IGF 2025 - Day 4 - Workshop Room 5 - Networking Session #200 Cross-Regional Connections for Information Resilience

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>> MARIVI MARIN: Hello, everyone. Thank you very much for being here. This session is called Interregional Connections for Information Integrity.

Across the world we're seeing totalitarian governments and democratic ones with increasingly alarming tendencies adopting practices that restrict freedom online. This includes laws designed to silence critical voices, political‑motivated surveillance and coordinated online operations that disturb public debate or spread hate.

At the same time, platforms still struggle to offer consistent responses and meaningful cooperation with civil society remains weak.

The people pushing back against these threats are journalists, activists, civic tech groups, and these are often the most affected. They are also operating in environments where sustainability is very difficult, especially now.

What we are doing today, it's a demonstration of cross‑collaboration is possible, not only between countries and regions but different branches of civil society.

Where we come from academia, journalism or other, we're connected. In many cases, it protects the civic space.

In this session, we'll explore four areas where these things appear. Censorship and controlling access to online information.

The second surveillance, monitoring, or intimidating people online.

Three will be online integrity, spreading false or harmful narratives.

And the last one will be Internet governance. It's basically linked to the policies and systems that shape rights.

With us, we'll have me as a moderator. I'm Venezuelan. I'm a human rights advocate, Director or ProBox a non‑profit working on information integrity in Latin America.

Marianne Brancesco (phonetic) from Costa Rica. She will be online. She's a digital rights researcher from ProBox team.

Valentina Aguana, from Venezuela. She's a system engineer and researcher at ‑‑ works on Internet censorship and digital rights.

Abdullah Ahmadi, from Afghanistan. He's a human rights advocate focused on digital inclusion in civil space. He's the director of Afghanistan Democracy and Development Organization.

Lillian Nalwoga, from Uganda. She's program manager at CIPESA, and she works on Internet policy and digital rights in Africa.

Stephanie de Silva (phonetic) from Venezuela. She's a digital research specialist focused on information manipulation, part of ProBox team.

Sascha Hannig, online, she's an international relation analyst and academic focused on ‑‑ influence and the impact of science and technology in society.

Iria Puyosa, from Venezuela and the U.S. She is Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council and Tech Initiative. She's an expert on digital authoritarianism and governance.

Roberta Braga, from Brazil and the U.S. She is Founder and Director of Digital Democracy Institute of the Americas, DDIA, focused on a healthier Internet for Latinos across the U.S. and Latin America.

And Martha Roldós, from Ecuador. She's an investigative journalist, Director of Fundación Mil Hojas.

And with that, I will start with the first two questions regarding censorship. These will be the following ones.

What recent examples of censorship, formal or informal, has affected your country?

And what resistant strategies, technical, legal, social, have been affected in your country in censorship?

With that, I will leave the floor to Abdullah for his first question and then to Valentina.

Abdullah, the floor is yours.

>> ABDULLAH AHMADI: The civic space is closed in Afghanistan, based on the ‑‑ report.

First, the recent examples. Since 2021, Afghanistan has experienced both formal and informal censorship. There's restricted media by imposing new guidelines that ban critical reporting.

Many TV and radio stations have been forced to close or self‑sensor.

Internet Service Providers block access to certain news sites and pages, affecting journalists and human rights groups. They monitor social media for voices.

Intimidation is widespread. Detention and threat is risked if they critise the regime, especially social media.

Female journalists face harassment and banning. This silencing has had a shocking effect inside and outside Afghanistan.

Second, about the resistant strategy, the second question, civil society groups resist. Many people rely on VPNs and messaging application like Signal and Telegram have become common for journalists to share information.

There's distribution of news through the WhatsApp list to reach people inside the country.

Legally, while already almost no functioning legal pathways under the Taliban rule, regional and international organisations have stepped in.

Journalists collaborate with the national human rights bodies, and there's pressure to protect journalists.

