IGF 2019 – Day 3 – Convention Hall II – Promoting free data flow with trust in a digitally connected world, Osaka Track, Biarritz Strategy and the future

>> KENTA MOCHIZUKI:  Good morning.  We are going to start our main session.  Please have a seat.

Okay, good morning again.  I'm Kenta Mochizuki, a Member of the multistakeholder group of the United Nations Internet Governance Forum, and a Japanese company.  Today we'd like to hold a main session on digital threat titled promoting free data flow with trust in a digitally connected world, Osaka Track, Biarritz Strategy and the future.  As written in the main session page of the schedule, this session aims to facilitate a thoughtful dialogue of how to further promote free flow of data, while addressing the challenges related to privacy, data protection, intellectual property rights and security with the concept of trust.

This will be done taking into account the progress of digital transformation as well as the political tensions which are impacted the global economy.

Digital economy has been growing continuously with ICTs such as AI, or IoT, Big Data and architects, blockchain and any other emerging technologies.  Now it is not too much to say that digital economy is economy as much has to be a key driver for innovation and economic growth in both developing and developed countries who are changing the traditional ecosystem of the world economy.

Because digital economy is based on the Internet it is open and global in its nature it can easily be expanded globally.  Digital economy has a great influence on trade and there have been a wide variety of trade relation discussions and trade negotiation has been expanded to.  While the most important and contentious points of the issue is about data, and many countries have now been thinking about what kinds of rules and policies are needed to further promote data utilization whale protecting it from various perspectives.

In principle it is indispensable to ensure the free flow of data across borders but at the same time, we also have to think about how to have privacy, data protection, intellectual property rights and security taking into account cross‑border activities by global digital platforms and their impacts on small and medium‑sized enterprises.

Speaking of rules and policies, there are many ways to regulate data, that is, it can be a legally binding instrument, so‑called software regression or even core regression where the cooperation with both public and private stakeholders.  In this regard the more countries set legally binding norms to regulate the cross‑border transfer of data, the more it gets difficult to facilitate the flow of data and the businesses have to increase their costs.

At the end of the day, world's digital economy could be a patch work.  Therefore, international harmonization and interoperability between states, actors are utmost important and there have been various negotiations occurring predatory, and ‑‑ like trade negotiation.  However not all digital makers are ‑‑ 

They have still been struggling how to achieve the optimal international harmonization and interoperability, and multistakeholder participation plays a critical role and I believe the IGF is the best place to find ways forward to achieve the optimal international harmonization and interoperability for the facilitation of digital trade.

We hold a ‑‑ we have High Level speakers and panelists as well as prominent Moderators.  First of all Chairs of G20 and G7 this year report on the outcomes, and then we discuss one question based on the reports of both G20 and G7 Chairs.  After the Panel Discussion we open the floor and discuss another question among the audience, speakers, and panelists.  Before we wrap up we will ask you to all speakers to make final words.

Finally, I want to let you know that this main session realizes paragraph 13 in the digital economy Section of G20 Ministerial Statement on Trade and Digital Economy.  As a member, I'm very pleased to hold this kind of session and hope everyone here will enjoy and take from the speakers and audience.

I'd like to pass the baton to the prominent Moderator, Mr. Paul Fehlinger.

Paul, please start your session.  Thank you.

[ Applause ]

>> PAUL FEHLINGER:  Thank you, thank you very much, Kenta, for those opening remarks, and for setting the scene for this session.  It's a pleasure to moderate this main session on the future of cross‑border data flows and trust.  Welcome to everybody here in the room, remotely as well, and to our great panel.  My name is Paul Fehlinger.  I'm the co‑founder and Deputy Executive Director of the multistakeholder organization Internet and Jurisdiction Policy Network, and as Kenta pointed out, how to square the transnational Internet and National laws is one of the greatest challenges of the digital 21st century.  It is especially moving the for me personally to moderate this session on the future cross‑border data flows in Berlin where I was born and which is such a global symbol and reminder of what impact borders can have on our societies and on our economies.

We will talk today about how we can maintain and foster data flows and services across borders in a globally connected digital economy.  This issue has propelled in only a few years to the forefront of political agendas around the world.  And we have a great and diverse multistakeholder panel today.  With us are Yoichi Iida, the Chair of the G20 digital economy Task Force and Deputy Director‑General for G7 and G20 relations at the global Strategy Bureau.  Salwa Toko, the head of the French Council.  Mr. Till Kupfer, the Vice President for trade and National affairs.  Ms. Lidia Stepinska‑Ustasiak, the Deputy Director of the Department of Foreign Affairs in Poland.  Ms. Lee Tuthill, the counselor in the trade and services and investment Division of the World Trade Organization.  Mrs. Luiza Brandão, who is a lawyer and the head of the reference Institute on Internet and Society in Brazil.  Mrs. Rachael Stelly, the Policy Counsel of the Computer and Communications Industry Association CCIA.  Mr. Sebastian Bellagamba, the Regional Director of ISOC for Latin America and the Caribbean and Mr. Bill Drake who's an international Fellow and lecturer at the University of Zurich.  Our Remote Moderator will be Mrs. Afi Edoh, the co‑founder and CEO and a Member of the MAG.  We would like to start this session with reports of the digital tracks of both the G20 and G7 presidencies of this year before we have a multistakeholder discussion on those issues, so it is my pleasure to give the floor to Mr. Yoichi Iida to give the report on the digital track of the G20 this year, if I may ask you to please come to the podium.

>> YOICHI IIDA:  To good morning.  Thank you very much, Mr. Fehlinger and distinguished speakers and ladies and gentlemen.  It is my great pleasure as well as honor for me to speak in front of you and to make a short report from the outcome of the G20 digital Task Force discussion.

So Japanese Government took the presidency of G20 this year, and we had the Ministerial meeting on digital economy jointly with the Trade Ministers to cover some of the common challenges across trade and the digital economy, but today I would like to focus on the data flow.  But this shows the members of the Ministerial meeting on trade and the digital economy and because we had the Ministers on trade, as well as Ministers on digital economy, you see so many Ministers in lines but half of them are trade Ministers, and we had a very good discussion in Ministerial meeting held in June, which was passed over to the leaders level at the end of the same month.

So before we started thinking about the agenda for the meeting, we first thought about the overall purpose of the discussion, and we decided to put how to emphasize and how to share the importance of huge positive impact of digitalization to G20 members and as well as rest of the world.

So because this is a kind of one of the central policy topics, policy priorities, inside our country, which is called society 5.0.  The society 5.0 is aiming at building up human centered digital society in the future, and the concept is to make the best use of digitalization or Digital Technologies to boost not only the economic growth, but also the development of whole society.

So according to that concept, we formulated the agenda and topics to be tackled like this, and we put the data flow at the top of the agenda, because we believed data flow or utilization of data is very much the foundational topic for the development of digital economy as a whole.

So over the past periods, we discussed the Governmental fora such as G7 to G20 or even more discussed the benefit and also the challenges brought about by the global digitalization, as well as the more specifically the expansion of cross‑border data flow, and we reached a kind of regular formulation of the agreement which said we promote free flow of information across borders, while respecting legitimate policy objectives, or sometimes we use slightly different wording but we always put our intention to promote free flow of data across borders or information.  At the same time, we always emphasize the importance of our respectfulness to the individual countries' policy spaces.

And we of course understand the importance of respecting some data protection policies, and we are freely accepting the agreement but when we started the discussion, we thought about why we need to put so much emphasis on the respect to legitimate policy objectives in each National policies?  What is ‑‑ why the companies are so ‑‑ have to be so cautious in transferring data across borders?  Why users or citizens are so careful or sometimes even having so much fear in transferring or giving their data?

And so we recognized the need to be more trust, that these phenomenon are coming from the lack of trust between different stakeholders, or between individual stakeholders and digital economy, or data transfer itself.

