Ben Wagner

Why should anyone care about freedom of expression? Why does it matter that individuals have the ability to speak their mind uninhibited? What inherent value can be found in the seeking, receiving and imparting of information that would cause any society to raise it to the level of a human right? And why should the story and its subsequent narration in modern liberal thought raise the value of free expression to a value worth dying for? Why does speech matter?

This thesis explores the governance of freedom of expression on the Internet. It focuses on liberal democracies and global corporations in North America and Europe, analyzing governance practices rather than norms or discourses. The thesis also studies developments in Internet technology, which it is argued increase the disciplinary capacity of technical Internet architecture.

The thesis suggests that the Internet has seen the rise of innovative governance practices that influence how the Internet is regulated. From contesting code to algorithmic regulation and quasi-public NGOs, many novel governance practices can be observed by studying how the Internet is governed. Indeed it can be argued that Internet Governance is itself a forum for international regulatory debates on the nature of appropriate regulation in a globalized world.

Finally, an argument is developed which suggests that a 'global default' of Internet speech restriction has developed in the last two decades. This global default is at the core of many disagreements in Global Internet Governance, but at the same time can only be understood in an international context. That such a system could even be developed internationally has required specific forms of global governance, termed here 'legitimacy theatre.' This phenomenon serves to ensure weak institutionalization and minimal state involvement while enabling extensive coordination between private actors. These factors all contribute to creating the Internet as we know it today and help in understanding what can be said / and what is hidden or excluded / from the most important human communications platform.

The Arab uprisings have been a poignant reminder of how the Internet can promote free expression and assembly, but also how governments can try abuse it. The medium used by demonstrators to organize protests and bring medical supplies to Tahrir Square, for example, was also used by the government to pinpoint human rights defenders for arrest, harassment, and even torture.

This reality will likely be on the minds of policymakers from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, who are meeting in Vienna to discuss how to advance media freedoms, and who will be fully aware that while the Internet is a catalyst for popular protest, it is also targeted by governments to stifle those same voices.

An example of these tensions is percolating through the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). Last week, the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights and Privacy International filed complaints with the OECD against two companies in the U.K. and Germany. The groups asked the OECD to investigate whether the companies exported surveillance technologies to Bahrain, and whether those technologies contributed to human rights abuses because the spyware sold by the companies allowed the government to monitor, identify, and ultimately retaliate against its critics.

The OECD does not have enforcement capacity in cases filed under these circumstances. If the companies are found to be in violation of its rules, it may lead to some acknowledgement of this problem and perhaps a modest, negotiated resolution. But while the complaint is an important step, it also highlights the need to regulate companies that sell powerful surveillance technology. At a minimum, such companies should be required to assess the human rights records of governments  purchasing their products, and what impact their technology may have on human rights defenders or political activists. And governments should regulate that trade to ensure that these technologies do not fall into the wrong hands. This is not a trade that can just be left to the market because broader societal interests are at stake – such as protecting fundamental rights and ensuring human security.

These pressing questions are not restricted to Bahrain alone. Numerous governments with poor human rights records have or are trying to obtain these technologies. Governments around the world need to take this industry seriously and start regulating it appropriately. And it is time for Europe and North America to address the actions of companies within their borders that may be enabling human rights violations across the globe. The OSCE meeting this week is a good opportunity to start this discussion.

Will journalists and human rights defenders be able to protect their privacy – and their sources – online? Can citizens use new forms of communication to defend human rights and hold their governments accountable without fear of illegal surveillance or reprisals?

Decisions such as those taken this week will ultimately define the capacity of the Internet to enable human rights.

After the dust settled following the World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT) negotiations in Dubai in December 2012, 2013 poses numerous challenges to the ‘cyber diplomats’ in foreign ministries around the world. Right at the top of the list is how to respond to the failure to reach a global agreement in Dubai and what to do about the increasingly untenable position that the United States has taken in these negotiations.

For more than a decade the U.S. has prevented any United Nations or similar global oversight of Internet Governance, preferring instead to develop new forms of multi-stakeholder governance such as ICANN or the Internet Governance Forum. While proponents point to these solutions as innovative institutions that integrate all relevant stakeholders, critics see them as simply another extension of U.S. hegemony. And indeed, it is primarily the U.S. that has used its power to protect these institutions, both within the U.N. system and at such events as the World Summit on the Information Society 2005 in Tunis.[1] Other Western and particularly European states have been far more ambivalent in their support of these ‘new’ multi-stakeholder institutions, and repeatedly had to be ‘convinced’ in diplomatic negotiations by their American colleagues.

