mis and disinformation as a result of our First Amendment, our protection of freedom of speech, is to require more speech, to say, you have to disclose when you are using AI in a political advertisement so people know they are seeing something that's AI generated. That's held up in the courts right now because the courts are saying that as forced speech.
So, we have a very complicated dynamic of how we get at this issue of mis and disinformation when we have such strong protections around speech. But that's one way.
So, we continue to try to do that. We have passed legislation that requires those disclosures, that require the platforms to take down serious misinformation in the political context, although political speech is even more protected than your average speech in America. So that is a really challenging thing to do.
So, the next step we are taking is trying to push forward on watermarking, which I know is something that the European Union has pushed for. But this ability to understand reality from fiction I think is fundamental to protecting our democracies. And so watermarking and the technology that will go along with it is critical and I think with the EU pushing on watermarking and California pushing, we are the fourth largest economy in the world. We have a lot of tech companies in our back yard. And can we really make sure that technology comes to fruition so around the world we can all require it, we can all say we need water marking.
Right now the technology is not yet where we want it to be. But if it is there, maybe it will give us that ability for constituents to know what is real and what is not. And I think that would be game changing.
Just a few hours ago someone asked me about what's happening in California. Many have seen in the worldwide news about what is happening in my home state as it relates to our friction with the federal government right now. And one of the things we have faced is massive disinformation. So many deepfakes about what is happening on the streets of Los Angeles. I was there just a week ago, it was incredibly peaceful. That is not what you're saying on the social media sites because of all of the deepfakes being generated. When people cannot tell that from reality, it leads to serious outcomes in our elections, in our society, and we have to do more.
So, California is going to continue to push, although, I will say that right now the federal government is moving what would be a 10-year ban on state enforcement of artificial intelligence, which would stop most of California's efforts. And so there really is, when I talk about friction with the federal government in California right now, I can't overstate it.
>> NIKOLIS SMITH: Thank you for that. As a former federal employee, I am not going to start any more frictions right now especially since we are both from the same state so I wouldn't want to do that.
I do want to turn to another region in the world and for everybody here who does not speak Russian, please use your headsets. I want to turn now to our friend from Tajikistan. Mr. Alizoda, in the Central Asian response to information manipulation and the steps that are being taken, can you talk to us about the measures that you are taking in terms of building that type of institutional resiliency as it relates to everything that you have heard so far?
>> ZAFAR ALIZODA: Thank you. Thank you very much. First of all, I would like to take this opportunity to tell you about Tajikistan in terms of building resiliency and how we provide for uniformity of information and integrity of information, especially when it comes to digital technologies and their implementation in Central Asia.
Each country has its own laws regarding personal data and in Central Asian countries, personal data cover a wider meaning when it comes to privacy and private life. So, in accordance with our legislation, it covers both property and rights, and if you violate this right, we go on a case-by-case basis and it also depends on which country you are dealing with sensitive personal data fall under the category of personal data and this also covers confidential information about a person.
So, it includes racial origin, ethnic origin, beliefs, religious belief, professional activity, medical data, biometric data, et cetera.
This data need to be protected in a special manner, because their disclosure may result in discrimination, stigmatization and other negative consequences for the person. So, when it comes to the legislation, we really need to protect personal data, and this is one of the most complex tasks for the state. At this juncture, Central Asian states are developing a real institute for the protection of personal data.
Unfortunately, however, legislation doesn't cover all the aspects for personal data of the citizens. We still lack in our legislation how to operate and act quickly in order to prevent data leaks and breaches. There are no obligations either on providing information when it comes to the operators. So privacy is a very complicated issue, because it covers both public and private sector.
According to the national experts, it is really essential to review the legislation in Central Asia when it comes to personal data so that we reflect modern realities, including digital technologies. Because even when it's a public good, digital technologies should not limit personal rights and freedoms.
So, any business practice should envisage the assessment and protection of personal data so that there is a possibility in the future to provide information how the risks can be mitigated and the privacy can be assured.
In parallel with the European law, when it comes to personal data, the legislators in Central Asia should address the issue of introducing a legal framework for risk assessment and GDPR equivalent. And I would like to note here when it comes to GDPR, we don't implement it always, only when data processing is accompanied by the actual violation of the rights of people.
So, societies should have efficient legal tools and instruments so that to provide for human rights and personal privacy, as well as confidentiality for personal data. I should also like to know that at the legislative level to promote this information policy and strategy, which would help to balance our informational space, the Central Asia states are a member of Interparliamentary Assembly of the CIS country and there is a special declaration for cooperation in this area. Thank you.
>> NIKOLIS SMITH: Thank you very much. I couldn't agree with you more with respect to the institute that you mentioned. I think the first kind of tasks I think our panelists would agree, is that domestically as you are going through a process, you have to have something to formulate a risk assessment, right? It's key. And I think that using the IGF to discuss these issues would be a great opportunity. So hopefully you will be able to take back what you hear here and take it back and continue to achieve those efforts.
