APrIGF Document Platform

We must encourage the young people from different background to engage with different multi stakeholder’s communities effectively in order to make their voice heard for the future of Internet Governance in different regions.

We must encourage the young people from different background to engage with different multi stakeholders communities effectively in order to make their voice heard for the future of Internet Governance in different regions .

so sorry the previous comment was fo parargraph no 7.

The three common types of Harassment are: Verbal, visual and physical, can we consider any of three types is crime?

The pandemic has changed the education system dramatically. Currently, over 1.2 billion students are out of the traditional classroom, but still faced some challenges : An influx in the people who take online courses , Increased need for teachers’ advanced training , High demand for improved engagement , Increased need for personalized experiences and Continuous changes due to new trends.

I think if the people (he or she) has a good background to work with any ICT sector they have a right to take a job regardless of his/her situation ,and of course the priority must be for the people with special needs.

I think Trust most of the time linked to the security , It involves the national and international legal structures and systems for providing safety, privacy and integrity of the Internet, as well as protecting the property of Internet users, particularly minors and novice users. This also includes the transparency of dealing with the huge amount of data resulting from Internet usage and the need to have an open data policy.

I think three ways to make technologies more inclusive for people with disability:
Embed inclusivity in 4IR technologies, Apply universal and accessible design in tech-enabled products , Invest in assistive technology with 4IR.

As all know the main goals of Internet governance in different regions is to promote shared human values and rights in the “virtual” world, which should be similar to those of the “real” world , hopefully will reach that goal one day or even close.

What priorities and/or changes are needed from an Internet governance policy standpoint to accelerate progress towards a more inclusive internet for persons with disabilities?

In the context of Emerging technologies in education, such as online learning platforms, digital content, and virtual classrooms, have the potential to reach remote and underserved areas, thus addressing the pre-existing digital divide. However, challenges such as lack of internet infrastructure, device availability, and digital literacy still need to be overcome. This involves ensuring that educational platforms are accessible to all, including people with disabilities.his will require a combination of innovative approaches, public-private partnerships, and regulatory frameworks to ensure that these technologies contribute to a more inclusive and equitable education system in the Asia Pacific region and beyond.

As a community, I think we can play a critical role in fostering trust in the emerging technologies landscape. By promoting education, transparency, security, and ethical practices, while contributing to creating a safe and trustworthy digital environment for all stakeholders.

in the list of Emerging Technologies
add
“Blockchain”
“BioTech”
“Synthetic biology”
“quantum computer”

“suggested to rephrase”

During APrIGF 2023, a parliamentary track occurred from August 31 to September 1. This track brought together government officials from the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region to deliberate on various Internet and digital-related topics. These discussions included active participation from other stakeholders, including the technical community, academia, people with disabilities, and youth. Additionally, the APrIGF 2023 in Brisbane, Australia, coincided with the 2023 Asia Pacific Youth Internet Forum, the 2023 Pacific Internet Governance Forum, and the 2023 NetThing events.

adoption and awareness of “community internet “is other way to improve internet access

To establish a trusted technology company or original equipment manufacturer (OEM) with the mission of ensuring affordable access to cutting-edge technology at the grassroots level.”

i think mention about yIGF is not necessary at that point 

Need some more specific points of concern topic

If we mention Reliable with I. Access, we do not need section 19. Reliable Access means the Internet blocks is already covered in that.

It should be Reliable Access, not just Access.

Cybersecurity contain many sub-themes (i.e. system/infrastructure resilience, safety, privacy, cyber crime, etc) and many actors. It is important to encourage the technical community in those domains to engage with other stakeholders so there is clear understanding of the problems and discussion on possible solutions.

Cyber security is the main biggest issue now a days

must be infrastructure-based

For those of us with access to the Internet, it is a technology that plays an increasingly central role in our daily lives, letting us work, study, and connect with friends and family from around the world.

But the Internet – including infrastructure and devices, applications and services, and the relevant policies and regulations – is in a constant state of flux. Governments and businesses are increasingly making decisions that could impact the Internet. If we fail to recognize, protect, and support what makes the Internet valuable, we risk a series of irreversible and accelerating changes that chip away and ultimately break the foundation underpinning this incredible resource for us all.

That is why as the Internet evolves it is key for all Internet stakeholders to understand any change that can threaten the fundamentals of the Internet. We should be able to tell if a proposal could harm what makes the Internet work for everyone.

Today, the Internet plays an essential role in the majority of societies around the world. From banking to education, health to logistics, just about every sector relies on Internet-based applications and services to function.

Our increased dependence on digital technologies brings with it growing concerns around Internet security. While there are many dimensions to Internet security, securing the key building blocks of the Internet’s infrastructure is critical.

The Internet’s routing system enables data to flow from one point to another. Ensuring that this data flows correctly, and to its intended recipient, is the foundation of Internet security.

Thousands of Internet routing incidents occur every year, leading to economic and social harm by making key services unreachable, disrupting e-commerce, allowing malicious actors to spy on users and with it, the potential to compromise systems.

While existing security measures can help address many of these routing incidents, the solutions they provide are often limited. The interconnected nature of networks means that many solutions only work when other networks make the same improvements. We need collective action to make a real change.

In support of the larger Internet security agenda, policymakers should work with network and infrastructure operators, critical infrastructure protection agencies and standards bodies, among others, to improve global routing security while also preserving vital aspects of the system that have allowed the Internet to be open and universal.

Propose for the last sentence “Strategic public-private partnerships can provide potential solutions to bridge the digital divide in terms of Internet connectivity, provision of devices and skills training.” to be incorporated into or combined with paragraph 9, as connectivity, devices and digital literacy are key elements and equally important in fostering and achieving digital inclusion.

In discussing about the freedom of speech and expression, we must also look into the importance or sort of rights for the users or public-at-large to obtain a correct and reliable information.

We definitely do not want to see the Internet flooded with mischievous and irresponsible speeches or expressions that would not just eliminate trust but also creating an unhealthy environment and ecosystem.

how do you validate the regulations in the website database, because I found that in Indonesia, there are regulations with cybersecurity tagging, but the content has nothing to do with cybersecurity.

The capitalist economy of world is going into the hands of few rich people and the divide of rich and poor is increasing. In order to meet the sustainable development Goals the policy should reduce the gap between rich and poor citizens.

There should be updated cyber crime legislation in every country but the legislation must be adopted after the consensus from multi-stakeholders independent of law enforcement.

Where Internet has enabled the access to information and on-line social networking the need of Digital Rights Management has emerged as need of community for protecting the social-cultural need and to protect users online privacy and safe data use. And capacity building programs are in high demands.

There is need do the capacity building of elders and parents so as to bridge the gap of Internet access between children and parents.

Emerging technologies must utilize the benefits of community networks for connecting the last miles network for access to affordable Internet.

The inclusion should also shape the technology in a way that is easily acceptable in diverse social culture.

The implementations strategy must also take in account the age factors. The young womens today have more capacity and capability and access to absorb the Internet then mid aged women. So there is need to capacity development of women specific program to educate them about safe use pf technology.

The standard should be prepared for IoT security and protecting users privacy. These standard must be regulated while allowing the IoT in any country this can help in mitigating security concern of IoT adoption .

Many cost effective IoTs device comes with weak set of protocol which rises Security concerns so there is need to regulate the IoT manufactures and policy should be made to implement the compliance standards. only certified and compliance IoT devices should be allowed to allowed to market.

Te cross-boarder security is a challenge due to the fact that a lot of security architecture based on central trusted party to make sure the data integrity and security. The universal technological solution for protecting data integrity independent of trusted central party should also be explored to ensure the goal of cross-boarder data security for better data regulation and security.

The specific capacity building model for smooth learning of old age people should be encouraged. This will help in bridging gap between the understanding of young generation vs the mid or old age people who have less tendency to adopt and learn new technologies.

Network shutdown is still happening in the Asia Pacific and when that’s done , general public is completely ok with the government’s decision thinking it must be for them. The general public isn’t aware of their access rights..so a strong awareness with regard to ones access rights is required in the Asia Pacific and in countries like Bhutan where Sig has not been retained yet.

We 51 protection of child online: importance of child safely complaints tools

1) takes about different child abuses like cyber bullying, emotional abuse, sexting, sexual abuse, sexual exploitations, child
pornography and so on..

2) talked about iwf(internet watch foundation) which allows people all over the world to report online child abuse.

3) talked about what solutions can be provided which mostly stated that awareness is the key and the parents, teachers, government and the operators should come together to tackle the issue..

We 51 protection of child online: importance of child safely complaints tools

I would further like to state that cyber security classes should be mandated in all schools by the governments of each nation and more awareness should be made for parents,teachers and also to children on this regard..

Strategy or a solution of including rural areas of developing countries where connectivity is still a big question can be a great step for the accomplishment of the goal.

I believe a point of agreement between governments and private telecommunication companies is essential to connect the unconnected areas. Some fix percentage of connecting unconnected areas will be a good step towards connectivity.

Awareness programs on how irresponsible use of the internet can have a huge negative impact on people’s lives is needed.

people don’t know about the multi-stakeholder approach and they are not aware of how they can play their part to shape the internet. Awareness seminars are needed for this.

While I agree that access and inclusion is important, we must also take into account communities that choose not to be connected such as the indigenous people due to a myriad of reasons, one of which could be because of sacred culture and the need for them to protect it. At the same time, the government and other parties involved should still find a way to ensure they are not neglected and completely shut out from the world.

Public access not only helps to improve digital literacy and provide access to marginalized and under served communities, it also helps to provide “assisted access” to people who are not internet savvy.

For ensuring Cyber security, Privacy and Safer Internet, it is imperative that there is collaboration and more emphasis on capacity building among decision makers on the implications of their decisions,

A multi stakeholder approach to resolve the issue of universal acceptance is of prime importance. Industry, government, technolologist, academia, civil society, need to come together, discuss and work to resole the issue. It is also very important to take the views of internet users and non users about what they want, since they would be the ones who would use internet in local language in the future.

Shut downs leads to social instability, human insecurity and loss of peoples trust in situations often marked with social and political unrest. It is important to measure the impact of internet shut down and also to analyse what situations trigger internet shutdowns and who is given the iscretionary power to do so. Further what are the extreme situtaions when internet can be shut down and what is the process that will be followed needs to be discussed.
Infact rather than trying to shut the internet Dialogue, transparency and openness to try and find alternate solutions to this difficult issue could be the approach.

The gender digital divide should also highlight in access and the strategies which need to be adopted by nations to connect the women, the marginalised and disable.

This could perhaps be added after the last sentence , The greatest challenge ………………..skills of participants.

Another challenge is in scaling up and sustaining these initiatives.

Apart from promoting digital literacy there is a need to improve gender rights online too. To improve inclusion especially of women and protect their rights online, a study called “Views & Perspectives on Gender Rights Online, For the Global South” (http://www.ccaoi.in/UI/links/fwresearch/Report of Study on the Views and Perspectives on Gender Rights Online for the Global South Final.pdf), suggests implementation of better and effective policies; encouraging ICT skills and Science Technology Engineering and Math (STEM) studies amongst women and encouraging digital literacy; policy reforms for ensuring gender inclusive access to the internet; building trust online, including better legislation and enforcement of laws against online harassment; economic incentives to encourage diversity in the workforce; encouraging more engagement amongst women networks and promoting content in local language.

Growing misinformation, disinformation, hate speech and harassment is definitely a growing issue. However, there can be no binary solution to this issue.
Fake news has always been there in our society, the only concern is with the use of technology the reach and impact has dramatically increased.
Apart from regulations, or companies introducing measures within their products or services to reduce such incidents, capacity building and educating the community on digital etiquette is important. The civil society can play a critical role in this. Also, there is a need for more academic research on these issues – including what motivates some communities to react or spread/ share news while not others, etc.
It is an issue of the whole community and can only be addressed when the whole multistakeholder community works on it together. Blocking, shutting or restricting the internet will not help.
Having said that various initiatives are being taken by online companies in tackling these issues. While few have helped, there is more that needs to be done.

To be able to address issues of inclusion it is important to have correct data which will help in formulating appropriate strategies so the suitable methodology can approach can be adopted at all levels: building infrastructure, connecting people, addressing social barriers, capacity building. There is also a need for more cooperation between different stakeholders, countries to share data, best practices and have more dialogues. This will help to address many issues.

There is a need of governments to relook at their national  broadband strategies.    There needs to be real effort to understand and connect the remaining unconnected people. Many of the current strategy are merely ticking the box exercise.
Issues such as cost of devices, availability of electricity, gender issues need to be carefully considered. 
–       Lack of coordination between the different government agencies to provide their own services also acts as a hinderance and that needs to be corrected.

We should also add violence against women and children. The discrimination or affect by internet to the individual internet users have to included.
The word are too hard to understand. simple word to be used if possible.
Country like Nepal, there is no MLAT or letter of rotatory provision in our country incase of trans-border crime.
Please also include this.

“Law enforcement, network operators and IT professionals “. I think we should add civil societies…
“Law enforcement, Service providers,, IT professionals, civil societies and bankers”

It may be helpful for readers to provide links to the surveys that “are showing a large decline in trust in the Internet”.

Another type of fragmentation to consider is an institutional fragmentation, i.e. fragmentation approaches to the regulation of cyberspace and Internet space.

Are developing countries only should be given support? Many economically developed countries have not developed their legislation to ensure lawful access to encrypted materials, and therefore, a dialogue to assist both developing and developed countries seems important.

It would be helpful to clearly state that there are different types of attribution (political, legal, and technical), and each type of attribution has its own challenges and requires different approaches/discussions.

Technology is neither”the panacea” nor the primary reason for the crisis of trust. Technology, which should remain neutral by default, is not what causes many risks in cyberspace, but the malicious use of technology.

national e-commerce frameworks need to enable economies to leverage the use ict’s to drive social and economical development

the benefits of such initiatives should be effectively advocated and communicated to local communities in order to leverage or realise the full benefit of the multi stakeholder engagement

I would like to see more emphasis on developing of ICT in education sector especially tempted areas in Asia Pacific cause this would probably promote and encourage a universal access policies of individuals users in ICT

After attending across border lesson, i want to add if IGF and its sponsors could contribute in building Law Enforcement capacity in future. Currently Pacific LEA are in major needs in strenghtening our capabilities in the global fight against crime.

I’m inclined to agree with KS Park that the Right to be Forgotten should not be mentioned at this time. The reason is that it is a right that comes “after” the right of privacy. Without the right of privacy, the RTBF will not be a meaningful right.

Addressing Intermediary Liability appropriately is a critical step in enhancing the use of the Internet. To that end, the Manila Principles have been drafted after extensive consultation at the RightsCon 2015. More work needs to be done to put the Manila Principles into practice.

I think that specific reference to TPP needs to be removed. Athough the TPP is the first trade agreement for the digital age, the TPP process has, regrettably, been less than exemplary from a multistakeholder perspective.

Comment: Minor tweaks, mostly for grammar and clarity. Also, I think replaced the word “balance” because the solution to arriving at a balance is a compromise, which may not be appropriate here. And in keeping with the tenor of competing, I have used that in place of “conflict”.

The right to be forgotten as a principle must be approached with caution. Significant and competing issues relating to its extraterritorial application, digitised media archives and the integrity of historical records, the rights of individuals and media freedoms must be weighed carefully.

Moreover, emerging jurisprudence suggests competing public interest as it imposes a burden of proving public interest on people searching for information or intermediaries facilitating that search such as libraries, educational institutions, archives and search engines.

Really minor: hyphenate “gender-based”

As the opening plenary was on the Gender Divide, perhaps this item should be moved higher if not close to the very top.

[Therefore strategies must infrastructure-based]
A word or phrase is missing.

This sentence is clunky. It’s too wordy and this gets in the way of being comprehensible. The suggested edit follows.

As improved technologies facilitate access for the next billion Internet users, it is important that the individual and collective uniqueness, and the linguistic, geographic and cultural diversity that these new users bring to the Internet be supported, conserved and enhanced through inclusive policy measures such as the universal acceptance of internationalised domain names.

[Whether it is security, stability and resilience of the Internet infrastructure or security of network and information systems, , to issues on safety, privacy and data protection, collaboration and capacity building[22] are needed to mitigate[23] and prevent cyber security incidents[24] within and beyond the Asia Pacific region, and the setting of global encryption standards is encouraged[25].]

Suggested edit.

Collaboration and capacity building[22] are needed to mitigate[23] and prevent cyber security incidents[24] within and beyond the Asia Pacific region, and the setting of global encryption standards is encouraged[25].]

[agreed international conventions and declarations]

Delete “agreed” on redundancy.

[Respect for human rights is fundamental to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)[45].]

Recommend moving this up to the start of the paragraph.

[Human rights agreements should apply to the Internet environment in the areas of access and development, freedom of expression[39], right to assembly and privacy as well as on the right to information, education, health, culture, and to a broad range of other rights[40] as set out in the WSIS Geneva Declaration of Principles[41], Tunis Agenda for the Information Society[42], and other agreed international conventions and declarations[43].  The impact of existing and emerging laws, policies, and practices on the security of network and information systems, data protection, surveillance, anonymity, intermediary liability and cyber-crime must protect human rights and meet international standards for guarantees.  These issues have been the subject of intense scrutiny and debate by all stakeholders at the APrIGF meeting.  The application of human rights should also consider issues of gender, disability, age and sexuality[44].  Respect for human rights is fundamental to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)[45].]

Suggested edit.
Respect for human rights is fundamental to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)[45]. Therefore, human rights agreements should apply to the Internet environment in such as set out in the WSIS Geneva Declaration of Principles[41], Tunis Agenda for the Information Society[42], and other international conventions and declarations[43]. These areas include access and development, freedom of expression[39], right to assembly and privacy as well as on the right to information, education, health, culture.  Laws, policies, and practices on the security of network and information systems, data protection, surveillance, anonymity, intermediary liability and cyber-crime must protect human rights and meet international standards for guarantees. The application of human rights should also consider issues of gender, disability, age and sexuality[44]. These issues hwere the subject of intense scrutiny and debate by stakeholders at the APrIGF meeting.  

[Right]

Missing article: The

I think “legality of” in the first line should be replaced with “issues of”. The reason is that it seems to be an issue of legality but if so, any illegality can be easily “cured” be passage of a law.

Suggest amending the last sentence by adding to it the words in quotation marks:
At the same time, Internet shutdowns and restrictions are detrimental to the freedom of expression and right of universal access to Internet “and so should be kept to the minimum in duration and in compliance with due process.”

Suggest to edit the third last sentence to “This involves addressing cybersecurity risks, data privacy concerns, online safety, and the protection of vulnerable groups – all the while ensuring that the Internet will not be fragmented”. 

Balancing security and privacy is key in combating messaging scams. Telecoms and governments should have limited, regulated access to messaging content, ensuring user consent and transparency. AI-driven pattern analysis can detect scams without breaching privacy, while end-to-end encryption remains essential. Regulations must clearly define acceptable monitoring, with judicial oversight to prevent abuse. Transparency and accountability can be ensured through regular reports. International fraud calls can be tackled through global databases and cooperation, and fraudulent messages detected using a combination of user reporting and advanced algorithms—all while protecting privacy and democratic freedoms.

I would change from best practices to good practices. Covid-19 has shown that the internet is not a luxury but a lifeline especially in land-locked and mountainous communities, and this is why meaningful internet connectivity and affordable access to devices is imperative especially during a pandemic. This topic addresses the need to close the digital gap. Organisations and individuals in Central Asia are helping children and youths living in remote and rural communities deal with challenges in education posed by covid pandemic. It talks about their experience during the pandemic and the opportunities they are providing to the children to ensure that they remain connected and have access to affordable devices and content during a pandemic.

COVID-19 pandemic has pushed more communities online at a faster rate, accelerated the adoption of e-commerce, and facilitated the rapid dissemination of new digital skilling tools, e-health services, and remote work applications. But it has also introduced new risks that are experienced by users online such as online scams, phishing attacks, identify thefts and online bullying.

Past tense – the APrIGF was held….APrIGF co-located with…

nature of diverse Internet Governance issues and understand their significance at a policy level in all economies across the region…

Include Asia and Pacific region

Inclusion should enable everyone (including marginalised communities – persons with disabilities, rural and remote communities, youths and LGBTQI groups to contribute to and benefit from the digital economy and internet society. How can stakeholders work together to ensure meaningful connectivity, access and affordable internet for all. How can we ensure that no one is left behind?

UNESCAP, ISOC, ITU, GSMA and A4AI has done a status of connectivity in APAC. There are some great insights captured in this document – https://www.unescap.org/kp/2021/towards-meaningful-connectivity-insights-asia-pacific-case-studies

I agree with everyone but we should also allow new voices from marginalised communities (they are usually left behind). I would also include new voices from rural and remote communities, persons with disabilities, LGBTQI communities etc.

In some countries, social media is regulated. Regulating the internet or social media violates the basic human right – everyone should have the freedom to express online or via social media but they need to do it with common sense. Because they have a sense of responsibility so you can make a point but with kindness.

Please change from paste tense to present progressive tense.

It would be great to mention inclusion in the context of accessibility for everyone. It’s not just about digital skills but also about making sure that everyone has the same opportunities to participate in IG regardless of their gender, age, ability or location or disability. And we need to ensure that marginalized and minority groups are included in the IG discussions (especially LGBTQIA+ groups and women and girls, disability community). Is it possible to change ‘for all to ‘for everyone’ ?

to ensure that no-one is left behind and to support access to meaningful connectivity and affordable access…

ranging from ….can we also add small island states e.g Tuvalu or Vanuatu?

Agree with Swaran.

This is a great point.

Is there a sector on other emerging technologies and the fourth industrial revolution?

Include the discussion of Armed conflict in case of a Cyber attack.

The design challenges of IOT and what policy considerations needs to be adopted.

New Security Considerations when IOT is merging with Industrial Control systems. Is it creating challenges for Critical National Infrastructure?

Contribution from audience at Day 1 town hall session: Place holder topics

– Intermediary Liability, Manila Principles

– Capacity Building, bringing people in to have a better access to training and education and training and participation.

Contribution from audience at Day 1 town hall session: Local language, Internationalized Domain Names (IDN) and Email Address Internationalization (EAI).

Contribution from audience at Day 1 town hall session:

– Participation by women

– Rights to accessibility

Contribution from audience at Day 1 town hall session:

– Right to Information, proactive disclosure, internet platform for obtaining information from state agencies.

Question from audience at Day 1 town hall session: The Budapest convention is a global cybercrime convention, the Internet is truly global, would a regional convention be very useful?

Contribution from audience at Day 1 town hall session:

– Issues related to spectrum for connectivity

Contribution from audience at Day 1 town hall session:

– Net Neutrality

Contribution from workshop participant: placeholder topic and text:

– Multi-stakeholder model

The use of the multistakeholder model in Internet governance receives broad support internationally. Multistakeholder model encourages coordination and planning through a consensus-making process and recognizes the need to incorporate regional and local Internet governance context and strategies. Its implementation and efficiency thus undergo continuous testing and refinement. There are ongoing efforts to explore means for greater participation in multistakeholder processes and to work towards an inclusive multistakeholder method.

New proposed section: Capacity Building (Joyce Chen, ICANN, Townhall 1)

Thank you for your comment. These are questions for APrIGF attendees to let us know what they hope to see discussed at the APrIGF workshops. The event is still ahead so we are not concluding anything at the moment.

Note: ICANN not, IAN

Can capacity building be part of this section?

Same with the PWD accessibility – can this be included here?

Can this part be merged with Paragraph 28? I think both have a primary purpose of putting people online.

An addition to capacity building, maybe we can also add YIGF as one of the programs that provides an avenue for the said area.

As an addition, maybe the document can be in multiple languages for the benefit of people who are not natives of the English language. :-)

When we talk about the term ‘trust’ the concept of ‘consent’ becomes really significant. In the Indian context, the recent DPDP Act introduces the concept of ‘consent manager’. A third-party entity responsible for managing the consent of a user – whether or not a data fiduciary can use their data and if yes then how. Whether this is the best way to manage one’s consent or not is something that is subjective. Still, I believe if we are to develop a framework that ensures that the ‘consent’ of the user with respect to their personal data is given the utmost priority, we would be able to lay a strong foundation of trust between various stakeholders in the digital world.

I completely agree with Maria. The meaning of the term ‘meaningful access’ extends beyond infrastructure to digital literacy. It is essential in order to enable such marginalized groups to raise their voices and enjoy the benefits of the Internet. One such example is the Indira Gandhi Smartphone Yojana in Rajasthan, India wherein over 1.4 crore smartphones would be distributed to women and students. While the scheme aims at empowering women, not proportional attention is given to making them digitally literate to actually use such a device and keep themselves safe from rising cybercrimes like online sexual harassment, identity theft and many others.

As discussed and pointed out in the session by the speakers it is unfortunate but true that various stakeholders including the government might only be interested in looking at the impact of internet shutdowns from an economic point of view.

At Youth IGF India we got a chance to understand the workings of a NetLoss Calculator developed by the Internet Society. This tool can calculate the economic impact of an internet shutdown over a period of time in different countries. It calculates loss in terms of GDP, FDI, and increase in unemployment at the national level. I believe that we should develop more such tools that not only keep track of shutdowns but also quantify their impact. This would help incentivize not only the civil society but also the private sector and the government to stand against the use of internet shutdowns to maintain public order.

For easier discussion, this part should be better break up into one paragraph per one discussion topic.

May be not only recommendations, but documented concerns, agreements, and disagreements.

3. Preventing Data-based Discrimination — more and more data, including personal data and public data, are collected and available for processing, this can leads to better services, new products, improved efficiency in different kinds of operations, which all could lead to better life of people in the society. At the same time, this could lead to discrimination to a person or a community based on collected data or analysed output. We should ensure that this will be prevented from the design of the network.

“Chair’s Summary” is interesting, as it clearly signify where’s the Summary comes from.

My suggestion is that, APrIGF could adopted a different or a same name, no need to be exactly the same as the global IGF, as long as it clearly signify where’s the document comes from.

Whether this document will be a Summary, a Recommendation, a Statement, etc. is left to be discussed — some people already did this at http://comment.rigf.asia/table-of-contents/aprigf-asia-2015/aprigf-macao-2015-outcomes-document/#psR

Some countries allow wifi hotspots without licenses, although their cybercrime law put (criminal) liabilities to intermediaries like wifi — so less people eager to share their wifi. Community wifi also got affected, as the operator of the network will face legal risks.

Example: Article 15 of Thailand’s 2007 Computer-related Crime Act.

Support more integration of regional Youth IGF and regional IGF. — The arrangement of timetable should allow Youth participants to join any session as they wish. May be by have a separated, preparatory process, of Youth IGF one day before IGF.
Encourage workshop proposal to include youth as a panelist. Although, during the workshop process, youth should be treat as equal to other participants — there will be no special treatment.
Find ways to support national Youth IGF to happen.

+1 @Izumi

These priority issues are sorted by? ..  Alphabetical order?

Or probably “Data-driven discrimination”.

Replacing “recommendations” with an agreed term in the Sub-heading.

Can we call this “Privacy-by-design”?

providing some statistics, like numbers of days open (start date, end date), numbers of comments, etc. would be very interesting and will give the reader the idea of the participation in our process :)

should also mention the arbitration mechanism that would allow foreign companies to challenge domestic regulations before international arbitration panels.

if section is to be included, it should made clear that the “right to be forgotten” (in quote) is another concept related to right to privacy, but not the same.

The information that RTBF deals with is a data that is (or should be) already the in public, and to be decided whether to keep it further public or not.

The information that the right to privacy deals with is data that shouldn’t be in the public in the first place.

Computer code will be more effective in practical that legal code in this Machine to Machine.

How to do the governance? As it’s not obvious to average people.

What about scope it down to only “critical information infrastructure” ?

[cyber-security]

I suggested “cyber-security” to be replaced by “security of network and information systems” which is more self-explanatory.

[new laws and policies]

to be replaced with

“existing and emerging laws, policies, and practices”

In the context of cross-border data transfer and local people using online services provided from servers in foreign jurisdictions, this is problematic.

I proposed this title and text:

“Protection without borders

Expectation of privacy may vary by cultures, thus different protections in different jurisdictions. Considering the nature of cross-border data transfer for online services and users’ difficulties to aware of that complication, if there is a difference in the level of protection in relevant jurisdictions, the highest level of protection should be guaranteed as a default safeguard. Minimum adequate level of privacy protection should also be sought after as an international agreement and adopted by every concerned jurisdictions.”

To protection person in question, if there is difference in the protection of suspect/defendant in relevant jurisdictions, the MLAT should honour the highest level of protection.

To protection person in question, if there is difference in the protection of suspect/defendant in relevant jurisdictions, the MLAT should honour the highest level of protection.

Regarding to this, please also refer to para 37 (“respect to cultural differences” – privacy protection in different jurisdiction).

Need title.

Propose: “Protection of critical information infrastructure”

may be merged with para 30?

Or put emphasised on the new challenges that IoT will bring, like difficulties to patch large among of outdated devices, privacy violations from Big Data and linked data (made possible by large-scale data collection and smarter algorithms).

If we can frame it for a better protection of privacy, there’s no need to remove.

Surprisingly, currently we don’t have a specific section dedicated to Privacy or Data Protection.

Three-part test of legality, legitimacy and proportionality must be ensured to be passed for all relevant jurisdiction in the investigation or prosecution. An oversight of the process must bee required from all participating countries. Data about requests should be made available to the public, for the interest of transparency and accountability.

Agree. If we can start with Convention on Cybercrime. And try to improve the Convention if feels inadequate.

Data about requests should be…
–>
Data about requests, such as user data request and shutdown request, should be…

(give examples, for readability)

protection from … [illegal] and harmful online contents

–>

mind the word “illegal”, as the legality and legitimacy are two different things.

Encrypted (“secure and private”) communication is illegal in some countries, for example.

Suggest to add a point on consideration for “expiration date” of protection measure and mechanism.

Some data encryption or data masking used today to protection data may works today but not necessary works 10 years from now. But the owner of the personal data still alive, without the protection.

More comments will be collected from workshop “WS83 Upgrade Required: Obfuscation and cryptographic standards for data protection law in the age of linked and big data” tomorrow – http://apps.2017.rigf.asia/submission/proposaldetail?id=113

[ protection of children[27] and youth]

Not only children and youth are vulnerable. Senior citizens are too, if they have lesser experience about the internet.

Child protection in itself is an idea from offline world that taken for granted that senior citizens are more experienced. This is not true for online, may be true in the future but not now.

Because computer getting faster, more data available, reidentification techniques are smarter. — Data encryption, data masking, data obfuscation techniques for data protection that work 10 years ago may not work today. Those work today may not work 10 years from now.