There's continued publishing of news related to the podcast and social media channels.

People have access to this information.

We're organising outside the country to help journalists protect themselves and find a safe channel to speak out.

In closing, censorship in Afghanistan is part of the broad attack on human rights, but despite fear, there's services used for support.

It's important to amplify voices and ‑‑ finally, I call for the UN to work towards convention on digital rights to protect freedom of expression ‑‑ with exclusive governance.

>> MARIVI MARIN: Thank you, Abdullah.

Valentina?

>> VALENTINA AGUANA: I think we can see similarities in Venezuela. I'm going to talk about Internet blocks and how Internet blocks are being used as a mechanism for censorship. I think it's important to have a clear understanding of what Internet block is, an intentional technical ‑‑ it's not the result of a technical problem. Therefore, intentional.

We were documenting Internet blocks for over 10 years, a decade, and we have a pretty good understanding about how the landscape in Venezuela and the Latin America region has been changing over the years.

Just last year in Venezuela, there's a new era of Internet censorship that completely changes the way Venezuelans use the Internet.

We have documented that at least 61 independent media outlets in Venezuela are currently blocked. But the raw number itself doesn't really tell you anything. What we need to know is this respects practically the whole independent news media ecosystem in the country.

Also, civil society organisations have also been affected by these blocks. They are not only news media sites but fact‑blocking sites, NGOs, et cetera.

One of the more severe things we've seen is since last year, the Venezuelan government has blocked social media platforms like Reddit, TikTok, X, formerly Twitter, and it's still blocked.

We thought blocking social medias was a redline for sensors, but we know, unfortunately, that's not the case anymore, not only in Venezuela but in different countries.

And we have seen these spreading the other countries within the region, citing disinformation and public safety as an excuse for these Internet blocks.

Another very serious trend we've seen is the blocking of critical Internet infrastructure. We're talking about public DNS servers, Google DNS servers, et cetera, and also CDNs being block. We documented last year the Amazon web services CDN, as you can imagine, blocking it was a disaster. Millions of sites relied on cloud ‑‑ we believe the intention was not to block the CDN itself, but a website using its service. These collateral censorship that not only happens in Venezuela.

In Spain, whole IP ranges are being blocked ‑‑ among other companies, trying to tackle copyright infringement.

Measures to block must be exceptional, proportional, and the least dramatic as possible, only doing what is necessary, and, of course, through a legal process.

So the censors are getting more sophisticated with the blogs and more on what they're trying to block.

What is happening in Afghanistan and Venezuela, there's not a clear path to challenge these blocks.

However, multilateral and international organisations are there for a reason, and we need to keep pressuring these because we know that the Internet is a human right.

So I think this role is very important.

Finally, I think the work of the civil society organisation is key. We need to keep doing advocacy and teaching about techniques.

However, this is not enough. I think that other traditional solutions are ‑‑ and I think the time and community needs to invest in new solutions. Privacy by design, censorship by design. We created an app that has this approach. I think this is what we need to do going forward in the future.

>> MARIVI MARIN: Thank you very much, Valentina and Abdullah.

With that, I will leave the floor with the second topic ahead. That will be surveillance. And the two questions will be for Martha and for Lillian.

What forms of digital surveillance have been used to monitor, intimidate, or silence civil society, journalists, or communities? And how have been affected these groups responding, and what protective practices or tools have emerged?

With that, I will leave the floor to Lillian first and Martha second.

>> LILLIAN NALWOGA: Thank you for the pleasure to be here. I will try to be brief because this is a conversational session.

In terms of forms of surveillance, we've heard from the previous speakers. It's not different than what's happening in Africa. We're seeing various forms being used to monitor, intimidate, or silence civil society, journalists. Most famous for targeting Internet interception.

Actors are using wiretapping and things like that. Interestingly, this is well embedded where we have quite a number of countries, including where I come from, Uganda, whether it's Tanzania or Kenya, we have interception of communication. With that, governments are mandated to intercept because they think there's some sort of harm.