Last but not least from the Island of Barbados, Ms. Marsha Caddle. What steps are underway in Barbados to rebuild public trust in elections and the democratic system?
>> MARSHA CADDLE: Thanks. That's a big question.
>> NIKOLIS SMITH: It's loaded.
>> MARSHA CADDLE: It's very loaded. Let me set some context by saying that Barbados is a small island in the Caribbean, population of 270,000, about, and declining, which is another. Existential threats that we are facing, falling population and aging population.
But Barbados has always had since independence a history of stable, free and fair elections and a high degree of political stability. I think it's important to set that context because these circumstances in which we are talking about these issues of maintaining democracy and democratic participation are against the backdrop of expectations of stability and truth.
The other thing that we have in Barbados is extremely high Internet and digital penetration. So, you will see our numbers say something like 114% mobile penetration. So, we are kind of over the maximum. People have very immediate access to information and high expectations about that information.
So, then the question becomes about not just access, but meaningful access and use, as we talk about these issues. Just before I got on a plane to come here, the office of the Prime Minister in Barbados had to push out urgently warnings about a deepfake that had just been circulating. And I want to share the example because it highlights not just the domestic issues when it comes to democratic participation and trust, but also the potential risk to destabilize global relations, international relations on foreign policy. The deepfake was about the Prime Minister saying something in relation to another major world power and saying untruthfully that Barbados was taking a certain diplomatic stance with respect to this country.
Now, that has the potential to completely, especially in this current global political environment, to completely put at risk a lot of what a country is doing with respect to policy and global engagement. So, we are not just talking about domestic trust, but we are talking about international and a country's global position in the world.
And so I wanted to say a little bit in answer to your question about what we are doing. One of the things I think is very important is this issue of democratic literacy. How do people interact with policy conversations, with electoral processes? One of the things that we have tried to do simply is to push out as much truth and transparency as we can. Start to get people accustomed to an environment of truth and evidence. Because that, even before we started talking about technology, is perhaps something that hasn't been as strong as we would like.
So, for example, we have these joint select committees of parliament that consider issues before they are passed, consider legislation that have to do with governance, with social issues and so on. And they are broadcast. There are very few things that the Prime Minister says, through speeches, engagements that are not broadcast either in realtime or recorded and shared. And why? Because we want to be able to get people used to the idea of truth. This is the original source. And this is where you can find it. You can find it on these channels. You can find it in these ways.
The other thing that we are working on is investing in a tech ecosystem that can balance or build tools that essentially fight against misinformation so that there are others who are investing very heavily in misinformation, what can we do to invest in creators, tech creators who are going to combat that with things that promote truth?
One of the things, though, that we think is very important is encouraging platforms to return to more robust methods of verification. We think that that is critical and I will say very quickly, I think it was Rebecca who said earlier that political speech is very protected in general in your jurisdiction. The interesting thing is that while political speech is protected and while I can sit in one jurisdiction in the country like Barbados and see things proliferating about political actors in my space, on the other hand, as a political actor on a social media platform sitting in Barbados, I am not trusted to generate content. And so as soon as I try to generate content as a politician, I am told, well, actually you're a politician and we are not sure that you should be able to say these things on our platform.
So, the question of being able to combat misinformation is also, I am also constrained because of some of the rules that platforms that are generated in other parts of the world but impact the way that I can talk to my constituents the way that they operate.
I think these are some of the ways that we have started to really try and encourage an environment of real evidence and truth. There is legislation.
I was the minister who brought cybercrime legislation, we took it to the joint select committee. We heard evidence. We heard pushback. We heard concerns on human rights from citizens. And we amended the legislation. And so I think this is a healthy way to get people in the conversation and make sure that we realize that democratic participation and adherence to truth and evidence is everybody's concern.
>> NIKOLIS SMITH: Thank you very much. So, we have talked an array of different areas in terms of what we are doing within our governments, the challenges that we are facing. What else -- we will start back with you, Senator. But what are the other gaps that we are missing? I think there is room there where we can recognize the existing challenges that are there. But are there areas that we are not focusing on maybe that could help us bring this together?
And then the second piece of that, is that on the non-legislative side, are there areas where we can collaborate? Obviously, the IGF is a great platform, right? But are there other areas that we could be doing on an international front because we are looking at it from a domestic lens, right, to make sure that we come together? I will start with you.
>> CATHERINE MUMMA: Thank you very much. Now, because we are parliamentarians, I have noticed that we tend to focus on the impact of technology in the political space. But I would want us to think broader and imagine the innovation in the health sector, for instance, with digital technology, how will telemedicine took like and how should parliament anticipate the possibilities of human rights violations with advancement of digital technology in the health sector. And, therefore, how would that law look like.