This means the owner of the personal data who still alive 10 years from now will no longer have technical protection.

The regulation should address this and make the regulation future-proof, at least to the life span of a human.

[resilience to disasters]

While ‘resilience to disasters’ and, in general, ‘availability’ (which is part of information security) is important, I don’t think it should come as the first thing under ‘Access’.

Hmm.. or should the substances from the discussion be mentioned in the relevant sections, instead of having a separated section on youth? I’m thinking more of the integration of all demographic groups.

Say, if there’s a concern or observation on cybersecurity from the YIGF role-play, should that comment be put in cybersecurity section? Likewise, if there’s a comment from YIGF on access, put it in access section.

Data protection section should mention about the data-driven discrimination.

Right to explanation (of algorithmic decision-making) is proposed in WS80.

The International Principles on the Application of Human Rights to Communications Surveillance (the “Necessary and Proportionate Principles” or “13 Principles”) should be mentioned here, as it is one of the principle related to the most fundamental part of the internet and it is in itself the principle that developed in multi-stakeholders fashion.

Conclusion section is needed.

[Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs)[18] and Email Address Internationalization (EAI)]

In order to support this, as well as other native language interface and input/output, the infrastructure like Unicode encoding and supporting fonts for languages are also needed.

There are also cases that the Unicode for a language is supported on desktop operating systems, but not on mobile operating systems. This rendered the access
to names and contents in that language impossible or confusing.

Take the example of non-Unicode ‘Zawgyi’ font of Burmese language, which is popular in mobile phones but make it difficult to access to Burmese Wikipedia. (for more details, see ‘Burmese Wikipedia’ in English Wikipedia)

The problem now is that many mobile phone vendors prefer to install non-Unicode font (‘Zawgyi’ in Burmese) as default font of their devices.

While installing Unicode font is possible by the user, it takes further effort and technical skill which not necessarily has in every users.

Mobile phone manufacturers should work together with internet governance community and language community [esp ethnic/minority language communities] to guarantee access to languages in a standard way on the internet.

This comment (on character encoding, font, and access) has been addressed in side-event Internet Universality Indicators by UNESCO and APC during APrIGF 2017 (29 July 2017).

Mobile phone and IoT manufacturers and software developers should responsible on providing security patch in a timely manner for a guaranteed period of time after the time of purchase.

‘Capacity building’ is pretty much addressed and highlighted in different venues of internet governance, but cybersecurity & privacy on the internet platform is the area where capacity building alone doesn’t work — as people are heavily rely on the device and network that they use – and they don’t have a [technological/administrative/legal] permission to upgrade/update/patch these devices by themselves even they do have ‘capacity’.

Safe behavior on vulnerable device is not safe.

There should be a form of regulation to make sure that internet-connected manufacturers will take responsible in making their devices secure for a reasonable time period.

For example, if the average mobile phone changing cycle of consumers is 3 years, the reasonable time period for manufacturers to keep releasing security patch of their mobile phone can be 3 years or more.

Support this comment on FOSS, which can also related to the transparency of algorithmic decision-making as well – as discussed in WS80.

Agree. At least it is the fact that Convention on Cybercrime is signed in 2001 or 16 years ago.

Internet has changed a lot since then. Facebook founded on 2004, YouTube 2005. iPhone released in 2007, Android in 2008. It’s quite a different internet.

How about having a “Human-readable version”, like what Creative Commons License has? :D

+1

May take a ‘drop-down bullet’ approach adopt by Manila Principles on Intermediary Liability (google that).

Show simplified headings, click on a heading for more explanation bullets. And a click on ‘Read More’ for background papers full of references.

Please link to https version when available.

Please link to https version.

Wonder if this short url (igf asia / WS_1) will be a permanent link?

If it’s not and the destination may change in the future, we shouldn’t use it for reference. (should use the full url instead)

[Community networks and public access to ICT]

We have at least three big things here, at least according to the heading “Access, Empowerment, and Diversity” – and may need to break this down to subsections for readability.

# Access

This is more about infrastructure, and as other comments already pointed out, can be many things in this package.

To take something similar from other public policy circle, can think of 3As of Availability, Accessibility, and Affordability, widely adopted in public heath, or 5As, with additional of Adequacy and Appropriateness, from patient perspectives.

Resilience is also here [WS 38].

“Digital Economy” workshop like [WS 57] is obviously connected to this subsection.

# Empowerment

This may be more about the ability of a person or a social group to use the available infrastructure.

Digital natives (youth) [WS 41], digital migrants (older people who new to digital environment), and marginalized communities whose their offline social status may also undermined their online social status, should be all under the consideration of this Empowerment section.

(The ‘Internet Universality Indicators’ by UNESCO seems to discussed a lot on this.)

# Diversity

IDN, EAI, Unicode, fonts, local contents are here – and may need collaboration with wider circles and this is something that have to rely on standards that larger that internet alone.

I understand that the librarian people who attend IGF take this very serious. May able to take more comments from [WS 74].

—-

Take one example: Mother who have to raise their kids at home all day can’t afford to go to telecenter. This is Access + Empowerment issues combined and an example of building network or access points alone does not necessary addressed the access problem.

So in this sense [WS 93] can also be discussed here (there are a lot of overlapping, i know).

We should also include the work espionage.

*word

Based on the AI and Education discussion we had during yIGF 2024, I feel an important point was brought up about whether our educational goals should prioritise developing empathetic, community-oriented individuals or focus on cultivating experts who can drive technological advancements, which I feel could be included in the synthesis document.

About the software updates bloatware situation, I think there should be a smaller, high priority updates that only contain security patches for vulnerabilities so, that people can update their devices with the latest security definitions, without having to install other non-essential updates at the same time. Major version updates that contain new features and UI changes could still be optional. This separation would ensure devices get critical security fixes as soon as possible, while allowing users to decide when they want larger updates that change functionality.

My comment is regarding the Consent and Right to Withdrawal, there should be a proper, easy and reliable way for people to withdraw their consent later on and a place for users to revoke access to their data when they want. A lot of times, people only use an app or service for a short period of time, and they may not want their personal information to be lingering around at companies they no longer engage with frequently. Many tech companies don’t provide a single and straightforward way for general public to withdraw consent and delete data. There should be simple, accessible options within services to allow people to revoke consent and remove their information.

I raised a point regarding the deep-tech AI startups in Silicon Valley and the impact they have on public perception by creating a sense of Fear of Missing Out. These companies often suggest that AI is superior at certain tasks and could potentially take over jobs, which in turn enhances their market capitalizations and stock values. I believe that this strategy warrants consideration for regulation. It’s critical to address the ethical responsibilities of AI startups and ensure transparency to prevent market manipulation and mitigate unnecessary societal anxiety.

Building trust is not a easy process. Building online trust is much harder since many people are not still familiar with the digital technology.
Transparency could be one of the solution. Government and private sectors companies should provide them how they are using the data for what purpose. The role of media is also very important in building online trust because people are usually convinced by a lot of media. Once the media mislead some information, it will spread throughout many communities. Therefore, misinformation and disinformation should be strongly restricted by the government by digital laws and regulation.

The overarching theme of APrIGF was inline with current conversations of IG space. When Global Digital Compact has also been in draft stage and shape of the future internet may shift from multi-stakeholder to multilateral model. International governance of interoperable frameworks will be challenging for open, secure, resilient and interoperable Internet.

Greatest challenge of Internet will be at the intersection of Internet technologies and ethical governance issues in human rights as well as digital rights. Especially, when technology advancements are hard to predict, we can hardly formulate guidelines, regulations or rules to deal with ethical governance issues.

Although there are growing challenges with the evolution of technology, yet a resilient apprach with a more responsible manner can shape a better Internet.

Through meaningful participations and inclusive conversations, youth leaders in our communities can be empowered to address the key issues of Internet Governance around cutting edge technologies. This is esentially helpful to prepare future leaders and critical thinkers to participate in informed policy making.

Collaborative approach among Global South and Global North as well as interoperable governance frameworks can avoid splitting of future internet, which is also hard in view of power struggles of global leaders. But there is to cooperate and collaborate instead of competition for the sake of next generation and to empower resilient Internet.

While talking about protection of vulnerable groups, we must keep in mind the religious affiliations of people, not to hurt the feelings of certain group or targeting religion in the name of freedom of expression. Blasphemous content on the Internet is like red line, which is always condemned and not allowed to cross anyone.

Data protection and privacy is a relative issue, which relate the culture of different economies. It even depends upon the personal choice of individuals, as to how s/he makes his data public or private on public domain.
Collection, storage and maintenance of critical data, information of healthcare, defence, education, power/energy and banks etc in addition to compliance with local regulations, alignment with global frameworks and international legislations are paramount.  With evolution of technology, there comes complex use case scenarios, which are challenging for governments to fix the responsibility and accountability.
With increasing demand of data storage due to AI, there is dire need to ensure safety measures.

Proactive measures by Governments in collaboration with Telecom operators to create awareness campaigns and to educate the citizens on the cyber threats and online scams can be fruitful. Use of conventional media like TV, radios in addition to mobile internet etc. can increase the awareness at large. Telcos should make responsible and liable under laws of the land to take necessary measures to prevent fraudulent activities. 

This is very sensitive when talking about end-to-end encryption and ensuring data integrity. However, a balanced approach is appreciated. Pakistan government has currently allowed law enforcement agencies to intercept any communication to ensure safety. Capacity building of Police, Judiciary, and other Law Enforcement Agencies to tackle the cyber diplomacies, to learn international best practices and legal strategies is the need of hour.

There is need to create platforms to engage HR defenders in view of urgency of issues, as the mechanisms with traditional methods sometimes take months as well as less responsive. But again, there are issues to restrict voices. Awareness and advocacy to HR Defenders in view of UN Guidelines should be promoted. But there is lack of implementation, where it comes to protection of human rights defender or caregivers etc. The use of technology is double edge sword, which can be used for creativity as well as offensive use can create challenges. There are several discussions on AI liability withing global AI governance conversations.
 

Infrastructure investment and expansion, one of the criteria, and an area that needs to be worked on, policy and regulatory reform, public-private partnerships, capacity building and digital literacy, regional cooperation and knowledge sharing, supporting innovative  technology, inclusive Internet Governance, affordable access solutions, and being open.

Digital Right bill should ensure privacy, transparency and accountability in the digital realm.

Idea for regional coalition for fact checking initiative is appreciated. There are number of issues surrounding the political conversations with misinformation, disinformation and fake news. Such discussions are gaining momentum with prevailing situations of elections this year. 

Media literacy and inclusion of community leaders in such discussions are important. Local presence of platform in addition to compliance to local regulations are crucial conversations in Internet Governance realm.

There need for interoperable governance frameworks around different processes. Roles of technical communities are eminent in Internet Governance conversations. However, a balanced approach of multilateral and multistakeholder processes could shape the secure and resilient Internet and address the key issues of Internet Governance.

Technologies are evolving at a fast pace and with every passing day, data and information is a sensitive topic with regard to manipulation or predictive analysis for decision making. Data can lead toward an informed policy making process as well as can contribute to misleading the decisions of opinion leaders through fake news. Artificial Intelligence is learning from data and Blockchain or digital ledger technology is a mechanism to reliably capture data transaction history in a distributed manner. Internet Governance is all about debates or conversations on emerging topics in a multi stakeholder manner, which encourages participation of all segments of society and promotes the inclusive process.

The Internet has been playing a significant role in empowering the communities and groups as well as minimizing the burgeoning gaps of the digital data divide. Persons with disabilities and minority groups can potentially become an effective part of the decision making process while using assistive technologies. People from all groups including women, youth, minors, elderly abled, disabled and/or under-represented groups can become part of the respective process (locally, regionally, globally) and help in shaping the secure and resilient internet for future. Access to the internet can be increased through creation of meaningful content in local languages and national language, IDN ccTLD, Multilingual Internet, Sign language for PwD etc have great potential to promote resilient Internet among communities.

International cooperation among different organizations to address their working groups, processes can lead towards a better world. However there are challenges to co relate the processes and frameworks of different organizations. There is high time in formulation of Global Digital Compact, which has been preparing for the next twenty years of World Summit of Information Society WSIS process of ITU. However, meaningful participation from Global South is still needed.

Covid has exacerbated the usage of Internet during pandemic. There have been collaboration platforms for interaction of different stakeholders. 

Increased participation of governments across globe regarding expansion of digital public infrastructures and  dialogue is necessary to presenting context with each other as well as enabling policies to bring private sector for investment and expansions.

APrIGF is one of the key regional initiatives on Internet Governance. APrIGF 2024 was held under the theme “Evolving Ecosystems, Enduring Principles: Shaping Responsible Internet Governance”.

The Asia Pacific Youth Internet Governance Forum 2024 (yIGF) also held along with APrIGF and concluded on August 20, 2024. It was made possible with support of the local host of the APrIGF 2024, TWNIC, the APrIGF Secretariat, and other supporting organizations: NetMission.Asia and DotAsia Organisation.

International governance of AI and other technologies has been a critical. There is no unified global governance model for AI, which results in a fragmented regulatory landscape. While international organizations like UN and OECD promote AI governance, there is debate for central body to enforce universal standards.

It yielded key takeaways from different sessions organized during the event such as panel discussions, meetup with industry experts, APAC youth leaders dialogue, and IGF youth track.

It is worth mentioning that Internet usage also comes with adverse effects when it is been abused or overused. Having the capability to address the risks aspect on individual digital wellbeing should be part of user literacy for maintaining the trust of the Internet.

First sentence sounds a bit stretch, digital is one of many enabler for the global economy. We should not forget other enablers such as infrastructure, education, science and technology.

I think we should distinguish between ” free flow of information” and “free flow of data”. So the sentence can be rephrased as: how do we ensure a successful economy with trust, free flow of data, and appropriate domestic and global rules well balancing privacy, security and other regulatory concerns including financial and tax regulations.

First sentence sounds a bit stretch, digital is one of many enabler for the global economy. We should not forget other enablers such as infrastructure, education, science and technology.

I think we should distinguish between ” free flow of information” and “free flow of data”. So the sentence can be rephrased as: how do we ensure a successful economy with trust, free flow of data, and appropriate domestic and global rules well balancing privacy, security and other regulatory concerns including financial and tax regulations.

Sorry this should paragraph 10 not 6. Please ignore this comment

In WS105 panel on digital trade and development, concerns were expressed about the implications of the trade rules which have been agreed in recent free trade agreements and proposed at the World Trade Organization such as: cross-border data flows, e-signatures, restrictions on access to source code and algorithms, for: privacy, artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, algorithmic bias/discrimination, financial regulation, tax collection, health, environment, competition law etc. It was explained that data should not be treated as a commodity and our rights should flow with the data. There was consensus among the panelists that the trade rules are already out of date compared to the fast-moving technology and would not solve the access, connectivity and affordability challenges in the region.

The ‘free flow of data’ narrative should not be considered the default norm. Our data is not a trade commodity and it should not be treated as such. Privacy is a fundamental human right; thus it should flow alongside our data throughout the data life cycle. There should be check and balances to the free flow of data.

Our rights should flow alongside our data throughout the data life cycle.

People should be in control over their data, no matter where they are and no matter who holds it. Data ownership implies that people can sell away their fundamental rights, including privacy. Thus, we need comprehensive data protection laws and other regulatory mechanisms that are designed to safeguard people, not international businesses nor state control over their citizens. But we also need regulations that encourage healthy competition, not data monopolies.

I’ve a comment on the last paragraph where we are using cybersecurity and cyber crime as synonyms. Need a new paraphrase.

I think, cyber policy makers are key stakeholders who make cyber policy including laws.

I think, the first sentence os a bit wrong, dependency on IPv^, DNSSEC and routigh Security only ?? Well, I’m not convinced. Need rework on the para. We can say, these are some of major issues to be addressed !

Who should take these education or awareness ?

Privecy and Data Protection are always critical issues, not only now.

Can we have APAC regional level Disaster preparedness network ? Any discussion in that line ?

There are many economies in APAC who criminalizes blockchains and similar new technologies, were there any discussion on addressing the issue? Does this recommends or urges to address the issue?

I found some Asia and Pacific participants perspective. Are we dis integrating Asia Pacific into Asia and Pacific ?

It would be better if on  Point 5 we can give example of how the dynamic nature of Internet ecosystem has made it complex issue for security and trust like linking multiple accounts with a single identity proof can lead to issues like Synthetic Identity Theft.

Fo Digital safety space the basic and most important aspect is Digital Education at student, college and parents level as well including the office training as well. Digital Safety is not specific to a generation, instead every generation especially the woman is most affected by it. So i don’t know whether to mention here it or not but during this session a gender issue indirectly showcased by a participant in his Insta story buy not directly but questioning an old lady question saying it is not Lok Sabha of India. So, a platform where we are openly discussing about digital space, someone targetting some other on basis of Gender, nation and age is quite not good.

I am not sure law enforcement should get such a prominent role in safeguarding that the internet is a safe place. Sure, LE needs to enforce the law but I think responsibility to safety on, and security of the Net rests with users, ISPs, industry and the like. Furthermore LE across the globe never will have the ability to live up to such a responsibility.

If these questions should reflect the discussion during APrIGF; I feel the focus was much more on capacity development, awareness raising, and another interesting view, different interpretations of security across the region. The threat perception in the Pacific being different from Asia and Aus/NZ.

As for the IPv6 deployment ,ICANN may encourage Governments of each country to come up with some stimulation plans such as “If you transfer to IPv6 ,tax deductibility is available! ” to urge companies to transfer from IPv4 to IPv6.

Suggested addition: The challenge then is for us to streamline investments towards an integrated digital economy. The same is accorded to how data is prized as a government asset and a catalyst for private sector investments.

Suggested Addition: The bottomline objective is to build on the experience of the multi-stakeholder process involving government, businesses, civil society and other sectors of the digital community, and to harness their energies into bringing the benefits of the digital economy to all citizens.

Suggested addition: As a basic right, qualified access to information is a democratizing platform and with this sense of confidence, the APrIGF lays the necessary groundwork for the development of the broadband ecosystem for the use of internet in participatory democracy.

agree with tying in with Global IGF

More importantly, the idea is to integrate the YIGF participants as much as possible to the main session. They might not be able to participate confidently in the APrIGF, but they would bring their observations back to their small-scale group discussion. It plants a seed and a path for gradual progress.

If go one step further, can also incorporate encouragement of youth to participate in panels to add extra points to the workshop. This mechanism would encourage workshop organisers to add a youth perspective to their workshop.

Agree on that they should be treated equally as other participants during the conference

Also wanted to establish a sustainable initiative and common ground to exchange and to come up with consensus, for example the establishment of an Asia Pacific regional research network focused on child online safety.

For me, we should be able to resolve access first because too many people still do not have access to the internet – the rural poor, PWDs who are not provided for with appropriate assistive devices, and many others like students and ordinary workers. For example, in the education sector alone, where because of the pandemic, schools are still closed, and learning is limited to poor internet limited sessions, and printed modules left to the responsibility of the parents and students to fulfill. Inclusion is the major issue, until we resolve that, the rest remain to be the issue of the privileged and connected. But that is not to say that we should not address sustainability and trust. just that we focus more on inclusion. This is also to reduce the digital divide.

Internet education should be part of the life skills training since we also need to teach young people to protect themselves from harm in the internet, and not just its beneficial use.

Actually it’s not just the weaponization of surveillance but even of one policy fits all approach to the pandemic. The high handed approach have shown how government officials, particularly in the frontline – police, community officials – could go beyond their mandate in implementing what they thought were right. Some minors suffered corporal punishments for violating curfew, while other people were charged with cyber libel for questioning the local officials’ response to the pandemic. Luckily most of them were thrown out by prosecutors or the courts, but not after the hassle of being arrested, published on social media, and detained for a time. Worst, government-paid trolls extol these kind of actions as necessary for discipline and compliance to pandemic control.

include “gender equality”

How can we develop some guiding principles for platforms trusted flagger programs for the Asia Pacific region. What might the common features be and how can civil society, tech, law enforcement, government work together on developing a guideline.

I noted that the main thematic tracks represent the pressing issues internet governance must address in the region. For the Pacific, the issue of trust is beyond pressing, especially when trust issues on the internet are becoming more of a common occurrence.

I couldn’t agree more. I find this model of discussion to be very mind-opening and engaging, especially when the participants are accorded the preference to choose the sessions that are aligned with either their interests, experience, or both. The only downside is when multiple sessions of interest happen at the same time, which causes a bit of a dilemma of which session to sit in at.

I noted that Meaningful (Connectivity) Access is the ultimate aim that our local economies must strive for, and whilst this has been achieved in mostly developed economies, it is still a challenge for the Asia Pacific region. As such policies and legislative supports that push for access and inclusion, are of prime importance with the use of a multistakeholder approach when tackling the challenges we face to achieve Meaningful (Connectivity) Access.

The discussion on Emerging Technologies made me realize that any form of technology, be it traditional or emerging, is a double-edged sword, that can be used for good in the hands of good people, or used for bad purposes in the hands of people with bad intentions. I therefore think, Emerging Technology will close or widen the digital divide, especially when accessibility parameters are not equal between economies that have little to no internet access, and those that have meaningful access. At the helm of Emerging Technologies to close the gap are the digital skills to use or operate them. When people have the digital skills to operate an Emerging Technology, there will be so many interesting use cases we can churn out of any form of Emerging Technology.

From the discussions in a session that looks into this area, the main challenge to finding the right balance in professional development is the perceived risks and promised rewards presented to a workforce. Obviously, the path with the least resistance will always be chosen, which means minimal risk for its corresponding reward. However, there are others who value the high-risk and high-reward model, and these are ones that definitely reap the rewards and valuable opportunities presented to them.

Encryption is crucial when collecting and storing biometric data because generative AI based on biometrics requires a lot of raw data to feed into Machine Learning algorithms. This means transparent terms and conditions and policies and even frameworks must be put in place so that people understand that Biometric AI needs their data, and at the same time, be confident that the storage of these very personalized data is highly protected.

I learned that it’s sad that net freedom is always at the mercy of the state and whether is based on fair or unfair reasons, the state always has the legal upper hand to control the access of the internet to its citizens or a group of them. The case of West Papua and the Civil Society Experience is a sad one and I hope for the best for them.

The Asia Pacific region presents its own set of challenges in Bridging the Communications Divide, the main one of them being geography. Therefore there is no one-size-fits-all solution for this, but a multi-communication model that encompasses all forms of communication technologies on terrestrial, maritime and aviation connection points. There will be more dependence on satellite communication, especially when the cost of launching (and maintaining) satellites into space are reduced with advancing technology.

I also support the suggestion to delete this sentence. despite of cultural differnce, privacy should be regarded as universal human rights.

this is thecomment on para 37

There should be more discussion on Free and open-source software (FOSS). Since, it is one of the fundamental components for an internet that is open and accessible to all, an internet that repects our privacy. FOSS ensures that we have control over the technology we use in our daily life. FOSS ensures that the technology we use is transparent, and does not do anything malicious behind our back.

Sorry, this comment supposes to be for the whole document not just for this paragraph.

In order to link this with the text in “Sustaining efforts to overcome digital divides through Community Initiatives and practices” I would say “Community Radios and Community Networks” serve as … ” I would remove (CRs) as its an acronym is not used elsewhere in the text

There was a noticeable dichotomy between how different countries currently tackle the protection of youth against online abuses such as intimate image abuse. Some comparative examples given by the panellists are:

Indonesia’s Electronic Information and Transactions Law (from Ms Avida Veda’s panel)- which has focused on on criminalising the actual content, to the point where the responsibility is often placed on the victims for posting such explicit content in the first place.

On the otherhand, in Japan – Ms Yamaguchi’s PhD studies interviewed instances of women posting out of free will – who may even feel empowered by the fact they can choose what parts of themselves that they show.

This wasn’t a issue that was delved into in the session, but I think it is imporant that these cultural differences are acknowledged, as governments must consider how to balance the protection of victims of online abuse while also allowing for sexual autonomy for others. I wonder if, realistically, it would even be viable to have international collaboration for this, or whether this issue be left to individual countries to decide.

I believe that the current 3 policy questions on trust – as provided during townhall discussions – are not fully reflective of the concerns that the younger generations may have regarding trust.

While the current policy questions for trust are valid and legitimate concerns on how we can foster and broaden the scope of trust especially for less accessible communities, what was lacking from this discussion was the considersation of the many youth that already place significant trust in technology as digital natives.

I would have liked to hear more acknowlegement about the power that governing and commercial bodies already hold through youth’s trust in technologies, placing importance on REGOGNITION and ACCOUNTABILITY that product developers and governmentment should be held by, to ensure a e-environment where youth are able to feel and be safe, and be allowed to enjoy technology.

The advance of technology has undoubtedly brings convenience and benefits to society. However, according to PwC’s Global State of Information Security Survey dated 2015, the cybercrime market worth $114 billion, which is bigger than the cocaine market ($85 billion, quote from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2011). Therefore, I believe it is necessary to evaluate the Cyber Maturity Framework of organizations which provide new technologies prior launching /on a regular basis. The Cyber Maturity Framework consists of four capability areas: Respond, Identify, Detect and Protect).

Respond:
Assesses the organisation’s ability to respond and recover from external and internal attacks against its systems and data.

Identify:
Assesses the organisation’s ability to understanding the threats and appropriately manage the associated security risk to systems, assets, data and capabilities.

Detect :
Assesses the organisation’s ability to detect external and internal attacks of varying sophistication against its systems and data.

Protect:
Assesses the organisations ability to implement security controls to reduce the risk of threats being realised (e.g. loss of data or system outage).

I believe partnerships and collaborations between different companies and regulators may help the underserve communities and regions to catch up with the pace of digital boom.
For instance, Ant Financial (Alibaba Group’s mobile payment affiliate) decided to partner with Touch N’ Go to develop their e-wallet rather than break in with Alipay in Maylasia. This can ensure healthy business synergy in both companies. Also, the regulators may consult the fintech companies when building new regulations to ensure the law is down to earth and can be implemented while balancing the business development and cybersecurity.

Please add the following: “The law is driven by government agencies established by law, including the Thai government, which is actively pushing for it.”

I would like to add the following: “In addition, cooperation from both the public and private sectors is also required.”

Please amend as follows: “Name of the main responsible agency: สำนักงานคณะกรรมการการรักษาความมั่นคงปลอดภัยไซเบอร์แห่งชาติ (สกมช.) National Cyber ​​Security Agency (NCSA) http://www.ncsa.or.th , Reference document file https://www.mdes.go.th/law/detail/3572-Cybersecurity-Act-B-E-2562–2019-“

Maybe it will be more comprehensive to add “age” as a variable factor like gender? For example, I think social media platforms Twitter and Facebook and online political events provide more opportunities for the youth to express their opinions and participate in such events. Not only in terms of politics, but also influences the youth culture, making youth subculture attracts more people. Especially in China, we can see a rapid growth of youth subculture texts. Typical examples are meme and idol culture.

Some theories of philosophers indicate that the logics of technology heavily influence our traditional logic, preparing us human for digital logic. So, maybe be we can talk about some changes in the definition of our humans, like the studies of “embody” in media and technology.

[Privacy and data protection are critical issues now, especially as they may come into conflict with freedom of expression]

Is this trying to say “right of privacy” as “universal human right”? If yes, then the correct reference should be Article 13 of 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The freedom of speech is in Article 19. Conflict between privacy and freedom of expression usually discuss in a context of press freedom. I would suggest to frame privacy as enabler of freedom of expression, as in Article 17-19 of International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

[A multi-stakeholder approach to identify and address key risks is a positive way forward to addressing cybersecurity issues which within the Asia Pacific region]

I think there may be a word missing between which and within

PACIGF Notes on Cybersecurity:
The Fiji Government has recently introduced an Online Safety Bill that will see irresponsible social media users paying up to $20k in fine and face imprisonment of up to five years if investigated by the Online Safety Commission and found guilty.
This bill will impact on hateful and harmful electronic communications and the posting of intimate visual recordings that would impact women and children as victims.

PACIGF Notes:
52% of the countries have adopted DNSSEC in the Pacific

Sorry maybe the above comment should go under Online Privacy and Protection

PacIGF Notes:
It is costly for companies to implement and also maintain infrastructure because the islands in the Pacific are too spread out, also there are natural disasters occurring every year

PacIGF Notes:

Pacific Internet exchange point: Vanuatu, PNG and now Fiji

PacIGF notes:
In the Pacific there is an Australian Government program called Pacific Connect with a focus on Fiji, Samoa, PNG, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu and Tonga to engage digital and ICT initiatives in the areas of government digital/innovation, cyber engagement, leadership, women, and research. The program is said to be about putting the ‘right’ people in the room to connect and work on mutually beneficial issues. The two year pilot program’s theme is: Building Australia-Pacific Connections for the Digital Future

PacIGF Notes:
Digital Technology is still fairly new with a technical Startup called TraSeable Solutions implementing Seafood Provenance and OxFam (humanitarian relief cash transfers) with other projects like Fiji’s land registry on blockchain, PNG- palm oil supply chain and national identity and supply chain projects

PacIGF Notes:
There is still a need for alot to be done.
Also need for a bridge between IGF communities and spaces. The need to bring multi stakeholder models to the Pacific Nations

PacIGF Notes:
A need for all to come together with your own skills for your own areas. To collaborate and work together to achieve national requirements

PacIGF concluded with the need to learn from each other and help each other also a more inclusive approach where for example the legal people highlighted that they are always the last to know and only if there is a problem but they would like to be more informed and in the loop from the beginning

[The imbalance of deployment of technology in the Pacific Islands compared to other developed regions has led to a rise in cyber incidents. ] This is not necessarily true. You coukd say that there is an imbalance but it has not led to the imbalance. It is more accurate to say there is an imbalance and there is a rise and that these gaps in technology etc need to be addressed. everything else sounds fine.

Stories from the Pacific – the human side of cyber incidents

The successes of digital transformation in the Pacific and increased internet connectivity of Pacific Islands is unfortunately accompanied with greater vulnerability of local IT systems. The recent spike in high profile, publically reported cyber incidents from the Pacific has seen a much welcomed boost in awareness and focus on bolstering technical, organisational, and policy approaches to help increase nations’ cyber resilience.

Technology is being employed as an enabler to build and strengthen services. In Tonga, the Digital Strategic framework from 2019-2024, the strategy sets the use for the governments informtion and communication technology with the ultimate intention to improve government decision making, business process and work flow efficiency. Improving the quality of services timeliness for the people of Tonga while reducing the complexity and cost of government services.

