Workshop 36: Strategies to prevent and fight child pornography on Developing Countries
Workshop organisers: SaferNet Brazil (civil society); Brazilian Federal Public Prosecutors Service (Governament)
Chair: Demi Getschko (NIC.br President)
The presenters were:
1) Mr. Rish Jaitly, Google's Polcy Council in India (Industry)
2) Mr. Thiago Tavares Nunes de Oliveira, cyberlaw professor and SaferNet Brazil President. (civil society)
3) Mrs. Adriana Scordamaglia, Federal Prosecutor in Sao Paulo, National Cybercrime Unit.
4) Mr. Sergio Gardenghi Suiama, Federal Prosecutor in Sao Paulo, National Cybercrime Unit Coordinator
5) Mr. Anjan Bose, ECPAT International (civil society)
6) Mr. Carlos Eduardo Sobral, Brazilian Federal Police Cybercrime Coordinator
7) Senator Virginio de Carvalho, special rapporteaur of Braziian National Congress Special Comission on Child Sexual Abuse on the Internet (Parliament);
8) Senator Magno Malta, president of Braziian National Congress Special Comission on Child Sexual Abuse on the Internet (Parliament);
The Chair of the workshop presented the model of Internet Governance in Brazil as a pioneering experience regarding the effective participation of the society in the decisions that involve implementation, administration and use of the Internet. He mentioned that we usually have two differents approaches regarding security on the Internet: infrastructure threats and human rights threats.
The first one can be addressed with international technical cooperation and technology development. The second one is a complex phenomenon, which interact various dimensions regarding economic, individual, social and cultural rights, with developments and implications in the fields of ethics, education, health, law, public safety, science and technology.
Based on multilateral, transparent and democratic principles, the coordination and integration of the activities of Internet services in the country are made by means of the Brazilian Internet Steering Committee - CGI.br, a multistakeholder organization composed by members of the government, the enterprise sector, the third sector and the academic community.
Speaking on behalf of Google, Mr. Rish Jaitly highlighted the results of the MOU signed by Google with SaferNet and the Brazilian Federal Prosecutors Service to effectively remove illegal profiles on Orkut and exchange information to assist brazilian law enforcement agencies to investigate the brazilian offenders.
Speaking on behalf of SaferNet Brazil, Mr. Thiago Tavares Nunes de Oliveira focus his presentation on the growth of child sexual abuse on social networking sites and the evaluation of the effectiveness of various measures now available in Brazil to combat it, and highlighted the gap between developed and developing countries strategies on public, social and private sectors on this regard.
He mentioned the progress of this discussion since the first time that was included in the IGF agenda, and argued that human rights are universal and defined by international laws fixed by General Assembly of the United Nations and must to be respect and protected wordwide, including cyberspace. National and regional legislation was sanctioned in order to protect human rights, which means prevent and fight their violations, such child pornography, racism and freedom of expression. It's not a matter about one right vs. another, it's a question of how to protect these rights without putting it at risk, at the same time.
He concluded that Google's Orkut case in Brazil can help us to find the balance between preventing and reacting on human rights cybercrimes and respect ordinary users privacy and freedom of expression rights in democratic countries. He invited the participants to reflect on the key questions to be addressed on this regard:
a) How to oblige big international ISPs to comply with national legislation and disclose the data needed for law enforcement investigations without putting freedom of expression and users’ privacy rights at risk, especially in non-democratic countries?
b) which criteria should be used to enable the application of domestic criminal legislation to cross-border child sexual abuse phenomenon?
c) which criteria should be used to define the ability of a particular country to legislate over and sanction child abuse committed on the Internet?
d) what legal obligations to local offices of transnational Internet corporations have towards consumers and national law enforcements respecting offences committed by national users in their remote operated services? What are the minimum necessary obligations for ISPs in this regard? Are they correctly defined by law?
e) how much aware the big international ISPs have being in this regard in developing countries? They have been pro-active and suport the NGO´s and law enforcement efforts like they have done in developed nations?
f) what kinds of social and judicial measures are necessary to face child abuse and other cybercrimes against human rights on the developing countries, in a national, regional and wordwide
perspective?
h) how can we involve all stakeholders (industry, government, law enforcements agencies, academia, NGOs, media) to work together to deal with these problems particularly in developing
countries without strong ICT industry and corporate social responsibility culture?
Speaking on behalf of the Brazilian Federal Public Prosecutors Service, Mr. Sergio Suiama and Mrs. Adriana Scordamaglia presented the issues that are being faced in Brazil involving content-related offences in social networking services and discuss some of the key questions proposed.