So, we should not be fixated with a particular law that will deal with matters digital technology. We need to think broadly to see would we need to look at the laws in the health sector? Do we need to tweak something in the health sector, in the water sector, in the other sectors, so that we know the dangers that we are seeing now around democratic spaces could actually extend and have even more or even more profound implications to the common person. So, we need to think broadly around that and agree on how best to deal with this.
So, I think laws on digital technology are not about a particular legislation. It's cross board and we need to think beyond this and allow our professionals in all sectors to help us think around this.
Now, when it comes to thinking on what to do internationally and nationally, first to thank the IGF for the proactive way in which they are actually moving this agenda and getting us to learn and also discuss more within their forums.
In the Africa space, we have African parliamentarians have actually taken the liberty to form the African parliament caucuses so that we can actually compare notes and know that what happens in Tanzania will affect us in Kenya, will affect those in Malawi, will affect those in Nigeria. So, we need to start borrowing from each other and listening to each other and learning to grow on this.
And beyond legislation, we need to find out how the mechanisms we have in place could be built upon to do -- somebody in the morning talked about a mechanism for auditing information. How would that look like? Kenya has the data commission protection -- the data protection commissioner. It also has the media Council. Should we add onto their mandate some more clauses that will help us to monitor the area better? Do we need maybe an African Union or East African community mechanism that will help us to check the situation further. So, there is all these opportunities. Thank you.
>> NIKOLIS SMITH: Thank you.
We have about 10 minutes left of this section and then we are going to go into Q&A. I am going to go down the line. Rebecca, I will turn to you next.
>> REBECCA BAUER-KAHAN: So, I think that where I am sitting one of the things that is missing is technology for good. We see technology in the hands of very few players right now that are for better or worse profit driven. And how do we push technology to be the solution in the technology age. And I think that that's something that we really need to be working on, both locally in California, but also globally. And so part of what we are trying to figure out is how can we fund that? How can we put more money into our academic institutions to have the compute power to compete with the largest AI companies. Right now the only companies able to build these large-language models are these very well-funded companies and our academics needs to be in this space to create technology for good.
There's one example for us in the United States, on the intellectual property front, the University of Chicago created an AI model that allows you to put something into your copyrighted material that if a model is trained with your material, it will actually refuse it, if you will. And that's not a legal protection. It's a technology protection. And those are the kind of tools that I think we need to really allow us to battle against as you said, the misinformation and the disinformation ecosystem that is growing and can, I believe, be solved in part by better technology for good. And we have a real role in doing so.
And part of that, the reason we believe we are home to so many of these companies is our academic institutions, is the training that they provide. And if we are investing in technology for good at our academic institutions, are we then putting people into the world to create companies for good and how do we create that ecosystem I think is really important.
And then I will say on the global landscape, I think it is this kind of collaboration. I think it is understanding we are all trying different things. We are all out there in a world that was created over the last decade, trying to find solutions to very new problems and as has been said many times today, the technology is moving faster than the policy.
To the extent that we can listen to each other and hear what is working in your jurisdiction and how can I bring it home to help the people where I live, I think we are better off, because we have to move fast in order to protect our societies and the only way to do that is in collaboration and partnership.
>> NIKOLIS SMITH: Thank you, Rebecca.
Grunde.
>> GRUNDE ALMELAND: I think I will pick up on technology for good and as you were talking about, democratic literacy, we know very well that digital -- being able to adapt digitally does not necessarily translate to democratic literacy or media literacy.
But one of the reasons why I wanted to focus on independent media in the beginning is because the example of Norway is also an example of how digital adaptability enabled us to still have quite a high level of trust in media, and how that technology actually were able to create a foundation for people being able to access independent media, being able to have this high level of media literacy that we are very fortunate to have. And I think it's such a good example, because in the months and years that we are moving towards, using that same kind of inspiration on taking technology as a tool to enable to have more transparency, making sure that we adopt technology that strengthens these kind of institutions that we want to uphold, strengthens democracies is such an opportunity. They are so easy to point at all the challenges because they are so evident and apparent to us, but it's also such big possibilities in having these tools that are also can create more transparency.
Just as a small example to end off, we have a lot of complaints from journalists of how much time we are using to review their applications for access for information in government institutions. It's such a small example of how you can simplify a lot of these processes as well that ensures the whole process being more simple, easier accessible for a journalist and also more transparent for the public.
>> NIKOLIS SMITH: Thank you.
>> MARSHA CADDLE: I think creating this culture of evidence so people feel that, okay, should I propagate something if I cannot show that it is true. I think that is something that has certainly helped. But also investing in the kind of learning, certainly in countries in global majority countries, investing in the kind of learning that will allow our people to create tools that they find useful and that they generate and are able themselves to trust. One of the ways in Barbados that we started when I was Minister of Technology is to be able to train people in things like data analytics and data science. And this is not just informal academic institutions, but partnering with companies. There's one, for example, that does a lot of work on the content of Africa you called Zindi that we are working with so that people can learn some of these skills and be able to create tools and play in that space. We think that there's an AI value chain which means that for some countries in the global majority, it may not be practical to say we are going to build these large-language models. But we can create at some part of that value chain and start to create some of these technology tools.