Security (physical infrastructure), protection of personal and privacy of information, protection of national critical data are fundamental to the Tongan governments digital strategic goals. The digital government security requirements flow several security principles including protection of confdential information, ienuring the integrity of data and information and ensuring accessibility of information to those with a valid need to know and proper security authentication and authrosation. With the kingdom of Tonga population is importnt to measure the amount of threats, cybersecurity processes that impact the population. Due to isolation, limited resources, there is a need to build resilience towards these impacts.

Tonga’s computer emergency response team (CERT)was established and effective via a cabinet decision on July 15, 2016. CERT Tonga operates under the Ministry of Meteorology, Energy, Information, Disaster Management, Environment, Climate Change and Communications (MEIDECC). It currently has 3 established staff members, 2 males and 1 female. This 3 staff look after the cybersecurity issue and all cybersecurity related matters for the Kingdom of Tonga. In the area of workforce development, young Tongan tertiarty students are encouraged to consider internship at the CERT if they wish to develop their cybersecurity skills. CERT Tonga also has a cybersecuirty workforce development programme in partnership with the Ministry of Innovations and Trade, New Zealand which will allow them to recruit 3 additional staff. CERT Tong works towards a vision of safe and secure digital environment for the Kingdom of Tonga. Its mission to to coordinationand collaborate amongst stakeholders through awareness to detect and manage cyber threats in the Kingdom of Tonga

How did CERT Tonga respond to the ransomware attack in Tonga:
All incidents should be reported to CERT Tonga but most incidents don’t get reported because the organisation wants to handle it internally by their IT staff. In February 2023, the Medusa ransomware hit one of Tonga’s critical ISP. This was reported to the CERT within 3days as the deadline from the attacker to the victim. Due to limited resources, capacity and technical capability, this was the first time for the CERT o experience such an incident. The CERT reached out to other CERTs in the region for assistance, CERT NZ. The advise was for the victim not to pay the ransomware. For the affected party, their services were not fully compromised and the Tongan government requested emergency response assistance from the Australian government. CERT Tonga was directed to lead the coordination and collaoration of the first cybersecurity incidense response teams to tonga from Australia and New Zealand and Tonga. Cyber CX and teams from Australia were responsible for the investigation, recovery and restoration of services of the affected party and CERT NZ for conducting training for ICT staff, government ministries and public enterprise and private sector as well as the affected parties staff including assistance and advise on communication

Multistakeholder approach only works if there’s full and active participation of every stakeholders during Internet governance discussions. It is crucial that we ensure harmonisation between the ‘technical dialogues’ and ‘policy dialogues’. Some of the challenges the Internet is presenting are due to the lack of cohesion (or discussion) between the stakeholders.

With regards to governments and their role in internet governance, we the various stakeholders from different backgrounds need to be more proactive in informing our own governments with regards to the issues in today’s internet and how they could be resolved.

There are different roles that government, industry (both small and large actors) and other stakeholder groups can play in promoting the adoption of standards. It’s also important to be very clear about the arguments for such adoption and how they are targeted for most effect.

It is important to recognize that the legal side of emerging technologies is consistently lagging behind the incredible pace of the technological development. Around the world, deepfake nudity in school environments has become a major issue, but little can be done because there is no legal or regulatory framework to deal with these issues. How can we make sure legal teams can keep up with the rate of emerging technologies?

As discussed in WS 83, Public Libraries are ideal places for Internet access where users can be guided in a secure, inclusive, impartial, free and non-threatening environment. In New Zealand, for example, free Digital Literacy/Skills sessions are commonly held in Public Libraries on specific topics or for marginalised groups. Communities in small developing nations can be empowered through provision of Internet and information access in Libraries.

Need to include Youth into the discussion and policy development process, as Regional IGF and regional YIGF more.

Need to ensure more opportunities for the newcomer to be engaged in the process. Not just provide the opportunities but to ensure the information about them is spread across the community.

Why only in General Elections? We need to combat Disinformation in all aspects of human life.

And how can general user contribute as well.

Very interesting to learn new concept regarding the topic on Cyber security

I was graduate with a bachelor in Computing Systems in Auckland and interest also in Cyber security which I also have some related subjects in term of malware Analysis,System Security Botnet,Fishing etc…..I would like more if the stake holder could provide more pratical worshop on this topic of Cyber security.

For my little state Island I wish if my community need to understand more about online Privacy and data Protection to help young people to their respective environment to have what this topic is all about.

For my Island State I wish if APRIGF can deal with our local Government IT center to run awareness more on access and Empowerment of using Digital device through internet.

I wish if our Government IT center to create a digital e-commerce shopping online to satisfy every citizen living in my country(vanuatu).

i really want to see a diversity of people with different norms and values to participate and engage in Digital world.

The word ‘legitimate’ can mean something that ‘conforms to the law’. In many countries (such as India), several consensual and harmless acts online are classified as ‘obscene’, ‘seditious’ etc., and so, ‘illegitimate’ under the law. Can ‘legitimate’ be replaced with ‘ethical’?

Here, too, can ‘legitimate’ be replaced with ‘ethical’ because various ethical uses of the internet are wrongfully and unconstitutionally classified as illegitimate under the law in countries like India – such as, laws on obscenity, sedition, unlawful activities etc.

The issue of diversity and accessibility (under the Inclusion track) intersect within the context of the “digital language divide” as language affects users’ experience of the Internet – it guides who can access and meaningfully participate in online spaces, what content/information we access (and thus, which knowledge we reproduce), whom we speak to, and how we behave in online communities. Inequality in representation in different languages online also shapes how we understand our place in the world. To support greater linguistic diversity on the Internet, tech organizations (profit and nonprofit) running search engines and online encyclopedias need to amplify their translation initiatives/solutions and governments need to develop policies and programs that support and facilitate online linguistic diversity and multilingualism.

I suggest the expansion of the notion of diversity and accessibility here to include the issue of linguistic representation online.

Hate speech intersects with disinformation and misinformation when the content of hate speech is based on non-factual information – which is often the case in the APAC region. Amid gaps in hate speech legislation in the region, bottom-up, human-centered approach to counter online hate speech, such as using human experts to conduct fact-checking could address issues with automated content moderation which most online platforms rely on. These issues include the difficulty in identifying hate speech content across multiple languages and differing social and cultural contexts (the context-dependent nature of hate speech) and biases in machine moderation.

While fact-checking that relies on human experts is a more reliable approach, the volume and speed with which online hate speech is produced and disseminated make the effort seem unsustainable. Another issue is the reach of fact-checking output – Is the public aware of such an initiative? Who visits factchecking sites? Which intermediaries disseminate the fact-checking output?

To address the second issue, it is important that fact-checking organizations form partnerships with online networking platforms, the local media organizations – national and regional, and other relevant intermediaries to scale the fact-checking effort. Further, more research needs to be done to best bring together manual and automated approaches to fact-checking and content moderation toward human-in-the-loop system/method.

These bottom-up approaches need to be accompanied by advocacy efforts targeting regulatory changes at the national and regional levels. The recommendations of the 2020 Asia-Pacific Regional Forum on Hate Speech, Social Media, and Minorities could serve as a basis that clarifies the role and responsibility of different stakeholders in countering hate speech and provide examples of relevant multistakeholder frameworks for monitoring hate speech.

Recommendations of the 2020 Asia-Pacific Regional Forum on Hate Speech, Social Media, and Minorities:

https://tom-lantos-institue.events.idloom.com/files/events/13149/files/recs-asia-pacific-regional-forum-final.pdf

Inclusion should not be only for digitally literate people but also for those who are digitally as well as socially illiterate. Their voice need to be in digital space. Discussion should include in this topic as well.

The encouragement is most for local youth IG in their respective region. More opportunities need to given for these youth who is represtenting the status of their local IG space not only as fellows but also as speaker, panelist, moderator, organizer. Any role they can play and make their voices reach out loud in reapective dimesion.

The current hegemony of tech corporations which belong to the global west must be examined, and whether they push countries in the Asia-Pacific region to a state of dependency on such corporations. Does the need to break this power dynamic push for fragmentation?

I certainly agree that persons with disabilities are more likely to be left behind during rescue efforts at the time of calamities. The app ecosystem in the disaster management domain still predominantly depend on the use of the touch interface, since all smartphones use that as the primary method of user interaction. It is tough to cater to all disabilities since it is a vast spectrum in itself. However, enabling more methods of interaction such as voice, the use of inbuilt motion sensors, use of physical buttons and integrating peripheral devices such as smartwatches can certainly help in bridging this gap in accessibility.

the name of the program is mislead

the discussion is interesting but it does not touch the point about what is the hack

actually, I understand about we will show about idea or prototype of “hacking” government or surveillance. but we just talk about platform for collect violent data.

With respect to Universal Acceptance…

The Internet DNS has already provided support for IDNs and they have been in production since 2009.  What needs to happen now, both in respect to IDNs and all new TLDs, is that the developers of computer programmes and systems need to catch up so that they take advantage of these new facilities.

Readers, including businesses, governments and civil society participants, should make sure that their own systems are UA Ready – that is that they can accept, validate, store, process and display all domain names equally.   This is an issue not just at the top level, but at second and subsequent levels as well.

They should also encourage their suppliers and the providers of services they use to become UA Ready.

[NB: This editing application is an example of one that does NOT accept IDN e-mail addresses]

Combined efforts from public, private and community sectors is needed to create sustainable initiatives to solve issues of affordable accessibility and digital literacy for all.   Effort is also necessary to support local languages in all facets.  Developments are also necessary is safe and affordable electronic payment facilities to allow everyone to facilitate sustainable activities.

A call to action here would be beneficial, calling on Spectrum Managers within each community to de-licence WiFi spectrum.

Satish, either will be fine, in my view.

“Trust” is a challenging term because it’s so broad.   When I first read this, I thought how can we ensure that justice is served when our trust is broken by naughty people?   Communities adopting similar legal frameworks for addressing scams and allowing cross border enforcement would be a way of building Trust.   If you order a book from me, and I don’t deliver, then you should be able to easily pursue remedies.

But there’s also the Trust of accuracy of information.   And the Trust that the information that I transmit is secure between me and its intended recipient.

Expanding digital literacy and access will also have a (generally) positive economic impact. I’ve seen reports that a 10% increase in access results in a 1% increase in GDP. It is important, I think, to make sure that Digital Literacy goes hand-in-hand with Access because this will ensure users will be able to discern good from naughty.

(PS: Your system rejected my IDN email address)

There is a LOT of meat in this one paragraph and could well do with breaking it up.

Technologies

Policies

Processes

Should there also be encouragement for consistency across jurisdiction so that bad guys can’t hide somewhere where there’s inconsistent rules from where they act.

[serious economic consequences]

…serious economic, social and cultural consequences…

Not all new technologies would contribute positively to the economy.
We need to acknowledge that technology is not inherently good and it also has some adverse effect on society.
What does “markets” refer to in the first paragraph?

add guidelines on the first line……therefore should read, after implementation of policies, guidelines and best practices…..

Emphasis to implement and conduct awareness and education to multi-stakeholders on existing national laws that have provisions of collecting and possessing data privacy

also the key to inclusive and diversity is to promote innovative development

also the key to inclusive and diversity is to promote innovative development. (this sentence should read here and not above)

In addition to Government providing policy environment for access it should include for services as well and further financial support to drive local content and demand driven solutions

just started in the Pacific

In the Pacific especially Vanuatu digital economy is in its early stages especially with e-commerce it is only popular among tourism industry due to payment systems not fully integrated into the local commercial Banks.

Digital trade and ecommerce will also promote traditional and cultural practices to produce more of local products example local handicraft when global market drives demand.

Along with copy right rules, the need of e – education must be extended in an affordable price to children and youth in remote and rural communities.

Awareness and training on Capacity building and Internet Governance processes is required for educators.

Proper accress to Internet is still a dream. Hardly 10% residents have proper access to Internet in Asia. In India it is 50% still. I found no discussion and solution over the issue here in draft. Exclusive inclusion of all the stakeholders is required to solve the issues. We are in need of some sophisticated technology at most affordable rates to increase the access of Internet to the bottom of pyramid.

This can be rephrased as “Building a secured Internet ultimately means improving on the cybersecurity standards and the ability to trace malicious activities”

Thanks for the comments Mr.Babu. This sentence can be rephrased as “The future stability and security of the Internet highly depends on the successful implementation of policies and best practices, and by addressing the increased implementation of few major issues like IPv6, DNS Security Extensions(DNSSEC) and routing security”

No special educators for this awareness, we need to bring about evidence based training that needs to be exchanges among the peers and shared with the community

Cyber Security is still a fully undiscovered area and participation by the internet community to focus on capacity building effort will alone is not suffice and there should be some capacity building that are technically designed to handle insecured situations on the Internet. The community can also aim to come out with a Security Framework that can act as a platform for future enhancements.

Internet being ubiquitous how much online privacy does an individual have? Do we have any latest tools or security techniques that enhances the safety of online transactions and that improves our privacy on the cyber space?

When filling the digital gap and making Internet available to all regardless of socio-economic status, gender and age. Pointing out on the age factor is digital inclusion applicable for all ages? will this not have a greater impact on the children, kindly suggest more on this.

Developing programmes for digital literacy in all languages at the same time it becomes necessary to take steps and measures on involving people actively to participate in such initiatives. For Example: Inclusion of Women into Internet Governance from the Asia Pacific Region exclusively from India demands more compromises with family members, in such situations what steps can we initiate to make the digital literacy to reach the whole mass.

The Internet has become a place for people to make a living. One of the platforms for this is video sharing. Popular sites such as YouTube has served as the platform for content creators to generate their own income by means of their own videos, typically funded by ad revenue. What creates issue with this is that there are content creators who rely on the content of other people, adhering to “fair use” as their legal protection. Despite such protection, this does not stop creators to file lawsuits citing copyright infringement. Theft of intellectual property is also an issue that reaps the same consequences. This legal conflict is a threat to the thriving entertainment industry, as well as economic prospects for individuals. Therefore, a clear and detailed criteria on what constitutes as theft of intellectual property should be imposed.

in WS59 a theme emerged around the importance of understanding the dynamics of diversity, in that it changes over time on different issues and as such discussion evolves through stages. That diversity is not an absolute or finite value, and that cultural diversity is highly relevant for the AP region in the global IG context, especially in the development of rough consensus (i.e. to avoid dominant cultural bias causing undue influence over results of discussions given cultures in AP’s tendency towards deference to authorities)

WS57 discussed the growing importance of investigating illegal wildlife trade online, and the effectiveness of cross jurisdictional processes are becoming increasingly critical. At the same time though, privacy and other user rights must not be compromised. Industry code of practices are important beyond legislation.

WS57 highlighted the merging physical space with cyberspace in the sense that the internet and ecommerce is having a direct impact on wildlife and the environment, (poaching supported by demand from convenience of ecommerce). At the same time ecommerce and elearning can support rural economies to discourage poaching. the SDGs and their interrelation with the Internet and Internet Governance is exemplified by supportive policies and technologies deployed for wildlife conservation (especially as it intersects with rural populations and least developed areas in the proximity of endangered species)

Universal Acceptance is a part of a bigger issue of making sure that the Internet’s Critical Infrastructure protocols evolve over time in an open standards manner. For the synthesis document, I would suggest that we add text suggesting that: Universal Acceptance of Internationalized Domain Names (IDN) and Email Address Internationalization (EAI) for systems online is a matter of priority not only for ensuring that Asia Pacific users can utilize their native language to navigate the Internet, but also as an imperative for the continued evolution of the core Internet infrastructure protocols, including the enhancement of scalability (e.g. IPv6), security (e.g. DNSSEC) and multilingual capability (e.g. IDN) of such protocols.

using of AIs regulating Digital Economies

Understanding the risk; the people with disabilities as the target of datafication on social protection programmes.

It’s also importance to acknowledge the power relation between stakeholders are currently not equal, and to treat all voices equally there should be a visible effort to address it.

There’s a need to provide the knowledge in an understandable language, not only for abled people, but also for the community who might not have the same understanding or language or perception yet (eg. deaf communities) to address all sorts of things pertaining to digital livelihood.

Talking about inclusion, there’s also need to engage and include the law enforcement as often they are at the end of enforcing law but does not really have the understanding of how important it is to have human rights based approach and intervention on internet governance matter.

I agree on this. In Indonesia there’s also a11y focused community, such as Mitra Netra (for the blind/visually impaired) and Suarise-a consultant to improve a11y access for PwDs, but the focus is more on jobs access and not yet to engage them in the discussion of internet governance. We need to engage them too.

On the impact of the GDPR on the APAC region. Many APAC countries are implementing privacy & data protection laws directly informed by the GDPR (see Indonesia’s proposed law and Australia’s upcoming amendments to the Privacy Act). Very welcome to see this GDPR influence as the digital economy grows faster in APAC than any other region in the world!

Particularly on the note of underserved and rural regions, who currently don’t have full access to the digital economy; what happens once the economies of scale which power the non-digital economy cease? What happens when the balance tips in favour of digital transactions, supply chain management and inventory control? Will the non-digital solutions cease and leave the underserved communities behind?

It’s the job of the internet community to make sure that these communities are not left behind on the march to innovation.

Community Engagement in Different Stakeholders for Data Protection for government monitoring & controlling perspective of South East Asia with comparison to western world

Capacity building starts at the grass root and a good example of the Vanuatu IGF that were established during APRIGF. It would be good to revisit the impact of such intiative in training locals on how to safely navigate the Internet. This initiative can be driven by local government initiative such the CERT Vanuatu.

This section does not address how we can strengthen existing stakeholders such as CERTs. It does mention these initiatives but there is a need to determine how CERTs and any other domain interact with organisation such as ICANN, APNIC, and other train providers to strengthen their skills in term of responding to threats.

To make IG ecosystem more impactful we need collaboration more especially the youth IG groups collaboration like youth4IG, YCIG etc. I believe that youth has the power to have a good impact on IG. Besides it is important to be aware of IG issues from the early stage of their life.

Effective and achievable circular economy policy frameworks are crucial for digital environmental sustainability due to the rapid growth of the electronics sector and its associated environmental challenges. As digital technologies become increasingly integral to our lives, the production and disposal of electronic devices contribute to resource depletion, electronic waste, energy consumption, and pollution. Circular economy policies ensure that electronic products are designed for longevity, repairability, and recyclability, reducing the strain on resources, minimizing waste, and curbing emissions. By encouraging responsible consumption, efficient resource use, and innovative recycling practices, these frameworks are essential for balancing the digital world’s expansion with the urgent need to preserve and protect our environment.

The right to access and inclusion of internet must mention the right of communities (i.e. indigenous communities) to refuse the internet in their area or want to be isolated from the internet signal to protect and value their culture.

References (Indonesian case):
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jul/28/the-village-that-wants-to-cut-off-the-internet

Indonesian ministry to honor Baduy people’s demand for internet blackout

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-06-09/indonesia-indigenous-group-requests-internet-blackout/102464636

In two days’ discussion in yIGF, one crucial issue was media literacy. IGF should promote digital literacy for young people and be held by the youth organisations concerned with media literacy. Then, protecting youth social and political movements on the internet (especially on social media) is crucial to increasing youth participation in internet governance.

The 1st policy question is too broad and theoretical. It would be better to make comparative approach between de facto and de jure of the national laws to assess its own interpretation in accordance with its provisions. On the other hand, there is a possibility that national law is influenced by conventions or international agreement which subsequently established universally-applied principles. If I were to suggest, the terms “regulations” could be replaced with principles we internationally adopt as a matter of comparison.

The 3rd policy question should be narrowed down a little bit as it may create confusion such as the role of government in the protection of human rights online based on what? the regulations? Please point out a context you want to refer to, since I believe that there are various cases that involve the governments with different measures. For example, there is a legitimacy of surveillance under certain conditions (proportionality, necessity, etc).

       Addressing digital literacy for parents is crucial for enhancing online safety and understanding. Here are some effective strategies:
        Educational Workshops: Organize community workshops and webinars focused on digital safety, privacy settings, and online behavior.
         Resource Centers: Develop online resources, guides, and toolkits that explain digital risks, privacy settings, and how to monitor and guide children’s online activities.
        Collaborate with Schools: Partner with schools to provide parents with information and training on digital literacy as part of school programs or events.
         Support Groups: Establish online and offline support groups where parents can share experiences, ask questions, and get advice on digital issues.

As we consider the key challenges for AI governance, it’s crucial to recognize that a one-size-fits-all approach may not be effective due to the varied cultural, legal, and socioeconomic landscapes across the region.
 In particular, I’d like to emphasize the importance of contextualizing AI frameworks to reflect local realities. As an example, what works in urban centers may not be suitable for rural or marginalized communities, where access to technology and education can be limited.
Therefore, AI governance must be flexible enough to adapt to these differences while ensuring that ethical standards are upheld.

This discussion is timely, especially for the Pacific Region. The idea of forming a regional coalition for fact-checking is promising, but it’s essential that it reflects our unique challenges and diverse contexts. Collaboration across the Asia-Pacific is crucial, but we need to ensure that the principles like transparency and accountability are adaptable to our local realities.
It’s also important that smaller Pacific nations aren’t overlooked in these efforts. While a coalition could be a powerful tool, we should be realistic about its limitations and complement it with grassroots initiatives already happening in our communities

From a Small Developing Country perspective, particularly in Samoa, we have seen firsthand the transformative potential of technology like Star Link in improving connectivity.
However, regulatory blocks and infrastructural limitations has impeded such advancements. In Samoa, and more broadly in the Pacific, there are specific challenges related to regulatory frameworks that impact the deployment and utilization of technologies like satellite internet. These include stringent regulations that may not yet fully accommodate new emerging technologies.
Overly restrictive or inconsistent regulations can inadvertently promote fragmentation, particularly in rural areas that need connectivity the most.
This can exacerbate the digital divide and limit the effectiveness of efforts to provide universal access.

I found it really interesting listening to the panel share the challenges and successes of healthcare data governance in Taiwan. It’s clear that this is a really important topic, especially as we start to see similar developments in the Pacific region.
It is very crucial to make sure that people know how their data is being used and that they’ve agreed to it. In places like the Pacific, where community trust is key, getting this right from the start is essential.
The experiences shared today, particularly Taiwan’s use of the Personal Data Protection Act (PDPA) to safeguard health data, highlight how transparency and ethical practices can build trust in the points of Personal data only be used for the specific purposes for which it was collected and Data Subject Rights to agree/disagree of using their personal data or opting out.
I believe that this framework could serve as a best practice or guide for other countries looking to implement or improve their own healthcare data governance systems.

This discussion is timely, especially for the Pacific from where I come from. The idea of forming a regional coalition for fact-checking is promising, but it’s essential that it reflects our unique challenges and diverse contexts.
Collaboration across the Asia-Pacific is crucial, but we need to ensure that the principles like transparency and accountability are adaptable to our local realities.
It’s also important that smaller Pacific nations aren’t overlooked in these efforts. While a coalition could be a powerful tool, we should be realistic about its limitations and complement it with grassroots initiatives already happening in our communities

As we consider the key challenges for AI governance, it’s crucial to recognize that a one-size-fits-all approach may not be effective due to the varied cultural, legal, and socioeconomic landscapes across the region.
In particular, emphasize the importance of contextualizing AI frameworks to reflect local realities. For example, what works in urban centers may not be suitable for rural or marginalized communities, where access to technology and education can be limited. Therefore, AI governance must be flexible enough to adapt to these differences while ensuring that ethical standards are upheld.

Human rights are by universal.  The phrasing “especially the different balance required at different stages of development” should be deleted, as it seems to suggest that the importance attached to human rights varies depending on the stage of development and it is acceptable to trade off cybersecurity against human rights.

Data protection practices must comply with international principles like the OECD 1980 one
Region should look at what GDPR mean for us and how the good principles can be adapted int he region

Tension between internet governance law and extra territorial laws

Synthesis – Town Hall 1
Content moderation – to be rooted in human rights – David Kaye report – Human rights impact assessment – social media for content moderation

Enforcement of laws – cyber crimes to get better addressing

Need for greater participation and voice of youth to be heard

Taking a human rights based approach to technology and to root ICT laws in human rights principles and values

Similarity in legislation – states should cooperate to have comparable legislation and tweak it ot local context

Network shutdowns – need to capture – in relation to disaster management and response

Privacy be design needs to be emphasized along with informed consent standards

Asia Pacific Regional Internet Governance Forum 2024 Taipei Synthesis Document – Draft 0

by design*

Abuse and online harassment missing

Suggest:
Privacy and data protection are critical issues now, especially in the digital age where forms of violations are fast evolving. as they may come into conflict with freedom of expression, and can result in data-driven discrimination.

Reason: rights don’t come in conflict with each other. They have to be seen as an exercise of harmonisation. SR on FoE has many times talked about balancing rights and not confronting

After youth and women – please include while addressing privacy.

Instead of internet community – use Societies should

Suggest rephrasing the next paragrapgs as :
Societies should take a proactive approach (contributing to the efforts of regulators and legislators to strengthen online privacy and data protection), and also collaborate with agencies and organisations which are trying to combat ‘hate speech’ directed at different sections of society, especially women and minorities.

Across the Asia Pacific region, legislation has been developed to govern various aspects of the Internet. Legislation that traditionally govern offline spaces is also used in tandem with these specialised legislation to address violations. This is applicable to privacy and data protection as well. It is pertinent to emphasise the need for these laws and regulations to meet domestic constitutional as well as international human rights standards. ICT laws and privacy related regulations by state and non-state entities must place users and individuals as their priority, be rooted in, and adapt a human rights based approach. States and private entities, especially social media platforms must carry out human rights impact assessments for their existing policies and regulations on privacy and ensure that any changes or introduction of new policies undergo such assessments. States should also collaborate and adapt good practices from each other towards ensuring human rights online and privacy protection through adapting comparable legislation in the region.

I do not agree that this is a new concept – this existed in earlier forms – but i guess the point is dealing with the challenges of the new forms of data protection challenges –

Some points missing from earlier inpiut – can be captured as
Good practices and standards evolving in other jurisdictions, especially GDPR must be analysed and adapted as feasible for the region. Privacy considerations strengthened in light of GDPR may have extraterritorial enforceability. ICANN contracted parties must particularly comply with the GDPR and contractual obligations, trumping community-led policy development processes at ICANN.

Digital rights management could be explored as a significant manner in which online privacy can be protected, to this end capacity building programmes and measures must be extended through multi-stakeholder participation to empower users. Private entities, especially social media platforms play a significant role in ensuring privacy online and refraining from compromising privacy rights of users. Platforms must adapt privacy protections by design and strive for informed consent over formal gestures. As the demand for data localisation grows, these private entities must act in accordance wtih international human rights standards and states must refrain from compromising rights of individuals.

I am not sure if arguing that highest level of protection is the best way – we should ask for privacy by default and the enforcement of common minimum standards – which can then be enhanced in other jurisdictions

Suggest this to replace existing paragraph

We should talk about being aware and understanding how different groups and discriminated against and have difficulty using the internet – or accessing it – example – indigenous groups and women – LGBT groups.

Perhaps we can express that the new and emerging tech should be rights respecting – also can say we hope open source alternatives for existing and new tech keep evolving ensuring that users have autonomy and choice

Should we put dispruptive in “”

More than social systems it is a question of rights – social systems is a dicey term

Please reconsider how the last line is phrased… Even if tools benefit society, or a notion of it – it comes from a place of power- who is to decide it beefits society enough to overrule personal or individual rights

Not just civil rights – it is economic cultural and social rights that are mostly impacted – overall I suggest using human rights or mention both classes through the document.

These changes are possible only in social media platforms and internet companies, especially those that have become a part of our every day life act in a more responsible manner. Business entities must take rule of law and ensuring rights are protected in the their policies and implementation is the basis on which less intrusive regulations can be demanded from states

Would be good to include persons of all sexual orientation – this is key

Would it be possible to suggest a rights based approach to cyber security?

Also would be great if we addressed diversity in infractructure ownership which will impact who gets access

Can we change civil rights to human rights?

Suggest putting in a line that aspires for a plural internet that allows or aids individuals to develop in a manner that they deem fit for themselves

1. Network shutdowns have a series of negatie impact on human rights including the right to access, information, education, health, expression and assembly and association
2. NS are not efficient or effective solutions – they are a part of the problem.
3. Asia is the leading region on network shutdowns
4. The UN has repeatedly held that NS are not desirable – we need a call to the end for the practice on NS
Half the participants were women

We need a rights based approach to technology and regulation of technology. We hae to acknowledge that tech is not neutral and that it can harm disadvantaged communities. We thus need to have a rights based approach where we recognise the impact of different technologies including codes on people. Encourage greater multi disciplinary discussions and look at the impacts

When NS happens it means in addition to harmful content we are also shutting down essential information and content – especially for safety

I would remove and before national laws. Most of our struggle has been with national laws diluting HR guarantees. What international law provides is the bare minimum that needs to be guaranteed.

In the second line on – essential for ensuring accountability – would rephrase as placing the interest of individuals and societies at the centre of how the internet is regulated and for ensuring that our rights are secure.

+1

The DC agreed to add this paragraph in this tense as the event had not yet completed at that time. It will be revised. Which line needs to be changed?

Suggest this be changed to 4 part – including necessity

How do you define a reasonable period of time? If that is the case, the user must also be aware that this information is safe only until a certain period.

Not sure what data-driven discrimination is discussed here… perhaps we can simplify it by saying freedom of expression, privacy and data protection need to be balanced rather than saying they come in conflict

We should highlight hate speech

Instead suggest:

Legislation and policies governing ICTs:
Across Asia several legislation have been developed to govern various aspects of the internet. Legislation that traditionally govern offline spaces are also used in tandem with these specialised legislation to address violations. These provisions must respect internationally recognised human rights and standards for restrictions. They must also draw from other regional documents on ICTs including the Budapest Convention Cyber crime.

Or

Legislation and policies governing ICTs:
Across Asia several legislation have been developed to govern various aspects of the internet. Legislation that traditionally govern offline spaces are also used in tandem with these specialised legislation to address violations. These provisions must respect internationally recognised human rights and standards for restrictions. They must also draw from other regional documents on ICTs including the Budapest Convention Cyber crime. Particularly, states should be urged to reconsider the manner in which mutual legal assistance agreements (MLATs) are currently implemented. The right to privacy, access to justice and rule of law must be upheld when data of individuals are shared by states.

Alternatively

Universal protection of rights:
While expectations of privacy may vary across cultures, protection mechanisms must meet internationally guaranteed right to privacy.

