Stuart's blog

A bit of a late post on yesterday’s goings on now, starting with the workshop on a legal survey of Internet censorship and filtering. IFLA representative Dr. Sohair Wastawy was presenting at this session and she concentrated on the situation relating to Egypt and other Arab countries. It was a great presentation, taking in everything from why censorship takes place and how, to trends across the region. I will try to post the slides and the paper online as soon as I can.

Other panelists addressed different regions such as West Africa and Europe, and Robert Guera from Freedom House in the US introduced their latest report ‘Freedom on the Net‘, a survey of Internet freedom in 15 varying countries. It can be downloaded for free here. Good discussions followed, including a good example of public pressure to change overly restrictive Internet laws in Pakistan, and a brief digression on the use of IP law as a censorship tool. Sohair was almost mobbed at the end by appreciative audience members who stepped up to congratulate her on her presentation.

In the afternoon I checked the session on Openness, Privacy and Security in the main hall, with a heavy emphasis on the balance between privacy and security. My favourite speaker on the panel however, Bruce Schneier, made some perceptive comments about how we are actually talking about liberty versus control, and how privacy can actually be a way to more liberty (think of a tall fence, or a door lock). What really stuck with me though was something that I heard mentioned again later in the day in a youth forum on the same issue – that people only really care about privacy and security issues on the Internet once something actually happens to them personally. Until then we seem to be happy spreading our data shadow everywhere. If you are interested in reliving the session, the transcript of the whole thing is here.