So, I do think that the culture of evidence to support strong legislation and establishing sources of truth that people see that they can trust is a part of the puzzle as well.
>> NIKOLIS SMITH: Thank you.
Headsets for folks.
>> ZAFAR ALIZODA: I would like to add that the policy of the global problems is different for different countries and regions. For example, GDPR might be important for some, but the developing countries in the regions of Asia still do not give priority to that, for example, the legislation is close to GDPR, but still several issues are unsolved as the cross-border two thirds priorities to improve. Or it's important to improve the legislative in Turkestan are always working on these issues, but still the issue of the application practice is relevant. The law of application and in connection with it, I think it's necessary that the global platforms also from their side could maximumly align their policies for all the users no matter of the user country. Thank you.
>> NIKOLIS SMITH: We have under 30 minutes left for the session. But we are going to do Q&A. We have two areas. Oh, there's two microphones placed. What you can do is there are two lines, you can form two queue lines. There's spotlights on this one over here on the right. And then if you can go to the microphone, make sure to state your name and affiliation, please. Thank you.
>> PARTICIPANT: Hi. I'm Wilmay. My question in Spanish, so headphones.
I am from Peru. Now, in electoral processes where basic programme in electoral processes, we have had some basic problems not only in the electoral process, but in the transmission. And the second is where we a couple of years ago saw problems in electoral process, we see a movement towards declaring institutional the electronic votes in these countries, not only Latin America, but also other countries. In the legislative point of view, how can you avoid the abuse of these electronic systems, particularly the electronic voting in order to negatively affect the democratic processes. This also covers the processes prior to the elections, Romania, for example, when there was misinformation used to influence an electoral process. We see the previous process and the problems in the processes and the one thing is that the parliaments who establish the voting rules and sometimes they end up using electronic voting just because they really want to be so advanced. But it's undermining democracy.
>> NIKOLIS SMITH: Any takers for the question? I'm going to take a couple more and then we will -- yeah, because there's a long line forming. Let me go do this side, please.
>> PARTICIPANT: Thank you. Good afternoon to everyone. My name is Raul Manuel and I am a member of parliament from the Philippines representing the youth.
In our country we have also witnessed lots of examples of the use of artificial intelligence, especially generative AI for misinformation and just recently we have public elected officials who have endorsed the use of AI for virus ends and even for political objectives and that can be dangerous, especially if it suits their own political goals.
So, my question is particularly addressed to our representative from California, but if others would also want to respond, that would be welcome. I'd like to ask about the progress of your efforts or legislation in particular to requiring the watermarking of content, especially if they use AI. Because it will really help people to distinguish the contents that they have on their feeds so that they will not be victims of targeted disinformation that uses generative AI. That's the question. Thank you.
>> NIKOLIS SMITH: Thank you.
>> PARTICIPANT: Thank you very much. Anya Schifrin, Columbia University. Thank you for the kind words about universities, assembly member Rebecca Bauer-Kahan, we need them right now.
Quick question. We are starting some new work on deepfakes used for financial scams. We believe this may be something that could be a bipartisan area of concern. We are impressed by Taiwan's laws against this. Just wondering if any of you have experience with these kinds of laws and can tell us what you are doing. Thank you very much.
>> NIKOLIS SMITH: Thank you. We will take a few more.
>> PARTICIPANT: Thank you. Thank you very much. I am Senator Kenneth Pugh from Chile, South America, and I would like to ask the panel precisely about an issue. We are human beings. Humans, we have human rights, and that Article 19 in the chapter of human rights.
The problem is, in order to get confidence, we need to know each other, we need to talk, we need to have a will, and then we will trust. So, human beings need to be in contact.
How are we going to achieve that in the digital environment with digital trust when we are providing one of the most important rights, which is freedom of expression to artificial intelligence, which are not humans. How we are going to define who has a human identity. It doesn't mean that we are getting the ID provided by the government. How we are going to differentiate humans from not humans in the cyberspace, how we will know if they are minors or not. Because in real life we can see them. It's a young boy or girl. But how we will do it in the cyberspace, if you have anything to share, I will be very grateful. Thank you very much.
>> NIKOLIS SMITH: Why don't we pause here and start addressing before we go through the whole line and I lose track of all the questions.
Why don't we start directly with his. Anybody on stage want to go first?
>> MARSHA CADDLE: Let me take the last one about how do you -- really, this is about intent. The last question. How can you differentiate the origin of an idea or a certain set of information. And I think it is less of an origin and more about output. That's going to be what we end up having to regulate and legislate, because it is going to be very difficult to say, just like often we don't know now, we can't see the author behind something, we may be able to eventually verify but that takes time and more and more people are very impatient when it comes to information.