Suggest this:

Uninterrupted access to the internet is essential for the free exercise of rights online. Network shutdowns and blocking have serious economic consequences and impede the right to information, expression, assembly and association among other rights. Any disruptions to the access to mobile and internet services must comply with strict standards established in national legislation and must meet the threshold of legality, necessity and proportionality laid down in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

The use of ICTs in Chennai, India in 2015/2016 during the floods for rescue efforts and for relief work

Will be good to mention the need to apply business and human rights standards to tech companies – recognising the impact these companies have on the rights and lives of individuals

Can remove what is in brackets -worried that ethics is too vague – may be we can split that sentence up

The most important thing about regulation is that they have to be rights respecting. The recent emergency ordinance on Fake news in Malaysia and Social media rules in India are cause for serious concern. Users are unable to understand what amounts to a violation and this reduces their ability to have a trusted internet and a predictable one.

I would recommend starting this section by recognising the responsibility of companies and financial actors who provide capital to the companies to respect human rights as provided under the UN Guiding principles on business and human rights.

Can E-learning or E-Education be discussed here?

I think trace malicious activities is not enough. Can we go further more after tracing.

?

I would add practical, reasonable and fair solutions

A transparent multi-stakeholder approach to identify and address key risks is a positive way forward to addressing cybersecurity issues which within the Asia Pacific region.

This sentence is manufactured oriented Machine-User. What about User-other user side line perspective?

[It is important to protect and respect the rights of users while ensuring digital security as a whole.]

My comment above!

[The key to socio-economic progress in the developing societies is quality education]

and training

A paragraph that states clearly that APRIGF understand the need for pacific islanders equip with devices that are disaster responsive.

As we all know, AI technology is definitely redefining our world now. This session highlighted a wide range of topics on AI, such as sovereignty and inclusion.
I was particularly impressed by the proposal of open-sourcing LLM (Large Language Models) as one of the strategies to increase accessibility for underrepresented groups. Of course, it would be best if all countries could produce their own large language model, but there are practical limitations. The internet started with a few, but now it can be considered the most successful example of open-source technology everyone uses and develops. It was an excellent session that presented the direction of AI technology for everyone.

This panel would be enriched with the presence of HR defenders.

An important contribution of APrIGF is share free, multilingual online training programmes to marginalized communities. The network of networks would be helpful to find natural partners for translation, facilitators and more so that the end users have opportunities to learn

We need a process of accreditation for local digital literacy champions which provides a clear educational pathway for online learning

Please note the work by the Green Internet Foundation with Chris Adams who spoke at the last RIPE meeting earlier this year

Prof Safaet Hossain from City University asked how to avoid people stealing educational content to the educational panel. If we are trying to connect the Unconnected we should be encouraging all educational materials to be licenced under the Creative Commons Sharealike licences and encourage folks to use the content with the proviso that they acknowledge the source.

There is a need to recognize that connecting the unconnected and resolving the digital divide are still the main problems faced by many developing countries in Asia Pacific. In this context, complementary connectivity initiatives have been offered as solutions and creating an ecosystem, an enabling environment for supporting the development and scaling up of sustainable complementary connectivity models need to be a central part of sustainability discussions.

Addressing sustainability challenges of complementary connectivity initiatives require a combination of data-driven impact measurement, effective communication strategies, stakeholder engagement, as well as policy advocacy with the private sector and governments.

Given the different contexts and levels of development of communities of Asia Pacific, there is no “one size fits all” in sustainability of complementary connectivity initiatives. The development of such needs to be iterated given the nature of diverse geographical and socio-cultural elements and interrelated components to consider, including but not limited to policy and regulation, infrastructure, as well as social and economic resources.

With the various challenges even, “it takes a village” to support complementary connectivity initiatives ‘with shared purpose.’ This further requires an agile and adaptive management with flexible financing support. Also, the promotion of different technological solutions adapting to changing customer needs, culturally appropriate services and billing models and community ownership in terms of operations, management and responses to community needs and preferences contributes to a collaborative and open ecosystem needed to address the sustainability agenda. The collaborative and open ecosystem also requires cooperation from local authorities, national governments, industry players and possible legislative measures, also given the extreme costs of interconnectivity and solutions rely on teamwork of local, subregional and national stakeholders.

Measuring the impact of community networks is also important. By showcasing the tangible benefits and positive outcomes of such, we can make a compelling case for governments and resource institutions to support sustainable models of community networks and complementary connectivity initiatives. An M&E system based on IP traffic and other related data must be developed and supported to measure impact in terms of online behavior, which in turn may inform overall impact.

Legislation of favorable policies supportive to complementary connectivity initiatives may also be a solution given some experiences on reluctance of governments to allow smaller carriers even with 7-year track record and 100% uptime.

There are various experiences of evolving sustainability models such as the ISEA project linking community networks to social enterprise and local economic development which needs to be further documented, supported and scaled-up. Emerging sustainability strategies of four pilot community networks in different value chains (coffee, organic vegetables, crafts, agro-ecological/ cultural/ educational tours) are towards enhancing efficiency, productivity and incomes beyond project timeframes.

There is also an interest in establishing a community of practice on sustainability and social impact of connectivity initiatives. There is an initiative of ISEA, APC and Angels of Impact through the Technological Innovations for Sustainable Development Platform and we invite interested organizations to join.

Correct typo of ‘intercessional’ to ‘intersessional’

If as you suggest this section should be framed from a human rights perspective, it may be better to delete this section as privacy is already mentioned under the Human Rights section. In this way, cultural differences become less contentious in terms of privacy.

The topics below may be merged or changed but I suggest that topics be clustered together to reflect various main themes. The following suggested order does not indicate that some topics are less important than others. I have started from 28 and attempted an order from there:
28, 31, 35, 33, 34, 30, 38, 36, 39, 40, 29, 32. I have omitted 37 as it’s suggested that this be merged with 31.

Please add ‘disability’ in the last sentence to read: “The application of human rights should also consider issues of gender, disability, age and sexuality.” Article 9 of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities discusses the right to accessible and affordable ICT for people with disability.

Digital literacy should extend beyond learning how to use email and basic tools to safety online and to develop critical thinking to ensure that people understand what is reputable online information. Critical thinking is a key to online empowerment.

Accessibility for people with disability is a cross-cutting issue that is exemplified by the number of APrIGF sessions ie topics that were relevant. For example, apart from the specific disability session, accessibility was discussed in preparing for natural disasters, e-government services and digital literacy and taking Internet governance to the masses.

Emerging technologies such as IoT can be life-changing for people with physical disability but needs to be designed to be interoperable with various devices including assistive technologies.

Technologies should be designed to take into account the needs of the whole community including people with disability. This is done through existing international guidelines.

The concept of universal design was discussed in WS 44.

IoT and disability was raised in WS44

This issue was raised in WS 83

[Online accessibility and the availability of services online particularly for people with disabilities remain a priority. Development of content on the Internet should include accessibility as part of the agenda as such accessibility features can add to the user experience. This could be achieved with various technological developments such as voice assistants and character recognition software. More can be done to involve people actively in developing inclusive technologies and online content.]

Suggest to shorten and change above wording to:
‘Online accessibility for people with disabilities remains a priority. Inclusive design means the development of hardware and software that enhances the user experience generally and enables online content that is also accessible for people with disability. More can be done to involve people actively in developing inclusive technologies and accessible online content.’

Please add ‘disability’ after ‘age’ in the third sentence. There are over one billion people globally.

Please add ‘persons with disabilities’ in first sentence after ‘gender and religious minorities’.
There is cyberviolence against women with disabilities.

Please add ‘disability’ in third sentence after ‘gender’.

I was particularly struck by the emphasis on the proactive measures that tech companies like Meta and Google are taking to design safer platforms, as well as the importance of user education and continuous feedback. However, what resonated with me most was the call for collaboration between tech companies, researchers, and society to address the complex and evolving challenges of online harm, especially against women. It reminded me that while technology can be a powerful tool for progress, it must be guided by ethical considerations and a deep understanding of its impact on society.

Agree. We should put emphasis on the effort in bridging and narrow the digital divide with the aim to enhance the Internet environment with higher access, empowerment and diversity, like the fundamental infrastructure and adequate and sustainable capacity building.

I totally agree with Arthit that “resilience to disaster” should not come first under the section access, but an item after basic access for the general public is achieved. Thus, it will be better and make more sense if we put it at later part.

About IDNs, in the awareness level, every party should study and explore the linguistic factors of domain names contributing to the global digital divide, how Internet domain names are managed, citing the IDN development cases in Thailand and Russia.

digital literacy goes hand in hand with digital citizenship. it is essential to safeguard one’s interests and others while expressing views on internet space. it is one’s responsibility to spread awarenance about digital citizenship in one’s circle as it may not only be harmful to that person but to others in the community too.

trust also calls for making change easier for people specifically the older generation who are most skeptical of new technology and need help with the transition from classical technology to the world of machine learning and AI.

Internet Governance normally related with the “subject and rules”, it is necessary to sort out who will be get involved in the issue and what rules will be applicable. And more ,it usually expressed by different stakeholders of the internet governance which will related with technology and public policy. Indeed the solution also will be solved by the combination of technologies and policies. In particularly, the technology is the foundation of the internet or cyberspace, and the activities of main parties、 the foundation of the policies also based on the technologies. In addition, the internet governance get the different stakeholders get involved and became globalized which is necessary to consider the factors time and pay attention to the changes in the internet governance system.

eUniversal Acceptance issue including E-mail Address Internationalization and IDNs is very Important for AP region as Next 500 million Internet users are from AP region itself.
Ascii based Internet is barrier to those who are not familiar with ASCII based languages,in getting online.A multilingual internet is useful for all so that every one can have the benefits of this marvelous technology.
We should also come together to solve issues related in to Universal Acceptance i.e. Speech to text search in local languages

Once connected to the Internet – people will use it. Mothers can sell from their homes. Builders learning new methods via Youtube. Farmers selling directly to customers. And so on.

Once connected to the Internet.

There needs to be regulation mandating open access to Internet infrastructure. So it can’t be monopolized, and ensures competition.

To be sustainable, the government need to have + enforce a strict policy against anti-competitive behaviours.

For example, in Indonesia there have been backlashes from merchants who are fed up with the high rate of commissions from platforms; which stays high, and exactly the same between platforms.

The high rate of commissions forces them to raise their prices – which in turn causes their customers to run away to their competitors.

This in turn will destroy the gig economy itself. This anti-competitive behaviours is simply unsustainable in the long run.

The keyword is indeed “collaboration”

Governments need to ensure literacy & critical thinking in the education curriculum, create laws that targets the hoax actors & their financiers (instead of the victims / consumers) – and make sure platforms’ algorithm does not amplify hoaxes/ other kind of bad contents in the name of engagement.

Civil societies need to raise awareness in people that hoax is a serious problem. It kills. It causes people to lose money. A lot of people still does not realize that this is a problem.

Once people realize this, then the ideal scenario will happen : people themselves will counter the hoax actors.

Yes, it’s field day for bad actors because there are so much personal data, even medical data, available to harvest – due to lack of IT security and Data Protection regulations.

Many people already have their private data exposed to the public.

It’s not just a theoretical scenario anymore.

A strong IT security & Data Protection regulations is simply a must.

A good IT security regulations can avoid this situation. Lack of it will cause this.

Healthcare system vendors must be held accountable to security holes in their products. Incentivized to make it better, and deterred from making compromises in term of security.

HCW (healthcare workers) and other personnels with access to healthcare systems must be trained in the topic of digital security awareness.

Deployment and usage of 2FA tokens must be a norm.

DRC and secure, automated backup; must be a norm.

We need to have a Green Computing certification scheme, such as the well-known Energy Star: https://www.energystar.gov/about

It must be robust, covering the whole spectrum of internet & computing, including datacenters and each of its components.

There are levels of its certification, such level 1 for minimum compliance, and level 5 for complete compliance.
Therefore enabling a phased approach to the ideal condition.

This is spot-on – I have been using email and mailing lists since the nineties ; yet I can’t help feeling that I’m still missing some things from time to time.

We need a structured communication facility.

A forum with threading feature, such as Hacker News, might be a good idea.

We need to realize that “freedom of expression” does not mean “freedom of amplification”

Currently, controversial contents are amplified by the platforms’ algorithm – while the balancing views are denied exposure, due to its content that’s tend to use disarming words.

This is a serious issue, an unlevel playing field.

Both sides must be given equal exposure by the platforms, not just one of them.

Whether/How Internet is defined as “Critical National Infrastructure” is different from country to country. In addition, the Internet is a cross-border infrastructure that is critical at least in a sense. So, I think it’s better to chage “Critical National Infrastructure” into “infrastructure based on the Internet”?

Vanuatu is ranked as one of the top (potential) sufferers in
WorldRiskIndex. Countries/territories in Asia/Pacific region
are among the tops as well.
Disasters are unavoidable. Internet accessibility during after
disasters is essential for the human lives. Preparation for
Natural Disasters was a well-attended session.

The above should be touched in the synthesis paper as it is
one of the very important issues in AP region.

CERT should be replaced with CSIRT since CERT is registered trademark of Carnegie Mellon University.
UN IGF also uses CSIRT (http://www.ucl.ac.uk/steapp/dpl-news-publications/un-internet-governance-forum-workshop-on-csirts-and-cyber-diplomacy)

The background part looks good，especially the 3rd paragraph.

What’s not clear to me is the purpose of this OD? What are we going to do with it? Who will be the audience or recipients? Are we going to “released” or “submit” OD to the other international arenas? How would be the relevance of OD to the future rIGF?

The 3rd paragraph shows the unbinding nature of the OD but it did not clarify the purpose.

Trade agreements address many things other than intellectual property rights. This para needs to be completely rewritten to reflect the discussion here.

I really don’t seem any reason for isolating the so-called the right to be forgotten from privacy and data protection. Is there any strong and compelling reason for so doing?

Suggest to have an overall review of the structure of the document and identify the key issues and/or topics to be covered. Apart from the current list, there are “others” (such as Manila Principles on Intermediaries, Network Neutrality and Capacity Building) that are yet to be included.

After Day 1, the fruitful discussions had been made and should be reflected in the documents.

The title is too ambiguous and should be replaced with “Emerging Issues on HR on the Internet”. This section is not a overall and comprehensive narrative on HR, instead it merely addresses a few selected issues. It’s better not to use the exclusive title as present but make it more open-ended.

“Prohibition of data localization” is indeed a poor wording and should be modified. It’s a complicated legal issue and cannot be prohibited completely. There should always be contain exemptions or exceptions that enable local storage requirements.

The global pandemic of COVID-19 highlights the essential need of e-education for both educators and students. Virtual classrooms, online distribution of teaching materials, provision of necessary software and tools and other adaptive or innovative measures require for an enabling and supporting legal environment. Those copyright rules impair e-education and other public information services should be reformed.

We may wish to clarify the meaning and definitions of couple of legal terms mentioned here. Data localization is not equal to prohibition of cross-border data flow. Protectionism is too broad and negative to be used here.

A problem concerning cybersecurity is that there is no uniform set of laws for all countries, or countries within any region, which would put up a broad framework within which all digital activities need to be performed. I think we should include the legal topics in our agenda for the year 2018-2019.

I think not just the technical community, but also the private sector companies need to be duly included in the multi-stakeholder approach. This would then entrust responsibilities and rights to the conduct of the latter.

I see, the next point says end-users also be trained on security technique methodologies. This could be best achieved if the private sector is asked to train their customers/ audience base, but on an objective note.

Here we need to keep the emerging market trends in mind. Say for instance, South Asia would be increasingly getting connected with Southeast Asia with the actualization of the India-Myanmar-Thailand Trilateral Corridor, which is now officially decided to be connected with Vietnam through Cambodia.

There could be other regions within Asia that will be connected to their respective adjacent regions in near-future.

How do you actually connect marginalized communities at a cross-border level. This needs to be very well planned, and not for the heck of saying.

Educating women, especially young girl children, on matters relating to advanced digital technologies and digital securities in crucial for empowering the whole society. There needs to be special focus in this regard, and am sure this would not be gender-discrimination but gender-empowerment.

I think we, i.e. APRIGF, its MSG group members and the organizations they are affiliated with/ head, should come up with a consensual final document of this and send it across to all national and state/ provincial governments. Also, we make a follow-up inquiring how government agencies have acted upon the shared suggestions mentioned in the doc.

0989529447

I don’t

I believe that maintaining cultural diversity online is an important issue, but what I want to ask is that is there any active action we can take online to keep cultures from disappearing. The internet itself is a kind of powerful and new culture, which is actually putting minor culture on the edge of extiction. So I think there should be something we can do actively.

Paragraph 56 beautifully encapsulates the essence of the principle of inclusivity. In a world that’s rapidly advancing with technologies like AI, 5G, and blockchain, it is absolutely vital that we ensure no one is left behind. The commitment to inclusivity means that factors like background, gender, disability, or social standing should never be the reason for anyone to be at a disadvantage. The mention of the ongoing challenge of meaningful access, particularly for marginalized communities, highlights the urgency of the situation. To truly harness the potential of these technologies for the betterment of society, it’s crucial to engage in open and collaborative discussions involving all stakeholders. Only by working together and focusing on infrastructure and access for all can we unlock the full promise of these emerging technologies for the benefit of everyone, promoting socio-economic development across the board.

The opening and many of the panel showed as gender is crosscutting and cannot be considered or highlighted just under the human rights section. Access to infrastructure, information, knowledge shown how the excluded are women and individuals discriminated by being gender non conforming. I would suggest a preamble acknowledge gender as a key divide and engage with substiantial strategy to practice inclusion. Innovation with no gender thinking/designing will never be really inclusive. Furthermore gender violence has to be considered non onlyy an effect of sexism, discrimination and so on but as one of the key factor that prevent women to fully access the information society.

Rtbf cannot be considered without data protection framework.

Privacy should be linked with consent and agency. Both factors have being constantly stressed during the session focusing on gender, sexual rights and freedom of expression and should be mentioned here too.

Existing process required to be reviewed and revised to ensure multi-stakeholder collaboration for developing local digital literacy champions.

We represent the voice of the youth. As we all know, the youth composes most of the internet users in this generation and that we are also the future of the internet, we hold a substantial responsibility in shaping the platform in the present for the betterment of tomorrow. And so we believe that a representative from the youth participants should be given the opportunity to partake a place in the workshop panels, and to voice out the youth perspectives regarding the themes and sub-themes that will be discussed in the forums.

How about substituting the phrase:

“The Outcomes Document aims to document” with “The Outcomes Document aims to identify” to avoid duplication of using “document”.

How about using “summarize” instead of “represent” in the first sentence? Just to avoid possible misunderstanding.

“Suggestions” instead of “Recommendations” if there is strong opposition, but otherwise, “Recommendations” is fine. This is Not a political or diplomatic document.

Using  “Chair’s Summary” might be problematic – as in the process of IGF Improvement, more than Chair’s Summary, some kind of more tangible outcome document has been proposed.

Having said that, using “summary” may not a bad idea.

As we are renaming the document from “Outcomes document” to something else. Would be good to keep it consistent. How about “APrIGF Synthesis Document”? More accurate?

Best practices or ways forward

Again, an update of the process would be needed:

– 1st rough draft based on workshop submissions

– 2nd iteration from comments through the online platform & public dissemination of the link etc (from dates)

– 3rd iteration from comments (platform) & (dates)

– Final version through rough consensus

Something like this? Or based on the secretariat’s excellent summation so far already in the mailing list

from participants at the APrIGF (as well as the broader APrIGF community through remote participation and dissemination at the mailing list)

instead of project, why not “express voices, views and thoughts…”

Ya, maybe “Synthesis or Summary” document is a nice idea

The role of civil society in access issues is critical to be included. This includes research, assessments, monitoring, capacity building, impact evaluation, and creating and providing alternative infrastructure amongst many other things.

1. Humanistic Dimensions:
•Comment on Paragraph 18: “While focusing on resilience at the design stage is critical, I believe we should also consider the humanistic dimensions of resilience. This includes ensuring that digital infrastructures serve the diverse needs of all communities, especially those who are marginalized or vulnerable. By integrating a human-centric approach, we can build systems that are not only technically robust but also equitable and inclusive.”
2. Cultural Sensitivity:
•Comment on Paragraph 19: “It’s important to acknowledge the cultural diversity across the APAC region. The document could benefit from addressing how local cultural contexts influence digital adoption and resilience. Policies and practices should be adaptable to these varying cultural contexts to ensure they are effective and embraced by local communities.”
3. Foresight and Future Scenarios:
•Comment on Paragraph 18: “In addition to immediate resilience measures, I suggest incorporating foresight and scenario planning into our approach. By imagining different future scenarios—such as technological advancements or environmental changes—we can better prepare for and manage potential risks. This proactive approach can help us stay ahead of emerging threats and maintain resilience over time.”
4. Proactive Risk Management:
•Comment on Paragraph 19: “We should emphasize the need for proactive risk management that anticipates future challenges. Beyond current risks, we need to consider emerging threats like AI-driven cyberattacks or the implications of quantum computing on encryption. Foresight tools could be valuable here in identifying and mitigating these risks before they escalate.”
5. Future Readiness:
•Comment on Paragraph 18: “Resilience isn’t just about surviving current challenges; it’s about being prepared for the future. I believe we need to develop adaptive governance frameworks that can evolve with changing circumstances. Additionally, building capacity for continuous learning and adaptability within communities and organizations will be crucial for future readiness.”
6. Holistic Approach:
•Comment on Paragraph 19: “Resilience must be viewed holistically, considering the interconnectedness of digital infrastructures with other critical systems like energy, healthcare, and transportation. By adopting a holistic approach, we can enhance societal resilience as a whole, rather than addressing digital infrastructure in isolation.”
7. Sustainability and Ethics:
•Comment on Paragraph 19: “Sustainability and ethical considerations should be a priority in our resilience strategies. We need to ensure that our digital infrastructures are not only resilient but also environmentally sustainable and ethically sound, aligning with principles that protect human rights and dignity.”

From our end in the Pacific, yes totally agreed in raising awareness so that everyone using internet will understand the threats, challenges and business opportunities that comes with the internet and at the same time aware of some proper and respectful way of using the internet platform within their respective roles.
As for me being both involved in the Government and community so its best to use both connection to make the multitakesholder approach at national level a success. Can put together Government resources and community participation to build guidelines for a safer internet for everyone in the community.

In my view Governments are the victim of the social media contents on the internet. Have been working for the government of Samoa for 20 years and have seen abuses nowadays with the introduction of social media up their game to a another level. With freedom of expression and human rights people are not afraid to put anything on the internet despite some violent contents and misleading information as they can create their own fake news that suits their agenda. There is no control on verification of any information before uploading it.
Hate speech, abusive language and misinformation is very disturbing when using these platforms. Some people tend to pour hate and fake news to stir up peace in Economies and will lead to disputes and lost of Trust to leadership. Some of the abuse have actually go beyond the limit, where it started with politics but now aims at families and children of the victims which is my BIG question is where does freedom of speech and human Rights DRAW THE LINE…Thus the RIGHTS support the Abuser who is free to make fake/hate news and disturb the peace within the community or the poor VICTIM..
There were times our Govt was tempted to block social media especially Facebook but we have recognized its important role for genuine family connection around the Globe. We can’t underestimate how the social media platform have make life easier in bringing communication and accessibility to our home and roofs and many other benefits to our daily life but we have to understand that we need to use it with respect and its not something to bring shame and hurt to other human beings.
We have moved to review our legislation’s and the government have reintroduced our criminal libel law to protect the victims from such disrespectful acts by some. The only challenge about the Act we can’t prosecute actions done from overseas but only contents that were uploaded locally.We have now in the pipeline of establishing a new Digital Transformation Authority that will oversees important changes in technology, as well as monitoring Government ICT services to meet the standard and security required. It will also through this Authority to make sure that Government critical information is protected and secure safely.

I was hoping if all countries that are now registered under the Global Internet Governance Forum can formalized a convention to safe guard the internet use. I know there is a Budapest convention for cyber crime by the Council of Europe (185). It now serves as the binding International instrument to fight against cyber crime.
It provides guidelines for any country developing comprehensive national legislation against Cybercrime and as a framework for international cooperation between State Parties to this treaty.
In saying this, we now have Non-European countries like USA, Japan and Australia as well as our neighbors Tonga who have signed and ratified the convention. I believe its a good platform for better collaboration and investigation if the perpetrator resides within these Countries or Regions.

Cybersecurity is focused on best efforts to make things more secure, without ever achieving 100% security. The goal of a truly secure Internet is an aspirational target. There needs to be increased effort on developing, implementing and revising minimum standards and good practices that address identified key risks for end users, organisations, critical infrastructure, nations and regions. This will require a multi stakeholder approach to identify and address key risks, it’s not just a problem for the network operators and IT professionals. Capacity building efforts need to consider: cybersecurity strategy and policy; cybersecurity culture and society; cybersecurity education, training and skills; legal and regulatory frameworks; and standards, organisations and technologies.

National level leadership and dedicated, ongoing funding will be required for measurable and sustainable capacity building to deliver a more secure Internet, strengthening every link in the global cyber security chain.

With the possibility of the splinternet there should be a call for island nations (governments) to invest in submarine cable infrastructure and not just leave it to the private sector. To a certain extent this improves the backhaul and the bandwidth capacity and significantly contributes to inclusion to less developeed island (provinces) but also enables redundancies to other adjacent nations making bilateral, multilateral nations better.

Could there be some sort of a neutral fact-checking website that is focused on APAC that is wikipedia-like that is led by APrIGF participants where multistakeholders can equally comment on it and yet their identities would be traceable for accountability. The results will show a spectrum of results from various perspectives not just a binary view on truth so people can be more informed. Also the results can be shareable to popular websites with understandable graphics for easy interpretation.

For all research that has been done, acknowledging limitations is critical – as the first step. The next step is addressing the gap on improving the research initiative. 

The current situation in the Pacific especially in Vanuatu is the lack of digital information contents, digital access, skills and information availability for various purposes that suits Vanuatu’s social and economical population. While there are now some implementation to spread access coverage, tailored information/contents for Vanuatu.
In addition, creating user/business avenues and demand-driven access to motivate more use of Internet apart from just social media, email access and sms, etc. which could encourage local, regional and international access and connections are ideal to increase access and empowerment in the pacific.

I fully agree with Kenn Yee on the multi-stakeholder and collaborative approach outreach and capacity-building efforts for internet governance.
The Pacific should get more involved in this approach as I think it will be the most suitable and working model to fit the geographical and diverse cultural existing in the pacific. And with the rapid pace and technological shift involving cloud technologies and services, the pacific needs to step up, evolve and utilise the Internet for their benefits and greater wider Asia Pacific region.

Online Privacy and Protection (or data protection) is a new concept for people in the pacific especially in Vanuatu. People in the rural areas of Vanuatu who daily use Social Media for communication generally do not know what is online privacy, data privacy/protection and even the concept of protecting personal data/information. The “value” of personal data online does not raise a concerning alarm to most end-users in the pacific. And with the unregulated nature of social media platforms, users do not take a step back to self-evaluate them on what/how their daily online presence are like.

There are several points/inputs with Cybersecurity and APrIGF:

1. I think the opening sentence/statement is very good and states well what cybersecurity in the Asia Pacific region. Highlighting the words: “…growing concern, developing economies, security measures, online economies and emerging technologies…” really expresses the need to address cybersecurity gaps with multi-stakeholders security collaboration and partnership approaches with capacity building and promoting cybersecurity especially in the Pacific.

2. This is a proposal to add to the APrIGFG 2019 sessions: more dialogue and discussion around addressing cybersecurity gaps with (1) more emphasis on security research inputs from industry research centers, academic research centers and governmental research centers, (2) innovation technologies within Cybersecurity domain, (3) law enforcement approaches, and (4) introduction of security techniques and methodologies which could help protect end-users help themselves over the internet, (5) Cyber Security standards such as ISO 27000 security Series standards, etc.

Elaborating on how law enforcement play effective role in ensuring a safe Internet environment for users, existing collaborations with law enforcement research centers and agencies have indicated working relationships with security companies, academic institutions and financial institutions. Such working partnership are indicating positive way forward to addressing cybersecurity issues which the Asia Pacific region. Hence, encouraging the Pacific region to establishing partnership with law enforcement would be a bonus to their capacity building strategies.

3. Encryption Standards and regulations. This input is more of a general input, where I am hoping to include discussion and inputs for the Asia Pacific region.

4. I am supporting other speakers and people who commented on inviting more technical people to attend and create more session. I am not sure how much relevance this would be to the whole Internet governance forum (especially around management, logistics, etc.), but including technical work shop sessions such as Security tool training, and mini cyber security challenges especially for YIGF and pacific attendees would be a capacity building suggestion.

5. Finally, my observation for the Pacific on a way forward with cyber security is to encourage effective partnership with security firms, institutions, academic institutions, law enforcement, ISPs, regulators. Finally learn from developed nations who are implementing effective cyber security strategies.

I agree with you Joyce.

This year, there is high and active youth participation in APrIGF, which reveals that the youth community in Asia-Pacific is growing robustly. Young people in this age are digital natives, therefore, it is essential for the community to include their voice in the policy-making process, and their opinions are actually beneficial for policy-making.

WS 6 is basically a workshop initiated by youth, moderated by youth and for youth. Workshop like this not only helps open a door to Internet Governance for youth, but also helps get their voice heard. In order to help widening their horizon and exposure in Internet Governance, and to include more of their opinons, it is suggested to include at least one youth speaker on every workshop, so that the youth perspectives on every topics or issues can be considered.

Social media has an increasing influence on Internet users nowadays, where we highly rely on it to receive different kinds of information, from international news to life updates of your friends. However, there are no strict rules on these social media platform, which means the reliability of this information is questionable. Corporations try to establish the community committees to review reports received regarding fraud, fake news, bullying case, etc. However, due to various factors, including gaps in capacity and knowledge, culture differences, languages, personal judgement, value, and emotion. bias is generated and the core issues in these problems are usually not addressed. Therefore, it will be appreciated if these social media platforms can adopt emerging technologies such as AI as part of this report reviewing process, which can help eliminate bias generated by humans during the decision-making process. With an auditing process in the algorithm, it is believed that it can help improve the effectiveness in resolving issues related to social media and help eliminated bias generated by AI too.

Encryption is the foundation of human right online that every Internet users deserve to have. Without encryption, we have no privacy. We have the right to express freely both physical and on the Internet, which our opinions should not be intervened or censored by any authorities or being manipulated or interpreted in a way that is beyond our initial thoughts. Therefore, it is important to ensure encryption is universally applied on the Internet, in order to protect the universal value and standards towards human rights, where the Internet can always serve as a space for us to fight for our rights even if we are experiencing unfairness in certain situations in the reality.