We've seen tools deployments of spyware or people who are targeted, whether it's activists. We've heard reports or seen reports with Citizen Lab releasing information related to Pegasus. There's politicians being ‑‑ in other countries.

Also targeted social media monitoring, which may have automated bots.

But the surveillance itself, if it's being done for good ‑‑ again, I put good in quotes ‑‑ but what we're seeing is governments may want to ‑‑ you know, they have legitimate concerns when it comes to surveillance. In most cases, the laws and policies say something totally different, especially when it comes to undemocratic countries or countries that are really deep down in the repression.

So there's a lack of oversight or limited oversight when it comes to how far they can go with this surveillance. Again, I think that's where the issue is.

Just wanted to highlight the amount of money or resources that have been put in these surveillance tools.

In 2023, there was a research that documented ‑‑ I can't mention the names ‑‑ countries like Nigeria, Zambia, and others spent a billion dollars on tools. Tools were being supplied by countries, the U.S., China. Some countries like Israel. When you first look at this money and the state of the countries or what could be used in doing public service and all that, it's something that gets you to understand that states are more interested in understanding what is said and silencing voices than having that much money.

But the other thing, as I come to the other question, in Africa, we look at tools like filters of the content. That's a form of surveillance. We've been known, like other countries in Asia ‑‑ or in Asia mainly ‑‑ where Internet shutdowns have become a pandemic of its own. Last year, over 20 shutdowns were committed. Now you can imagine that if you connect to the Internet, it will prompt how you're connecting, and that can also get into that.

In conclusion, these tools combine and are being used to dissent. It makes detection difficult.

This is a growing concern in Africa and is becoming a global concern, especially when it comes to rights to privacy and freedom of expression.

How are the groups responding in practices?

A lot of coalition movement building within the civics space.

For instance, for the shutdowns, we have the campaign by Access Now and the ‑‑ network that comprises about 10 organisations.

Mainly, in East Africa, where I'm coming from, Totowa, in Swahili, it means ‑‑ it builds chateaus and capacity building and all that.

Last but not least, being able to show where things are happening for advocacy and other indicators have the information there so we can always push against surveillance.

Thank you.

>> MARIVI MARIN: Thank you very much.

With that, I will leave the floor to Martha. Martha is online.

>> MARTHA ROLDÓS: Okay. Now I'm ready. We've had the same experience that other speakers have explained in those matters.

In Ecuador, we have the questions are surveillance for what? Because we were presented that surveillance was a tool for security against crime in a country where crime has risen exponentially. The narcos were thriving. So surveillance, what is the form of sending to the public the idea of surveillance? I explained this because in our country, it's just been approved, a new intelligence law that makes surveillance actually legal in every aspect of it. If it is conducted by the intelligence unit ‑‑ the governmental intelligence unit. So that's huge right now. With the new law, we are not having any kind of register of the intelligence operations for history. They are going to be destroyed. The intelligence unit is going to oversize themselves.

That's a step to the worse in the country right now, in terms of privacy and digital rights.

In other things I would like to highlight, that's not just now. We have had, since the government and new implementation of systems of surveillance. It was a broad surveillance. We've had a pack rat. We have had all of our buildings with Picassos and all these things that are on trend. Everything that has been trending in the world for surveillance has been used in our country also.

It goes like waves. Almost always mainly journalists but also activists have been attacked by these instruments.

That's in the things that have been done in Ecuador, not just during the regime from Rafael Caldera, but also the governments that came after that. With the next government, it was difficult to refrain themselves from using.

There was a brief moment of apparent clarity. The intelligence office was actually closed, but a new office was opened that had more controls from the state, but it hadn't worked like that actually.

(Audio interference)

>> MARIVI MARIN: Thirty seconds.

>> MARTHA ROLDÓS: Well, that was the first question.