But I think one of the things that we are going to have to concern ourselves with is really verification of what is generated. And as well as being able to tell where it was generated from. So, to be able to require that we can see that this particular output used AI, but also to be able to use different piece of legislation to generate output.
So, for example, we have seen cases recently where there was a coercion used to get young people to do certain things and this came from an AI actor. What that jurisdiction, I don't want to mention which country it was in, but what that jurisdiction ended up having to start to look at is, well, what is the kind of content, no matter the source, that can make its way into this space where vulnerable people are represented.
And to start to use kinds of key word technology and authentication technology to say, look, because this content has come into this space, it cannot be allowed here because of the nature of the people who are here, whether they are young people and children and so on.
So, I think that as you say, it's going to be very difficult more and more to kind of police the difference between the two. But I think identifying the origin and then regulating or being able to direct the content and the outcome is going to be more and more the kind of work that we are going to have to do.
>> NIKOLIS SMITH: Thank you for that.
Senator.
>> CATHERINE MUMMA: On the issue, I think it was the first question about what can parliament do about electoral laws and electoral systems where there is misuse of technology, I guess, for rigging elections. My view is that a good electoral system is largely dependent on the electoral management body. Because for the fraud to happen, whether with AI or any other, it usually will take place with some collusion by people within the electoral management board.
So, whether it is through the person or the procure to carry out the elections, whether it is through their own IT systems, and Kenya has been -- Kenya has usually gone to the Supreme Court to discuss the issue of manipulation of the transmission of elections, the electronic transmission of the presidential results, and we have had issues where, for instance, the last election, the electoral management body completely refused to open the service to audit the electoral system that transmitted the results.
So, I believe it's not so much the technology as is a corrupt set of minds that are behind this whole thing. And I believe if electoral management bodies remain neutral, then elections, whether digitally driven or not, will remain credible.
>> NIKOLIS SMITH: I was looking at Grunde and Rebecca, you are both vying for one so I will let you go first. Please.
>> REBECCA BAUER-KAHAN: No. I just want to start there, which is I love that perspective, in the United States every state runs their own elections and so it's done differently across our whole country. And I think this is a question not just is the election integrity real, but do people believe it? Part of what holds our democracy up is an agreed principle that our elections on free and fair and that's better than a challenge.
So, I do think that one of the things that's critical personally is a paper trail. Even if you are using a machine that you get a receipt, that there is a way to audit it, which I think is so critically important. So I will add that on.
Somebody asked about our watermarking legislation. In California last year, we did pass a law and it was signed by the governor that requires the platforms to show a watermark in a few years. And we did that because we wanted to signal to the innovation economy that California was going to require this. Because we knew that all of the technology isn't there today, if we required it, the brilliant minds out there would create the technology because there would be a market for it.
So, I believe that's coming, which is very exciting. I think for the whole world. This year we are moving a piece of legislation that would require the devices, so your camera, to have embedded in it the technology that would authenticate. We actually as a legislature, we are one of the entities that used Adobe's technology for the first time where every image we took in house was run through their watermarking technology so when we put it into the world we could trace it back. We could prove whether this was a real image or whether it was a doctored image.
That technology is coming. We have gotten to see it in practice and it's exciting because it's one of the things that will enable us to see fiction from reality.
There was a question about financial scams. That's something that has come up. We have not moved legislation yet on AI and financial scams but I think it's so important. And I think the foundation of that is privacy legislation. Part of why the financial scams are getting so sophisticated is because there is so much access to information about every single one of us. When they call and they say, they are your aunt or your uncle and they know your children's names, you fall for that scam in a way you wouldn't if they didn't have that much information about you.
Part of it is protecting privacy, which I think is critical. And then the second piece is making sure that, as you said, this isn't just about AI legislation. It's about legislation, we already have laws that outlaw these type of scams. How do we say it's as much a violation of the law if it's done by a real person or done by an AI tool? And making sure that our laws that protect our communities extend out to all AI actors. Which I think goes perfectly to the last question, which was about this question about AI being human and that's an interesting question in the United States because we just had a court for the first time have to struggle with this question. There was a chatbot that a young boy in Florida died by suicide because a chatbot told him to take his own life. And the mother has sued the company. And the company claimed they had a First Amendment protected right to speak. They had a right to speak. The chatbot could say whatever it wanted. And the court said no, the chatbots do not have constitutional rights like humans did. That was a huge win. It's one court but a step in the right direction to saying these AI companies are not humans. They are not the same as you and I, they do not have the rights that we do and pushing that forward will be critical in making sure that we have the protections necessary from these AI tools.
>> GRUNDE ALMELAND: Piggy backing off that, I think it's important to remember as politicians and legislators that we should not immediate this whole new world of technology with panic and believing that we do not have anything legislated already because most things are already quite heavily legislated. And sometimes it has to be amended and sometimes we need to come up with new legislation. When most of things are already legislated, we just have to see how technology fits into it.