Fake news is a big concern during COVID-19, it is understandable for some social media platform to establish some mechanism to filter out “inaccurate” information with some fact-checking system. With the “831 Incident in Hong Kong” example raised during the Townhall session on 30 September 2020, I believe our community should pay more attention on how such enterprises are reviewing their content and how they are influenced by the government bodies of different countries. As it is another form of violation of Human Rights to filter out factually accurate content with inaccurate conclusions. This is definitely a potential risk behind the entire fact-checking mechanism, as people may abuse the system by spreading false information online on purpose to limit the dissemination of true and accurate information in any channels with a similar mechanism for whatever reason.

Participation of youth or our next generation is essential for the sustainability of the entire Internet governance community, as well as the discussion of different Internet issues. It is always easy to say “we should encourage youth to participate”, but in reality, youth being unaware of Internet governance is not always the case. There are you in the community, but a sustainable way for meaningful participation is lacking.

A discussion in the Asia Pacific Youth IGF 2022 highlighted factors that hinder the inclusion of new voices, such as lacking support, gaps in the structure of the Internet governance ecosystem, as well as language barriers, and suggested how the youth community and other stakeholders could and should do to encourage sustainable meaningful participation from our next generation.

Youth is contributing with a limited capacity. The key is how our regional discussion and community includes their voice. For example, the youth from the Asia Pacific Youth is discussing and put together a youth statement with their outcomes on different Internet governance issues and working hard on keeping young people in our community. But is our regional discussion and community inclusive enough, in terms of structure and opportunities, to recognize their contribution, and reflect their opinions.

APrIGF is by far a pretty welcoming platform for new voices. However, the sustainability of youth participation has always been a challenge. There are fellowship programs that support newcomers, but there isn’t enough support or a clear pathway for them to evolve into different roles in our community.

For example, joining the MSG and taking up roles to stay involved and contribute to the community is one of the many ways to continue their engagement. But is the existing environment inclusive enough? Not only the nature or design of how things are done in a working group or community but for example, the methods of communications. Is it effective or easy enough for new members to follow?

The existing format we adopted for communication, for instance, is using a mailing list and sending hundreds of emails back and forth to get one issue discussed or tasks completed. Newcomers might be interested to participating in all these processes and actually being capable to contribute. But a relatively unorganized way of communication might hinder or even discourage newcomers to understand, follow or even contribute to such a meaningful initiative or community.

According to a session at the Asia Pacific Youth IGF 2022, it is agreed that collaboration is the key to youth engagement and developing digital citizenship. Collaboration among youth initiatives is needed, in order to create synergies to ensure the youth’s opinions will be reflected as much as we can in different levels of discussion in the Internet governance community.

In order to develop local digital literacy, support from local organizations or collaborations is needed, as those outreach works are mostly contextual, and local languages and cultures usually have a great influence on capacity building.

The cyber-world is a rapidly changing environment. It is a fact that information can be disseminated in just one click with nearly no cost. Mitigating dis/misinformation on social media is a must, but given that social media is a privately-owned public space that is hosting a virtual community, content moderation, particularly on dis/misinformation must not be done by the platform or service provider solely. Instead, a community-based solution has to be proposed.

Certainly, we can always improve the algorithms to “filter” the information that is inaccurate or false to tackle the issues of dis/misinformation. However, the transparency of practice must be ensured with the participation of the community, as this could balance out the chances of the mechanism being abused and used for censorship.

Meanwhile, a community-based fact-checking mechanism should be developed and the empowerment of the general public in identifying the truthfulness or accuracy of information should not be neglected.

I wonder whether you want to add “including open Wi-Fi” to indicate the value of allowing open networks without a login or registration requirement? I did talk about this in the Core Internet Values workshop.

I’m also a little confused and concerned about what this might mean.

Overall comment: the synthesis document is rather light on content and heavy on generalities. But this is not necessarily a fatal criticism. I acknowledge that there is some value in beginning with a very high-level, general document while we are kicking the tires of this process.

Youth-driven initiatives have been mentioned in this paragraph. Adding a section on the discussion outcomes of the YIGF role-play session from each of the three committees that have been formed after the final round-table discussion on the final day.

I think this paragraph is simply restating the sub themes of the conference. The other topics listed may have been discussed but they shouldnot be considered sub themes.

Kindly include entry re PWD and accessibilities.

This I think should be lifted from here. It actually covers all the sections, from access, security, digital economy, to human rights.

CERTs will play a key role in monitoring behavior of activities and providing advisories and they need to mentioned.

The Prime Minister mentioned about money laundering and especially people with such intentions are using the Pacific as their safe havens to carry out such an act. As such, we need to look at security developments in terms of internet technologies that will 1) prevent such acts from being committed and 2) if they are committed, tracing of such activities including powers to enforce full force of the law across borders.

Cross-border data flow should increase to facilitate for efficient trade between countries. Laws of the land should be given priority over introduce or foreign laws.

How do we know that applications that are developed satisfy the needs of all users of the app? If we do not have that access at the very beginning, then we would not have known the answer now. But it is more important that we build that into the very core of our education system so that youths are empowered knowledge and information as they walk out of college. It would be a little bit of a challenge for those that never made it to the elementary schools. But the vocational training centres should be able to bridge the gap.

Presently, 2.5 billion people are active social media users in the Asia-Pacific region which is, therefore, the world’s largest user community. Information disorders have gained a strong foothold in the region which is the result of the situation.
The spread of disinformation and misinformation, intended to deceive or manipulate, has become a major worry for both the media and the general public.
Types of disinformation and misinformation vary from deepfakes, hoaxes, propaganda to fake news. These fables can be transmitted in many ways, for example, social media sites, internet news sources, and traditional media. Misinformation may look harmless, but it may sway a big part of the populace to take action, make the politicians come up with a certain result, be untrustworthy to the institutions, and even make the society fight each other.
Journalists, together with the news channels, are the ones who take the responsibility of checking the information and presenting accurate and reliable papers. However, the wide distribution of online information is so fast that the checkers can’t face the task. On another hand, media business, which is known to be economically heavy, may result in exciting stories and clickbait, it probably is the cause of disinformation spreading.
The public has a crucial role to play in tackling the disinformation epidemic. The key point to construct critical thinking skills is that one should always be suspicious of what is presented as too good (or too bad). It is fundamental to the process of information acquisition to make sure that such information is taken from multiple sources and to be critical of the biases of people who share the content.
Overall, the digital age has made it hard to tell the difference between what is real and what is not. Mishap information and disinformation even the rest of the problems of information (information disorders) are the most serious challenge the media and the public discourse. We can help to build a more aware and resilient community by promoting media literacy, supporting fact-checking projects, encouraging the development of critical thinking skills, and most importantly, chartering a path for a regional fact-checking coalition. 

The pursuit of fairness in intelligent automation (machine intelligence) is a delicate business, complicated by the various socio-cultural contexts in which automated reasoning frameworks operate. As there is a growing consensus above the value of virtuous ai, the specific obstacles and answers can change significantly across realms. By taking these steps, we can help to ensure that Al is a force for good in our society, benefiting everyone regardless of their background or circumstances.
The inherent biases which may be present in the information used to train such structures are one of the primary obstacles to achieving fairness in AI. For example, if the dataset used to train the facial recognition algorithm consists mainly of pictures of certain race of people, the algorithm is likely to be less precise in recognizing a person of color. In order to deal with this issue, it is essential to ensure that train data represent the various communities that it will assist.
The ability of Al systems to perpetuate or exacerbate existing social inequalities is another problem. For instance, an algorithm used to mark credit could disproportionately deny loans to individuals of marginalized populations, thereby exacerbate existing fiscal disparity. In order to mitigate this liability, it is essential to carefully assess the potential outcomes of machine intelligence systems and take measures to ensure that they do not worsen the existing bias.

AI has the potential to significantly enhance financial inclusion for vulnerable populations in the APAC region. By leveraging AI’s capabilities to improve credit scoring, enhance financial literacy, and address biases, it is possible to create a more inclusive and equitable financial system. However, careful consideration must be given to the potential challenges and risks associated with AI deployment. By taking proactive steps to mitigate these challenges, we can harness the power of AI to improve the lives of millions of people in the region.

A Digital Bill of Rights should encompass these several key principles. First, it must guarantee the right to privacy. This includes protecting personal data from unauthorized access, ensuring transparency in data collection and use, and granting individuals the right to delete their data. Second, the Digital Bill of Rights should safeguard the right to free expression in the digital realm. This entails protecting freedom of speech, opinion, and assembly online. Third, the Digital Bill of Rights must ensure the right to access information. This includes guaranteeing access to reliable and unbiased information, as well as protecting against the spread of disinformation and propaganda. Fourth, the Digital Bill of Rights should protect the right to due process in the digital context. This means that individuals should have the right to challenge government actions that infringe upon their digital rights. Finally, the Digital Bill of Rights should address the right to digital inclusion. This entails ensuring that everyone has access to the internet and digital technologies. Governments can invest in digital infrastructure, provide affordable internet access, and promote digital literacy programs to bridge the digital divide.

Circular design principles should guide electronics products and devices to ensure sustainable lifecycle management. This involves designing products for longevity, easy disassembly, repairability, and material recovery. Manufacturers should prioritize modular designs, using standardized connectors and components to facilitate upgrades and repairs. Additionally, the use of eco-friendly materials and minimized hazardous substances should be emphasized. Governments can enforce regulations that mandate eco-design criteria, such as minimum product lifespan, reparability scores, and recycled content targets. They can incentivize manufacturers to adopt circular practices through tax benefits, grants, or certification programs. Collaboration between governments, manufacturers, and consumers is vital to establish a circular economy ecosystem that fosters innovation, reduces waste, and ensures the longevity of electronics products while minimizing their environmental impact.

The basic method of Internet connectivity is now Wi-Fi.

Some Asia-Pacific countries prohibit private companies from operating Wi-Fi hotspots, restricting this activity to incumbent telecommunications operators.

Bridging the Digital Divide depends on free and open access for all people and companies to the radio spectrum that Wi-Fi relies on.

Frequency and spectrum are interchangeable terms. I suggest the sentence read either:

“Open access to WiFi frequencies is increasingly important”

or

“Open access to WiFi spectrum is increasingly important”

Libraries in some Asia Pacific economies face regulatory hurdles when providing community Internet Access. These can include a:

1.) a telecommunications license, or dispensation from a licensing regime.
2.) a requirement to filter Internet content provided through the network
3.) a requirement to provide interception capabilities for police / government
agencies
4.) a requirement to block Voice over IP technologies including Skype in economies where voice services can only be provided by licensed carriers

An Asia-Pacific strategy for Community networks and public access to ICT should acknowledge these regulatory hurdles and promote their harmonisation or elimination as a step towards ensuring Universal Access.

Telecommunications licensing requirements are a major barrier to connecting the unconnected in developing Asia. Activities such as setting up a community Wi-Fi network are prohibited or made difficult in many economies by regulation, process, and corruption.

True progress in this area cannot be made until telecommunications regulations in developing nations are relaxed to allow communities and their technical partners to innovate.

This group would do well to produce a document summarising regulatory barriers to community networks on a country-by-country basis to highlight the problem and pursue it at a regional level.

We say “strategies must be developed” but in fact the ITU & World Bank InfoDev already have excellent strategies published in their ICT Regulation Toolkit. Should we instead seek to update or promote their work?

“In the case of 5G, network slicing may likely fragment the Internet.”

Network slicing is the concept of running multiple logical networks on a common radio access infrastructure. It’s main purpose is to allow 5G infrastructure to be shared between Internet access, industrial control functions, SCADA for utilities, telemetry for self-driving vehicles, IoT sensor networks, and other critical infrastructure applications that do not belong on Internet-connected networks. GSMA provides a complete definition here: https://www.gsma.com/futurenetworks/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/GSMA-An-Introduction-to-Network-Slicing.pdf

There are few if any valid concerns about network slicing fragmenting the Internet.

“Universal Acceptance (UA) is a fundamental requirement for a truly multilingual and digitally inclusive Internet” – however this very website and feedback form does not accept my email address at the domain tō.nz as being valid.

I think it is also important to include how the APrIGF and other sorts of discussions in the IGF sector can enable fostering international collaboration on technology standards and norms to ensure consistency and fairness in the global tech landscape. If it would also complete the landscape, there is also a possibility of collaboration on solutions to global challenges, such as climate change and public health, using emerging technologies.

I agree with both the points stated by Usman and Paribhasha that biometric data should also be included in the top priorities for legislation. With the evolution of today’s technology and transference information from physical to digital, including the vast amount of information captured through metadata, there needs to be clear and specific rules to simply look over the protection of these sensitive items. Any misappropriated use of biometric data falls under threats to data privacy and cybersecurity.

I think there should also be an inclusion of sustainability concerns that particularly emphasize the importance of considering the well-being of the entire ecosystem, not just human needs and desires, and also overlooking the ecological consequences of technology in favor of human convenience can lead to environmental degradation.

Finding(s):

Wrong spelling of “Foot notes”.

Recommendation:

Replace “Foot notes:” with “Footnotes:”

In addition to providing access to the internet to more people, we also need to make sure that the internet provides a safe space for minority groups and vulnerable communities. There are at least two issues when it comes to the internet: the monolingualism of it and the lack of content that provides affirmations for minorities and marginalized communities. Therefore, I believe it is important to also think of how we can empower minorities and marginalized communities to populate the internet with native contents by and for the community and to build a safe space so they can not only use, but also thrive on the internet.

What do panellists think about industry / platform providers using self regulation codes? Or other codes of practice? From listening to the excellent presentations there did not seem to be any calls for these. Curious about views on this given many providers default content moderation settings. Thanks.

To include another section dedicated to activities around capacity building on Internet Governance such as newcomers capacity building day, and encouraging APAC participation in IG issues.

Need to push for enforcement of law both on and offline, particularly at national level;

To mitigate security concerns and cybercrime, there is an urgency to develop robust cybersecurity policies at organisational and national levels.

Need further elaboration on role of law enforcement and more guidance for them on balancing individual privacy rights while ensuring public safety.

Need language on the need for more capacity development activities to increase knowledge and capabilities of technical operators.

Some issues raised at Townhall:
– Digital citizenship and importance of digital literacy
– Accountability and transparency of (big) platforms, governments, and stakeholders
– Role of governments and private sector (such as media) in the spread of misinformation and erosion of online trust
– Collaboration and cooperation in cybersecurity “all hands on deck”

With new, emerging technologies, and the state of current geopolitics, the risk of Internet fragmentation is increasing. Fragmentation will disrupts people’s ability to access the Internet in a seamless way. It will also lead to a loss in innovation – one of the benefits of the global, interoperable Internet.

There were some good recommendations for inclusion – financial inclusion – in the Opening Plenary. Would be good to add some lines reflecting the discussion from there.

There was good discussion in the Day 0 session around healthy skepticism of the use of AI. Worth including some notes from that session in this section.

The impact of cyber attacks on hospitals/healthcare sector/systems is profoundly human.

Establishment of not only national but also industry or sector-specific CERTs can help these critical sectors to mitigate attacks and recover from incidents.

1. False Takedown- If a person or an organisation has high influence they can falsely claim against someone that the content is defamatory even if it is not.This can lead to the author’s loss in terms of content and personal/professional reputation. 2. Platform Accountability- There is a low workforce and funding for fact-checkers. Due to these reasons, there is a huge widespread of fake news over multiple platforms.

why is it conflict to each other?

Can we say ‘appropriate level of protection which meets international standard should be’…..

Also, we may add what should be done e.g. incorporating social norm + laws + tech is needed to address the problem?

Human Rights online should just not limit what we can do in the internet, but it should not be ignored as well. I think the Human Rights online should be its own thing, it should be redefined, privacy offline is not necessarily what is online, free speech offline is not necessarily what it should be online. There is a difference and as such defined differently. It is an interesting topic, it should be highlighted but its definition should be clarified. Human Rights was not defined in a day. The existing one may not at all apply online.

With the internet being this ever-evolving entity, human rights on the internet should be ever-evolving as well. We should move forward and see the internet as it is and as it will be with rights ever changing and not as something set in stone.

Report on
APrIGF 2021 – Hyderabad Local Hub

The Hyderabad Local Hub of Asia Pacific Regional Internet Governance Forum, APRIGF 2021, Asia was conducted in Hybrid mode at Surana Auditorium, Federation of Telangana Chambers of Commerce & Industry (FTCCI).

In the first part of the program, Opening Plenary was witnessed online from the Auditorium by participants and in online mode. After the introductory remarks by MSG Chair, YIGF representative and UN IGF Programme and Technology manager, Secretary MCIST, Nepal inaugurated the APRIGF. In his address he highlighted the various initiatives of Government of Nepal for Internet access including the Digital literacy program. He urged on the need of interaction among various stakeholders to work on development of Internet Governance.

The first panel session –Covid-19: Internet as a Lifeline highlighted the various issues related to Internet Governance during COVID-19. Some of the key points discussed during the Panel discussion were: In addition to the physical connectivity, the services accessibility, usability and privacy are the important issues. Though the use of internet has exponentially increased during Covid-19 including tele-consultations, online education, online transactions etc but it has also created new challenges w.r.t breaching of personal information, increase of frauds etc. The panelist urged the Governments should initiate IT & Technology education at school level, address the privacy issues and provide connectivity support to all citizens.

Inauguration of APrIGF- Hyderabad Local Hub Launching:
The IGF-Hyderabad Local Hub was inaugurated during the event. Dr. N J Rajaram in his initial remarks stated that we need sustainable, inclusive and trusted internet which has the features namely affordability, accessibility, realism and relevance. MS Khyati Naravane, CEO, FTCCI in her opening remarks congratulated on the inauguration of Hyderabad Local Hub and highlighted the activities of FTCCI.

The IGF Hyderabad Local Hub was inaugurated by Mr.Jayesh Ranjan, Principal Secretary, IT and industries, Govt of Telangana. In his address, he highlighted about the disruptions that happened due to COVID and urged the readiness towards more and more digitization. He also raised the concerns about dealing with Digital Divide in a better way. Further he discussed the need to deal with online frauds and internet crimes as they were increased during these tough times. Giving his best wishes to the Hyderabad local hub he reiterated that the Government of Telangana would like to partner and participate in the activities of Internet Governance to address the issues highlighted. Mr. K . Bhaskar Reddy in his Presidential address complemented ISOC India, Hyderabad chapter for taking initiatives towards Internet Governance. He urged the need of constant interaction between the Government and stakeholders to address the issues of Internet.

Mr. K Mohan Raidu, President Internet Society India, Hyderabad Chapter listed various working groups that works towards addressing risk and challenges of Internet. In his address, he highlighted various initiatives of the chapter towards dealing with the challenges faced. He discussed about the Community project to reach to rural areas. He said that ISOC Hyderabad will initiate the activities of collecting mobile devices that are unused by the people so as to help the needy. He also highlighted the initiatives of Universal Acceptance (UA) for multilingual internet.

Mr. Bala Prasad Peddigari, Secretary, ISOC Hyderabad Proposed vote of thanks.
After the inauguration of local hub, the participants connected to the Round table discussion on “Impact of Digitization on Climate Change” where the speakers highlighted few of the important issues like better utilization of internet traffic based on various internet traffic patterns and addressing the issue of reducing the power consumption of various devices using the internet even in the idle state. The key take away of the round table discussion was “rather than only thinking about how many bits are transferred there is also a need to estimate the equivalent power consumption”. The next session on “Transnational conversations on reclaiming freedom of expression online” discussed on issues pertaining to gender and other types of discrimination on internet. The panel was of the opinion that freedom of expression cannot be violated in the name of censoring the content. The discussion ended with a note that “There is a need to get the law makers and all stake holders to reduce the discrimination on internet”.

In the valedictory function, Dr. Salman Abdul Moiz, Vice President ISOC Hyderabad summarized the deliberations happened during the day and urged the participants to come forward in realizing various initiatives of ISOC. The session ended with words of thanks and networking over the lunch. The event was supported by FTCCI and Aurora Technological Research Institute.

We need to identify who has been affected by the digitization processes, and how. For example, whose land is being used to build internet infrastructure such as data centers. And who will build those infrastructures? Who are the laborers behind the digital industry? If they are migrants, or indigenous peoples, how do we integrate them in the internet ecosystem? Could we consider them as a part of the internet ecosystem?

We also need to think about an efficient e-waste management system, and how to improve the working conditions of waste pickers who are informal workers and take the risk of prolonged exposure to toxic substances.

I think the discussion on gig economy in APrIGF this time lacked authentic voices from platform workers. We do not really know what a real challenge for them is, and what they exactly need from related stakeholders. In addition, I think this issue is challenging as their working conditions are different depending on the existing labor protection laws as well as the strength of labour unions in different countries. In the context of my country, Thailand, food delivery drivers and platform drivers, particularly old drivers, has a low digital literacy. Some of taxi drivers have unintentionally started using application to find their customers because young customers have changed their way to ask for taxi services.
To make a more fair and sustainable digital economy, voices of platform workers need to be heard, and they need to be visible in regional and global meetings such as APrIGF. We need an inclusive solution to close the digital divide and make economic activities more sustainable.

One of the speakers raised the issue about the import of surveillance technology such as Pegasus spyware by the government to monitor activists and opposition parties rather than to use for national security reason. In this regard, apart from privacy law in each country and region, the human rights due diligence framework need to be applied with tech companies as we need more transparent in purchasing and selling of surveillance technology. In addition, parliamentarians need to examine the use of state budget in purchasing of digital technology to tackle terrorism and/or protect the nation. Although some governments might argue that such technology is used for security purpose, in reality, it would be used for stealing personal data of ordinary citizens.

It is great to see more youth participating in APrIGF. But I would like to encourage this community to use intersectionality lens to think about young representatives. It is not just about age, but also their ethnicity, gender, (dis)ability, educational background and religious/belief etc. For example, how do we encourage young LGBT people from ethnic minority to join as a fellow? Is it possible for young people who are a platform worker and have a low level of education to participate in APrIGF? In this regard, I think we need to start from the local level – to empower those people to be prepared to talk about their issues in the regional and global level.

In addition, is it possible for APrIGF organizers to provide translators for participants who are not fluent in English? I have been engaging in APrIGF since 2018 and found that there are only a few fellows/youths from my country joining this event. One of the main reasons is that speaking English, particularly in the public, is not easy for them. Even some of them have public speaking skills, but not for English language.

I think what is lacking in APrIGF is the equal power relation between stakeholder groups. In particular, in each session, I did not see the diversity among speakers (at least in the sessions I attended) – many of them are from the same stakeholder groups. The sessions that talked about digital rights and disinformation, I did not hear voice from government/lawmakers. How do they work to improve digital rights? And what approach do they work to regulate the Internet? I would like to see more constructive dialogues among CSOs, private sector, tech community, and government in sessions in APrIGF. How can we make APrIGF to be a safe space for discussions for all stakeholder groups?

combined efforts from multi community sake holders or internet users or internet consumers safe guarders is needed. rather than private public etc

effort necessary to support skill development , local languages local Ideas thoughts

collaboration on cyber security education and preventing cyber attacks from nations which will effect people countries innocents etc.

Rural users villages un educated users.

ecological social survival economical

under global united open nations / open data flow liberty of cross border of open knowledge’s must be safe guarded with open agreement and policy/

social ,economical, native people societies , under privileged societies , middle class societies un educated job less youth etc

Note globally middle class is getting sandwiched the next billion are also form these communities or youth of world is also can be added.

investigation prosecution open collaboration

tracing cyber crooks with out double minds / standards.

Education and open privacy to cultures under universal open standards rules and regulations can over come culture where in good privacy is needed in known , others privacy is becoming others business mud throwing for survival etc,.

If culture is aspect no body in world must not watch movies tv shoes etc

Governments service providers internet companies must respect consumer rights and also quality if living liberty of internet is important.

right to destroy of digital personal data secured knowledge of people is important. good people data is not worried by criminals data must not be forgotten.

Dear one and all

This is kanumuri s Raju from India. In order to make internet safe , make every internet user rights needs in place we must act on these

1) educate all internet users how to use it , safe gaurdimg their privacy face cyber attacks as most of them are uneducated.

2 ) no junk data in internet web sites

,3) eastablish skill centers .

4)! No fake news based on
False inputs.

) Act on people missing .

6} collobiration open partner ships

7)saving eco system / electronics recycling

8) make governece important

9) qos important. Localization imp.

Green Greetings from DAV College Amritsar, Punjab, India !
We at DAV College Amritsar, believe in equality , inclusiveness and value driven Internet framework for next billion internet user in Asia Pacific. We strongly believe ICT based deliberation and ideation help sustain Human Rights in digital era. We also believe trust can be achieved by incorporating balance between Basic Human Right and Security and privacy on Internet ecosystem . We never advocate hate speech and fake news in order to have more responsible behavior for end user.
One World One Internet !

In my view right to fundamental speech needs to review in the context of freedom of expression. We do need comprehensive framework to address theses issues.

When it comes to improving access to Internet, one of the biggest hurdles is digital divide. Even if the Internet is taken to their door step, digital illiterate (or even uneducated ones) gets left out from the inclusion. So the strategies must be also focused on helping/supporting those people who are first time ICT users. For example, community centers with Internet facilities can be setup within the community and the operators can support those people.

[ IPv6]

When more and more focus is geared towards IPv6 adoption, it is also equally important to make such adoption affordable. Else those users who can not make the transition from IPv4 to IPv6 will be impacted, and consequently, for giving access to the next billion users, the old users will be sidelined.

[Community networks and public access to ICT]

In the workshop session – public access of ICT, there was greater emphasis to develop more local contents to diversify the Internet resources, which will enable easy access to non-English speaking users.

[Privacy and data protection]

When it comes to security, privacy and data protection, the policy makers are confronted with the balancing act of CIA framework, which emphasize on “Confidentiality”, “Integrity” and Availability. It is always challenge to sufficiently protect the data, but also making easily available to intended users. So it again drives down to policy decision of providing appropriate balance between “restricting access” and “granting access”.

Not sure about using content in a plural form (contents) here.

Indeed, digital literacy is critical. Particularly in regions that are newly connected.

Use of words “multi stakeholder” here. Can be consistent with rest of document which spell it as “multistakeholder”.

Ensuring that the Internet does not replicate existing inequalities is something mentioned in the community networks session. For example in an area with good connectivity, men still have more access than women or the wealthy more so than the poor.

Have to develop contents in accessible formats

And localizd contents

Participants shared their experiences of inadvertently allowing a checkmark to be clicked when they did not mean to, allowing their email to be subscribed to multiple newsletters seeking to sell them something. Also noted this happens in real life, not just in online world. For both, the practice may be legal, but it is not honest. It is not trustworthy. One participant recommended applying AI and ML to a browser to catch deceptive design- the question for the day is how to not just counter bad practices, but how to encourage and empower good practices? What do trusted design and trusted design guidelines look like?

To get all inclusive environment, we must need to deal with every stakeholders in each countries. Since there is a lot of differences between between not only rural and urban areas but also between Developing countries and Developed countries. To affordable internet, government need to deal with ISPs to get the access cheap and affordable for all and great connection. To fullfil the digital knowledge, events like APrIGF and yIGF and the others more need to support the local and Regional events.

There are still violations of rights in Asia Pacific regions not only from online but also at the ground situations. To protect our rights, we need to express our feelings, our thoughts via using social media to give awareness. And by the rule of laws, although we can cover with it, but the rules must need to protect the freedom of expressions and rights, not to violate it.

As lawmakers move to clamp down on deceptive design practices, we also need to build guidelines and benchmarks for what trusted design looks like as part of a wider shift towards an environment where platforms design their services in a way that puts users in control and where trust becomes a norm. We need to create a culture where trust and long-term relationships are highly valued and where companies that lean on deceptive design practices are made to pay, as empowered customers leave and investors refocus on competitors that meet their expectations around ESG and ethical technology.

Building the principles, best practices, and regulatory guidance that can shape this environment demands input from a wide spectrum of specialists, from designers and product managers to academics and advocates, and experts already leading the way on regulation.

This is a very interesting point-of-view, because there is actually a community and project dedicated to digital accessibility called a11ty. It is a community-driven effort to make digital accessibility easier.

As an aspiring developer myself, I think that at the heart of building a more accessible online community are the ones that build the platforms themselves. Therefore, I believe pushing for a more accessibility-driven development and design to the point that it’s mainstreamed for a truly inclusive internet would cascade into a more accessible online community. This of course, applies to all fields: cloud, web, mobile, IoT, AI, ML, VR, Blockchain, etc.

This can be accomplished through a lot of ways, one of which I can think of is through incentivizing ideathons and hackathons centered on a11ty paired with active involvement in the internet governance space. As I mentioned, I think there are more ways to go about this, but these are my thoughts regarding the topic.

Australia’s experience suggests that the digital divide can be reduced but that it is extremely difficult for it to be eliminated. Some of this is because of the challenge of providing connectivity to small numbers of people in very remote locations. While LEO satellite is an obvious emerging solution here, finding ways to address affordability become fundamental to solutions.

Notice:
RTBF Meeting on Day 2 (July 28) from 9:00am in Room 405

Achieving digital circularity in the electronics sector necessitates a collaborative effort between governments and device manufacturers, grounded in key principles and commitments. Governments must prioritize the development and enforcement of robust regulations that encourage product design for longevity, repairability, and upgradability. Additionally, they should incentivize the adoption of sustainable practices, such as extended producer responsibility and eco-labeling.
Device manufacturers, on the other hand, must commit to producing electronics with modular components, standardized interfaces, and clear documentation for repairs.
Embracing open-source designs and sharing repair information can foster a culture of circularity. Moreover, both parties should collaborate on efficient collection, recycling infrastructure, and safe disposal of electronic waste.

Definitely agree with your statement Joyce

Basic elements of Internet Governance should be introduced in schools together with other computer-related curricula, particularly in the Pacific. Many young people don’t understand what the Internet actually is let alone how its governance is managed. Teaching young people how the Internet actually came about and how it continues to be run today should be a precursor to teaching them how to use a computer and access the Internet.

Just a suggestion, this comment might be better captured under Access and Empowerment section

Suggestion for addition after “resources and support that help to empower access need to be considered”: , crafting a policy framework based on best practices for accessibility as a norm for developers to follow.

Instead of “better and effective policies”, suggestion to specify what the goals of such policies are.
Suggested text: The Internet is a global open platform, and policies should effectively pursue this;

Internet shutdowns are a huge disruption to a nation’s economy and society regardless of the length of the shutdown and whatever the motivations . National and local authorities need to be informed that such shutdowns are ineffective in addressing public unrest or other issues, and large economic costs are unnecessarily incurred.