In the second question, we have had ‑‑ what was the affectation? Not just the people's privacy was exposed. The problem is it was weaponised. The information obtained through surveillance was weaponised.

The problem is it didn't just obey to the state. Some actors, like narcos, had ‑‑

>> MARIVI MARIN: I'm sorry to interrupt. We're done with that point. Thank you very much. We see more similarities, although we are far away. We see the points.

Now we'll go to the third point, which is information integrity. With that, I will leave the floor to Estefania to talk about this.

>> ESTEFANIA DE SILVA: We've seen this repeat in several countries. For example, in the case of Venezuela, government entities are members of the cabinet and spread information and launch smear campaigns against their opponents by activating not only bots but also networks of coordinated users. Real people like you and me that create several accounts and replicate the same content to spread or promote it by the state with little to no modification.

And to incentivise the participation, people see this as a side job, so to speak.

The same pattern has been replicated in countries like Cuba and Nicaragua where the government initiatives this information and a smear campaign, and coordinated users replicate the content.

There's training in these countries because these governments create the appearance of widespread support. This type of behaviour aims to divert the attention of things happening in the country, especially given that social media platforms are often used to access biased information and process daily occurrences.

In fact, the influence and reach of these platforms have been such that there have been cases of people being arrested for social media posts that are contradicting the state narrative.

Regarding the second question about the responses that have worked or fail, digital activism has played a role in Venezuela. For example, the teacher's union ‑‑ they combine the demonstration with the protests on the street. We can see these much‑needed actions have been met with repressive countermeasures like the so‑called hate law, which criminalises a protest and is used to justify the arrest.

Another team that's very important. With, this I will be done. It's the independent media outlets and the forming of coalitions with fact‑checking teams and initiative organisations that have become pioneering because these actions aim to educate the citizens on how to identify this information or manipulative narratives and promote practices like the tools they use, like VPN, to avoid censorship.

It ensures that even though the traditional media is controlled by the state, there remains access to verified and independent information that reflects the reality of what is happening in the country.

>> MARIVI MARIN: Thank you very much, Estefania.

With that, Sascha, I will ask you to be brief, please.

>> SASCHA HANNIG: So I'm going to stick to my time.

Thank you so much for your introduction.

When we talk about information integrity, it's what information can we trust? When we ask ourselves what type of narratives of this information are spreading in the region, that's a question we actually want to know.

In that regard, I do agree with the previous speakers on cooperation between actors on the situations in which these campaigns are spread.

I only want to add a few points upon that.

So the first is concerns over the formation and narrative not being taken as seriously as they should by decision‑makers, state actors, maybe civil society to some extent does care about it.

We see examples that when compared to other regions, such as the European Union, in Latin America, in general, this information is not seen as a security issue. It's seen as a distortion of information spreading.

As a result, there is many ways in which information is spread. Some of these have already been mentioned.

I would only want to add to the first question. How important is the context? When we have disasters, when we have uncertainty, when we have political unrest, when we have domestic controversial issues, those are the areas in which these campaigns thrive. And these are the areas with not only state actors like Russia or China or any other actor with an agenda thrives.

Also, untraceable, independent information spreaders.

Regarding the second questions, what responses from the civil society, academia, et cetera, have restored integrity?

The regions, as I mentioned, is behind in information responses, but we do see raising awareness.

This raising awareness has created a door for discussion, which, in some cases, has translated to actual responses.

And I just want to mention one case with the 15 second I have left ‑‑

>> MARIVI MARIN: I will have to stop you here. The time was up. But I will leave it that way and move forward with the last two questions.

The first one will be for Roberta and the second one for Iria. Please do three minutes each, and we'll finish with that.

Thank you very much.

Roberta?

>> ROBERTA BRAGA: I can speak about the United States and Brazil. Here, we're talking about models of governments that the region has been implementing. I think as we know, in the United States, there really are no central governance mechanisms for things like data privacy and Internet governance. So, by default, not only do the states sort of make a lot of the laws, which can really lead to some decentralisation and businesses adhering to some of this, inadequate enforcement and diversity in approaches between states, but we also see that the United States prioritises, at its core tenet, free speech.