And I think this relates to a lot of the different questions that are put forward here. And talking about the scam as well, I think this is -- well, AI used in scams, you know, it falls under, I think, if you look in any kind of country and legislative space, you see that this would fall under what is already in Criminal Codes. But the issue is really that there is a lack of cooperation between countries in order to tackle these new challenges.
And I think when you see -- we have a really good example that came out in social media a few weeks ago of a system called Magic Cat and it is a great piece of journalism that is available in English as well, you can Google it. And it shows how sophisticated these kind of scams are and how not well prepared Norwegian society in this case was also to actually tackle this kind of international scam.
So, I think international cooperation is often more the answer than coming up with the exact new legislation.
And just a quick remark on the watermarking side of it. We have good case study about this in the Norwegian society as well. The media landscape in Norway came together to create this technology. And cooperating with BBC and New York Times, a lot of these big media outlines to have good watermarking technology implemented in journalism. But what is the key component of that is not, you know, having this kind of verification check, but it's having the information accessible for people, who took the photo, where is it from, these kind of essential information that gives people an opportunity to make their own decision upon the content and are not trying to force them by saying this is real or this is not real.
I think this is something also to remember for us as politicians, that we need to give people the fundamental information, just not always trying to decide for them.
>> NIKOLIS SMITH: Thank you. So, we are running out of time. But I want to see if we can be really efficient in the queue line. I know there are some members of parliament that is also looking to ask some questions.
Can we just do really strong credit questions, make sure they are not too long so we can get some quick responses before we go into the closing part. Please.
>> PARTICIPANT: (No English translation)
You want me to speak in English? Is it okay in Arabic?
I hope you can all hear me. I hope you can all hear me. We are going to bring up a difficult question. The situation is not quite clear, I must say. And we know there is a huge difference between reality and fiction. We have a lot of information about participation, for example. But as legislators, as parliamentarians, what is important to us is preserving openness, transparency of information. And what we have heard so far is all about the power that comes to legislators, because legislators are supposed to protect society.
We know today that technology changes very fast, and it's often very hard to follow the same pace when it comes to legislation.
Another question is how to preserve privacy, but we have to preserve freedom. We have to preserve transparency at the same time. If you look at content, if you look at AI-generated content, is that the kind of content that will dominate? Is it really AI that will suggest information that then can be misinterpreted by, let's say, parliamentarians or are there decisionmakers? How will you protect content? Who will be able to protect the content that is destined for the public.
>> PARTICIPANT: My name is Rujo, and I'm an PM from Portugal. The questions are this. Social networks should verify news and fake news and misinformation, but following the U.S. elections, we came aware that, for example, Facebook, Meta will stop doing that kind of verifications. What do you think that we should do? So, regulation should be a solution for these kind of cases, or we should trust in these big companies to verify this information?
Second question, something that a colleague asked before about the ID. When we want to open an account, a bank account, for example, even if we use a cell phone, we have face recognition. We can take a photo from our ID. Should we implement these solutions, for example, when someone wants to open an account in a social network? Because there are a lot of fake profiles, and I don't see other solution if we don't give a stronger step on this.
And last question, the French President Emmanuel Macron announced that probably he will enact laws to prohibit youngsters under 15 years old to have a social network account. So, there are a lot of misinformation and fake news that influence the political decisions that our youngsters are taking or are learning.
Do you believe that a solution or a path should be to prohibit youngsters of having social network accounts? Thank you.
>> NIKOLIS SMITH: We are going to have time for one question for each side and we will try to do our best in a lightning round respond to this. I wish we had more time.
But one more question from each and I would encourage you at the conclusion of this, there will be a reception this evening, some of the MPs, you will be able to engage with them there. If you don't get a chance to answer your question here now.
So, one more on each side. Thank you.
>> PARTICIPANT: Thank you very much. John KJ, member of parliament in Kenya. And it is to all the people on the panel, including the moderator, and mine is to ask, to your mind, what do you think are practical, pragmatic steps that IGF can take to place responsibilities not only on big tech developers, but also on economies that are advanced and jurisdictions that are advanced to an extent that they are feeding all the other countries with the technology they are doing so that we have so much of technological dumping? Because to emerging countries in places like African will at one point be at par with Silicon Valley is a fallacy. To imagine that such advanced economies do not have responsibilities is also wrong.
We are here at IGF. It takes a lot for even some of these countries to be represented at IGF. And we have real cases of technological dumping that does not speak to even the basic human rights.
In Kenya, for example, we had a company walk into the country and start collecting biometric data, scanning people's irises and inducing vulnerable populations with tokens in the name of world coin, and the behavior that they brought to Kenya are things that they would never do in their own countries, even with the existing laws. But whenever the countries in the south hemisphere raise this, we are told to go and develop our own laws.