However the U.S. has yet to get almost everything that it wanted and still say no - as was the case in Dubai. This particularly uncompromising position has only increased the misgivings of ‘like-minded states’ around the world, who have always been torn between supporting the U.S., concerns about their own lack of ‘sovereignty’ in ‘cyberspace’ and related concerns of other states in emerging economies. The result has been a tacit European acceptance of multi-stakeholder institutions that reinforce American economic and political dominance of the Internet, while occasionally resorting to more classic tools of foreign policy when they felt that their political influence was lacking.

Worryingly many of the crucial emerging economies do no seem to have been convinced by the multi-stakeholder approach. States like Brazil, Kenya, Mexico, India, South Africa, Indonesia or Turkey have not yet been convinced that these new institutions are indeed ‘the future’ of internet governance and have tended instead to side with the more state-centric approach advocated by Russia and China. While many of these states are ‘grateful’ that their concerns are shared by European and other Western states, they are also unwilling to accept the status quo, particularly when it unilaterally imposed.

Most importantly perhaps, there is very little understanding in European or North American capitals what many of these emerging economies actually want. While it will be difficult for the United States to respond to these preferences credibly given their past negotiating positions and the performance in Dubai, European states do not carry the same baggage. However even then without a basic understanding of the preferences of these states and giving these states a substantive role in the policy development process around these issues, they are unlikely to be swayed. The Russian and Chinese proposal of greater public control over Internet Governance remains highly attractive, not least when coupled with Chinese support of economic growth surrounding communications.

A plausible European response to these problems would be to start listening to the needs and wishes of emerging economies seriously and back this up with a series of commitments. Preparedness to jointly develop serious policy initiatives in the space of Global Internet Governance is one. A commitment to support these initiatives with hard cash in the form of development funding, loan guarantees and technical support in building communications infrastructure is another. At this point in time - a few notable initiatives such as the European Parliaments digital freedom strategy and the creation of the Freedom Online Coalition in Den Haag excepted - Europe has fallen far short of such lofty goals.

Up until the end of 2012 the unilateral veto of the United States was enough to keep the multi-stakeholder model of Internet Governance afloat. However it remains to be seen whether this position will be sufficient during the numerous upcoming debates on Internet Governance between 2013 to 2015. Moreover with Hillary Clinton in the process of leaving the State Department and the ensuing process of musical chairs among the upper echelons, it is unlikely that the U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry will be able to demonstrate the same level of leadership on ‘cyber diplomacy’ as his predecessor. Instead of wavering between support for the U.S.-led status quo and appreciation of the concerns of non-Western states, European states could engage with emerging economies around the world to propose a way to develop an alternate approach. This would however require a common European strategy on these issues as well as a serious commitment to engagement with emerging economies and their legitimate concerns. Whether either materialises in time before the efficacy of the unilateral U.S. veto runs out remains to be seen.

Before decisions on the regulation of the Internet and prevailing universal norms are made on a global level, Europeans must develop a common Internet strategy. Such an EU strategy, however, cannot pit security against freedom or the interests of the state against individual liberties and fundamental rights.

Bevor auf globaler Ebene darüber entschie- den wird, wie das Internet reguliert werden soll und welche normativen Grundlagen überhaupt gelten, müssen die Europäer eine gemeinsame Hal- tung entwickeln. Eine solche EU-Strategie sollte aber nicht Sicherheit gegen Freiheit oder Staat gegen Private gegeneinander ausspielen.

"When protests erupted in Tunis, Cairo and Damascus during the course of 2011, it wasn’t just the rulers in Amman and Rabat that feared similar civic unrest. Across the world authoritarian states have tried to smother the potential for similar movements with the classic repertoire of concessions and promises, cheaper foodstuffs and fuel prices, more economic liberalization, less political repression. One area which has been increasingly popular however is gaining control over information. Following the first reports of protests in Tunis, keywords such ‘jasmine’ and ‘spring’ shot to the top of the lists of censors across the world and restrictions on information about the Arab Spring were by no means limited to the Middle East. Although governments across the world have been successively increasing their capacity to control information, the framing of the Arab Spring as a "Facebook revolution" has given this drive particular impetus. The fear of the seemingly uncontrollable social and political forces that might be unleashed by the Internet has become one of the primary concerns of modern autocrats.