So we discussed how to trust in order to promote free flow of data across borders, so the ultimate purpose is promote data flow across borders in order to boost up the economic development and Social Development, but for that particular purpose, we understood we need to strengthen mutual trust, so after discussing among 20 countries, this is what we reached as an agreement.

So instead of saying promoting data flow across borders while respecting, blah, blah, we said, by continuing to address challenges related to privacy, data protection, intellectual property rights and security, we can further facilitate data free flow and strengthen consumer and business trust.  So in substance, this is more or less equivalent as the previous statement, but the objective of the discussion was how we can understand the way to promote data flow and for that purpose, how we can strengthen trust.  Unfortunately we couldn't reach very concrete result or concrete agreement but what we did was the last red sentence.  So we committed, we will cooperate to encourage the interoperability of different frameworks, so we understand different countries, different communities, have different situations, different conditions and different frameworks to regulate, or to protect the data, and in order to strengthen, in order to promote the cross‑board data flow, we need to promote interoperability between different frameworks, and there is also, we are a short part saying that we affirm the role of data for development.  This is also very important, but today I skip this.  We put this aside for this discussion for today.

So this agreement was elevated to the leaders discussion and the leaders agreed on the same substance, and then they also discussed how to promote the international discussion of data flow and digital economy as a whole, because on the other half of the Ministerial meeting, the trade people are discussing how to promote the e‑Commerce negotiation, which is being promoted under WTO, and they understand, they need to promote the data flow across borders, specifically the data used for e‑Commerce transactions.

So Prime Minister Abe decided to launch an initiative called Osaka Track on the side line of the G20 Summit, and leaders from 27 countries gathered together before the Summit meeting was started as a kind of additional event and they agreed on launching this initiative, so the purpose of this initiative is, in the red part, to promote international policy discussions, especially to promote data flow, and we believe this initiative will also support the discussion on the negotiation preparing for the negotiation on e‑Commerce and WTO.

So let me briefly explain what is Osaka Track.  As I said, Osaka Track is aimed at promoting the international discussion on digital economy as a whole, or data flow, but we also believe that this will help enormously for the ‑‑ for support to the discussions on negotiations on e‑Commerce under the WTO framework.

So this is a kind of multilayer structure, but as a whole, this is promoting the discussions over digital economy and data flow with the multistakeholder approach, because in any aspect, we believe discussions over digital economy or digitalization should be promoted with different stakeholders and from that point of view, IGF is one of the ideal fora to promote this discussion.

So these are some of the challenges in front of us which we understand after the discussions and I don't go into the individual topics but I hope a lot of discussions and I understand a lot of discussions similar to these points during this IGF in different fora, and we also expect these discussions will be continued in the framework of IGF in the coming years.

So thank you very much, and I pass back to the microphone to the Moderator.  Thank you.

>> PAUL FEHLINGER:  Thank you.  Thank you very much.

[ Applause ]

I would now like to ask Mrs. Salwa Toko to take the floor and tell us about the track of the G7 discussions this year.

>> SALWA TOKO:  Good morning, all.  Ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much for inviting me to this Plenary Session.  We are very pleased at the French Digital Council to have this opportunity to expose what the last G7 on digital has concluded.  What I would like to share with you is our vision at the French Digital Council how we stand for on how we are entering this digital society area.  First, very quickly, let me give you just a little bit of introduction about the French Digital Council, who is not really known, and are very aware of that. 

We are an Advisory Board and we operate as an independent one to advise the French Government and mainly provide policy recommendations.  We play a strong role in bridging the gap between the tech builders and the rest of the society.  We act upon the belief that the citizens cannot and should not be left out of decision‑making processes regarding Digital Technologies.

Users stakeholders in today's world are as important, if not more important, than the economic stakes that come into play.  One should not let platform decide on their own on the Internet's future.  The stakes are too big to let them do that.  That's the reason why more than in any other sector, I believe that digital matters have to be decided within a multilateral frame with all stakeholders.

I have participated last summer for the G7 Group on Digital Affairs.  I cannot stress enough how important it is to hold spaces of discussion such as the G7 where Governments and other decision makers have to engage in a dialogue with the Civil Society.  The 2019 French presidency of the G7 has indeed involved actors from the ecosystem within the G7 process, and that's a very important and interesting approach.  However, this is to me just a first step that has to be replicated and taken further in every single international decision‑making instance.  Multilateralism is at risk in almost every domain of international relations and the Internet is no exception.

We all have a responsibility not to give up on multilateral dialogue especially in the Internet, which has represented for some time the utopia of worldwide knowledge sharing.  It's only through dialogue and inclusion of all different kind of voices that we can build Digital Technologies, not for the sake of building these technologies, but for the sake of truly putting them at the service of the Sustainable Development Goals, at the service of the environment, at the service of the humans.

Take face recognition, for example.  These kinds of systems and their deployment in various public or private spaces raise very problematic ethical questions and issues.  The error rates are still important, the technology still often discriminates against women or people or color and when you're both, you can imagine.  But for what purposes?  That is a question which is today almost never asked, and when it is asked, it's usually just between Governments and platforms.  Civil Society, users, citizens, are almost never in the room, but that's exactly the kind of stake that we are facing today.  We do definitely need and desperately need multilateralism and dialogue.  This is one of the reasons why some countries of this G7 have adopted a Charter for an open, free, and safe Internet last summer.

The Internet is transforming our societies in ways that make very specific problem arise around the world, be it the spreading of hate speech, disinformation, or the rights to privacy and data protection.  Building on the Christchurch Call, the Charter's signing parties have for example agreed to counter illegal content online in compliance with Freedom of Expression and media freedom.  The Charter adopts as basis for Internet regulation the promotion and protection for human rights but what does an Internet regulation based on human rights mean?  First of all, human rights can seem like an old concept and practical for all digital societies.  That is not true.  Human rights are a comprehensive set of principle that would we have to fight for and which will completely apply to the Internet era.  Human rights mean guaranteeing our Freedom of Expression and fighting against censorship.  The right to access information, the right to net neutrality, the right to be forgotten, these rights are all human rights and we need to apply and protect in the Internet sphere, as well.

Second of all, we need to elaborate a new set of digital human rights that builds upon those we already have.  This is not a new idea.  Usually digital human rights focus on the rights I just listed.  What we need now is to empower citizens with new rights, tailored for the digital society at large.  How do we translate the notion of equal rights in an era where automated decision‑making discriminates against certain categories of people?  How do we ensure that all citizens are treated equally by the technology?

How do we have the very concept of technology within technologies such as algorithm?  It is an absolute necessity to formulate and guarantee a right to digital inclusion, vulnerable populations should not be left out of the digital transformation of our society.

The need to be on board, the need to be with us.  We need to work very hard, harder and harder, on reducing the gender gap in the industry.  We need to design better systems that make better decisions than those we make ourselves.  Otherwise, what's the point in designing them in the first place?

How do we enforce the rights to information when automated decision‑making usually work like black boxes?  The Internet has been built on the idea that access to Information and Knowledge is fundamentally empowering citizens.  We need to actually implement an idea into rights, to transparency and explainability.  Ensuring transparency means in real terms guaranteeing people that they are given the criteria on which any algorithm based or data driven decision has been made.

If I have been discriminated against by a machine, if I have been falsely recognized as a terrorist by a face recognition system, how can I access the evidence that the machine has not is wrong ‑‑ have taken a mistake, that the machine is making an error.

In the digital society the right to transparency and explainability also means ensuring access to justice for all.  Last but not least, ensuring a fundamental right in Democratic systems.  Today we see social media platform making decisions regarding political ads, for instance, that have an impact on the way our democratic platforms work but the big difference is there's almost no safeguard ensuring accountability of the platforms when they make the wrong choices.  In a democratic system, wrong choices are in theory at least sanctioned at the next elections.

What accountability mechanisms do we have now and what kind of those we need to create to ensure that the platforms that have a fundamental impact on our societies are held responsible for that decisions?