So, I'm asking, is IGF practically able to rein in owners so that we can place responsibilities not only on big tech, but even on countries that develop this technology to the extent that they carry responsibility to carry everyone along, because as we speak today, even as we talk about Internet, everything about Internet is never manufactured in Africa. We do not manufacture the fiberoptic cables. We do not manufacture the devices. We do not have a single satellite in the terrestrials to imagine that we are all on the same table and working on the same laws as IGF and working on the same conventions would be a fallacy. I am asking, is IGF able to do what the world did with the onset of nuclear weapons because that was first. We are here in the 20th IGF. But when we look at nuclear, the bomb was invented in 1945 and by 1957, there are already treaties that were put in responsibilities on the developers and on the inventers of that technology. When will that happen for Internet? When will that happen for social media? When will that happen for big tech? When will that happen for the countries that are so advanced? Because if we do not do anything right now, we will end up accelerating the divisions that exist and the disparities that exist and what will happen with this AI is that my people will be condemned to digital plantations just like they were condemned with sugar cane and with coffee and with all these other things that happened in slave trade to imagine that we will all walk together in the word is a big fallacy, what practical examples can we take out of the IGF, what practical examples can we take to put responsibilities where it belongs. Because to imagine that we are all okay on that path would be a big fallacy. Thank you very much.
>> NIKOLIS SMITH: Thank you very much. For the last question, what we are going to do, we will do something a little bit different. Instead of having everybody respond to all those questions, why don't we package that in our closing remarks. And we will start with Mr. Alizoda, because he didn't get a chance to respond, and that way we can still finish.
One last question. Yes.
>> PARTICIPANT: One last question.
>> NIKOLIS SMITH: One. Sorry.
>> PARTICIPANT: I try to be very brief.
>> NIKOLIS SMITH: Thank you.
>> PARTICIPANT: And a concrete question to question Mumma because I would be interested in a Kenyan perspective on this issue. You said earlier that you hope that IGF will help to facilitate a Code of Conduct for social media organizations platforms. I am wondering if you really think that that will be enough, a voluntary Code of Conduct for social media organizations, or if we rather need more like standards regulation plus also alternative platforms that actually work for democracy instead of undermining it, that work for freedom of speech instead of restricting it, and what is a Kenyan perspective on this kind of new social media platforms who could do it, how, and what would be something that you would want there. My name is Ana Lumen, I'm a member of parliament from Germany.
>> NIKOLIS SMITH: Thank you. Thank you, everybody. What we are going to do, we will start with Mr. Alizoda. If you can -- I know you didn't get a chance to respond in the first round, so as you are thinking about your closing remarks, you can try to think and kind of contextualize it in a way that you can respond to some of these questions from the audience. Thank you.
>> ZAFAR ALIZODA: Thank you very much, Nikolis. I do agree with the suggestion of the representative from Kenya and the efforts of the parliamentarians, the experts of the countries, and the questions discussed how to protect the information, it confirms once more the fact that no country can be aside in this issue. It has to be an equal participate and we have to respect the adopted ways to regulate the integrity of information in general. And I am sure that an exchange, a global common exchange within the frames of IGF will allow us all to develop an efficient policy to protect and take care of the integrative information, but also the regulatory information with the safeguarded global principles and standards. Thank you.
>> MARSHA CADDLE: Thank you. You know, to the brother from Kenya who just spoke, this is deja vu all over as they say. I worked for many years on climate justice and still am. And this is really kind of a repeat of that conversation, right, that we saw the dumping, in this case of greenhouse gas emissions. We experienced it, we suffered from it and then we started to slowly try to regulate a global system that would see the polluting countries, start to invest in adaptation and mitigation and it's been a long, arduous process that is not settled.
And so for me, we have to learn the lessons of nuclear regulation, we have to learn the lessons of climate that we are still experiencing now, and to be able to say, look, these are the things that we require of major tech countries and major tech companies. For example, you will see that major social network companies and creators can benefit hugely. They don't even have to physically come to a country and collect data. But they can benefit hugely just from pushing information into a jurisdiction where there is little control.
So, I agree with you. I cannot speak to whether IGF is that place. But I do think that we have to learn the lessons of the last three decades in climate and in other areas. And rather than having it take another three decades to come to a Global Compact that is about accountability, that that needs to happen, we already have models for it. We already know what that looks like. And it's just time to act in a global way.
>> GRUNDE ALMELAND: IGF certainly can be a space where we are able to find this kind of common ground, and I really hope it will be, because this is such an international question that trying to, I think often trying to regulate this in our national jurisdiction is creating a lot of Swiss cheese for these companies, and while it is delicious with Swiss cheese, it's not always good for you.
I really do believe that we need to find these spaces where we work together internationally in order to find this common ground, common set of rules. And there are a lot of challenges. And I think a lot of the questions point to those challenges when in terms of verification, you know, having a set rule and verification also excludes vulnerable people in vulnerable situations or is able to exclude them. Having people, making sure that in areas are able to speak up is also important. Requiring an age verification for children to access networks, whilst it is an active discussion in Norway as well, it still has the dilemmas of children also have fundamental rights in order to gain information, be active in -- you know, they are not small people that are being put in a room until they become adults. They should be an active part of society.