Alongside the goal of inclusion, consideration needs to be given for safeguards to ensure the well-being of vulnerable groups, such as children, in their usage of the Internet. These safeguards should be crafted with the interests of vulnerable groups in mind, to ensure that they are protected from Internet-related dangers and inappropriate content.

As an alternative to data localisation and data protectionist policies, procedures to define provisions for data access should be discussed and developed via a multistakeholder approach.

Outreach and capacity-building efforts for Internet governance, whether local or regional, should also follow a multistakeholder and collaborative approach towards a shared goal of bolstering the community.

Very important and timely discussions. Other sub-/extended topics for consideration
1. Highlighted the need to take into account the environmental impact and look for more sustainable solutions for subsea cable laying, installation, and maintenance.
2. Effectiveness and how could digital trade agreements could shape the future resilience of subsea cables/connections – resources:
EU-Singapore Digital Partnership (EUSDP) as part of DEA -https://www.mti.gov.sg/-/media/MTI/Microsites/DEAs/EUSDP/EU-SGP-Digital-Partnership.pdf
(See also similar DEAs between Singapore with the UK, Australia; as well as mentions @ RCEP/IPEF)

Platform accountability, like many other governance, should take a risk-based approach for a balanced accountability for different kinds of platform (and, preferrably, different features of a platform – a sandbox approach). 
 
Should also be cautious about the “pessimistic” risk-avoidance approach of platforms that could further exacerbate disinformation on those platforms – Wary of responses surrounding AND evolved from Australia’s News Media Bargaining Code, which was also considered in Taiwan and Malaysia in this part of the world (ripple effect)Latest development – [Australia] https://www.reuters.com/technology/meta-says-it-may-block-news-facebook-australia-2024-06-28/
[Canada] https://about.fb.com/news/2023/06/changes-to-news-availability-on-our-platforms-in-canada/
 

(S.M.A.R.T.)

HKyIGF participants deliberated on the above topics and crafted their own statement with reference to the three thematic tracks of this year’s Asia Pacific Regional Internet Governance Forum (APrIGF) – “Security and Trust”, “Resilience”, and “Ethical Governance of Emerging Technologies”.
Specifically, we underscored several core principles towards a human-centric digital future. By ensuring a digital economy that is Sustainable, Multistakeholder-involved, Accountable, Resilient and Trusted (S.M.S.R.T.), technological innovation and social progress in Hong Kong and the world would be encouraged and better developed to integrate across both cyber and physical spaces.
Hong Kong youth acknowledges the interdependencies and overlaps of efforts in achieving equitable sustainability, meaningful multistakeholder involvement, balanced accountability, high resilience and strong trust in shaping the desired digital future.
While government agencies should generally assume the leadership/coordination role in charting a SMART digital economy and Internet governance, the success of such an ambition requires a robust whole-of-society approach that aligns with international standards and practices.
Strategic partnerships and resource allocation, coupled with inclusive involvement across sectors and stakeholders, are crucial in ensuring a just digital transformation without hindering innovations and leaving certain underrepresented groups of people behind.High-level comments based on the 2024 Hong Kong Youth Collective Statement on Internet Governance also made below for specific paragraphs correspondingly.

High-level comments based on Hong Kong Youth Collective Statement on Internet Governance 2024 (extracted):

Upholding privacy rights and ensuring secure data handling is crucial for preserving trust in digital systems and preventing misuse of personal information. Digital privacy, data protection, and transparency of data processing should be safeguarded, empowering individuals and restoring trust in digital platforms by giving users meaningful control over their personal information.
Against the backdrop of more rampant cyber incidents. Cybersecurity firms in the private sector to work closely with the Hong Kong government, educational institutions, and financial organisations to establish and enforce stringent remediation and best practices that aligns with international cybersecurity standards.
Strengthening cybersecurity measures with advanced technology implementation, providing training for employees as well as holding their responsibilities in case of data breaches and constantly addressing vulnerabilities in the system.

High-level comments based on Hong Kong Youth Collective Statement on Internet Governance 2024 (extracted):

A resilient digital economy requires a multi-pronged approach that addresses cybersecurity threats, digital inequalities, and the effective integration of emerging technologies. By fostering collaboration between the public and private sectors, investing in digital infrastructure, and empowering all citizens with digital skills, Hong Kong can build a thriving, secure, and inclusive digital ecosystem.

With the prominent use of digital technologies in various industries especially in the finance industry, the issue of cybersecurity and information privacy remains a prevalent issue. Sector-specific cybersecurity risk management framework should be developed. Corresponding sectoral regulators should collaborate with industry experts and regulators to create a risk-based comprehensive risk management framework that helps fintech companies, for example, identify, assess, and mitigate cyber threats.

In promoting social resilience, we can create a more inclusive and sustainable digital economy with enduring growth potential by ensuring that all segments of society have equal access to and benefit from digital technologies. Moreover, integrating eco-friendly practices into the digital landscape is crucial to mitigate environmental impacts. This twin-pronged strategy ensures the long-term viability of the digital economy while safeguarding our planet.

Developing technologies with eco-friendly practices were especially underscored with the rapid growth of data centres that causes the rise in energy consumption and carbon emissions, posing a threat to Hong Kong’s economic goals. The rapid expansion of data centres in HK (revenue from data centres is expected to grow massively by 5.24% in 2029, reaching a cap of around USD 1.73 billion) highlighted the concerns about the difficulties in achieving net zero emissions which was planned to be achieved by 2050.

High-level comments based on Hong Kong Youth Collective Statement on Internet Governance 2024 (extracted):
 

It is important to consider the involvement and partnership of different stakeholders in policy-making as well as provide the necessary support to promote the participation of various parties, especially the underprivileged students and the older generation. Individual End Users should be able and have the know-how to access the Internet and benefit from the digital economy.
Youth involvement is important not just for their role as future workforce who can shape digital inclusion but also for their subjectiveness to digital inclusion policies.
Digital inclusion not only can help cultivate talent and expertise but also promote successful policies and project-making due to the consideration of stakeholder value and needs.
Education transformation is also important as it provides the participants with an effective learning and teaching experience.
Education Bureau, for example, can establish a strategic partnership between technology companies and educational institutions to promote AI teaching assistants in offering personalised learning support for students with different backgrounds.

The Government to ensure that AI is designed safely and ethically by promoting framework and regulation for AI development. Non-profit organisations should be empowered (by the government and the private sector through partnerships/funding) to educate citizens about AI fraud.
Technologies companies and AI developers to prioritise fairness and accountability in algorithm design, implementing robust bias detection and mitigation measures – emphasising to uphold human-centric values in AI systems, preventing algorithmic bias and discrimination.
More broadly, a risk-based and easy-to-understand regulatory frameworks, transparent (data processing) practices, and active citizen participation in digital governance are necessary for ethical governance.

The issue of the dominance of a few tech giants in the digital sphere should also be addressed, which raises concerns about competition, innovation, and consumer welfare. Addressing this concentration of power is key to nurturing a diverse digital landscape that encourages innovation and safeguards consumer interests.

I represent as one of the voices of the youth. Based on the Townhall Session held on July 18, 2019, me and my fellow youth participants from YIGF 2019 suggested implementing a “youth section” for the synthesis document from hereon. Knowing that the youth comprises of the majority of internet users online, especially on social media platforms, we would like to extend our help and participate more in these synthesis documents beyond what is expected of us. A large portion of the youth has broad access to the latest trends with the internet, so giving them the opportunity to voice out their opinions into a dedicated section where their thoughts will be focused upon. The youth playing a bigger role in both the multi-stakeholder model and the synthesis document is crucial when highlighting their important perspectives regarding the numerous issues with internet governance.

I hope that this will also put some focus on the accuracy of AI when it comes to integrating it with content moderation. If they plan on including it, then it should aim to be unbiased and really focus on the facts to avoid misinformation.

One way for the APAC fact-checking coalitions to tackle the existing challenges is to be practical and create accountability-based time tables and collaborate to create a regional framework for multiple coalitions within the APAC region sometime during the big, planned event in 2025. It is highly effective to share each other’s strategies and tips to maximize efficiency and lessen redundancy and inaccuracy.

Proactive early detection of deepfakes, for instance, through analysis of behaviour patterns, distilling the number of security reports, or the adoption of advanced biometric technology would be essential; however, this will only be successful if collaborative efforts between government and private sectors are being fostered, especially companies and governments oftentimes will have conflicting interests when it comes to regulatory issues. Strategies are always there, but the question we should really ask is how we can effectively implement the strategies and thereby enforcing the rules?

We held a workshop on the protection of youth online. I know there were several workshops regarding the similar theme. Therefore, we believe that we should include several sentences on the protection of youth online specifically. In this regard, I would like to propose the following sentences.

“While the freedom of expression based on the free flow of information shall be respected, protecting children from illegal and harmful online contents is one of the most important issues. Accordingly, it is vital for all multistakeholders including governments, private sectors, schools, and child welfare institutions to cooperate and collaborate each other in order to strike a balance between the freedom of expression and the protection of youth online. In addition, comprehensive approaches based on national and international laws as well as self-regulations are indispensable, taking into account cultural, historical, and social differences of countries and regions.”

We would like to propose the following paragraph to be provided after para. 16 “II. Security”.

[Proposed Text]
17. It is paramount to foster Internet freedom and ensure a safer Internet environment for all. Particular attention should be paid to address rapidly increasing challenges to protect youth online. The enhancement of ICT literacy of youth is important, but the protection of youth from illegal and harmful online contents is also indispensable not only for the Asia-Pacific region. All stakeholders including, but not limited to governments, private sector, civil society, the technical community, and international organizations should cooperate and collaborate each other in adopting regulatory, self-regulatory, and other effective policies and frameworks to protect children and young people from abuse and exploitation through ICTs, while upholding the freedom of expression online guaranteed by the free flow of information.

Thank you so much, Paul and Wanawit. I would like to propose to replace with the following (but with brackets):

Digital economy and trade are key enablers for the development of the world economy, yet they severely challenge traditional national [borders][jurisdictions]. Now that the digital economy has becomes the economy as such, it does not have any borders. The digital economy and trade cannot be successful without the free flow of information and appropriate domestic and global rules. On the other hand, there is a growing trend that some governments take protectionist approaches on trade by limiting the free flow of information and/or requiring data localization, and the trend hinders the further growth of the world economy. Therefore, constructing the further network of free trade agreements which requires member states to maintain the free flow of information and to ensure the prohibition of data localization as well as source code disclosure unless there is a legitimate public policy reason is recommended. In this regard, close collaboration and thorough discussion among governments, private sector, civil society, the technical community, and international organizations are indispensable.

Taking into account all the above proposals, I would like to propose the following text:

28. V. Multistakeholder Approach
The multi-stakeholder approach to Internet　governance, which includes full and active participation by all stakeholders including, but not limited to governments, private sector, civil society, the technical community, and international organizations, has been continuously and widely supported by all the stakeholders. This approach should be the basis of domestic and international policy making processes and initiatives which are inclusive, transparent and accountable to all the stakeholders in the world. All the stakeholders should be equal to get involved in the discussion of the Internet governance.

We would appreciate if you could add the following sentences in para.30, Security:

“While recalling the freedom of expression online based on the free flow of information not only domestically but also internationally, the protection of youth from illegal and harmful online contents is one of the most important issues in the Internet governance. Hence, it is vital for all multistakeholders including, but not limited to governments, private sectors, schools, and child welfare institutions to cooperate and collaborate each other in order to strike a balance between the freedom of expression and the protection of youth online. In this regard, comprehensive approaches based on national and international laws as well as self-regulations by private sectors are indispensable, taking into account cultural, historical, and social differences of countries and regions.”

While I would like to echo what Ms. Hong Xue said, provisions on digital economy and trade are absolutely needed. In addition, there are many kinds of international agreements and policies, so we had better change the title otherwise this paragraph is bit vague and it is unclear what this paragraph wants to say.

Therefore, I propose the following sentences:

—–
¶32 (or appropriate para. number) Digital Economy and Trade

Digital economy and trade are key enablers for the development of the world economy. Now that the digital economy becomes the economy as such, and does not have any borders. The digital economy and trade cannot be successful without the free flow of information and appropriate domestic and global rules. On the other hand, there is a growing trend that some governments take protectionist approaches on trade by limiting the free flow of information and/or requiring data localization, and the trend hinders the further growth of the world economy. Therefore, constructing the further network of free trade agreements which requires member states to maintain the free flow of information and to ensure the prohibition of data localization as well as source code disclosure unless there is a legitimate public policy reason is highly recommended. In this regard, thorough discussion among not only governments, but also other multistakeholders is encouraged by referring to Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement as one of the examples.
—

We should discuss to give sense of ownership to the communities. Support them to create their own Internet or local network infrastructure and let them help within themselves. Communities helping to the communities. People tend to be protective and caring towards their own properties.

There are number of ways to provide a low cost access to the rural areas where major ISPs consider it not profitable. And they also offer net neutrality through that network infrastructure (e.g. community network). We should raise awareness to the government and locals. It is time to try bottom-up approach rather than top-down approach

We should not only depend on the government to do the things for us. It takes time. I think people help themselves to create their own infrastructure.

Agree with you. There is no use of creating an infrastructure if there are noone to use it.

[Access and empowerment]

While providing an access to the rural areas, empowering local people to benefit from the Internet is one of the most important thing. Creating a business opportunities through Internet, periodical education programs, practical workshops are must!

Also, age gap of Internet users should be considered more. Because some areas younger people are more interested of using the Internet, but what about middle aged and older people? How are they going to benefit?

On the back of the trust/accountability discussion –
it’s been said we are in a post-truth world, perhaps this is a post-trust world too?

An attempt to reframe that question:

how do we re-establish trust in a post-truth online world?

I refer to an article by Bruce Schneider (Schneider on Security) that positions Security as both a feeling and a reality.
As a multistakeholder group I wonder whether we are doing enough to ensure that our communities (of users) are trusting or untrusting of the real vs perceived threats?
Are we also creating more panic over new concepts as a threat and diverting attention from actionable mitigations?I’m not sure that the current multistakeholder model within our evolving ecosystem is one that fosters trust.
Trust when interacting on the Internet is a series of micro-trust decisions and automating a large number of these processes is also disempowering people to understand and be empowered in these decisions. The promotion of more AI and to encourage governments to adopt more AI by the private sector feels irresponsible.
https://www.schneier.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/paper-psychology-of-security.pdf

Largely agree on this, but declarations alone are not suitable. I don’t recall which session this was discussed and need more time to review the content to contribute meaningfully. As an audience member raised, the CrowdStrike outage needs to be examined and whether it is appropriate that so much is being led by current multinational corporations.If they are to play advisory to Governments for critical infrastructure or services that include digital ID or the like, then at what point should their business model be required to be separated from their targeted advertising components. Where is the governance on conflicts of interest?

There seems to be a difference in understanding the concept of bottom up advocacy in the IG systems.Is the Technical Community the bottom of which the other stakeholders should heed their advocacy work?
Or should the civil society be enabled by the other stakeholders to contribute their significant knowledge and experience, supported by the technical community to provide best practices? The private sector could provide innovations in funding these models, but it is not in their interest to do so.So where and what is the bottom? What reasoning is there to determine that civil society cannot comprehend the policy and business decisions that causes fragmentation?Or is it that other stakeholders dominate these forums and do not give proper time, attention or weight to the voices of civil society? 
If there is any weight to the latter scenario, is that not a risk to fragmentation that perhaps the technical community is contributing to?

+1 for Jasmine’s comment.

Only civil society has a legitimate mandate to identify both the problem and the solution to these issues.They do not have the ear and attention as the other stakeholder groups.  They should be supported to contribute to good policy and that takes a significant shift in the practices and access that is ‘gifted’ to them or taken away or siloed.
The stakeholder community must focus on the processes and practices of the MS governance arenas as it is on the outcomes of these spaces. Many times the outcome documents appear to not have taken in to account the many same voices for the same things for the many years they’ve been raising them.Transparancy, bias, privacy and data protection cannot be conversations led by companies that are simultaneously contributing if not creating the problems.

Representation is not just having civil society turn up so as to seem like they are there.

As it was raised in the commentary the advocacy of civil society and technical groups in the adoption of the Cyber Crime Treaty is an afront to any trust that there is an ability to affect change and secure protections.The forum seemed completely absent from the actions that Meta has been doing to data scrape for their AI models without updating consents unless it was under the GDPR.  It was also absent that Meta ignored the nearly 66,000 researchers and journalists who signed a petition to retain CrowdTangle.
Instead Meta has in the weeks prior to the aprIGF, disbanded it and replaced with what they call ‘Content Library’. This in the significant election year.The question remains how the multistakeholder community balances the asymetrial power imbalance. This will require some form of self awareness of these companies in this fora.

This was an excellent presentation and initiative.However it was such a small part of the program, instead of a way to showcase different ways technical solutions could be used.It was also disturbing to hear in this session how hard addressing localisation of language including lingo was, but in another session Google saying how they could address these things.

Cyber Connectivity sounds not clear to me. Also “Merghing Physical Spcae with …” and “bring next billion online” well addressed the importance of connectivity.
What is new in this paragraph?

[Q] Is this about what we used to call “universal access”?

would it be fair to mention a certain bill of certain country in this document?

“The so-called concept of Right to be Forgotten (RTBF) is gaining greater support in many countries. Should RTBF have extra-territorial application? Does it also apply to digitised newspaper archives? Where do the boundaries lie with freedom of the press, and the integrity of the historical record? RTBF is a legal device supposed to protect privacy but it delists according to others concepts like public interest, and it is dangerous because it imposes a burden of proving public interest on people searching for public truthful statements or intermediaries (such as libraries, educational institutions, archives, search engines).”

“The so-called concept of Right to be Forgotten (RTBF) is gaining support in some jurisdictions. Should RTBF have extra-territorial application? Does it also apply to digitised newspaper archives? Where do the boundaries lie with freedom of the press, and the integrity of the historical record? More fundamentally, the mostly judge-made law delists according to concepts like public interest but it conflicts with public interest because it imposes a burden of proving public interest on people searching for public truthful statements or intermediaries (such as libraries, educational institutions, archives, search engines).”

“The so-called concept of Right to be Forgotten (RTBF) is gaining support in some jurisdictions. Should RTBF have extra-territorial application? Does it also apply to digitised newspaper archives? Where do the boundaries lie with freedom of the press, and the integrity of the historical record? However, more fundamentally, the mostly judge-made law orders delisting according to concepts like public interest but it conflicts with free access to information and therefore public interest because it imposes a burden of proving public interest on people searching for public truthful statements or intermediaries (such as libraries, educational institutions, archives, search engines).”

“The so-called concept of Right to be Forgotten (RTBF) is gaining support in some jurisdictions. Should RTBF have extra-territorial application? Does it also apply to digitised newspaper archives? Where do the boundaries lie with freedom of the press, and the integrity of the historical record? More fundamentally, the judicial decisions under that concept conflict with public interest because it imposes a burden of proving public interest on people searching for public truthful statements or intermediaries facilitating that search such as libraries, educational institutions, archives, search engines.” – Winston, Yasuo (of IFLA); K.S., Kelly (Open Net Korea)

Sorry for multiple comments above, which kinda reflect collective stream of consciousness of the working group. Please use the last one signed with the names of all of us (clocked at 7:07am). Also, I think Arthit’s comment is consistent with and incorporatable into our proposed text.

“suggests competing public interest” sounds too weak in pointing out the problem. how about “Moreover, emerging jurisprudence is problematice because it imposes a burden. . . .”?

Right to be Forgotten is not very welcomed in Asia for a reason. There are many former colonies and dictatorships which until recently have not resolved the past injustices or oppressions that still stand as structural roadblocks in the paths to equality and democracy. In addressing those structures, we need to see the whole truth, not partial truth. Not truth just about public figures, not truth only about high level officials who collaborate with dictatorships or colonial administrations. Not just truth ordained by some offical history books issued by the governments. Not just truths approved through majoritarian decisionmaking as suitable for public discussion. Truth can only be approached only when having all voices heard including subjective ones.

Proponents of Right to be Forgotten offer that it does not apply to public figure, but sometimes you need more information to decide whether someone is public figure or not. If the information is delisted, you really cannot make that determination properly.

​Moreover, people who in the past were not public personas, may become public figures in the future. Then their past may matter.

People have collective right to know the wrongs of not just others, or even themselves. Collective right to observe, evaluate, and retain what they see in one another. So that they do stand as responsible colleagues to one another and keep themselves from repeating the wrongs. This is how the ethics of a society are done: by learning from the past. Publicness is exactly the space for collective learning.

There are already many laws in Asian countries that interfere with such communal learning by suppressing even truthful information. For instance, in Korea, we have a truth defamation law where even information not proven to be false can subject to criminal prosecution merely for lowering another person’s reputation. We cannot have another principle such as RTBF that undermine our publicness.

RTBF, currently framed, also constitutes administrative censorship. Non-judicial administrative body, namely data protection agencies, are empowered to order search engines to manipulate search results. Administrative censorship has been abused deeply and widely in Asia for blinding people from truths inconvenient to the authorities, as you could see in recent internet shutdowns in South Asia. The danger of administrative censorship is that lawful information can be taken down due to progovernment bias can dilute those decisions. Also, the subject of orders are likely to challenge the decision even if there is a judicial review process because the government can always retaliate even just for challenging it.

Some people like to believe that data protection authorities are different from other organizations that have conducted censorship but I do not see it that way. I already see the evidence that in Peru, other Latin American countries where DPA is really playing the role of censorship. And in Korea, the dangers are also being played out. Internet censorship is not taking down unlawful content, but taking down unethical content and what is ethical is decided by these nine Korean males in their 50s and 60s and nobody can really get a consistent principle out of that. This only goes to show the dangers of DPA authorized to take down truthful public information for the pretext of RTBF.

Joint Statement of the Dynamic Coalition on Publicness Concerning the Right to Be Forgotten

The public realm is losing ground. New regulation and jurisprudence are being conceived to address conflicts concerning the digital dimension of the public space and our ability, as Internet users, to reflect on ourselves. One of them is the so-called “right to be forgotten” (RTBF). The version originally formulated and popularized by the European Court of Justice (ECJ) is now being adopted in other regions and with slightly different manifestations including both the right to delist and the right to delete content.
The underlying motive behind the idea of the RTBF is people’s fear of being discriminated against for their past conduct. If this is the case, we need to recognize that blinding ourselves from one another’s wrongs (or supposed wrongs) is not an effective way of addressing and combating unreasonable discrimination. Under current rulings, the supposed wrongdoers can censor search results about themselves just because they think that certain past conduct is currently irrelevant to the moral evaluation of their character by others. Such self-centered censorship will prohibit people from confronting the real forces that are fanning such discrimination. Discrimination can only be addressed when the problems and its causes are known to society.

Furthermore, blinding ourselves to information about others’ conduct is not a proportionate way of combating discrimination. Information that the supposed wrongdoers would like to bury deep within the Internet may be vital for the safety of the people who have pending encounters with the individual in question. Suppressing certain truthful information may be necessary to guard against a high likelihood of immediate discrimination, as in the case of former sex workers or sex abuse victims in certain cultures, but such likelihood must be measured against objective criteria not simply against subjective reputational wishes of the supposed wrongdoers. A viable legal provision against discrimination is possible and in many legislations already existent: either in ex ante forms, such as amnesties or expungement provisions, or in ex post forms protecting other personal rights, such as defamation. RTBF goes beyond that by restricting people trying to protect themselves from sharing vital information. A more effective and proportionate remedy against discrimination is allowing more information to be made available about people so that others’ perceptions of them can be properly contextualized.
Simply put, information is not the reason for discrimination, but prejudice. Prejudice is not based on information, but on the moral decision to do harm by misusing information. We should combat discrimination, not information.

RTBF depends on the temporal relevance of data, as in the phrase “no longer relevant;”thus, it is fundamentally incompatible with freedom of speech and freedom of information. Data does not become irrelevant with the passage of time because data, while becoming irrelevant in one respect or according to a particular perspective, may become or remain relevant from other angles or for other reasons – e.g., for historians, journalists, social scientists, policy-makers, or cultural studies. In fact, the value of data does not reside in the data in itself but in the eyes of the beholder. People may find relevance in old data that other people do not see. Freedom of speech and freedom of information recognizes that pluralistic ideal and grants people of all remote idiosyncrasies the right to impart or receive information as long as such action does not present a high risk of immediate and substantial harm. Freedom of speech does not judge on the relevance of speech.

The popular defense of RTBF – that it does not apply to public figures or information of public significance – misses this point. Public interest is in constant flux. Suppression of seemingly insignificant data may suppress the possibility of public discourse because revelation of important public facts is often made possible by assembling a mosaic of facts that seem irrelevant to the majority of the people at given times. This is why RTBF is extremely problematic in many transitioning countries where full information is urgently needed to address impunities from colonial and dictatorial periods. Particularly in those countries, distinguishing between public and private figures is often impossible without the full availability of information.

Finally, RTBF does not condemn the so-called “no longer relevant information” itself, but rather focuses on making that lawful information available online. In the future, this may mean that, those, especially the impoverished, who are limited to using censored search results will not have access to the information that the rich will be able to uncover by hiring people to conduct brute investigations. RTBF is therefore directly opposed to the Internet’s potential as the equalizer and liberator in terms of facilitating people’s access to information.

We believe that the RTBF results from a misconception of the public realm in the digital age. There is a need for research to first understand the scope and dynamics of the public space after digitization. An increase in the amount and availability of information online affects our thinking about privacy, and it challenges our understanding of the public and the private. The RTBF as articulated by the ECJ, however, does not even attempt to do that, but rather tries to apply the norm regardless of whether it is public or private.

For these reasons, we believe that RTBF jurisprudence should be withdrawn and should not be expanded in any way.

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Building networks in geographically remote areas is one of the most important challenges that we need to meet. Internet has thrived because the networks and the content on them were built by private actors voluntarily who try to meet the demands of the users, and because of the shared control among different stakeholders, the multi-stakeholder model is important. To further increase access in geographically remote areas, we must incentivize private actors into building networks, and the private actors who are most efficient in monetizing access are global portals and therefore they are most incentivized in building networks. That is why you see Facebook developing solar panels, Google developing Loony Project, etc. These platforms’ entry into network building create various competition issues, i.e., verticial integration. Also, we can easily think of these content providers building networks or activating networks just for access to their contents, the case on point, Free Basics in India. Through the multi-stakeholder model, we should discuss how and whether to embrace these initiatives.

I think the problem with RTBF is that it does not make such distinction, i.e., for any personal data whether consisting of public content or private content, people accessing that data or search engine helping such people are imposed a burden to prove “public interest’ or drop from search. For instance, a stock broker puts out his financial information online to demonstrate his investment skills. Can he later suppress that information from search results “for being personal data” (maybe to avoid criticisms when his clients complain about bad performance of his portfolios)? If you say “no”, who is there to show public interest in keeping that data when the broker files a suppression request.

I think that RTBF has proximity to Internet shutdowns in para 19 because it disables critical functions of internet governance for reasons not related to access to illegal information. RTBF rule applies to information that is perfectly legitimate by itself and requires that information to be hidden from search. Internet shutdown does similar things to internet traffic.

The Internet has been the catalyst for an information revolution of the past few decades thanks to the way the data delivery cost has been crowd-sourced among all participants in the Internet so efficiently as to be reduced to almost zero except that all participants had to pay only for the cost of maintaining physical connections with the local neighbors (“internet access fee”, “transit fee”) in proportion of the connection capacities. This way of cost sharing allowed people to communicate en masse at the scales dwarfing that of postage and telephony. A current regulation in Korea mandating ISPs to charge one another for the volume of traffic sent (the sender pay model) contrarily to the Internet way of things, has already increased the IP transit cost in Seoul to 8 to 10 times that of Paris, London, and Frankfurt, and made it prohibitive for overseas contents to be distributed within Korea, making Korea suffer from “the worst latency among OECD countries.” While Korea is about to extend the sender pay rule directly to content providers and other users of the Internet, European Commission is also considering a proposal to charge ”fair share“ of data delivery costs on the content providers again presumably with regard tothe data sent. These proposals, already once discussed and rejected back in 2011-12 by ITU, OECD, and BEREC, will bring the civilization back to the days of scarce and expensive communication through telephony as people uploading contents for a large audience will be charged each view. The Internet access (or ”being online“) has been a homogeneous product everywhere: it was the full connectivity to everyone else online. With the sender pay model, only the contents whose data delivery fees has been paid will be made available to the subscribers of only those ISPs that received those fees. The Internet as each of you see will be vary and and therefore become fragmented depending on the negotiations among your local ISPs and content providers. The Internet will lose its meaning as the platform on which all the global citizens could communicate with one another directly, freely, equally, and vigorously. We at APrIGF demand that the policy makers in Korea and Europe exercise caution and take into account the voices of the people who will be affected by these changes.

The relationship between privacy and freedom of expression can be ariticated more. Because I am wondering why privacy may conflict to freedom of speech. Without the guarantee of using internet, users may tend to self-censoring their expression. That is the lack of privacy harms freedom of expression.

(In my last comment, I mean “articulated” more.)

The concept jumps from privacy to freedom of speech then lands on “hate speech” might be hard to understand. The core idea is that in order to make the internet open to everyone, to let users feel free to express their personalities as a human, we need the privacy and take serious to online abuse issues.

The governance of health data should respect data subjects information autonomy by assuring the exercise of informed consent and rights to opt-out. The use of term “public interest” should be specific. Because when implying commercial benefits, it might be used to skip the consent from data subjects. Opt-out rights is the last approach data subjects and engage the implementation of data processing, it should not be used as the only right that people can control their own data.  

Messaging scams are very prevalent in developing countries as their government have a very weak digital infrastructure in their country. For example Philippines does not even host its own country code domain which is hosted by Hong Kong, and this allows the Chinese government to employ whatever rules and regulations on the Philippines domain. Messaging scams have come a long way and the scammers are using very advanced tactics to scam people out of their money. One thing the governments can do is to send the citizens of the country push notifications which informs people what the scammers can do to steal money and what the government or the banks will never do. Like the bank will never ask its users to sent the OTP or the CVV from a user. There should also be a third party in monetary transactions, that can be used to check the authenticity of the receiving party. Prevention is always better than cure hence citizens themselves should stay alert and aware while performing transactions. The governments and administrative agencies should also regulate the monetary transactions and increase awareness regarding the same.

The progression of cyber security among the human interactions is an inevitable outcome but the barrier to which people being bullied with terms and data gathering is due to the system created by the people themselves. It’s a perfect world where every individual feeling safe online but the very platform is built by a human which means there’s always a back door flaw for intervention and manipulation. Perhaps the only alternative is a platform to be created, generated and regulated fully by a computer from scratch to development which in this sense requires years of human trust in technology to even start taking its shape in the first place.