The three basic rights:  Equality, transparency, accountability, are, as you can imagine, working together.  There is no point in equality if decision makers cannot be held accountable when they leave people out.  There is no point in transparency if there is no accountability.  There is no point in accountability if you don't have any of the other two.  Ensuring these rights should be how we create trust for all in the digital era.  Thank you very much for your attention.

[ Applause ]

>> PAUL FEHLINGER:  Thank you.  Thank you very much for those words.

We are here now 50 years after the birth of the Internet and we see that new laws and regulatory initiatives that impact data flows and trust adopted at exponentially increasing speeds all around the world, and this happens now after a long period of inaction in many parts of the world.

And we heard the challenges that we're confronted with in the two interventions from the G20 and the G7.  At the Internet and Jurisdiction Policy Network, we launched yesterday a new report called the Internet and Jurisdiction Global Status Report, and I want to share some statistics with you to kick off the discussion.  We interviewed more than 150 key stakeholders, Governments, International Organizations, big Internet companies, Civil Society groups and other experts.

79% of those stakeholders consider that today there's insufficient international coordination and coherence to address cross‑border legal challenges on the Internet.  And over 90% of them have said that the problems are just getting worse over the next 3 years.

All issues and this was pointed out by the three interventions we had the pleasure of hearing until now, ranging from privacy to data access, ownership, online abuses, you name them.  They're all somehow interrelated and interdependent and regulatory initiatives, be they National, private normative orders, declarations, trade agreements, they have ripple effects and spill‑over effects on each other.  The digital trade debate thus cannot be looked at only in the field of the digital economy, but in the larger context of the question of how National laws apply on the cross‑board Internet, how rules are developed and how they are enforced.

So here's my first question to you, and you already highlighted the focus of the Ministers of the G20 on the interoperability of frameworks from the G7 report.  We heard the importance of the dialogue among the stakeholders for an open, free, and safe Internet.

So if coordination policy coherence are crucial to enhance cross‑border data flows and create trust among Governments, businesses, and consumers, then how in your assessment is the articulation of the initiatives and frameworks we observe around the world today, what are the trends you see?  What consensus is emerging and what are potential roadblocks for policy coherence?  I would like to start with Tilmann Kupfer.  BT operates in more than 128 jurisdictions around the world.  Please tell us how you perceive those issues.

>> TILMANN KUPFER:  Does this work?  Thank you very much Paul and good morning.  I'd like to touch on data flows and trust by touching on two points.  One is to talk about why this is important for BT and why it's crucial in the trade context and I'd like to link it to the WTO e‑Commerce Associations to which also which was referred to already so BT is outside U.K., we only serve business customers.  We're a global company and service customers in 180 countries and for instance FTSE 100 majority is among our customers but also in Germany the majority of the DAX list is our companies so multinationals so all kinds of Sectors, from automobile industry, Financial Services, pharmaceuticals, transport, logistics.  We also serve international institutions like from the European Union, and increasingly we have also customers from emerging markets.

By running one of the largest global networks, we are also one of the biggest data movers in the world, and when I speak in the trade context, I like very much to call us a logistics company for data, because of the ‑‑ without the seamless movement of data and the variable environment, the supply chains of our customers and the global value chains would stop the function.

Our services are basically involved in every single step of the global value chain, when you think about the resourcing of raw materials, if you think of design and development, also of marketing, shipping, sales, and after sales, ICT services are needed everywhere and equally also data.

That's why also the, that what we do as a company is very closely linked to the topic of this data, because companies want us to move their information assets and their data in a trusted environment and in a secure environment.  Increasingly, the digital economy is the economy nowadays.  So companies transform their business operations become more digital in order to become also more efficient, and restrictions of data whether it's data localization or also the barriers to the free movement of data, really become a problem for the modern economy.

The information economy report of the UNCTAD in 2017 came up with a figure that the global e‑Commerce sales amounted to $25 trillion, so it's a huge amount but there's a second figure which is equally important which means that 90% of these e‑Commerce sales are actually business to business transactions, and I think that's very important also when we look into the future.

Because with cloud, with Internet of Things, machine to machine communications, 3D printing, and things becoming more and more connected and there was a presentation where we heard also that cows become connected and tomatoes, so that the amount of data is going to really explode in the future and most of this data is going to be non‑personal data but still, when you look at the WTO e‑Commerce negotiations on international trade context, the real problem and the very heated debated topic is the way we move personal data around.

So from a BT perspective, for us it's very important that data is moved, is protected and that the protection of the data moves with the data and that's why we also support the general data protection regulation of the European Union and we don't like to call it a trade barrier.

In fact, the GDPR offers quite a few tools how data can be moved, because there are transfer tools in the GDPR, and the problem however is that the European Union looks at this from a perspective:  What happens with the data of European citizens when it moves outside the EU?  But companies have to move data in multiple directions, from outside the EU into the EU, and also between different countries and I think that leads to the question that needs to be addressed also in the WTO e‑Commerce negotiations that we find some principles to do that and I'm quite optimistic that a solution can be found.  Thank you.

>> PAUL FEHLINGER:  Thank you, thank you very much for those remarks.  So I know data moves around the world.  Everything today is digital and we can expect the highest growth of the data volumes around the world not for personal data but for non‑personal data due to the revolution of or IoT and other technologies.  I would now like to give the floor to Lidia Stepinska‑Ustasiak from the Government of Poland.  Please share with us your view on the trends and the coordination in the international system.

>> LIDIA STEPINSKA-USTASIAK:  Thank you, Paul, for your question.  In Europe we are witnessing growing importance of data economy.  According to European Commission and predictions, the value of the digital economy in Europe will achieve more than 700 billion Euros by 2020, and it shows the growing importance of digital economy as a source of economic growth and societal well‑being and therefore it is important to achieve coherence in policymaking but what is challenging here are at least 3 elements.

The first is multistakeholder approach, because in our opinion, regulations should reflect different needs of different stakeholders, and as you said 5 minutes ago, we have impressive list of 150 stakeholders.  Therefore, this process of involving everybody here is so challenging.

The second important component is the pace of development of emerging technologies, which tends to be faster than regulations, and even if Salwa said that global knowledge‑sharing sounds like utopia, it is necessary to exchange knowledge and best practices across regions.

And the third element I would like to mention today here is a deep understanding of interactions between different regulations.  We need coherent communication and clear vision how to communicate implications to different groups of different stakeholders.  I will give you just one example.  In Europe, it is a subject of a debate how regulation related to free flow of non‑personal data interact with GDPR and therefore it is necessary to provide coherent and clear communication to all stakeholders, particularly to SMEs that are innovation drivers, but they have more limited capabilities than, for example, global huge players.  Thank you.

>> PAUL FEHLINGER:  Thank you, thank you very much for your intervention that highlight again the need for coherence, the future direction to look at the emerging technologies and how our global data economy will evolve in the coming years when we design policies right now and also to highlight this big issue of legal uncertainty for smaller actors who do not have capacities to navigate hundreds or dozens of markets around the world, different jurisdictions and different laws.

Lee, can you give us an update on the discussions of those of the WTO?  What's your view on the current trends?

>> LEE TUTHILL:  Thank you.  As some of you may be aware the WTO has a number of initiatives going on in relation to digital trade or what some people refer to as electronic commerce as well.  It's ‑‑ we have a mechanism at the WTO not unlike many other International Organizations where we try to achieve a certain sense of coherence through negotiation and that's a very cumbersome process but I think once it yields some outcome, you're sure that you have the compromises you need to have had a consensus.  Now, a number of WTO members are collaborating to develop principles on a wide number of the aspects of electronic commerce, from customs and processing issues to cybersecurity related principles, but the one that has attracted the most attention and as we've noted already in this panel alone, the one that is most controversial and challenging is the discussion on trade principles for data flows.