Hobbling global diplomacy - new alliances stoking old discontents

At the same time this “fear of the spring” has become increasingly relevant in global diplomatic negotiations. While negotiations on a broad range of issues have been influenced by this phenomenon, these effects have primarily been experienced in the field of media and communications regulation. This phenomenon can be observed in diplomatic negotiations across the board: whether in negotiations for the new cybersecurity strategy being prepared by the EU, the on-going preparations for the ITU World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT) in Dubai in December 2012 or at the Internet Governance Forum 2012 currently taking place in Baku, Azerbaijan. In all of these negotiations the underlying fear of is palpable and makes it extraordinarily difficult to come to any broad agreements

However these negotiations also reflect broad and longstanding dissatisfaction outside of Europe and North America about existing arrangements in Internet Governance. It is not just China and Russia but also Brazil and India who have voiced their displeasure with the inappropriate U.S. dominance of key Internet institutions and resources. In this context of such unresolved diplomatic issues the fear of the spring is a powerful ordering force, pushing the BRIC states closer together and creating global alliances that would not otherwise exist in opposition to U.S. dominance in cyberspace. The last time a similar constellation diplomatic constellation came together at the World Summit on the Information Society in 2005 in Tunis, the U.S. was able to convince senior European diplomats that significant changes to the status quo were not in their interest.

Towards a European strategy for cyberspace?

Whether the U.S. will be successful with a similar strategy this time around is an open question. Part of the difficulty in knowing the answer to this question is that Europe does not yet have a common diplomatic strategy - nor a strategy in cyberspace. While the Digital Agenda does provide a framework for decision-making, it stops a long way short of providing a coherent European strategy for diplomatic negotiations in communications governance. This is particularly relevant as numerous European Telecommunications Operators within the trade industry association ETNO have attempted to use these negotiations as a strategic opportunity to regulate communications pricing more favorably for them. At the same time such proposals seem to conflict with the EU ‘No Disconnect Strategy’ to promote communications freedom and access to the Internet for Human Rights defenders, itself a response to the Arab Spring.

As usual Europe finds itself in an important position between the U.S. and other key actors such as the BRIC states - and as usual the inability of European states to agree on a common strategy isn’t making negotiations easier. While the U.S. and Dutch-led Freedom Online Coalition has become an important actor in this space, the fact that it only includes 8 European states (Austria, the Czech Republic, France, Estonia, Ireland, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and Sweden) means that it is no substitute for a common European diplomatic strategy in cyberspace. Until then the "Fear of the Spring" will continue to be a key driver of greater regulation and control in global diplomacy and communications governance."

This publication seeks to identify the relationship between freedom of expression and Internet privacy, assessing where they support or compete with each other in different circumstances. The book maps out the issues in the current regulatory landscape of Internet privacy from the viewpoint of freedom of expression. It provides an overview of legal protection, self-regulatory guidelines, normative challenges, and case studies relating to the topic.

Since the birth of the public internet, questions of global internet governance have also been questions of international affairs. However, while internet security has historically been heavily politicised at an international level, it is only more recently that the questions of internet expression and free speech have been perceived as a foreign policy issue. The following analysis will provide an overview of the two key foreign policy debates on free expression on the internet, before suggesting paths for the development of future internet foreign policy and what consequences these paths are likely to have for freedom of expression on the internet.

Western companies turn a healthy profit by exporting their surveillance technologies and equipment to repressive regimes. This is what Ben Wagner concludes in the Hivos-commissioned report “Exporting Censorship and Surveillance Technology”. Wagner interviewed dozens of people from Europe and North Africa and found that governments there have relied heavily on Western censorship technologies in an attempt to quell the civil unrest during the Arab Spring.

Following the Arab Spring there have been numerous public debates about appropriate policy responses to events in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). One of the largest public debates has centred on communications and the Internet and attempted to understand how EU policy could have prevented, mitigated or avoided some of the negative effects of Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs) during the Arab Spring. The following briefing paper provides an overview of the actions taken by governments in the MENA region to limit the positive impact of ICTs and the use of ICTs for harmful purposes. It then looks at key cases in the MENA region, analysing the events in Tunisia, Egypt, Syria, Libya and Bahrain before and during the Arab Spring. It then develops specific policy recommendations for European foreign policy, which are categorised by priority into short, medium, and long-term initiatives. In conclusion, it suggests that European policy makers have numerous avenues to develop policy solutions that could adequately respond to many of the issues raised during the Arab Spring, in the southern Mediterranean and beyond..