I suggest we keep it general and just say “relevant agencies and the technical community” This is so that the judiciary (prosecutors and judges) and policy makers are also included here as well.

[ technical capabilities]

I would suggest that this be changed to read “technical and forensic capabilities”in the region. This is to capture that some of these CERT’s are intended to be the only technical forensic capability in their countries as in the case for Tonga until maybe the number of reported cases increase in the future.

Not only Southeast Asia have such problem rising, many East Asia countries also facing such problem during/after the pandemic due to either the online scamming/misinformation are rapidly increasing or the political situation within/between countries changed.

Governments have designed some kind of mechanism to block contents. They might use those to also block unwanted content, and which will lead to the censorship issues.

Nuances of the concept of the “digital divide” need to be brought in – it’s no longer simply a matter of access, but also affordability. With new technologies, new digital divides have emerged, which have been observed (eg smart phone haves and have nots) but not dealt with.

Wi-Fi is a very specific technology and standard; do we mean spectrum for wireless connectivity?

This looks rather broad; categorization of people and aggregating data is a way of making sense of the world.

More facetiously, if we prevent data driven discrimination, does that mean we simply allow discrimination to be non-data driven; i.e. baseless? :)

Not all states make explicit the right to freedom of expression.

“…all-encompassing approach COMPARED TO the APrIGF 2021 program.” –> suggested change.

“class, or any other factors.” –> add one more comma after “class”, for grammar.

“…empiritcally [measure, track, assess, and evaluate] the benefits from…” –> suggested edit in square brackets.

“Progress on both aspects facilitates IDNs adoption, [which are vital to accelerate further local language content online that will create virtuous cycles of available content that then drives demand for more content and services online.] –> suggested change in square brackets.

Suggest “schools and libraries” rather than only focusing on libraries.

suggest “avoid breaking [encryption and similar] security [measures]” –> suggested update in square brackets.

Spelling – “impact of machines on LABOUR” –> missing letters.

Suggest to add, “It is noted that ASEAN is developing a guardrail governance code document for guiding AI, with a planned 2024 release.” (see https://www.reuters.com/technology/southeast-asia-set-guardrails-ai-with-new-governance-code-sources-2023-06-16/)

The recent trend is that censorship does not merely come in closing down of network or interrupted access to the Internet, but sometimes authoritative governments deliberately create traffic jam for websites that voices unfavourable opinions or opinions from the minority so that the website becomes unaccessible. Maybe this could also be acknowledged in the synthesis document and assistance and protection for those websites could be considered.

Also, in my opinion any disruptions to the access to mobile and Internet services should be avoided at all cost, no matter whether standards have been established in national legislation or what because access to internet is a basic human right which should not be violated. Laws that are against this human right are not justified, and provides an excuses for authoritative regimes in censorship.

Greetings to the Drafting Committee of the APrIGF,

I request you to kindly consider providing references (as footnotes) for the two statistical claims made in this paragraph.

Similarly, references can be provided for statistical/factual claims made elsewhere in the document.

Overall, the synthesis document reads good to me. Congratulations to the Drafting Committee (and the entire APrIGF community) for their efforts in compiling this wonderful document.

Regards,
Lokendra Sharma
Member, MSG, APrIGF.

Fostering trust in the internet, including the processes and infrastructure that underpin it, has been an aspirational goal for decades. But the involvement of governments, corporations and malicious actors in the governance and functioning of the internet has meant that this goal has been unreachable. The idea of mathematical trust, wherein two parties interacting or transacting on the internet can trust each other by relying on mathematical principles, is a good solution. Wider adoption of blockchain technology, which has mathematical trust at its core, may be helpful in fostering trust in the internet.

Agree with you Paribhasha and Brian.

Response to Brian: It is indeed a downside. Multiple sessions happening in parallel often leads to dilemmas about what to attend and what to forego. But there is no feasible alternative to parallel sessions given the need to squeeze in a number of sessions (and co-located events) in a span of a few days. However, one thing that reduces the ‘opportunity cost’ associated with attending any given session is to check the recordings of the missed sessions at the official APrIGF YouTube channel. Thanks to the hybrid format, both offline and online inputs are captured in these recordings.

While ‘walled gardens’, lack of interoperability and other techno-economic factors contribute to internet fragmentation, the more potent threat to universal internet may come from political side. The US, Europe, China and Russia are all promoting their own visions of how the internet should function and be governed. This geopolitical push and pull may fragment the internet in the future.

Thank Winston for your comment. While smartphone may have become more common in usage in the early 2000s, the first smartphone was actually developed in early 1990s. Therefore, writing “thirty years” here is appropriate. You may refer to the following resources:
https://www.britannica.com/technology/smartphone
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/03/remembering-first-smartphone-simon-ibm/

Hi, I had raised this last year, and raising this issue this year as well: We need to discuss the idea of mathematical trust. Blockchain is an example of how mathematical trust can give confidence to users to transact and interact with each other even when there is no central authority. Does mathematical trust work? What are its limitations, if any? The DC can consider recommending greater discussion on mathematical trust next year at APrIGF.  

I agree with you. I think it’s for us who are part of the IG to take it up and simplify further. But I do feel that these documents should not just remain as technical publications and shelved. Can a group of volunteers like us take it up and reach these issues to the actual end users of the internet? I am ready to volunteer.

Agree Amrita, and going forward I feel there is a strong need of a group that exclusively works or provides guidance on how such a public access could be provided, what infrastructure is needed, cost effectiveness, local ownership of such an infrastructure are some of the issues that need urgent attention especially in the context of hard to reach communities.

Education is the gateway to enabling youth to gain digital literacy and which will eventually lead towards digital citizenship. Thus it is important to educate the youth on how to be responsible nitizens who are ready for this internet centric world. We should aim to include more youth in engaging conversatios and spreading more awareness of internrt governance in the APAC region and others.

Building a resilient internet encompasses many facets such as making internet accessible during natural disasters such as typhoons and earthquakes. One such initiatives are LACS and LEOs which not only help end users who face natural disasters but also those who live in rural areas with either unstable internet connection or none at all. This helps create an internet which is able to overcome any obstacles it faces.

I wish to reiterate a comment made by the audience on inviting more government stakeholders and add that people from the military/police/intelligence/defense establishments should also be invited to speak in sessions where their insights can be relevant. Inviting them should be driven by the need for more accountability and, in many cases, these actors have made operational, tactical, and strategic-level decisions on the use of tech and internet within their respective countries. Audrey Tang stated during the plenary session that security and human rights do not negate each other. If this statement were to be made true for most countries in APAC, more candid and transparent discussions between all stakeholders and defense establishments is needed. Sessions in subsequent APrIGF can start by inviting officers with track records of being open to the idea of speaking in multistakeholder meetings/discussions similar to APrIGF, given that most establishments in APAC might be less inclined to partake in APrIGF.

Thoroughly enjoyed this session. Although only 1 speaker was present in Taipei, this session was extremely productive. This session could have been strengthened by:
1. Having a speaker to represent cable contractors and one who might be able to speak from the perspective of local communities around the landing points.
2. Address the lack of knowledge on the environmental impact of undersea cables and the need for more research on this.

APRIGF can create others stakeholders group and assignment monitoring commission after each Forum and finally produce draft agreement adopt and on others subject debate who constitute input to APRIGF following.

There should be a way that promote and motivate more
An Internet service provider (ISP) is an organization that community-owned, non-profit ISP’s and IXP’s.

Duplication of roleplay within countries with problems related to their countries is better.

This was need to be discuss in a manner how we could use our best practices in the scenario.

Internet Restrictions and shutdowns affect Digital Economy at large. Internet restriction and shutdowns may cause serious problem when it comes to Emerging Technology usages.

Same time most of the emerging technologies need to be used to uplift the standards of people. Privacy is a major concern we all have to think of.

Internet Governance is still a topic of few. Real meaning of the Engagement still missing mainly within the developing nations. As countries we doesn’t need to make fake multistakeholderism within IG process just to make world know. When time passes real multistakeholderism will come in to ithe process.

School on Internet governance will be a key to educate people. Here we in Sri Lanka try to create academic syllabus to IG with the aim to promote in to University level model.

Incorrect paragraph selected. on above comment

Apart from including the youth, I think it is also important for us to include the elderly in the discussion. With the advancement and spread of smart gadgets, more and more middle-aged people and elderly are now using these smartphones for online activities and to connect with their family and friends. However, for quite a number of them are not as alert as young people, who are digital natives, when it comes to issues like cybersecurity and privacy protection. Some of them have only little understandings on these dangers, which means that they are probably more prone to cyber crimes, privacy breach and so on. It is essential to include them in the discussion of internet governance so that we can understand better about their difficulties and better address them.

What will be the role of governments belonging to the Asia Pacific region? How will they help and expedite the adoption of the emerging technologies.

Can IoT act as a disruptor rather than being an enabler?
A simple drop of connection can be fatal in the areas of critical importance such as medical healthcare, security of the country, etc.

Are the countries future ready? With the evolving technologies in place, new challenges are emerging. How are countries strategising the use/misuse of the technologies in the near future? How are countries looking forward to adopt changes based on internet intervention. Have the countries developed an ecosystem for seamless transition to future technologies?

Good to specify that meaningful access is something that deserves further consideration but in this paragraph it is understood as something that is only linked to connectivity and while this is certainly part of it. It is also good to address how meaningful is Internet access/access to information once people have it and what are the current methods (if any) that we can use to track this

Libraries have a big role in bridging the digital divide maybe good to mention this in the context of the Asia-Pacific region

Internet Access has hugely changed my personal life and helped me change that of other women around me. The Women’s Digital League was formed when I was fired from my teaching job because the private school I was working at would not give me maternity leave. Sitting at home with a simple dial up connection I found remote work. Earning my first $2.5 writing an article for someone in the US gave me much-needed confidence in my abilities. It was a stepping stone to becoming financially empowered and independent; being recognized as the top most impactful entrepreneur in Pakistan; and in showing women they didn’t have to accept status quo. With greater financial empowerment I ahve seen young women not settle for the first proposal that came for them as they were no longer a burden on their household; send siblings to school/college; have greater say in decisions at home; be more respected and therefore have a higher self-esteem.

I understand the balance between generalizing and uniqueness, and I suggest that adding one sentence to summarize APAC’s specific issue in each sub-theme. Or how about keeping the current sections, and adding several paragraphs to describe more detail/ particular topics for our region?

I agree with Namkha. I think that it can go both ways: make services and products inclusive or exacerbate the already uneven distribution of access and opportunities. This depends on digital literacy and affordability, among other things. The design should also be questioned. Who says it’s inclusive? Does it include everyone or just the sectors or groups that developers or companies want to target? It was mentioned earlier how the concerns of persons with disabilities are not always considered in the design. Social norms and morals should also be considered. Because of the diversity of cultures and beliefs, there may be some resistance against accessibility.

I think trust and accountability have to be discussed together because in order for us to foster growth and innovation, there needs to be a certain level of trust among stakeholders. However, there has to be measures in place to ensure accountability; for that trust be kept. We need to have a way to check that stakeholders are doing what they say are doing and nothing more. Once people see how stakeholders are held accountable for their actions, trust will grow.

One of the key points highlighted during the workshop is the need for education and awareness.

1. Technical solutions and competencies are the technical deterrence to secure systems, to try and reduce or prevent technical vulnerabilities.

2. Legislation and laws are an approach to try and deter a behavioral motive but not necessarily prevent deter technical attacks. The bad guys do not care about laws.

3. Education and awareness is a user preventive measure from exposure to security vulnerability due to illiteracy and ignorance.

Therefore Education and awareness is an equally important measure to cyber security

[WS17. The Future of Digital Identity and Human Rights] Many of the governments are into digital identities. In the case of the Philippines, a National ID the law was just recently signed by the president. In a way, this is beneficial to the citizens in improving ease of transactions with among government agencies. But the question is, how resilient is our government in protecting our date. A data breach already happened in the Philippines which put 70M Filipinos’ personal data at risk. In the case of the National ID Law, we have to make sure that the Data Privacy Act will be reinforced to the government as the data controller and processor. Aside from that, a protocol has to be established to make sure that these data wont be compromised for whatever misuse.

[WS23. Big tech everywhere: Is this the future of the Internet?  ] During the panel discussion there was a concern about Big Fall of Big Tech. It becomes a trend that big tech companies are acquiring small tech companies to expand their products and services, leaving people with still limited options on online products and services. However, we may not be able to stop these big companies from doing that, that is our business, certainly. But what we can do is start and keep supporting tech startups in out locality, help build the startup ecosystem, and create more options, even gradually. Let’s promote permissionless innovation, support our local tech startups, and raise awareness about internet governance to this community.

The eGovernment workshop involved getting ideas from the participants of what they would like to have in their eGovernment website if they were asked for input. As most of them in this group were from Vanuatu, and I know that Vanuatu is currently setting up their infrastructure for an eGovernment website, I will include these inputs into my report on the workshop and send a copy to the Vanuatu Government’s Office of Information and Communication. Hopefully the APRIGF can contribute some input into the development of their country’s new eGov system.

During the Digital Literacy session, I raised the huge reluctance by holders of traditional knowledge about healing medicines made from natural plants, to digitise information that has been gained by the use of generations of healers. They believe that by secularising this information would take away their “mana” – the God-given gift of healers. So how do we access and retain valuable information about the healing properties of our natural biodiversity, so that it doesn’t get lost over time and so that modern science can make use of the information to benefit others?

Great points Yeseul

I agree with Don that for underserved communities in our region affordability is a real barrier to access. Content in local languages should also be valued and encouraged.

Because legislation is the domain of governments should there not be some inclusion here of the importance of government decision makers being involved in these consultations regarding approaches to NN legislation?

Providing a forum at all these larger events for the youth to express their views is vital if the internet and its governance is to develop to meet their future needs. Kudos to APrIGF for the initiatives they have established for Asia Pacific youth.

Universal access is different.. but I would include it as part of this universality section. I think UA is definitely important.

The Nepal Wireless Connectivity Project (WS#90)

Last mile issues for developing countries. For example, although Pacific Islands governments realise the value of many newly established cable connections, many have not fully factored in the ongoing costs of ensuring that infrastructure and future maintenance, governance structures and human and other capacities match the potential of the connectivity.

Internet adoption is increasing slowly in the Pacific mainly due to its lack of affordability. There are still island countries where monopoly Telecoms (and even some where there are multiple providers, e.g. Papua New Guinea) put the internet out of reach of those who need the access, but it is too expensive. Many Pacific users only have access to the internet at work, Private connections are unaffordable on their low local wages. The cost for businesses as well as for learning, information and other valuable uses is quite prohibitive.

The SDGs provide significant focus areas for development in regions such as the Pacific and ICTs and internet connectivity could be a major contributor to this development. Unfortunately there is not enough research being done to identify how appropriate technologies and internet connectivity can effectively contribute to the future-proofing of mitigation measures being introduced by local donor-funded projects.

Arthit has mentioned below that some statistics related to the development of the APrIGF Synthesis Document could be included into this document, perhaps as an appendix (?)
This would add to its authenticity when we present it elsewhere. The appendix could briefly explain the process, the schedule, and the names of eventual contributors and/or where they come from within the region to demonstrate the spread of contributing voices.

Because paras 3 & 4 are about process and not content, they could be deleted (and the appendix section developed).

You raise an important point Hong with regards to the need for attention to copyright rules and a supporting legal environment to protect intellectual property in the rush for the development of online courses.

Home schooling during the pandemic imposed pressures on parents of students of all ages juggling their new teaching role, sometimes for several levels, with other family and paid work responsibilities. Many schools in the Pacific that were already challenged with regards to scarce teaching resources and inadequately skilled staff, failed to provide an appropriate online learning environment for their students. Many students received no education during the lockdowns brought about by the pandemic.

Capacity building and training for educators…. ARE needed to provide.. etc

Solar energy farms on isolated small islands have not only enhanced the quality of the air on these island environments, without the use of hazardous fossil fuels to power old generators, but the new power source has enabled 24×7 use of green technologies for health and education, with cleaner and less expensive power generation which supports a further reduction in any climate change impacts.

We changed the title of the session to “the Challenges of attempting digital transformation in Small Island Developing States” when the team was reduced by two discussants who hadstories to tell from their islands. They had had a conflict with High level ICT conferences that were being held on PNG in the same week.

This is just a comment. We are putting together a summary of our session presentations and will get it to you by the 3rd.

Digital transformation is an aspiration for many small island developing states in the Pacific. As a case-study, the Cook Islands government has utilised valuable overseas aid support over the years to lay the groundwork for greater connectivity for its citizens on tiny and remote outer islands. Six-hours a day of diesel-powered electricity has now been replaced by 24×7 clean electricity powered by solar energy, and they can all now connect to 4G mobile broadband. Most of the tiny island populations have smart phones and are becoming more competent digital natives as more services become available and are more affordable. The government’s newly published ICT Policy depicts ICT being used by all sectors and ages and abilities of internet users – leaving noone behind. Setting up an appropriate infrastructure has been important so that citizens will be able to access more online government services as they are developed. An important pre-requisite to this access will be ensuring that everyone has a legal identity through a comprehensive civil registration system which records ALL births and deaths in the country. While the Cook Islands already maintains a successful record of this important information, transferring it to a digital system will also enhance citizen access to the wider range of government services, including e-Commerce and other important internet-related economic opportunities. Other Pacific nations are following similar trends.

Hi Trang
Thank you for you great comments. I hope I covered at least some of your concerns in my paragraph about what we are doing in the Cook Islands.
Maureen

Comment to be added to my statement above.
However, as with any successful change activity in the Pacific or elsewhere, technology is the comparatively simple part of digital transformation, the difficulties often lie in a behaviour change within the society itself – not only to drive usage and adoption of digital, but also to break down silos within and beyond government, and to change ways of working and thinking. A whole-of-society approach to digital transformation is crucial. It is not the domain of a single sector, actor, or institution.

Thank you Jonathan. The text was a filler taken from the workshop 12 description, but thank you for reminding us of the toolkit and how it would be useful to refer to it with respect to strategies already in place.

Comments made in Town Hall session 1
* Kuo Wei – long workshops and ‘next billion’ focus
* Visharaad – inclusion of disability and accessibility guidelines
* Nigel – include data related to workshops and attendance, etc
* Ali – elearning – to raise greater awareness – different approaches for different target audiences
* Joyce – add capacity building as a separate ection
* Edmon – Privacy (transferred to S11)
* Jemil – include PWDs and acessibility
*Adeel – access issues..
* Edmon – supported capacity building – separate section explaining what we want to say about CB
* Vashkar – the SD must be accessible to all users – and language needs to be user friendly
* Winston – report consists of complicated language – format is great but formal concepts are expressed by technical experts – their credentials?
* Hong – general structure – some sections closely related – current headings may need to be renamed
* Mili – supported CB section – for newcomers – perhaps set up an information portal to assist with CB
*Wanawit – government – trade vs commerce

Volunteers
* Access – Michael Pepen, Benjz, Waqas, Hongwu Dai, Wanawit, Anna Thomas, Gangesh Varma
*Human Rights – Valencia
* Capacity Building – Mili

Sentence starting: “Building on… APrIGFs 2015 Macao and 2016 Taipei,….” OR “APrIGF 2015 Macao and APrIGF 2016 Taipei,”

Also “two webinars each followed by public comment periods, ”

Could there be an addition? “… collaborative open document detailing the significant deliberations which took place during the APrIGF 2017 Bangkok.” (ending the introductory para with an introduction to the most recent APrIGF)

(as well as “of those within” the broader APriGF…

Nevertheless it is anticipated by “the” APrIGF…

…thoughts in the Asia Pacific region as “a” contribution…

I would delete “the” before Best Practice Forums..

Replace “to be held from” December 2017 (with) “to be held on 18-21” December 2017

I would finish the sentence at “collaboration at a regional level.”

(continue with…)

It also aims to aggregate national and local IGF discussions, and ultimately, to advance the … etc

I would suggest that we insert something in the sentence that begins “Community networks and public access to ICT [17]” and continue with…
“not only have the potential to improve digital literacy but also facilitate safe, effective, non-discriminatory access by all users, including women and children and those within marginalised and underserved communities.”

Last sentence is OK without the “And” at the beginning of the sentence. I know we all do it but its not grammatically correct :(

I like this paragraph

Exactly!

In the last sentence of this paragraph…
change”is funding as well as ensuring that… etc”

to

“is funding, however, it is also important to ensure that …etc”

Agree with Peng Hwa’s edits.. with amendment of the typo :)

I agree with the section beginning with statement about human rights being fundamental to the achievement of SDGs and also impressing on readers that human rights was a major area of “scrutiny and debate” at the APrIGF.

Great paragraph. I also think it addresses some of Ananda’s concerns from para#11.

agree

Awareness

Anyone with a gadget can access the whole world for collecting information and providing the same. Mainly in this pandemic situation it is the only possible platform for all the above. Even it is a virtual space still exists gender discrimination and attack against women. Then how they can be involve fearlessly in the cyber space? Question of equality is not solved yet. These are to be very seriously taken into consideration.

While the document is a great way to summarise the content at the conference, my concern is around the use and dissemination of the document and the learning thereby after the event.

Adding to the earlier comment it not just important to increase accessibility in the technological format sense, I also feel it is important to simplify the content in such a way that it is understood easily by all the end users of Internet broadly and can also serve as a user friendly document for referencing, learning for the new comers in the fraternity.

Lets do it! You can reach me at [email protected] and I will brief you on the plan. (Got one in my head)

A compiled list of actionable items/ or key takeaways…that summarises the discussion in the document for a quick scan. Point form. precise and objective.

Youth initiatives like yIGF, Netmission programs, various capacity building platforms to engage and encourage more and more youth to contribute to IG discussions. But necessary to highlight issues they face like the major problem is sustainability, funding, gender diversity especially in ASEAN.

Access issues in Asia are majorly driven by infrastructure and lack of basic facilities like electricity. Need to strengthen them first specially in remote terrains – Indonesia, Phillippines, India, etc in order to promote use of Internet.

People do not however, want to compromise freedom and speech for better access. Monopolisation of Internet by ISP’s or large telecom operators are detrimental to the pricing thus making internet access more affordable.

A strong law enforcement and regulation framework is needed to substitute the failure of the state in restoring peace and justifying their need to use Internet shutdowns as a mechanism.

Emerging technologies were amongst the hot topics and interestingly we discussed them from the ethics perspective too. One of the key terms that came along was a “rights based Internet” to help reinforce the open and accessible invariants of the Internet. But with ethics the challenge is where does it come in? At the programmer level, or early education? As ethics is a morality, it is also the major onus of all humans themselves in their own capacities. A good practice may be to focus on developing inter disciplinary curricula and ICT education to sound the unethical challenges that may spring from emerging tech.

Totally agree with you. Moreover, as some countries like Myanmar have very weak passport, participants from those countries can have to fulfill a lot of requirements for visa process for counties like Australia.

In the region, developed countries like Japan and Australia have been utilizing the emerging technologies while developing countries like Myanmar are still having significant portions of people lacking digital literacy and accessibility to internet. I think the role of those developed countries in assisting developing nations to take advantage of emerging technologies in a sustainable and inclusive way (such as making a partnership to advance infrastructure, offering opportunities to youth and so on) is very important to tackle uneven digitalization in the region.

It is really interesting to discuss and prepare youth policy statement based on these three thematic tracks. I think they generally cover a lot of topics under internet governance and emerging technologies.

Agree with Rafiq. Language barriers are one of the biggest challenges for the population without English skills to connect to internet, utilize technologies and participant in meaningful discussion.

Furthermore, I think we should encourage more representatives from the nations with larger number of people still unconnected to participate in such capacity building programs so that they can create positive changes in their communities.

In my opinion, to overcome these issues, the role of combating other social issues such as poverty, quality education, gender equality, sustainable economy, and SDGs are also important because they are related to each other. Thus, all the stakeholders need to work together on those wicked issues to spread digital awareness, educate digital literacy, improve infrastructure as well as the economy.

Agree with Namkha. Because sometimes governments themselves can be collecting biometric data in not very ethical way. In addition to legislation, I think equipping technicians and students with data background with the knowledge of ethical and legal usages of technology would be necessary.

I somehow agree with this statement because I think persons with disabilities are more likely to left behind even compared to other marginalized communities,

I think it is a complex issue and related to numerous other social challenges such as poverty, poor economic condition, inequalities and etc.

Since youth are current and future leaders, they have really strong capabilities and potentials to shape future internet, The opportunities to uplift their skills, connect with each other and other stakeholders as well as support for their initiatives are the critical to be provided for youths.

In my country, parents believe that social media and using phone and other device is waste of time for their children. On the other hand, many kids and teenagers do not have proper skills and knowledge about these things. It leads to having a lot of online conflicts and problems. Thus, I think it is necessary to put digital literacy and proper use of internet in school curriculum and educate the young students.

The emerging technologies will not wait whether we are ready or not. Thus, it is important to prepare for the next phase of the internet by combining the efforts of multiple stakeholders while reducing current challenges.

With emerging technologies, many have been developed environ tech, renewable energy and digital power. multiple stakeholders are necessary to work together on advancing green technology in any possible ways in the regions. Moreover, policies like carbon tax also play a crucial part in forcing industries to use green tech and reduce carbon emission.

I have noticed IoT tech are used widely in creating innovative green technologies like smart bins. On the other hand, they can cause e waste and large energy consumption. I think the role of innovators and technicians with the support of other stakeholders in making IoT tech more energy efficient and effective are very important.

A solid and detailed guideline for the enforcement body is essential. We cannot guarantee that the enforcement body would not perform any acts that go beyond the line and infringes ones’ privacy, even when its intention is to promote national security. In that connection, there must also be ways to stop those enforcement bodies from continuously infringing individual privacy.

In relation to the balance, it is also suggested that the guidelines should incline more to the protection of individual privacy, which is believed fundamental in human rights.

Aside from internet governance, internet itself is not generally known by the public in some pacific islands. As reflected by the local youth in yIGF, many of them said that the fact that they do not understand what internet is has hindered the progress of internet access.

In this connection, I think different stakeholders should also educate more on the basic concepts of internet in some pacific islands, which is also an important capacity building section. So with more knowledge on internet, internet access may be promoted, and so as internet governance eventually.

A more solid and detailed guideline is essential for enforcement bodies. We cannot guarantee that the enforcement bodies would not go beyond the line that excessively infringes ones’ privacy. In that connection, there have to be ways or directives to prevent those enforcement bodies from continuously infringing ones’ individual privacy, even when its intention is to protect national security.

In relation to the balance, it is suggested that the guideline should incline more on the side of individual privacy, as this is fundamental in human rights.

Appreciate the good work done by the organising team in selecting the theme, speakers and conducting without any issue. The three themes are very relevant and challenges discussed are very eye opening. The discussions were very good. The buddy group and mentor was very supportive.

AI is a broad terminology used. Machine learning techniques are improving day by day. New algorithms are showing improvements over the previous ones. The efficiency of the system depends on how well we train the data. Technology alone cannot solve the problem of hate speech, but can help tackle it to a large extent.

The earlier issues of economic divide, digital divide and gender divide all play a role here. Empowering the parents through constant sessions are needed. Along with the usage training, “ethical usage” should also be introduced to kids and parents.

Internet evolved as technology for non technologist. WWW is one technology which can be attributed for this sucess.

Awareness campaigns though all media specially social media is very much needed .

The pandemic COVID 19 increased the pace of digitization in developing economies. There was an overnight shift. This helped in continuing the life without any break. The other side of the issue is the digital literacy and cyber security awareness.

The The warmth of the meet and greet is very much missing . Listening continuously in online media is giving Zoom fatigue.

Measures and accountability is not sufficient to ensure a functional, secure and fair use of internet.
Outside the accountability, when it comes to liability, I think it is important to notice the contextual basis of our today’s multilateral legal enforcement. As platforms run their accountability system and framework to adopt instrument to escalate complaints, it doesn’t necessarily align with liability reach-out enforce by state or Interpol. In example, when this related to political stance adopted to base the accountability system of the platform, it oftentimes contradicts the liabilities; as in the shadowbanning that represent a political understanding/perception/stances (ex. Palestine, Hamas, Israel, conflicts).

When it comes to legal frameworks, resiliency can be a call to the words interpretation means we put normative words such as “means of communication” or “networks of networks” rather than specific “internet”. Or when it comes to violation, say that unlawful access rather than hacking or Mysql injection. So the norms will last longer throughout the technology advancement.
And also there is one other call to the institutional approach.
There is this theory of legal melee saying that law actually is what social dynamics create through their interaction of power, aspiration, and custom. I am long have been a part of this school of thought that brings me to recognize internet governance as a sphere to this understanding. Therefore when it comes to resiliency to orderness or regulatory frameworks, it is important to introduce a way to legal recognition and alignment to this dynamic output. As now many countries/government in APAC build regulatory bodies for various specific functions, such as telecommunications, general elections, others, we then need to expand this alignment to the private sector too, as it called as self regulatory organization, some industry has this approach already in global scale as in banking and sports. 

Building Trust on the Internet ( Surveillance state in AP)- In my view, it is very important that all the stakeholder have optimum trust in the platform. To achieve the same all the stakeholders have to shoulder responsibilities.

End user are to be made aware of their privacy needs.
Content provider and Collaboration tools ( Read Twitter, Facebook) that form important part of the ecosystem have to derive and develop plans to incorporate trust; Segregating private and public space for the end user.
Government and regulator have to be made responsible for respecting and building trust.

In my opinion, a lot of machines would constitute to a bigger portion of the next billion that would be joining the internet. Machine to Machine communication would be an integral part of internet expansion. Its important that security by design is considered in M2M communication.

While these treaties and agreement would be certainly helpful in ensuring the cross border data flow, which was one of the building block of the internet, it would be beneficial to have it done providing a level playing field to all the parties involved. Mechanism should be inbuilt in these treaties ensuring that the further development of digital economy for the developing countries are not compromised in any ways. This also include offsetting measures that data localization brings to the parties advantage.

hello, I am mokabberi from Iran, advisor of cyber policy research institute.