They highlighted that the internet service providers of these sns are mostly based on the United States and ave branches located in strategic markets overseas and “tailor the services with local content and in local languages to meet the needs of the community” in order to facilitate the development of the business in global terms. They argue that international law principles (like territoriality or nationality) shall be used to define the sovereignty of a state regarding content-related offences committed on the internet. They suggest it is possible to define some “reasonable standards” to test the validity of a nation's attempt to prescribe law over internet. in the case of the collective lawsuit against Google in Brazil, the standards argued were:
(a) orkut's profiles or communities that are being investigated have been managed by presumed brazilian citizens, given the language used and the subjects discussed by them;
(b) investigations are focused on users that have accessed the Internet mostly from access points physically located in brazilian territory;
(c) effects of harmful conducts on orkut are felt strongly in brazil, given the major part of its users are from this country;
(d) brazil has taken on the obligation, under international law, to investigate, prosecute and adjudicate offences against human rights when these offences are in its territory or when the alleged is a national of its state or a person who has his habitual residence in its territory;
(e) google has clearly designed its SNS to reach the brazilian consumer market, as a relevant market for the development of its businesses overseas;
(f) a “country of origin” approach would force thousands of damaged or harmed brazilian consumers to rely on unfamiliar rules;
(g) requiring a consumer to travel to a foreign court to litigate over a local damage would, in practical terms, deny that consumer any remedy; in addition, all contents that have being investigated by the brazilian federal attorney's office are also offensive under international human rights standards.
They concluded that it is legitimate to enforce the company's local office regarding a service that has been operated from the US if the claim for jurisdiction over a crime committed on the internet is valid and acceptable under reasonable international standards. In case of google's SNS it would be impracticable to send hundreds or even thousands of judicial requests to the US, using the regular (and still precarious) instruments of international cooperation, just to collect internet traffic data.
Speaking on behalf of ECPAT International, Mr. Anjan Bose said It is important to identify the key issues related to child abuse images such as the means of distribution, audience, social fabric and not necessarily only paying attention to the online forms and the technology involved. Child abuse images are also distributed through conventional media such as CD/ DVD, publications and widely available in open markets where awareness is not enough and law enforcement does not prioritise the issues. Sellers of such media does not recognize the harm caused to children and only interested in the money that it brings and in many such instances, as in Cambodia where it was sold in the open market did so with impunity quoting: “they are not our children”. Cybercafes play a big role in bringing Internet connectivity to the masses in developing countries and needs to be integrated in the policy making and child safety standards along with ISPs and telecom operators.
Social networking in developing countries are catching up with developed countries and some SN such as Orkut, facebook etc enjoy huge membership in countries like Brazil, India, Philippines etc but without the necessary awareness and educational systems to orient young people about Internet Safety. Mobile phone networks are also growing at a fast pace in these developing nations with all the advanced features and standards being implemented , thereby also exposing the young population to the inherent risks without necessarily equipping them with the right knowledge to tackle the issue and also lacking the infrastructure to effectively address problems when it arises.
Developing countries should learn from the lessons learnt by the more developed nations where the current practices and infrastructure is built up through experience and should also allow communication channels to open up dialogue with agencies working on this issue both in developed and developing countries to facilitate mutual knowledge building and ensuring adequate child protection mechanisms.
Speaking on behalf of the Brazilian Federal Police, Mr. Carlos Eduardo Sobral highlighted the co-operation between NGOs, private and public sectors to confront child sexual abuse on the Internet in Brazil. He presented the results of operation “Carrosel II” as an example of the sucess of this model. He called for the private and public sectors to work closer together and emphasized the Brazilian National Congress Special Investigation Comission on Child Sexual Abuse on the Internet as a common platform for cross-sector partnerships to link up law enforcement around the country and maximize resources.
Speaking on behalf of the Brazilian Senate, the Senators Magno Malta and Virginio de Carvalho presented the results of the Brazilian National Congress Special Investigation Comission on Child Sexual Abuse on the Internet and the the role of Parliaments and Legislators on Internet Governance in a developing country like Brazil. They argued that the current instruments of international cooperation are not sufficient to face child abuse on the Internet, particularly at developing nations. In Brazil, new kinds of social and judicial measures were necessary to face child abuse and other cybercrimes against human rights and to force the industry to take action and cooperate with the law enforcements agencies and judicial system. They called for an international coalition of developing nations to deal with this issues in Latin America and in other part of the world. The signing of the MOU with Google to exchange information between SaferNet and brazilian law enforcements was highlighted as an important initiative that should be encouraged in other countries.
Participants on the floor expressed that the situation in Brazil is paradigmatic, because it represents the beginning of a new form of creating social control and governance balance between law enforcements users data requests, application of national legislation and jurisdiction and big international ISPs wordwide policies and strategies.