It says two aspects.  One is the principle of free cross‑border flows of information, and the idea that data restrictions that data must be either maintained or processed locally are undesirable.  These principles would really be a starting point.  I think they're a starting point because the WTO when they come up with principles they traditionally do not tell governments how to live up to those principles.  They leave it to Governments to whether they have existing legislation or need new rules and regulations, to go back to the drawing board.

That's why continued processes that are multidisciplinary, multiministry, because of the variety of the impacts and the spill‑over effects, have to happen even if the WTO is able to achieve some outcomes in the area of principles for electronic commerce and digital trade.

These principles, if they succeed, would complement existing principles in the WTO, which include, for example, that Governments have the flexibility to achieve certain policy goals, legitimate policy goals, often not related to trade, such as privacy, such as crime prevention online, and some of the elements of environmental concerns can be achieved even in spite of rules like these.  So this is an important aspect of discussion.

Now, what you have is interestingly, and I think surprisingly to some, from what you might hear in some of the panels I've attended thus far this week, it's not a north‑south divide on where do we go with these principles, and the differences that have come out.  There's West‑West divide.  There's East‑West divide and there's South‑South divide.  Some of the South countries sound like Europe or the United States, and I think that that is something that we can work out with respect to most issues, the most questionable one right now is the data flows.  Some of the differences are quite trivial.  Do we use the word "ensure free flow of data" around the world or free flow of information?  That may not be extremely critical differences but then there are greater differences like we don't want to agree to the free flow of data because we want to be able to use it to protect our markets.

So that's probably an extreme view but it is out there on the part of some of the members of the South.

I think that the trends are not good.  This process that we've been undergoing not only is it cumbersome as I said, but you also have the sense, since 1998, when we first, in the WTO, concluded a moratorium or temporary moratorium on duties on electronic commerce, subject to a work program, since 1998, there's been this constant sense of fear that people didn't know where the Internet is going, they didn't know which way business on the Internet was going, and to some, the idea of doing nothing was perhaps preferable to doing the wrong thing.

Well, now I think people realize that the business and economy and the Internet went way ahead of them, and there's almost a panic, a sense of loss of control, we have to do something now.  The wrong thing could still be done, but we'll see, because I think that there's an urgency now to the WTO work that people didn't sense before.

What are the roadblocks?  The roadblocks are the differences large and small.  The roadblocks include things like if the WTO concludes some fairly reasonable baseline of standards and principles for e‑Commerce, there's a lot of very hard work to be done that I think needs to be multidisciplinary.  It needs to be multistakeholder.  It needs to be multiministry in the future, because in part, I don't see best practice having emerged to date.

GDPR, I think it's a really good effort.  It's a very interesting effort to find a solution.  Is it translatable to other countries, other contexts, other legal systems?  That we're not sure about.  How will it work out even within the EU?  That still has to be seen.  But that's just one example of the multiple areas where Governments are thinking that they need to apply laws and regulations to e‑Commerce, where we have some material.  We don't have raw material in a lot of other areas, and that will need to be done outside the WTO, because the WTO people aren't responsible for cybersecurity.  They're not responsible for privacy.  They're not necessarily responsible for a lot.  Consumer protection often that's another Agency.

So I think that you have the situation where the collaborative mechanisms, and I'm not saying that G7, G20, APEC, ASEAN, the European community, I'm not saying they're not collaborative mechanisms, but you don't have the kind of collaborative mechanisms in place that work at extremely granular levels in a lot of these areas and to work on extremely granular levels but cross‑ministry, cross‑disciplines, I think you need to create some new mechanisms.

>> PAUL FEHLINGER:  Thank you, thank you very much for giving us an update and a snapshot of the ecosystem from your assessment.  To highlight the pendulum swing that is now happening, the pressure and urgency that is felt in the system.  What I found very interesting is that you highlighted that on the one hand there's a need for principles but that the devil lies in the details, and I think this is very important.  And the other thing I think that you highlighted is that this is a trade discussion, of course, but it impacts so many other areas and other areas impact the trade discussions, so how do we do this even on an institutional or governance level, an organizational level?  So thank you for those remarks.

Luiza, you're a lawyer and head of the IRIS, Institute for Research on Internet and Society.  How do you view those issues today?

>> LUIZA BRANDÃO:  Thank you, Paul.  Good morning everyone.  It's a pleasure to be here and join this discussion.  They are really complex issues, as we see from this panel, and we have a lot of different approaches to possible solutions.  But what I see working in Brazil and in the Region is that there is a lack of diversity, dialogue and transparency on the procedures for taking next steps, so we already agreed that we need to go further as a global community to global solutions on Internet restriction, on data flow, ICT products and services, but are we making sure that diverse stakeholders take part in the process?

One of the main concerns talking about those divides that Lee previously mentioned is that very often, we don't have all the stakeholders in the same room with the same goals or the same background to discuss common issues, so one start point for these next steps could be a more transparent and diversity approach of the solutions we currently have, or we want to have.  Because very often, we see initiatives that are interesting that addresses important issues such as data protection, cybersecurity, intellectual property rights but they are designed to be global, and not necessarily there is a global debate before it goes to the reality, before it comes into force, and to break these walls that we still see in negotiations and we will need them to go down to take further steps on global coordination, I think it's necessary to bring the different stakeholders, to bring different countries, different perspectives, not just one country or one stakeholder from one Region or another, but to be more inclusive as possible, and legitimate the future initiatives and cooperation that we seek to build.

>> PAUL FEHLINGER:  Thank you very much for highlighting those important points.  If I want to summarize this a bit provocatively we know somehow what has to be done but we don't know how and the discussions have to be of course inclusive but how is it then possible that we can discuss every single measure adopted around the world at the global level with everybody around the table?  How does that work?

Rachael, you're the Policy Council of the CCIA.  Your members are among of them are the largest tech companies or some of the largest tech companies in the world.

How do they see those issues?  I think it's on, you should just speak.

>> RACHAEL STELLY:  I'm sorry.  Good morning everyone and thank you for the invitation to be on this panel.  It's an honor to be among these excellent panelists.  As a brief way of introduction CCIA is an international industry Association representing Internet services, e‑Commerce web sites, telecommunications providers and hardware services.

All of who export goods and services around the world.  And if you allow me to state the obvious the industries we represent have strong interests in the development of rules governing global commerce including cross‑border date flows and the delivery of Internet services and Internet enabled goods, whether it's the provision of business data services S. or enabling SMEs to set up online stores to find new customers across the globe or providing analytical tools for sellers to reach new markets or setting up a social media account that you can reach across the world data flows underline these business models.  As such these companies need rules that provide sufficient certainty to operate abroad in frameworks that still build user trust in their services.

Impediments to data flows and localization measures and other fragmentation measures have economic consequences and can deter market access for sex Porters of all size.  Increased coordination for global rules on data flows is critical to address trade implications of national regulations and to ensure that different approaches to data governance have aspects of interoperability.  With the inherently global nature, this can't be a siloed approach.  Some forums have tried to address the challenges including the OECD and APEC, which established principles on enabling cross‑border data flows, and these have informed National and multilateral frameworks to digital trade.  We're also very strongly supportive of the initiative at the WTO level to set rules at a multilateral level and we're very encouraged by the broad participation of countries since the launch earlier this year.  We believe there's up to 86 countries now, so it's important that the number of countries are participating in these discussions.

On a bilateral level I want to mention the robustness of the U.S. EU privacy shield review process.  This is a positive example of an iterative Policy Coordination, this process demonstrates how the value of building relationships and aligning expectations and build trust over time on these frameworks.  To address the second part of the question, we see a number of roadblocks that threaten to undermine this continued cooperation.  We continue to see National measures that have the effect of restricting data flows and mandate data localization.