Internet censorship and control have been commonplace in Tunisia since the Internet became available to then public in 1996. It was not until the last days of the Jasmine revolution in January 2011 that the Tunisian government shut down the censorship regime, raising numerous questions about Internet censorship in Tunisia. This article will look at how former Tunisian president Ben Ali was able to shut down the Internet censorship regime within a matter of hours. In order to answer this question, it looks at the history of the Tunisian Internet and its Internet censorship regime, before analysing Internet architecture, Internet institutions, functional differentiation between elements of the regime and the role of international technology markets. Each of these factors contributes to the overall censorship regime and helps understand how former President Ben Ali was able to shutdown Internet censorship within a matter of hours. In conclusion, tracing the genesis of the Tunisian censorship regime may contribute to understanding the role of institutional, architectural and market-based factors in enabling other censorship regimes across the world.

The mass demonstrations that led to the Jasmine Revolution in late 2010 and early 2011 have radically changed the media and communications landscape in Tunisia. All forms of information technology were until recently either heavily regulated by the Tunisian state or were owned by individuals with close links to then-President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. This analysis looks at regulatory regimes across three media and communications technologies during the Jasmine Revolution in Tunisia—Internet, television and mobile phones—and shows that the regulatory regimes of media and communications technologies co-evolved with the protests. As expression about public protests became increasingly pervasive within these media, efforts to control them became increasingly restrictive. Thus changes in the media and communications landscape are discussed in the context of the co-evolution of regulatory regimes.

Revolutions and widespread protests in the Middle East and North Africa in late 2010 and early 2011 have brought media and communications technologies to the fore of debates on human rights. The focus of interest has been on the ability of these technologies and particularly the internet to empower individuals and create alternative spaces for (self-)organisation, expression and civic action.

However the historical framing of the internet as a technology of individual empowerment limits alternative conceptions of technological interaction and masks many relevant properties of internet architecture and the process of it’s normative and institutional construction. Consequently the following analysis will present an alternative conception of internet space by deconstructing the norms, architecture and institutions of internet censorship and control.

The analytical framework be used to explore the construction of internet censorship and control during the revolution in Tunisia in late 2010 and early 2011, before turning to wider social and political implications of the analysis.

"There is a well established negative relationship between press censorship and economic development. (Kilman) Furthermore research by the World Bank Institute has shown that “the supply of information by the media can [...] improve the performance of the economic system.” (WBI, 2002) However this link is not so well established in regard to economic development and internet censorship.

This paper will take one area within economic development - the development of e-business and e-commerce - and attempt to demonstrate that internet censorship has a negative impact on this area of economic development. Once this link has been established, itʼs consequences for the economic development of countries South of the Mediterranean will be discussed.

There is a large body or research on the impact of censorship on e-business in Chine, which indicates that “[g]overnment control is negatively related to Chinese firmsʼ e-business adoption.” (Kshetri, 2007) In one example, surveys conducted in Southern China indicate that the concerns of internet users about privacy and censorship are “inhibiting E-commerce adoption” there. (Tucker, 2003) One major cause of this is the negative affect on user trust which internet censorship causes. As “[t]rust, in general is an important factor in conducting e-transactions, which revolve around uncertainty and ambiguity” (Akther, 2008) any wide-scale negative impacts on internet user trust are likely to have significant implications for e-commerce (Hynes, 2006).

In another study which compared the e-business models of India and China, internet censorship in China is seen as giving the country a comparative disadvantage to India in this regard, as India does not have a similarly elaborate censorship regime. (Li, 2008) More generally in China, “government control increases e-business related costs” and can be seen as “acting as barriers to consumersʼ Internet use” (Kshetri, 2007).

In summarising the Chinese experience of censorship, Three key factors seem to be obstacles to the development of e-business and e-commerce. As a result censorship seems to be leading to
• higher costs associated e-business and e-commerce,
• a lower level of trust in e-business and e-commerce by internet users,
• and lowers levels of internet use and penetration

As censorship is pervasive in several countries south of the Mediterranean, it is reasonable to suggest that censorship of the Internet has similar negative effects to the development of e- business and e-commerce as it does in China. Reports on the state of the internet in these countries indicates substantial or pervasive internet censorship in Tunisia, Libya, Syria and Turkey. (OpenNet, 2009)

As a result, the reluctance of several states south of the Mediterranean to allow open, unrestricted access to the internet is harming the levels of internet penetration and usage and contributes significantly to the “deficient e-economy in the region”. (Allagui, 2009) And while on the one hand the use of the internet South of the Mediterranean “mirrors Internet usage worldwide”, on the other hand “e-commerce is literally absent from the Arab usage of the Internet”. (Allagui, 2009).