My comments:
how can we promote inclusive norm making process reqarding these below consideration:
1. shaping Fair, democratic, global and ethical internet governance mechanism is key precondition for cyber security norm making process can overcome mistrusts.
2. we should also work on norms of responsible behavior of tech company
3. ITU can play role in cyber security standardization to secure ICTs products supply chain security
4.we should also consider smart lethal weapons and fake attributions
l thinks this process will lead to more militarization of cyberspace and cyber weapean race and establishing AIEA for cyberspace and let some country for unilateral coercive measure in cyberspace like digital countermeasure
This process like applying IHLs in digital realm and turn it into conflict zone is against the vision of peaceful and development-oriented internet for human goods

My comments:
how can we promote inclusive norm making process reqarding these below consideration:
1. shaping Fair, democratic, global and ethical internet governance mechanism is key precondition for cyber security norm making process can overcome mistrusts.
2. we should also work on norms of responsible behavior of tech company
3. ITU can play role in cyber security standardization to secure ICTs products supply chain security
4.we should also consider smart lethal weapons and fake attributions
l thinks this process will lead to more militarization of cyberspace and cyber weapean race and establishing AIEA for cyberspace and let some country for unilateral coercive measure in cyberspace like digital countermeasure
This process like applying IHLs in digital realm and turn it into conflict zone is against the vision of peaceful and development-oriented internet for human goods

hello, I am mokabberi from Iran, advisor of cyber policy research institute.

My comments:
how can we promote inclusive norm making process reqarding these below consideration:
1. shaping Fair, democratic, global and ethical internet governance mechanism is key precondition for cyber security norm making process can overcome mistrusts.
2. we should also work on norms of responsible behavior of tech company
3. ITU can play role in cyber security standardization to secure ICTs products supply chain security
4.we should also consider smart lethal weapons and fake attributions
l thinks this process will lead to more militarization of cyberspace and cyber weapean race and establishing AIEA for cyberspace and let some country for unilateral coercive measure in cyberspace like digital countermeasure
This process like applying IHLs in digital realm and turn it into conflict zone is against the vision of peaceful and development-oriented internet for human goods

My comments:
how can we promote inclusive norm making process reqarding these below consideration:
1. shaping Fair, democratic, global and ethical internet governance mechanism is key precondition for cyber security norm making process can overcome mistrusts.
2. we should also work on norms of responsible behavior of tech company
3. ITU can play role in cyber security standardization to secure ICTs products supply chain security
4.we should also consider smart lethal weapons and fake attributions
l thinks this process will lead to more militarization of cyberspace and cyber weapean race and establishing AIEA for cyberspace and let some country for unilateral coercive measure in cyberspace like digital countermeasure
This process like applying IHLs in digital realm and turn it into conflict zone is against the vision of peaceful and development-oriented internet for human goods

One suggestion:
A percent of (for example about 5 percent) of taxes of global tech companies and digital platforms that payed to governments can allocated for IGF budget for the implementation of IGF strategic plan and research and development Fund in the field of internet governance in national and international level . By this initiative funding problems of NRIS will be solved.

hello,
this suggestion can be enclouded in aprigf massage :
One suggestion for increase of financial Strengths of IGF
A percent of (for example about 5 percent) of taxes of global tech companies and digital platforms that paid to governments can allocated by them for IGF budget for the implementation of IGF strategic plan and research and development Fund in the field of internet governance in national and international level . By this initiative funding problems of NRIS will be solved.

hello, from mokabberi from iran.
my comments
we have seen some organized disinformation and fake news in social media with geopolitical purpose ,for example we clearly see that some networks of fake accounts and bots are producing fake news against shia muslims in the name of sounni muslims and at the same time, they are spreading disinformation and hate speech against sunni muslims in the name of shia muslims. We all know who benefits from conflict between muslims and Who benefits from conflict between russia and europe.
what should be done with this organized disinfo at global level that want to make hostilities among nations and religious groups in the world to gain iligimate economical and political interest?
Regulation? Digital ethics? Awareness and digital litracy?
Declaration by stakeholders?

Change my address to C/- Poste Restante, Vanuatu Post Limited, Port Vila Republic of Vanuatu.

This has to be done at the grass roots level or community Services Organisations level for Vanuatu.

to affordable internet in the pacific region

The rapid growing rate of Internet have indeed producing numerous challenges regarding security risks and cyber attacks,etc.
We can have a control on them by:
=>>Effective Collaborative Goverance which involves public and private sector companies to have a multi-stake holder approach.
=>>Data Literacy and Education:
This means to empowering knowledge and awareness among people about cybersecurity threats so that primary cases should be handled.
=>>Transparency and Holding Accountability:
Means to ensure that online products and services or any other items should be transparent about their data collection.

There should be decentralized as well as multi-stakeholders’ endrosement then I believe accountability as well as transparancy would be ensured. There should be clear indication in terms of privcy as well as governance. It is worth mentioned that without good governance, it would be difficulat to gain trust and reliability. And, definitely along with people and process, there will be requried for technologies to enfornce as we have to trust with verificaiton.

Internet is like open ocean and quite difficult to track over there. There should be multi-stakeholders’ approach for the betterment of internet governance. One cannot be responsible or accountable, instead a group or team. There could be monopoly in case of centralization, power exercise, suppression, etc. as we are observing region to region or country to country. Beside this, privacy along with accountability need to be ensured.

PLEASE DISCARD MY PREVIOUS COMMENTS

There should be decentralized as well as multi-stakeholders’ endorsement then I believe accountability as well as transparency would be ensured. There should be clear indication in terms of privacy as well as governance. It is worth mentioned that without good governance, it would be difficult to gain trust and reliability. And, definitely along with people and process, there will be required for technologies to enforce as we have to trust with verification.

This was a good session. Particularly due to the dialogue between Private Sector, academia and civil society on Covid-19 apps being rolled out by governments. The role of the private sector and governments under different jurisdictions to ensure privacy rights as well as the long-term implications of such apps on privacy rights were discussed.

Many radical ideas were shared in this session. Particularly:

1. The need to have conversations on what happens before digital violence.

2. How laws and legal systems primarily police the human body instead of policing the crime. Also the very important question on the consent and the category of victim on the internet.

3. Challenging the notion that laws are unbiased responses to oppression. Another important point on how caste oppression gets copy-pasted online and with digital violence.

4. Lack of algorithmic accountability and how the social media we use breaks down our behaviors, even our bodies into categories and the biases they propagate.

5. The inadequacy of the very imagination of the government regarding digital spaces and rejected the traditional mindset that applies to policymaking in digital spaces.

How are we going to face the future challenges in cyber threats?

when talking about other elements the resources and support that helps to empower access needs to be considered

What are the roles of all stakeholders in access provision and inclusion, and the provision of education and training for information literacy and digital literacy, including the responsible exercise of these skills with respect for other people? 3 recommendations that should be implemented by Internews to help the community especially.
First of all is to go back to basics. We might have the understanding that we are going to go into communities with the power and privilege we have compared to the community that we are going to serve. However, we should view anything that we are going to do with the community as a learning process for both parties. Listen first to their information and the knowledge they know so far. Assessment within the community to adapt on what they want and what they need. Only then education and awareness take place to disseminate the knowledge.

Secondly, we should hold on to the principle of do no harm in a more practical way. When talking about information it can be accessed online and offline. For the online platform, the way we engage with the community should be based on their understanding and we do not want to open can of worms where we educate them on how to get the information but not how to control themselves to impart the knowledge properly. Either urban or rural communities, they are all prone to the danger of the internet and false news. This is where we should be careful on what we go through with them as at the end we could not just leave them without properly briefing them on the online danger too.

Thirdly, no one is left behind. We tend to assume that rural communities have a lack of access for information. However, there are reports of those educated and also professionals that fell into scams and did not know properly on how to differentiate the quality and originality of the information. This could cause more harm in the society and community. The outreach of the programme should comprise the rural, urban poor and community organizers that will help the community in exercising their knowledge and rights and in a way enhance their literacy.

UA is a foundational requirement for multilingual Internet, in which users around the world can navigate via DNS entirely in local languages. UA needs coordination efforts by the private sector, technical & academic communities, civil society, and governments to ensures that all domain names and email address internationalization (EAI) can be used by all Internet-enabled applications, devices, and systems.
There is an importance need to make everyone from the stakeholders aware of the UA and its tight connection with the IDNs and what advantages it can provides to the general public. Awareness is not enough but creating the drive or motives to demand all stakeholders of serious efforts towards the inclusiveness of the IDNs and EAI.
There are few research and development experiments in APAC region on IDNs and EAI, but more resources is needed to work on standardization.
Creating a consistent environment of enabling the access of local content with local domain name and send and receive emails using the local email address.

[ Internet Governance & Multi-Stakeholder Participation ]

No one denies the importance to make the voice of underrepresented communities be heard at APrIGF or any other IGFs. But at the end of the day, it will discussions that “could” be heard by the decision making bodies but there might not be any follow up.
What would be a good approach is to develop the connection between APrIGF Community (like MSG, or other subject matter experts to join ITU Government delegates for consultancy during the development of ITU resolutions.

[WS6. Analyzing Perspectives on Youth Participation in the Multi-stakeholder Landscape: A Contextual Follow-Through Session on Motivations to Sustainability Efforts]

APrIGF has to be proud of having youth organizing a session and sharing experiences. Attended the meeting thinking that there will be discussions on how the Youth fit into the overall scene in the IGFs, but the focus of the workshop was on the different youth initiatives. What was shared of the youth engagement in the Philippines would give an example of how youth are contributors to policy development in their own country.

Norms should be developed from bottom-up in multistakeholder model.

Great research, this bottom-up of putting Norms when talking about children stopped me.
The digital norms are taking the net citizen to a completely different path of norms that was practiced before the Internet. Hence, the MS model that you are mentioning that need to be developed on an equal footing. To bring the experience and wisdom of the past with the practices of today.

So far cybersecurity laws have failed to protect the freedom of speech.
The problem that most states are putting regulations without wider public consultation. It depends on parliament members to comment or endorse new laws.
Would be possible to do some changes in the jurisdiction model to bring balanced views?

[WS48. A roadmap for studying ICT laws and building a database for Asia]
I didn’t attend this session, however, the organizer of this workshop could benefit of the pilot project that was done by iGmena to: Internet Legislation Atlas
“The ILA aims to pinpoint opportunities for improvements and contribute to raising the awareness of concerned stakeholders, and empowering civil society to participate in the Internet policy dialogue in the regional and global level and influence the decision-making process in the local level. This is done through:

Mapping the legal landscape in each country as it relates to the Internet and civil society.
Outlining gaps and ambiguities among existing laws and regulations in relation to international human rights standards.
Highlighting opportunities for advocacy regarding Internet-related law and policy in each country drawing on international human rights standards and best practices.
Connecting civil society to resources that will help them navigate the legal environment.”

[WS12. Coping with misinformation in an era of information deluge: Who is Responsible?]

Who is responsible: basically, every single person of us who share information either verbally, by email or through social media networks without authenticating it.
The challenge that we all face that the misinformation are getting smarter and hard to even an intelligent person to identify it. For example, the AI deep fake application which is available to anyone easy to use. This application can give anyone the tool to take a photo and use audio to make a video. This application has a double edge sword as artist and ad producer could be creative to do very creative videos but on the other hand, those who produce disinformation could use it as well to mislead the general public.

As disinformation are using AI, Many issues must be considered.
-Increase evidence-based policy research as there is a lack of evidence on the impact or influence of the use of technology or AI for disinformation campaigns.
-Clickbait and targeted advertising business models that are based on the promotion of sensationalist news as a means of competing in the market for individuals’ attention. Big companies employ algorithms that exploit user data. Hence, there is a need to have serious discussions on how to protect users data.
Hence Data protection
If the illegal collection and access to users’ data is stopped, micro-targeted disinformation campaigns would lose much of their effectiveness and threat potential. As is already clear, weak data protection rules and enforcement not only impact user privacy and choice, but also lead to constant monitoring, profiling, and “nudging” towards political and economic decisions.

[WS35. Language Diversity in Asia-Pacific: Challenges towards Digital Dividends]
According to UNESCO, there are more than 6000 languages worldwide.
To have a practical approach to digital language diversity and local content is to adopt policies that encourage local content producers. Countries in APAC region adopted the official languages, hence all content hast to depend on those languages and reduce the dependency on content produced from the developed countries.
This approach might put some communities into a disadvantage. But empowering minorities to produce their content and in their own languages will help to preserve it.

On another aspect, algorithm bias in search engines does create a divide based on the language the users are searching with.

The challenging of implementing good eGovernment services in developing economies is the infrastructure and reaching to the last mile.
Hence along with the development of the portal, the Government has to develop the right strategies to the grantee that their e-services do reach out to every single citizen. It might be done by allocating certain stations in the remote areas.

Unfortunately, our people are not even familiar with the basic concepts of digital literacy and digital citizenship. So, there is a dire need to educate and aware our public.
Including digital literacy in school and college curriculums, funding organizations that are working in this regard and hosting more initiatives and platforms to educate people are necessary to make internet a safe space for all.
Moreover, as discussed in one of the sessions, a multi stakeholder approach to regulate Internet without harming the rights of freedom of speech and expression has become a need of the hour.

Children living in APAC are underrepresented in the development of internet frameworks. Coupled with gender stereotypes, inadequate digital literacy movements in developing areas render them and their peers susceptible to the dangers of the internet. The promotion of online safety is best addressed by those who have first-hand experience, users. Children in APAC must be given an avenue to raise out their concerns and provide feedback on the adjustments made in internet policies. Youth-focused programs should not just be limited to knowledge enhancement with digital literacy and bridging the digital gap. Initiatives like youth empowerment camps will better train them to take control of their digital lives. Code of conduct is best inculcated from a young age. Following this, youths should be encouraged to partake in IGFs as a major stakeholder. Listening to children’s perspectives is important. This can be treated as a form of investment for the inclusivity and progressiveness of the digital world as they may be a creator and innovator in the next future of IT. Being insightful of the corresponding risks that come with their activities is not enough. They need to equip others with the skills of online safety while enjoying the innovation of technology and promulgate the positive benefit of a healthy digital life. The virtual and physical space are merging, we need empathy not apathy. Even though they are considered one of the most vulnerable, children cannot be protected all the time and need to learn to step out of their comfort zones. Age should never be a deterring factor but rather a motivator for change. In terms of governance, child protection systems and regulations need to be enforced for fortification of child safety while interacting in online games. Child exploitation is one of the forefront ethical issues of the digital world; therefore, prioritizing the appropriate digital citizenship and integrating sexual education in the national educational curriculum is a must. Teaching rights in digital world consequently teaches rights in the physical world. Parents and teachers collaborate to make up a child’s support system. Empowering and educating them fortifies learning at home and in school. Adults have a responsibility to guide children. Gaming and social media platforms should invest in real age verification system to provide a clear and accessible reporting mechanism and to serve as another form of support system for young users. Children should learn not only to keep safe from danger but recognize the opportunity to consume and create content that combat these dangers. 

In my opinion, I feel that while choosing the venue for such forum where multistakeholder, inclusion and bottoms up approach is valued, I feel that APrIGF also needs to consider the economic condition of every economy in Asia Pacific Regions so that participants from low economic countries are not left out and included in the discussion.

In my opinion, the impact of emerging technologies on the digital divide is not inherently positive or negative,it largely depends on various factors, including accessibility, affordability, education, and policy decisions. Technologies with values are preferable than technologies for profit.

We also need to think about the factors like content quality, engagement with the community, and a commitment to unbiased reporting when we talk about community radio. Additionally, supporting community radio financially and through training can enhance its impact and sustainability.

The organisation or any government and government agencies collecting biometric data must ensure that an individual has the right to access, correct, and delete the biometric data. This empowers individuals to have control over their personal information.

When people are sending the satellite into the space, who is responsible for the greenhouse gases emitted into the environment and space debris? These are some of the concerns that need to be discussed and think of.

It is important that we should firstly build the trust among multistakeholder group. There should be trust between all the regional organisations, governments, civil society so that our global digital landscape is built on trust.

To prevent account takeovers via SIM card swapping, implementing biometric verification during SIM issuance is a strong solution. This would add a secure layer of identity verification, making it harder for attackers to fraudulently obtain a SIM card. Additionally, holding telecom providers liable if important accounts are hacked due to SIM swapping can incentivize them to enhance security measures, ensuring greater protection for users. This dual approach can significantly reduce the risk of SIM card fraud and protect users’ sensitive accounts.

End-to-end encryption should be encouraged as it protects users’ privacy and data integrity. While this makes it harder to monitor content directly, it also strengthens overall cybersecurity, reducing the risk of unauthorized access.

A clear legal framework is essential to define the boundaries of such access. This framework should include:

Strict oversight: Independent oversight bodies should be established to ensure that any access is justified and not abused.
Judicial approval: Access to content should require judicial approval, ensuring a checks-and-balances system.
Transparency and Accountability: Telecoms and governments should be transparent about their monitoring practices and accountable for any breaches of privacy.

Promote the development and use of technology that incorporates privacy by design, ensuring that privacy is built into the core of digital tools and services.

If certain applications are perceived to pose national security concerns, cybersecurity laws should be crafted to hold the owners of these applications fully liable for any risks or breaches. This liability ensures that application developers and operators maintain high standards of security and transparency, mitigating potential threats without resorting to broad restrictions that could compromise internet freedom. By focusing on accountability and compliance with stringent security requirements, such laws can protect national security while preserving the open and free nature of the internet. This approach ensures that security measures target specific risks, rather than imposing unnecessary limitations on digital freedoms.

To ensure the validity and trustworthiness of fact-checking, mechanisms should include independent third-party audits, certification standards, and ongoing reviews for fact-checkers. Fact-checking organizations should disclose their methodologies and provide source links for transparency. A peer review system among fact-checkers, public feedback channels, and community ratings can enhance accountability. Additionally, a code of ethics, monitored by regional oversight committees, should govern fact-checkers, with regular reports and corrective actions to maintain high standards and public trust.

Harmonizing regional approaches to improve social media accountability and safety involves creating consistent policies, fostering collaboration, and implementing shared frameworks across different jurisdictions. This can be achieved by developing common standards for content moderation, data privacy, and transparency that align with international human rights principles. Regional coalitions should promote cooperation among governments, tech companies, and civil society to address challenges like misinformation, hate speech, and online harassment. Establishing regional oversight bodies or forums can facilitate dialogue, monitor compliance, and ensure that platforms adhere to these standards. Additionally, investing in digital literacy and public awareness campaigns can empower users to engage safely and responsibly online, while legal frameworks should be adaptable to address emerging threats without compromising freedom of expression.

Educating people about the ethical use of social media platforms such as Meta, Google, and TikTok is of paramount importance. As Edmon Chung highlighted, posting private information on these platforms, which are privately owned but publicly accessible, can lead to Technology-Facilitated Gender-Based Violence (TFGBV). Sharing personally identifiable information, personal videos, and photos online can have serious consequences. Therefore, it is crucial to educate individuals about safe and responsible social media use through various channels to prevent TFGBV and protect personal privacy.

In the context of Internet fragmentation, Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) often set minimum bandwidth requirements for cache servers to be available in a country. For smaller countries like Bhutan, which have limited populations and lower bandwidth, this can lead to the absence of local caching servers. As a result, users in such regions may experience restricted access to certain content or slower load times, contributing to a fragmented experience where content availability and performance differ compared to other regions with better infrastructure.

I’ve previously discussed the neglect of small ISPs by big tech companies during townhall sessions, highlighting their critical role in providing internet access to unreached and remote areas. Building resilient internet infrastructure for these small ISPs is important, even though they generate less income. It is crucial that big tech companies give equal importance and attention to these ISPs. We should work together to bridge the digital gap and uphold human rights, rather than focusing solely on profit.

There is a digital gap in South Asia, particularly in countries like Bhutan, where urban centers such as Thimphu have better internet connectivity and access to digital services. In contrast, rural and remote areas often lack the same level of infrastructure, resulting in limited or no access to the internet. This digital gap is primarily caused by the rugged terrain, which makes it difficult to build and maintain digital infrastructure, particularly in remote and mountainous regions. The cost of internet services and digital devices can be prohibitive for many Bhutanese, especially in rural areas. This economic barrier further widens the gap between those who can afford to access digital services and those who cannot. In a country like Bhutan, Starlink could potentially improve internet accessibility in rural areas. The lack of local content and services that cater specifically to Bhutanese users also contributes to the digital divide. Limited access to relevant content in local languages or content tailored to the needs of the Bhutanese population can hinder effective internet use.

The government or telecom regulators in the country should develop a framework requiring every ISP and telecom provider to establish a Business Continuity Plan (BCP) to ensure Disaster Recovery (DR) sites are in place. Additionally, these ISPs should have multiple routes to their uplinks so that the entire internet is not disrupted during disasters. They should also consider using one of the uplinks as Starlink to ensure that communication is maintained even in the event of a disaster.

Implement DNS-over-HTTPS (DoH) and DNS-over-TLS (DoT) to encrypt DNS queries, protecting users from eavesdropping and manipulation by third parties. This would help mitigate some forms of DNS-based censorship by making it harder for intermediaries to monitor or block specific DNS requests.

Ensuring that the organizing economy provides visas for all attendees is indeed vital for promoting inclusivity and upholding the multistakeholder model at APrIGF. This approach would ensure that participants from various regions and backgrounds can attend, fostering a more diverse and representative dialogue. It also aligns with the principles of openness and accessibility that are central to the values of Internet governance.

already held, should be changed to past tense

If possible, there should be included the number of participation in this para before mentioning theme, both online and in-person participation which will give a scope of the conference

its best to highlight prominent issues here, so readers from the very start know the kind of issues being discussed throughout the report

Under this track, following workshops explored some of the …

its better to use correct form of Covid as COVID-19 throughout the document

*to be inclusive

repetition of word “more” suggestion delete

can be rephrased as disinformation has become one of …… on the internet all over the world particularly Asia

*tool

Use full form

The Pacific’s rich cultural diversity and deep connection to the environment make it essential that these technologies are implemented in a way that respects local traditions, upholds human rights, and preserves natural resources.

In the Broader Pacific region, how can we develop and implement data interoperability standards that ensure seamless data sharing while promoting inclusiveness and equitable access to data for all people? What lessons can we draw from global examples to address challenges and ensure that this efforts are both securely and culturally sensitive.

Miss information and Disinformation is not just reviewing information. It is to raise awareness on platforms. Technology plays vital roles in disinformation.
Technology also plays a vital role in fact Checking. Can the Asia pacific fact Checking with collaboration with the sub region of Pacific fact Checking  engage more awareness of their roles within NGOs and Church groups including Governments  in the Pacific so we can have more organizations joining in. 

How can a AI module be build in a inclusive way taking in off various representative of identification from Asia to Pacific

I believe this was spoken by one of the speaker or the panel.
 

Taiwan’s experience with health data governance, particularly through constitutional litigation led by the Taiwan Association for Human Rights (TAHR), underscores the importance of robust legal frameworks that balance public interest with data subjects’ rights. In the pacific there is no current Act to protect Data, In Papua New Guinea our National data Governance and Data Protection Policy was just passed, we are drafting instructions for a Data Protection Act in the coming year. This is a good case scenario the pacific can learn from Taiwan by adopting clear legal safeguards and accountability measures that protect personal data while enabling its use for public good. Civil society plays a crucial role in this process by advocating for transparency, ensuring that data governance policies prioritize individual rights, and holding governments and institutions accountable for ethical data practices.

The latest report by UN Women and UNFPA in 2021 indicates that online misogyny has risen since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. This includes trolling, sexual harassment, and victim blaming….

This is quite relevant as the spread of health-related misinformation and scare have been running rampant on the internet, especially on social media platforms where anyone and everyone can write anything. This adds to the stress and eventually, physician burnout of having to correct the wrong notions (and even deal with the hardheadedness) of the general public.

I strongly agree that discussions about ethical AI in the Asia Pacific region must include the voices of people from local/marginalized communities. Coming from the medical field, I often find it challenging to communicate effectively and gather a complete history of a patient’s present illness, along with other pertinent information, especially if we do not speak the same local language. Knowing the language of your patient allows you to connect with them on a much deeper level, fostering trust and understanding. These difficulties can sometimes hinder my ability to build that essential connection. Integrating AI into healthcare could significantly enhance our ability to establish a more personal and empathetic relationship with patients. By assisting with language barriers, understanding cultural nuances, and even providing real-time insights, AI could bridge the gap between healthcare providers and patients, ultimately improving patient outcomes and satisfaction.

Parents play a critical role in setting online boundaries for children as they serve as their first teachers in life. As technology evolves, the need for comprehensive and multifaceted solutions to online safety issues becomes increasingly important. This highlights the importance of ongoing research to improve cyberspace policies and ensure they are adaptable to new challenges. Implementing these policies is complex due to the diversity in individual behaviors and personalities, requiring tailored approaches that consider the unique needs of each child. Collaborative efforts among policymakers, educators, tech companies, and other relevant stakeholders are essential to create a safer online environment for the younger generation.

People in many countries still do not recognize the cert, both cyber attacks, people should know.

Should be done public guide. To let the public know what the cert is responsible for, why should you know?

Make a public guide about Cybersecurity For the common people.

The Cybersecurity public guide and Cert public guide are must not use a lot of manual text, use the infographic to explain.

Need to publicize why large organizations should have their own cert.

Consult the public before issuing Internet control or censorship rules. Because some cases do too unnecessarily. Violations of privacy and privacy

In Thailand I very concerned about this concept. “The Council for the Advancement of the Reform of the Nation,” with the intention of “fully regulating Social Media,” with excessive censorship or blockade, violating privacy rights, being able to sneak information at any time, blocking its services. nation By claiming that the protection of the internet and games addict.

(News link (in thai) https://www.beartai.com/news/179268 )

I want thailand Should be like this

The voice of a Thai youth on IGF and internet governance. #APrIGF2017 #APrIGF pic.twitter.com/uGcLMwVTps

— EMPOWER (@empowermalaysia) July 29, 2017

I do not agree to have access to services blocked. But it should guide the public to know how to prevent the danger of content on the Internet for your children, however, should be better. Because the current system to support parents are already good. But parents lack knowledge.

I think : I do not agree to have access to services blocked. But it should guide the public to know how to prevent the danger of content on the Internet for your children, however, should be better. Because the current system to support parents are already good. But parents lack knowledge.

Before the law governing the use of online media, content censorship. Should ask people first. Because there are times when the government has a broader law or violated the privacy rights too.

I think : Before the law governing the use of online media, content censorship. Should ask people first. Because there are times when the government has a broader law or violated the privacy rights too.

Compromised IoT devices, such as webcams or even lightbulbs, can be used to form “botnets”, networks of Internet-connected externally controlled devices. These devices, referred to in this context as “bots”, are often infected with malicious software and used for disruptive or criminal purposes. Understanding the growing impact that IoT security has on the Internet and its users is critical for safeguarding the future of the Internet. IoT manufacturers, IoT service providers, users, standards developing organizations (SDOs), policymakers, and regulators will all need to take action to protect against threats to Internet infrastructure.

One of the key obstacles to improving internet penetration in rural and remote areas is last mile connectivity. The lack of commercial viability, as well as huge network roll-out costs worry operators who are reluctant to make the necessary investments. Community Networks are considered as an excellent supplement solution to address last mile connectivity. They do require a strong support from policy makers and some of the steps that could be taken in this regards are:
1. Streamline or eliminate related regulatory requirements, especially those that are not applicable to small, community-based networks.
2. Expand universal service and other public funding opportunities, and publicize / include community networks as eligible for funding through universal service fund.
3. Introduce approaches to provide spectrum access and innovative licensing for community network operators.
4. Encourage community initiatives to build networks aiming to reduce digital divide.

It is also important to consider that not one solution can work / can apply everywhere and the most critical aspect behind success of a community network is ‘sustainability’ that usually comes with a supporting business model.

One of the issues discussed during the week was routing security. Every year, thousands of routing incidents occur, each with the potential to harm user trust and handicap the Internet’s potential.

Spoofed Internet traffic is a persistent threat, and often the root cause of reflection Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks.All stakeholders including policymakers, must take steps to strengthen the security of the global routing system.

Best practices, like the Mutually Agreed Norms for Routing Security, provide a clear path for network operators to take towards addressing these routing threats.

While we action on cybersecurity threats on the Internet application layer, we cannot fail to Protect the Core (technical layer)

[WS55.Community Networks] One of the key obstacles to improving internet penetration in rural and remote areas is last mile connectivity. The lack of commercial viability, as well as huge network roll-out costs worry operators who are reluctant to make the necessary investments

Policy makers and Regulators can facilitate initiatives like Community Networks to bridge last mile connectivity gaps by:

– Streamlining or eliminating regulatory requirements, especially those that are not applicable to small, community-based networks.
– Provide tax, customs, regulatory, and licensing fee exemptions.
– Provide clear, public guidance on the specific policies and regulatory requirements (and exemptions) for community networks.
– Expand universal service and other public funding opportunities to community networks.
– Introduce innovative approaches for licensing and spectrum access

The United Nations estimates that one in six people live with disability – that is a total of 650 million women, men and children in the Asia-Pacific region.

People with Disability (PWDs) face various challenges in accessing the Internet based on their impairment. For example, persons with visual impairments can face compatibility challenges when screen reader software is used to access visual displays that are not labelled or hyperlinks that do not make sense when read out of context.

If designers of digital technologies and content keep accessibility at the heart of design activities, people with disability can be empowered to do more themselves, without having to rely on others. In contrast, if designers miss out on accessibility, they continue to develop products and content that increases barriers for people with disability when using digital technologies and content.

Although, there are known and easy to implement guidelines to address the barriers, many developers of web content, mobile applications and related digital technologies usually do not consider people with disability while designing or updating their products. With such a large number of the population with disabilities, businesses are potentially losing out if accessibility issues are not considered, and the universal design concept is not understood and adopted. Universal design means that businesses improving consumer products such as hardware, software, websites and applications to make them usable for a broader section of the community including people with disability, in turn, gain reach to a much larger consumer base in more situations.

It is very important to recognize PWDs as one of the stakeholders in the development of policies and technologies, and to educate the community (especially content developers) about the importance of equal access for PWDs. Promoting digital accessibility contributes to the achievement of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and ensure that the rights of PWDs are met.

Diminishing trust is a challenge for the Internet – all of the creativity and innovation we see on the Internet is based on users trust. Internet of Things (IoTs) will play a crucial role in maintaining this trust.

Poorly secured IoT devices and services can serve as entry points for cyber attacks, compromising sensitive data and threatening the safety of individual users. Understanding the growing impact that IoT security has on the Internet and its users is critical for safeguarding the future of the Internet.

Many organizations are working hard on IoT security and privacy issues, but there is a need for all stakeholders, including policymakers, manufacturers, and consumers, to make good choices about the future of IoT and security.

This section should be framed from a human rights perspective. This is actually a dangerous section as some repressive Asia Pacific countries use these words “cultural differences” or “cultural specificities” as excuse to not respect human rights and even violate human rights.