As discussed we often see these measures in the privacy space but with increasing frequency we're seeing them to address National Security concerns, the latter are often the most restrictive and don't have mechanisms in place that still allow the cross‑border, the transfer of data flows and they also include quite strict infrastructure localization measures.  We'll note that mandated localization measures offer can undermine security and privacy protections by storing information in one place.  We also note if National rules regarding data protection and security aren't crafted in a manner that provides sufficient legal certainty for these services they can serve as market access barriers.

Some privacy laws have had the effect of shutting out smaller firms in a market just because they're not clear of what is required under these new laws and that's why it's so critical that Governments provide necessary certainty and guidance to these services in order to, for services of all sizes to participate in the global economy.

We recognize that countries want to retain country sovereignty to set their own data governance standards but we think there's a way to not infringe upon this principle while ensuring valid mechanisms are in place within these frameworks to transfer data while remaining compliant with privacy standards in the relevant market.

Before I conclude I want to briefly note that while critical data flows are just one dimension of in data free flow with trust.  Internet services rely on a number of regulatory frameworks to export to new markets while retaining user trust in these services.  Including cybersecurity measures to ensure secure systems, liability frameworks that incentivize services to remove illegal content as well as content that violates terms of service as well as customs and trade facilitation measures that lower barrier to entry.  We're glad that the WTO and other international fora is looking at a number of these issues in the context of global coordination and I look forward to continuing the discussion on the panel.

>> PAUL FEHLINGER:  Thank you very much Rachael for those comments.  I pick from that the highlighting of that this cannot be a siloed approach.  You also highlighted again a topic that was already raised by the previous speaker which is the issue of legal uncertainties and the issue of smaller actors and brought into our discussion also this question of how sovereignty is exercised in an interconnected world of data flows across borders.  Sebastian we heard now from Government, from businesses.  We heard from Civil Society.  From the architectural point of view, what has to be done to preserve, enable and further enhance cross‑border data flows in the future?

>> SEBASTIAN BELLAGAMBA:  Thank you for the invitation.  I think the most important point there to your question is that we need to preserve the basic principles that guide the Internet.  We cannot save the Internet by breaking it, so we need to find a way we can address the issues that we're discussing in this panel.  At the same time, we preserve the network that makes the Internet so available for everyone and that produce all the value and innovation, all the advantages that the Internet is bringing to everyone.

So how to reach that balance is a tricky question.  I think it's important to realize many things.  One thing I think you were aiming at in your question is how we manage to balance a network that has been ‑‑ from an architectural point of view has been designed not to consider National boundaries at all, doesn't recognize a political line, while at the same time we pay attention to National laws and we respect both functionalities and both architectural designs at the same time.

I think one critical component that's been discussed here and that relates to that goes to the last part of the title of the panel, and has to do with trust.  I think the trust part of the free flow of information is, or data information, is critical to this, so one thing that I find important is to replicate in a way the origin of the Internet in that way, that the Internet in itself is based on trust, and there is a collaborative way to address and to generate that trust among the all the participants and that has to be when it comes to dealing with the Internet and the consequences of the Internet, I think that perspective needs to be addressed.

It needs to be addressed in a way that we all are involved, we are all included in the discussions.  There are multiple actors that are involved in the operation of the Internet.  There is no centralized way to rule the Internet in any way, so the different stakeholders that are involved in running the Internet need to be part of the solution, of the way forward for this.

We strongly believe in a collaborative way to preserve the trust on the Internet.  There are four factors that need to be considered here, which is user trust, technologies for trust, trusted networks, and a trustworthy ecosystem.  All of them need to be considered when you think how to apply rules in order to preserve the trust on the way it works.  And I would like to point to two things that, two trends that we see as block roads in this regard.

The so‑called lawful access solutions, and filtering mechanisms to encrypt online content.  We see both as a critical thing that needs to be addressed because we are not going to achieve the free flow of information if we don't preserve that.  If we don't preserve these critical characteristics of the Internet, trust is going to be a road, and then all the things that we're going to do are going to be a road accordingly.

Trying to circumvent the basic encryption of the Internet we've weakened the Internet in a way that will not make it useful anymore.  We'll get to the point that we are risks breaking the Internet, as I said, at the beginning, filtering in general is not a good idea on the Internet because it can be circumvented and create more problems than solutions, in general.

So I would say that the encryption as a part of data free flow with trust is ‑‑ as said in the G20 this year.

>> PAUL FEHLINGER:  Thank you for bringing to discussion the issue of encryption and also telling us a bit about how the architecture of the Internet is organized through collaboration and who knows, maybe there's a thing or two to learn even for the policymaking of the challenges we're confronted with now.

Before we give the floor to Bill Drake, thank you for your patience hear in the audience, and also the people who follow remotely.  We want to now after this intervention open up the discussion so please think already about your questions and prepare maybe short statements.  I'm sure you have very interesting things you want to ask our great panelists here, so you can already start lining up at the microphones or prepare your online questions, and we will come to this in just a second.

Bill, you have written extensively about the ecosystem, the different trends.  As of 2019 what's your assessment?  And where are we going?

>> WILLIAM DRAKE:  Who knows?  But thank you, Paul.  Good morning, everybody.  Happy to be here.  The broad question as you've asked could be taken in a number of different directions.  We could talk about coordination among privacy actors, among people involved in law enforcement, and access issues, et cetera but I'm going to focus on the trade part because that's what I'm particularly interested in.  Some of what I have to say will resonate with what Lee said.  Some of it will maybe diverge a little bit.

Since I'm the last speaker I guess I should try to be a little provocative in 5 minutes so I'll make just 4 points.  First and I say this with apologies as a political scientist who studies international negotiations, coordination, and coherence can only be achieved when the strategic structure of incentives among players is reasonably symmetric.  Unless the relevant parties have sufficiently compatible interests in negotiating references to make credible commitments, even the most creative institutional design of the process will be insufficient.

In digital trade, the situation does not work on a broad multilateral basis, so the only option has been to pursue smaller and plurilateral negotiations among the willing.  This has led to a proliferation of free trade agreements, outside the WTO, with varying levels of consistency amongst themselves, and with the WTO basic rules such as the general agreement on trade and services.

And then even among the Coalition of the willing you've got, as Lee indicated, all kinds of cross‑cutting divisions.  There's a highly variable geometry of disagreement.  It's not just global north and South.  There are differences in every direction.  Secondly, the joint statement initiative that's currently being informally pursued under the WTO roof has gained momentum and attracted a growing number of developing country participants.

Nevertheless, the prospects for reaching agreement by the June 2020 WTO Ministerial meeting seemed rather cloudy to me.  Half the WTO members are not participating, including much of the developing world, and a few thought leader countries like India and South Africa remain adamantly opposed to negotiating an agreement.

Given the prevalence of thinking like data is the new oil, and the repeated stated desire of some countries to pursue policies like data localization that are incompatible with the preferences of other countries, it's very difficult to see how we move forward on a really broad basis.  Transatlantic differences over privacy protection, wider disagreements over National Security exceptions, the applicability of existing trade disciplines and so on all raise a lot of challenges.

So my guess would be that we end up with something like an OECD‑plus agreement, some industrialized countries with some friendly developing countries but doing something on a much broader scale is going to be very difficult.

Third, I would say trade process, this have where I maybe diverge from Lee, trade processes alone are not sufficient to bridge the differences under the governance of the global digital economy.  Monthly closed door meetings of trade officials repeat long‑standing and incompatible positions and then go home do not solve the underlying differences and preferences that percolate into the trade system.  Despite the failure of prior related secret negotiations like the trade and services agreement, Governments remain wedded to this approach.  They're going to do the same thing they've always done.  The lack of transparency in the process even on the design of principles and norms not to mention any negotiation of actual National commitments make it impossible to draw in new ideas and expertise and build the societal support you need to make agreement and convergence possible.

On the whole, this situation seems unlikely to change very much although some countries have at least consented to publicly posting some of their input documents.  So fourth, and here's my main point, I believe that parallel tracks of intergovernmental and multistakeholder dialogue are needed, to work through the complexities of digital trade issues, increase the level of consensus that will be needed in order for the WTO to succeed.