Similar preferences of internet users south of the Mediterranean could indicate similar potential for e-business and e-commerce in the southern Mediterranean that already exists in the northern Mediterranean. As a result it could be argued that less internet censorship south of the Mediterranean could significantly improve the environment for e-business in these countries.

Furthermore a local model of e-business could assist the states south of the Mediterranean in the context of dependency theory. The overwhelming majority of internet usage in the southern Mediterranean is on sites outside the region, (Allagui, 2009) reinforcing the opinion of critics who believe that the “implementation of the Internet [has] helped reinforce the dependency relationship between the Western economic system and its counterparts in developing countries.” (Albirini, 2008) A greater local role for e-business and e-commerce could go some way to lowering the dependency of the South of the Mediterranean.

In order to explore the negative relationship between censorship and e-business further, the internet censorship policies of four states will be explored in greater detail: Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Tunisia. While Egypt and Jordan have some of the lowest levels of internet censorship in the countries south of the Mediterranean, Syria and Tunisia have some of the most pervasive censorship in the region.

The three points developed above which are seem to be hindering e-business and e-commerce in China will be used as a framework to study these four cases in the southern Mediterranean. While the goal of this paper is not to “induce the governments change their politics and enforce the development of the web-economy”, (Allagui, 2009) it is hoped that the results will contribute to a growing literature on the impacts of censorship policy and in a wider sense internet governance.


Bibliography
Abdulla. , R. A. (2007). The Internet in the Arab World, Germany: Peter Lang Publishing.

Akther, Fahim. (2008). The Influence of Familiarity and Security on Decision Making Processes in E-Commerce

Albirini, Abdulkafi. {2008}. The Internet in developing countries: A medium of economic, cultural and political domination

Allagui, Ilhem. (2009). Multiple Mirrors of the Arab Digital Gap

Hynes, Niki. (2006). Consumer trust and its effect on sustainable e-commerce development in China

Kilman, Larry. (2006). The Role of the Press in Sustainable Economic Development

Kshetri, Nir. (2007). Organizationsʼ E-Business Adoption in China: An Institutional Perspective

Li. (2008). E-Business models and services.

Opennet (2009) Country Profiles of Tunisia, Libya, Syria and Turkey. Retrieved 15.07.2009 on
http://www.opennet.org

Tucker, David. (2003). Consumer Barriers to E-Commerce in South China

World Bank Institute. (2002). The Right to Tell, The Role of Mass Media in Economic Development"

The recent renewal of Google's license in China is yet another example of the ongoing internet governance conflict between Google and China in relation to Free Speech and control over access to information. However the nature of this internet governance conflict has evidently changed since Google established itself in China in 2006 (Drummond in McKinnon 2010).

Google and China are both justifying their positions using moral arguments. Although there are different competing theories that analyze the increasing moralization in international affairs, all these theories only concentrate on one aspect of the discourse and as such are reductive. There are three main theories dealing with moralization as the Archimedean point in international conflicts: rational choice theory, the accommodation-oriented deliberative model (“Verständigungsorientiertes Modell”) and the rhetorical argumentation model (Hanrieder 2008).

Rational choice theories are only able to conceptualize the bargaining aspect of such a discourse and develop intention-based models centered on veiled preferences (Schneider 1994). By contrast the accommodation-oriented deliberative model and the rhetorical argumentation model are focused on the arguing aspect. The former model can be seen in the tradition of Habermas and assumes the ideal model of discourse as a  given real situation (Deitelhoff 2006). The latter model is based on the de facto given moral reasons and concentrates on the analysis of rhetorical strategies observed without making any assumption on the truth or plausibility of the articulated arguments (Müller 2004).

By using Amartya Sen’s liberal paradox we believe we are able to analyze both the discourse interaction and the given reasons while reducing the number of assumptions made. Integrating both the bargaining aspect and the arguing aspect of the previously mentioned theoretical approaches we believe it is possible to avoid unsatisfying partial, reductive explanations and deliver instead an encompassing explanandum.

