#FCBBCA Cyber snooping: In whose hands should internet governance be entrusted?
In Iran it is reported that the government are building a national intranet that adheres to Islamic values and is isolated from the World Wide Web, in the UK the government is proposing a communications bill that will see an increase in monitoring of emails and social media by the police and intelligence agencies’.
Authoritarian states have long seen the freedom of the internet as a threat and have tried to restrict it, but recent develops suggest a move towards increased tracking and control of what the public do and see online across the world.
With companies’ interests lying in the commercial gains of data and governments’ in the ability to monitor populations, join us as we ask to whose hands internet governance should be entrusted.
Chaired by Kirsty Hughes, the Chief Executive of Index on Censorship – an international freedom of expression non-governmental organisation. Previously she has worked at Chatham House, IPPR, the European Commission and most recently she was head of Global Public Policy and Advocacy at Oxfam and Senior Associate Fellow at the Centre for International Studies, University of Oxford. Twitter: @IndexCensorship
With:
Birgitta Jónsdóttir MP, a member of the Icelandic Parliament for The Movement and chairperson of the International Modern Media Institution. She has worked as a volunteer for various organisations including WikiLeaks, Saving Iceland and Friends of Tibet in Iceland. Prior to becoming an MP she has been an activist, writer, first icelandic woman to work as web developer and publisher. Twitter: @birgittaj
Jacob Appelbaum, an accomplished photographer, software hacker and world traveler. He works as a developer for The Tor Project and trains interested parties globally on how to effectively use and contribute to the Tor network. He is a founding member of the hacklab Noisebridge in San Francisco where he indulges his interests in magnetics, cryptography and consensus based governance. He was a driving force in the team behind the creation of the Cold Boot Attacks; winning both the Pwnie for Most Innovative Research award and the Usenix Security best student paper award in 2008. Additionally, he was part of the MD5 Collisions Inc. team that created a rogue CA certificate by using a cluster of 200 PlayStations funded by the Swiss taxpayers. The “MD5 considered harmful today” research was awarded the best paper award at CRYPTO 2009. Twitter: @ioerror
Karl Kathuria, an independent media technology consultant, specialising in Internet distribution and streaming media. Prior to this, he spent over 10 years at the BBC, managing the distribution of World Service Internet content to a global audience. In this role, he faced the challenge of delivering news content into countries where censorship is prevalent. As a result of these efforts, he was invited to the Munk School of Global Affairs in Toronto to work with the Citizen Lab team in 2011 on an independent research project. During this period, he studied the effects of the BBC’s content distribution strategies in China and Iran, and made recommendations for the propagation of circumvention software into these markets. His current projects include working with Psiphon Inc., the Canadian provider of network software aimed at preserving security, privacy, and access to content that may otherwise be blocked.
Dr Ian Brown, associate Director at the Cyber Security Centre and Senior Research Fellow at Oxford Internet Institute (OII). His work focuses on public policy issues around information and the Internet, particularly privacy, copyright and e-democracy. He also works in the more technical fields of information security, networking and healthcare informatics. He has consulted for the US Department of Homeland Security, JP Morgan, Credit Suisse, Allianz, McAfee, BT, the BBC, the European Commission, the Cabinet Office, Ofcom, the National Audit Office and the Information Commissioner’s Office.