These are all dilemmas that we have to navigate as well, while we still try to protect, but not overprotect.
>> NIKOLIS SMITH: Thank you so much. Rebecca.
>> REBECCA BAUER-KAHAN: I think what is being said is at the crux of it all which is global cooperation, I think. We talk about so much of what the world has done and we have gone different directions. I mean, I don't know if we have MPs from Australia here but they have banned social media for young people. How is that going for them? Is it having the problems you describe? I think we can learn so much from one another and really move the ball forward. Because as the gentleman from Bahrain said, policy moves slower than technology and I think only through that collaboration can we really move forward in a way that protects our communities.
There was a question about privacy versus some of these society protecting tools. And I think we can figure this out together. I mean, we are moving a piece of legislation this year that would require the devices to be able to verify your identity. So that you don't have to share that with the platforms. That it is there's a way technologically to do that and privacy protective way. And if we do that together, I think we can move the world forward, not have Swiss cheese, and have societies that are protected from some of the ills that we have talked about today.
And I want to acknowledge that I live in one of those jurisdictions that is responsible for these tech companies. And the weight of that is real. And you also can imagine how it affects our electoral politics, especially in a country where you can buy elections and that's perfectly legal now in America.
So, we live in a very complicated political dynamic. But I will say that this topic of technology and its impact on society is becoming one of the most agreed-upon political topics. Because I think that we are living in a reality where we see the downsides, whether it be for our children, and how they are mental health is being affected or our democracies and truth.
So, I am hopeful that even in the complicated country and democracy I live in, we will be able to move forward solutions that will be protective, not just of our own people, but of the world.
>> NIKOLIS SMITH: Thank you, Rebecca.
>> CATHERINE MUMMA: Thank you. Now, codes of ethics are the first tool for self-regulation for a lot of professionals and professional associations and organizations. So, I think the first self-regulation opportunity lies in some codes of ethics. And since the big tech may not necessarily be an association where we can say as an association, come up with a code of ethics, I am thinking IGF could be a good space to initiate this. And I would want to suggest that you look at the IPU resolution on AI. Also look at the IPU draft code of ethics on science and technology, which might give some suggestions on what could happen.
But that will be actually extending some opportunity for big tech companies to realize the freedoms may have and they may have crossed the lines in terms of freedoms and what they are doing may be harming very vulnerable populations, especially in countries that may not be as enabled. And that comes, brings me to the point my colleague, KJ, just raised around the more developed countries taking responsibility and the big tech companies taking responsibility in regard to what the negative sides of tech is happening in the more -- the developing countries.
I would want to say first, we need to recognize that the protective, the international protective mechanism around human rights is breaking, as far as I'm concerned. We have seen what's happened in Gaza. And we are all helpless. Or the world seems to be helpless as a lot of human rights violations are happening, not just in Gaza, but in other places, in Sudan, in the Ukraine, and wherever else.
I would want to first query whether we need to reimagine what international cooperation was supposed and whether that international cooperation can be rethought and reimagined to truly provide the protections that it's supposed to provide.
Meantime, I think as the small countries, we may need to do what we have to do. One of the things I think, from the morning session, I would think we must, in protection of our vulnerable populations, we must start putting conditionalities to the licenses that we give until that time when we will have the tech companies realize, I mean, weaning our young people through facilitating access to what they wouldn't do in their own countries is a violation of human rights, that distorting, facilitating or enabling the distortion of elections in our countries in order for us to end up with wrong governments is a violation of our rights.
So, even as we place the responsibility to the United Nations and the international community, we must start looking inward and determine the incremental kind of arrangement that we will have with these companies to ensure that for the very vulnerable, we give conditionalities to the licenses before we issue those licenses to the big tech companies. Thank you very much.
>> NIKOLIS SMITH: Wow. I'm seeing the flashing red. We should be done already. I just want to say, can we give a round of applause to this great panel, this discussion. Thank you all.
(Applause)
>> NIKOLIS SMITH: Two things that I want to make sure I underscore here. Number one is that this is still day 0. Day 1 is actually tomorrow. So, this track will continue tomorrow morning. So, make sure that you are looking at the schedule. You will have more opportunities throughout the week to talk to some of these people on stage, through other sessions. So, make sure you take advantage of that, especially the folks that didn't get a chance to, as they were queuing to ask questions.
One more thing before we close. For all members of parliament that will be going to an event and reception at parliament this evening, what you are going to do when we leave here, we will exit out and go to the left and down. There will be some folks waiting for you guys to take you. The bus, I believe, that's going to escort you leaves at 1600, so 4:00 p.m. If you have any questions, you can come talk to some of us as we come off the stage as well.
But, again, thank you so much. And enjoy the rest of your week. Thank you.
(Applause)