Applying Sen’s model we analyze structure and content of Google and China’s discourses in relation to the ongoing internet governance conflict on information control. In the analysis we place particular emphasis on the coherence between structure and content, which clarifies the relationship between bargaining and arguing without excluding either concept. Hence we are able to differentiate between revealed and veiled preferences while explicitly including both within the overall model. Thus, coherence between structure (dynamic of discursive actions) and content (the given arguments) can be interpreted as an indicator of the truthfulness of a preference (i.e. revealed/veiled).

This model demonstrates the specific dynamics, which exist in conflictive situations of information control (i.e. censorship, freedom of expression, the primacy of state sovereignty and national legislation). We will document our model by concentrating on a case study, concretely on the conflict between Google and China and explain why this internet governance dispute persists.


In this context, deciding to interact means to enter into a conflict thus implying to become mutually dependent. Moreover actors perception of the discursive action (structure) and preferences (content) of the other actor leads to joint mistrust between the actors. Although dependency remains and the conflict is ongoing, the implications of not interacting further are worse than perpetuating the conflict. Hence no accommodation between conflicting parties is possible and the internet governance conflict between Google and China continues.

As has been shown above, this model may be able to demonstrate which strategies are possible and which dynamics exist in the internet governance conflict between Google and China. Perhaps most importantly of all, this model explains how, when and why nosy preferences result in a deliberative and subsequently decisional impassé. Both Google and China remain seized in their preference structures, which they need to justify to their respective constituencies.

One of the key advantages of such a perspective on the free flow of information on the internet, is that it emphasizes different strategies of the actors involved, which leads to a dynamic model of information control. Another important benefit of this model is that culture is viewed as contingent and an insufficient variable to explain different forms of information control.

As will be argued in following, we believe that these dynamics are not an isolated phenomenon. Google is a global player in the internet governance sphere, but it is by no means the only such player. Moreover these global players such as Google are not nation-states and do not follow state-oriented logics such as national boundaries. Rather national boundaries run contrary to Google’s business model, making conflicts of the type discussed above between states and global players increasingly common.

We believe that the model can be applied in a wide variety of different conflicts on information control, which is itself understood as a term which encompasses forms of censorship, filtering and legislation to restrict information flow to which positions of free expression and freedom of information provide a counterpoint. Moreover it will become increasingly relevant as information control conflicts between the 'transnational potential of the internet' and the 'internet of nation-states' become more pronounced.

The academic debate on deep packet inspection (DPI) centres on methods of network management and copyright protection and is directly linked to a wider debate on freedom of speech on the Internet. The debate is deeply rooted in an Anglo-Saxon perspective of the Internet and is frequently depicted as a titanic struggle for the right to fundamentally free and unfettered access to the Internet.

This debate is to a great extent defined by commercial interests. These interests whether of copyright owners, Internet service providers, application developers or consumers, are all essentially economic. All of these groups have little commercial interest in restricting free speech as such. However some might well be prepared to accept a certain amount of ‘collateral damage’ to internet free speech in exchange for higher revenues.

It can be argued that more transparent and open practices from network service providers are needed regarding filtering policy and the technology used. Nevertheless these practises are unlikely to fundamentally endanger free speech. Within the international system however, there are a large number of actors who have a considerable interest in limiting free speech, most obviously states.

As this paper will argue, the link between deep packet inspection and internet censorship is of far greater concern for freedom of speech than its use in traffic shaping or preventing copyright infringement. At the present time many of the states censoring the internet are already known to use deep packet filtering.

The proposed workshop will bring together stakeholders from academia, civil society, government and private sector representatives to discuss how internet technology is exported and how this affects human rights. While it has become common knowledge that surveillance and censorship technologies are often exported, the extent to which this is taking place has only recently become apparent with public reports on censorship and surveillance technologies by NokiaSiemens being used in Iran, by Ericsson in Belarus, by SmartFilter in Tunisia and by Narus in Egypt all suggesting substantial human rights implications.

In response to these concerns the Global Network Initiative in the U.S. has taken the lead in providing a self-regulatory framework to respond to these concerns. In Europe the European Parliament and several European governments have expressed a desire to regulate these technologies. This workshop will discuss both what we know about the export of internet technology and how this impacts human rights. It will include presentations on the extent and scope of technology transfer, the ethical dimensions of technology export, possible (self-)regulatory responses and remedies within existing human rights frameworks.