Greatly enhanced intergovernmental cooperation is needed in the G20 process which is institutionally underdeveloped and has not been sufficiently leveraged by Government perhaps in conjunction with the OECD, UNCTAD and other partners we need more transgovernmental cooperation among National Regulators in a variety of different issue areas touched on by trade negotiations but in parallel we also need multistakeholder dialogues, alongside the G20 process going beyond the B20 and T20 discussions, and in separate Forums like World Economic Forum, the IGF, others.

These settings are less pressurized than the WTO and could allow Governments and stakeholders to explore ideas inter alia and Internet Governance issues and build more consensus on core issues like data localization and data barriers et cetera, and how do we assess for example what constitutes a legitimate Public Policy purpose for restricting data?  What counts as a measure that is not more restrictive than necessary to serve a legitimate purpose?  And so on.

These are things where I think the trade negotiators by themself just can't get it done.  We need a multistakeholder, interdisciplinary community of expertise and practice like we had 20‑something years ago when the whole trade and services process took off, we had a global epistemic community of experts that fed in a lot of creative and important ideas into the process that made this work.  It doesn't exist now.  People are too divided and it's a real problem and I would say finally in parallel with expert level processes we need mechanisms to promote broader public engagement and that's where processes like the IGF come in.

So for me, the trade process is important.  It needs to go forward, but it needs to be nested in a broader nexus of cooperative relationships with more information flow, more coordination, so that you get convergence outside the trade negotiation room that will then feed in and help the trade negotiators work more effectively.

>> PAUL FEHLINGER:  Thank you, Bill for sharing those points for us and for your call for more coordination and coherence, and I liked very much also the point you were starting with, which is this prism of looking at this debate, what are the incentives for coordination, for cooperation, for the different actors around the world?

Ladies and gentlemen in the room, dear remote participants, the floor is now open.  Let's have a dynamic discussion.  I see the first person over there.  Please, please introduce yourself to everyone.

>> Yes.  Bertrand Petit of The Think Tank in Paris on the AI and cybersecurity.  Very interesting debate.  What appear from the outside that there is catchup game on regulation towards the digital economy which circulate around two issues:  Data, data protection and software, okay, software how you make the software cyberproof, watch proof, what is inside your product is safe and so on.

So as we watch over the world this debate, the ones who are moving faster especially on the IoT, which is the driverless car, and those people will see this go to this end but they come up to the decision that in order to build the safe driverless car you will do it on open source.  So in view of the urgency in this world, how do you promote open source?  Do you see it as solution?

Because in fact, it's the only transparent software you can have, and you can audit.  They are not perfect but they are transparent, and they have proven very efficient in the digital space for innovation.

>> PAUL FEHLINGER:  Thank you very much for this question.  Are there other questions in the room?  We can group a few questions.  Yes, please.

>> My name is Fernando, I'm from Brazil and I'm an MA Researcher on global governance on the Internet.  My question goes on the more of a comment, too, goes on the way to question the idea of an OECD Plus agreement, since OECD has been always something that was being an exclusive group, an economic group.  How can we make sure that global pact on the Internet or something like that can encompass the most problematic countries such as Iran, such as Russia and such as China?

I think this could mean more fragmentation in some ways, but also predominate the model, American model, of governance that it's already something that exists, so my question is:  How can we negotiate with countries, with authoritative measures, on the Internet that is, they are the main offenders right now?

>> PAUL FEHLINGER:  Thank you for those questions.  Yes, please, from our remote participant.

>> AFI EDOH:  Online question.  First one what are the initiatives about international technology standards?  Second one.  For all the panelists: Data protection regulation in general a form of Notary protection is used by countries which are falling behind in the data economy race.

>> PAUL FEHLINGER:  Thank you very much.  Is there a third question?

>> AFI EDOH:  That's all for now.

>> PAUL FEHLINGER:  We have questions on open source, on OECD plus and fragmentation, international technology standards and data protection.  Who wants to go first?

Bill?

>> WILLIAM DRAKE:  In saying OECD plus I didn't mean to coin a term, just to be clear.  That makes Lee's skin crawl.  Let me say this to your question, the gentleman from Brazil:  I think that really broad‑based harmonization on a broad multilateral level around trade issues is going to be very, very difficult to achieve.  It's just the reality.  The differences between the domestic systems and preferences of China, United States, Europe, and you mentioned some other countries to which we could add, India, South Africa and so on, are fairly substantial, and it used to be that they tried to negotiate trade deals like in the Uruguay round as a single undertaking with a broad nothing's done till everything's done and you bring everybody along on every issue, every topic and do tradeoffs among the different issues.  That model is very, very hard to do today, because the differentiation of interests among players has grown so substantially.

Living in Geneva, I hear all the time from certain International Organizations and NGOs that everybody's about the global north and the Global South and I feel like it's 1975.  It's the same discourse that we were hearing back then.  But the reality is, the Global South is extremely heterogeneous and what works for Brazil may not work for Lesotho, what works for India may not work well for Nepal.  Everybody's preferences are quite different and so as a first step I think the most you could probably realistically expect try to get those parties that are willing to make a commitment into a group and then see if having done that you can grow out access to the benefits from that and encourage others to join over time but it's a progressive process.  I don't see how you get a Big Bang negotiation that results in the whole world coming together and singing kumbaya, and Lee can disagree.

>> PAUL FEHLINGER:  Any other reactions?  Yes, please.

>> TILMANN KUPFER:  Can't say much on open source.  I want to follow up on what you said about how we can look at WTO on countries which are a bit more like minded, and if we find ways to bring them together, Lee also mentioned the West‑West divide and the OECD made a good study recently which was published earlier this year, looking at the areas, which different approaches countries take to delocalization and data flow and personal data protection.  And I think if you look at the EU on the one hand and on the countries, blocks of TPP countries or CPTPP countries plus U.S. MCA countries, on the one side, they take different approaches, and the EU has a more precautionary principle as we see in the REACH Regulation, for instance, so they want to make sure that companies put all their systems in order before they can move data across borders so we have these different transfer tools in place there.

Whereas the other countries, the other side takes a bit more liberal approach.  However both want the data to flow in a protected way in the end, and both also, so opposing forced data localization so I think if you can bring them together that could be a good way and I believe there's a chance here, because the general data protection regulation has different transfer regulations in place so data can flow in a protected way.  There's an interesting case for Japan because the EU and Japan found an agreement mutually, they both considered both data protection regimes, but offer adequate protection for their citizens.  However, that adequacy finding was done outside the trade agreement, it was negotiated in parallel and in the multilateral context an adequacy finding will not be possible so we have to think about other ideas.

Lee mentioned the discussions around finding common principles but that doesn't for the EU because the EU doesn't want to negotiate a fundamental right in the trade agreement so we have to take another step further and I think the, if we could find an agreement that does two things.  One is restrict data localization and there's a second one that does require that countries who adopt data protection laws offer in those laws workable solutions for companies to move data in the protected way based on the country of origin so the data would flow with the protection offered by the country where it comes from, then we can have the flow guaranteed in multiple directions and the benefit for this, it would create a common level playing field for companies because they don't need to compete with other companies who have to obey to a lower standard only.

It also would avoid the need to negotiate a common lower level of principles only.

And but in parallel of course we still need to have more dialogue also with data protection regulators so that regimes become a bit more aligned over time but also it would be very helpful if the trade experts and the policymakers in the trade area would talk a bit more also with the data protection community, because there's often a lack of understanding between the two.  Thank you.

>> PAUL FEHLINGER:  Thank you.  I think this is one of the most recurring topics in all of your interventions is this need for bridges between the different policy sides to address those fundamentally transnational fully integrated and interconnected issues.

Would some of you like to react to the questions and the directions, the first reactions by Bill and by Tilmann?  Yes, please, Rachael and then Lee.