In the U.S. this year, we're seeing that a lot of the social media companies have moved toward a community‑driven mode of content moderation, which I think has its pros and cons. It's been really hotly debated here in Washington, D.C. and in California and other places.

Our teamed a DDIA downloaded millions of notes in Spanish going back to 2021. We'll share more of that on July 9th, if you're interested. But that doesn't address online harms in real time.

It takes ‑‑ days to go from submission to publication, on average.

Brazil, my other home country has taken a different approach. Brazil has the ‑‑ our digital civil Bill of Rights, and it really pushes for net neutrality and data privacy.

It's something being discussed now.

And then we have our general data protection law, which mirrors the GDPR for privacy and data protection. I think we need more to give the teeth needed to monitor the safety online.

To Marivi, I will leave it at that.

>> MARIVI MARIN: That was fantastic. Thank you very much. I appreciate it.

With that, Iria.

>> IRIA PUYOSA: Thank you for having me. I will try to be brief.

One of the issues I'm concerned about at the moment is the civil society organisations ‑‑ are facing given the pressure for the currently political dynamics and the multistakeholder ‑‑ due to the change on the ‑‑ I'm interested in how these are playing on organisations who are also facing a sharp decline of funding for the war we're doing. They've been talking about censorship and circulating this information, protecting the personal data, content surveillance, all of that is very important wars as well as a multistakeholder governance role that the civil society plays is in danger because of the lack of sustainability in the long term for these kind of organisations, particularly organisations in the Global South who are losing ‑‑ even though it's not related with the core resources or the Internet infrastructure, its core to the Internet governance model.

Civil society organisations, there's no way for us to defend the multistakeholder model, and it's going to be run by corporations.

So the survival of the Internet multistakeholder Internet governance ‑‑ my team is aiming to have a systemic assessment or support need, and we are exploring the way to partner with philanthropic donors in order to identify mechanisms for a ‑‑ civil society organisation. This is part of the mission we're focused on in the coming year and try to understand what is used to support the civil society organisations in Africa, Latin America, South Asia ‑‑ digital public infrastructure and Internet and data governance.

To end, recommendations nor government and funders. It's important to strengthen the capabilities with local civil society and ‑‑ and, in particular, those organisations working in key areas like connectivity, artificial intelligence, and linking to the achievement or the sustainable development goals which is very important for the African countries.

For the civil society organisation, it's to try to work together, exploring the ways that we can foster collaboration in order for organisations and Latin America and Africa or Africa and Asia ‑‑ we are seeing in the conversation that the issues are similar in our regions, but having coalitions working together would be helpful in order to make the most of the scarce resources we have right now.

It will help this organisation, this kind of partnership, to collectively navigate these shift and these change on the global Internet governance by the Global Digital Compact new state of play.

Thank you.

>> MARIVI MARIN: Thank you very much, Iria and everyone online and in person.

I will leave just two brief questions.

Do you believe, for everyone in the audience, in person and online, do you believe that there is at least one trend in your country?

Say yes with the hand. All of us have some. And I see from the audience there is too.

And did you learn something about a tactic, idea, or alliance that you can use today for your own country?

In my case, I did. I did.

Some from the audience too. I'm happy to see that.

With that, I will close because we don't have more time. Thank, everyone. Thanks for online and in person. By listening to each other and sharing concrete experiences and reflecting across countries, roles and challenges, we have shown that the role to protect is not only possible but already happening.

This event reminds us to resist practices for a safer and healthier Internet for all is not just about identifying the problems, but it's also about building these bridges that we were talking about, bridges between regions and between diverse stakeholders and between different areas of civil society that are the ones leading the fight every day.

Let's keep this collaboration alive and moving forward.

Thank you very much.

(Applause)