>> RACHAEL STELLY:  I just wanted to follow up on the question on the inclusion of more authoritarian countries in the discussions and whether agreements can be reached at that.  I'll note China is at the table at the WTO Joint Statement Initiative.  I think that makes relevant the point that whatever is agreed upon at the WTO level we're seeing some submissions at the WTO level and also in other trade negotiating contexts where there's quite extensive exceptions and the exceptions to the presumption on free flow of data in these texts are quite broad and pretty much render the presumption meaningless, and so a number of the texts being proposed are self‑judging in nature and that could even conflict with countries, National laws that have enabled mechanisms that transfer data flows so I think making sure the exceptions at the WTO aren't crafted in a manner that will undermine the cooperative process.

>> PAUL FEHLINGER:  Thank you.  Lee?

>> LEE TUTHILL:  Well, just briefly, I think we need to remember that OECD is a lot broader than it used to be itself, but I think Bill's right in the sense that at least initially, if anything can be done in the WTO, it will be the kind of thing that perhaps people who are not ready now could sign up to it later, if that happens.

Yes, Russia and China are both sitting into the negotiations, but that leads to one of the questions, if people like Japan and the U.S. with the highest ambition, you might describe their positions as highest ambition, see that the ‑‑ some of such countries cannot join with the highest ambition goals, does that crash the negotiations?  I don't think there's been a sense that the negotiations will go ahead without major economies not agreeing to some very basic Internet and data flow related provisions.  That's just a prediction that worries us quite a bit.

The other thing quickly is that I think the comment I'll pick up on non‑tariff barriers, I work for the management of the agreement that in fact was one of the first big experiences dealing with non‑tariff barriers, the services agreement, because we didn't have tariffs.  So in that sense, I think those of us who followed services watched these e‑Commerce negotiations very slowly ‑‑ very closely, seeing how challenging it is to deal with essentially trying to interlace people's different domestic regulations but we have seen it happen in the past.  We have seen ways that Governments can be convinced that there be comfort levels, but you often do need to bring the different regulatory communities into the room, something we did in the Uruguay round of trade negotiations.  We called it a Sectral testing exercise.  We brought different Ministries in to actually talk to one another in the WTO building.  Something like that may be necessary now, because there's a lot of talking going on in capitals, but let's say the Central Bank people from capitals aren't talking to one another specifically on trade, and what's going on in Geneva, but they're talking directly to the trade Ministry.

We could use a lot more interfertilization, precisely because we're talking about non‑tariff barriers, for the most part, in e‑Commerce, like we did in services.  And I think it's doable, but it is a multidisciplinary process.

>> PAUL FEHLINGER:  Thank you.  Any more reactions?  Are there further questions in the room?  Yes, please.  And please introduce yourself.

>> Thank you.  My name is Jean‑Claude Goldenstein, a tech entrepreneur in Silicon Valley, but I'm originally from Europe, from France.  Salwa talked about the threat of hate speech and disinformation, and I'd like to bring up the challenge of hateful deep fakes that would be spreading fake rumors.  We're just at the beginning of this and there's been uncovered in this Conference and in general and in the press which focused more on deep fakes about politicians, not enough about business leaders, organizations such as yours that will be victimized by deep fakes.

So Sebastian talked about tools to improve trust, and my question is if AI cannot reliably fact check deep fakes, what are ways do you guys see to quickly contain the spread of doctored video before they hurt leaders and people who are funding the social networking platforms?

>> PAUL FEHLINGER:  Thank you very much.  Are there further questions?  Otherwise I would give this back to the panel.  I think that's a great example of how interconnected all those discussions are.  We talk about WTO and trade and there's a question on AI and deep fakes but that's the reality we live in.  Those are not theoretical discussions.  This level of legal uncertainty among businesses, operators, consumers and even Regulators is our present.  What are your thoughts on that?

Bill, please go ahead.

>> WILLIAM DRAKE:  So, you know, there's a lot of progress being made by people in the AI community in developing means for detecting deep fakes but it's an arms race and so for every bit of progress you get from people being able to map these things and find small differences, you get then the guys who are producing the deep fakes helping the game to the next level and finding a way to trump that so this is an ongoing cycle so just relying on the technology by itself may not be sufficient.  We may need to have some sort of a network for alerting people to bad information and sharing warnings et cetera.  I don't know how that would work, but let's just take one example.

Remember the Rwandan genocide, how much rumors spread on radio helped to drive people to acts of great violence.  Imagine now that you could do deep fakes not just with somebody speaking, but you could actually do deep fakes that show circumstances, a city, a village that supposedly has been attacked or something like that, when it hasn't and that can spread very rapidly.

There are a lot of very volatile places in the world where the possibility of digital wild fires taking off and having really nasty effects is a real thing.  So we're going to have to devise solutions that are not just relying on the technology.  We're going to have to find some way of establishing a mechanism for information‑sharing, alerting, and having rules for takedowns and corrections, et cetera.  Nobody knows how to do this yet.  Maybe Sebastian does.

>> SEBASTIAN BELLAGAMBA:  Actually I don't know.  We're not in that layer, but one thing that is important about what you're saying, that relates ‑‑ fake news are not the other problem.  Creating news also.  That village may have been attacked, and the spread of that, that pace will be a problem even if it's real, not only in the case it's fake, so that I think is important.

Another thing is my use of trust, and my use of trust related to the process in which we get along in order to find out ways to move forward and not in the case of fake news in this way, just wanted to make that distinction.

>> PAUL FEHLINGER:  Thank you very much.  Are there any other questions?  We have time for one last one.  I also have a question I would like to ask our panel.  If that is not the case I'd like to come back to the two initial statements we had on the G20 and G7 presidency and if I take just one word that summarizes the G7 statement it's the need for interoperability, and from G7, from your presentation, there was a very strong emphasis on the need for dialogue.

And we also discussed basically that there's an emerging consensus, or we start to understand that we need to have integrated global solutions, but the question is:  How do we build them?  And I want to ask you one last questions.

If you would have a recommendation or an opinion on how can we really strengthen the interoperability between the different regimes, the different frameworks around the world so we ensure they're at least compatible if not fully interoperable in the future?  Do our coordination efforts gain fast enough and what can be done?  Maybe I would like to ask each of you to give us one take‑away, one recommendation of the direction in which we should go.  Yoichi Iida, maybe you can start.

It comes.  Just keep talking.

>> YOICHI IIDA:  Thank you very much for the question.  Yes, in my opinion we don't recognize, we don't formulate the Freedom on the Network, and trust for some policy objectives.  We don't want to put these two things as a kind of dichotomy, or tradeoff, but we believe these two factors should go hand in hand and strengthen each other together, so the adequacy admission by ‑‑ between EU and Japan is one of the good examples, and even if we have different frameworks, we can reach a kind of some interoperabilities and we believe we always need to ask different stakeholders what direction we need to go, because when we think about the principles or regulations or some abstract requirement, but the Government sometimes do not understand the reality of technology or the reality of users' conditions so we need to understand what should work in the real situation, and we need to reflect them in the policy formulation, and also the negotiations or discussions with different Governments or different stakeholders.

So my answer is very simple, but what we need to do is to keep discussions with multistakeholder approach.

>> PAUL FEHLINGER:  Thank you, thank you very much.  If I can pass on the microphone.

>> SALWA TOKO:  Thank you, Paul.  Very, very complex and tricky question.  For sure we have to continue the dialogue, but the emergency, or the issues we are facing maybe needs something a little bit more than only dialogue.  When at the French Digital Council we do urge people to gather, organization or, every type of organization of Civil Society, we urge them not only to dialogue but to write the road map that is needed for the principles and I do agree with Mr. Yoichi that, yeah, most of the time, unfortunately Governments really do not understand what's going on.  And for us it's one of the main problems, so maybe we have to be from the civil society and I think I will be ‑‑ it's not diplomatic for me to say it right now but I will, I think that Civil Society have to be over the Governments on the dialogues, road maps.  I think that if some Governments do not understand that they are helpless, they don't have to be at the table.  They have at least really have to understand that they have to listen to the experts, the Civil Society with gathering to try to create, I will not say the perfect road map, but at least one that is taking care of everyone.  That's what I think.  I won't come back to Paris.

>> PAUL FEHLINGER:  Thank you very much.  Tilmann?

>> TILMANN KUPFER:  Thank you.  I think as we have seen also in the kind of questions but also from the discussion here and also from your statement at the beginning all different topics are interrelated even if we just look at one aspect which is data flow because it's about human rights, it's about censorship and access to information but it's also about trade and the protection of fundamental rights.

And when we look now just only at the trade aspects, I mentioned already that it would be really good if we bring the data protection community and the trade community together, so that they get a better understanding of what's actually possible and what's needed because the trade community often there's a lack of understanding why data needs to move and why personal data also needs to move, but fortunately when we look at the GDPR, we have the tool's intent at least at the beginning of the discussion was not really recognized by the trade community, so it's ‑‑ it doesn't have to be a barrier.  Data protection is a non‑tariff based barrier because if you apply to everybody without discrimination, that can also work.

Then I think without, instead of thinking about how to agree on a common set of principles, and going into the National data protection laws of each other, it should require that every country which has a data protection law offers the possibility to move the data in a protected way and where the protection of that jurisdiction moves also outside the boundaries and that would already stop countries to argue for the sake of data protection we have to store it locally which doesn't make sense.

>> PAUL FEHLINGER:  Thank you.  Thank you, thank you.  Lidia, what's your view or recommendation on the future of interoperability and coordination?

>> LIDIA STEPINSKA-USTASIAK:  To be frank, I don't see one tool or one way that will be able to solve all problems with interoperability.  But I believe that the good way that is able to move us forward is a constant cross‑regional dialogue, is ongoing process of consultation on different levels, local, cross‑regional, as well, involving different groups of stakeholders like public sector, private sector, Public Administrations, SMEs, and also Academia, and what I would like to expect from such a dialogue is not only a harmonization of different regimes, but also possible reduction of uncertainty and enhancement of trust, which is necessary and would also appear many times in our today's discussion.

>> PAUL FEHLINGER:  Thank you, thank you.  Lee?

>> LEE TUTHILL:  Hi, yeah, well, I think the question from Monsieur Silicon Valley is symptomatic if the idea of not regulating what's happening over the Internet is definitely over so if we're going to regulate it I think we're talking about a whole host of communities, a whole host of parallel processes.  The question is how do these parallel processes feed into each other?  Is there some kind of a mechanism that can create avenues of liaison between Civil Society discussions and the discussions of, say, Central Banks or cybersecurity people and trade people?  That would be ideal, whether a mechanism is formal or informal.

Another thing I think about is the fact that I have seen, if rules are going to have to be made, what are the rules of the road?  WTO is trying in a very ‑‑ at a very high level, or very principle kind of way of looking at that, if you're going to look at the bigger details, I see a model in something that I think has been very useful and successful, if you're familiar with the International Telecommunications Union has a Global Symposium of regulators and what has surprised people there is that people really share experiences, not just through the panels, but they're sitting there talking about, how did this regulation work for you, how did this new project work for you, out in the hallways and in the coffee shops.

Another example is the way Internet and jurisdiction, for example, the people you work for, has been working.  Is there a way that Internet and Jurisdiction and regulators can feed into what each other are doing, find ways to inform one another?  A place like a Global Symposium of regulators that multisectoral, and that involves Civil Society attending in some way, involves organizations like yours attending so that people are all cross‑fertilizing.  I think that would be helpful.  Is it too ambitious?  I don't know.  We'll see.

>> PAUL FEHLINGER:  Thank you.  Thank you very much.

Luiza and I think it's okay if we overstep the time a tiny bit.  I think we also started 5 minutes but we need to keep the time also.

>> LUIZA BRANDÃO:  So I agree in this, with these ideas that we have to figure out some steps, so different stakeholders can follow.  It could be steps for a dialogue, for coming together, and feed also the public opinion as Bill said, to bring it to the meetings, to reflect what are the goals of that society, what are the reality they face.

Of course, it's impossible or it's super‑hard to understand or to imagine a context where we could discuss every single detail, and this is not the point.  The point is to establish at least common frameworks or principles that involve not just Governments, but also cross‑regional and National players to establish those steps or further procedures.

>> PAUL FEHLINGER:  Thank you, Luiza.  Rachael?

>> RACHAEL STELLY:  I'll be brief in the interest of time, but we think that trade will continue to play an important role in these discussions.  Just as National Regulators step up scrutiny on the digital economy, we think that existing trade commitments needs to make sure that regulations are committed with those, in addition to looking forward to the future to see what the WTO can agree on at the global level.  In addition we also see other fora including the OECD, UNCTAD, IGF as critical forums to develop a lot of evidence based policy analysis and Civil Society perspectives to feed into these trade discussions to reach solutions.

On a specific level on interoperability, we note that emergency regimes could have more success in promoting interoperability by focusing on developing systems based on principles of accountability rather than an overall reliance on differing perspectives, on consent base mechanisms that can differ from country to country and are quite complex, and I think I'll just leave it there.

>> PAUL FEHLINGER:  Thank you very much.  Sebastian, please.

>> SEBASTIAN BELLAGAMBA:  Just to reflect that this data flow, it's happening just because the existence of the Internet, and even though the Internet has some things that we need to consider, for instance, I think there's an agreement that the Internet is first of all good in our lives.  So when we discuss this, let's keep in mind that the vehicle we're talking about is the Internet and that we don't have to break this thing that makes our life better every day.  Thank you.

>> WILLIAM DRAKE:  First of all, I already expressed support for greater transgovernmental regulatory cooperation so I'm down with Lee's new body for regulators but more generally let me just say:  We're all governance geeks and because we're all governance geeks we all want to think that there's some magic institutional mechanism that we can envision that will suddenly promote better interoperability and coordination.

But, you know, it doesn't matter whether the table is square or round or you tell people they have to stand on it, or anything else, if the Member States' interests are being defined domestically in ways that are highly divergent, so what we need is again a global community of expertise and practice that will promote greater convergence of concepts, ideas, and so on.  If you listen to people in Washington, D.C., talk about data localization and barriers to data flow it's one party line from all the think tanks, all the industry Associations, it's very fixed.  Same thing at Brussels.  Then you go to Delhi, you hear something completely different and what people are talking about in a lot of developing countries, data is the new oil.  We want our oil, all this.

It really is divergent and they're getting advice from International Organizations telling them that data's the new oil and you just resist any cooperation so we need to do something to facilitate broader multistakeholder dialogue that is not just among trade negotiators that really probes into these things and gets at why countries feel the way they feel about the digital economy and the way that they want their Governments to play a leading role in it and try and build some consensus there.  Until you do that you can roundtables, square tables, three level tables, it's not going to matter.

>> PAUL FEHLINGER:  Thank you very much, and I think my personal take‑away from this session is the issues are really complex.  I think we managed to map out the different facets.  Everything is interconnected and interdependent and at the same time the stakes are so incredibly high for the future of the cross‑border Internet and our digital societies and economies.

And I like the word magic that you used because I think this is also one of the take‑aways, those issues will not go magically away.  We need to deal with them, and this is why I think it's fantastic that the G7, G20, WTO are coming to an Internet Governance multistakeholder Forum and that there's a big equal that all of you here say that the multistakeholder model and multistakeholder discussions can provide a pathway to bring together the different policy processes around the world, the different perspectives, the different stakeholders so that we have the necessary coordination for cross‑border data flows in the future and for future generations.

So, ladies and gentlemen, a round of applause to our panelists.

[ Applause ]

Thank you very much.  And I hope that this will be a discussion that we will continue.  Thank you.