IGF 2014

The paradox of the Internet for advancing human rights is well known: it has created new vistas for citizen mobilization and knowledge-sharing, yet also created new means for governments to monitor, censor, and harass. As the Internet has grown, the technical means have gone from obvious methods like blocking sites to more nuanced techniques such as DNS re-routing and use of DPI to monitor or redirect traffic. In some cases these efforts are couched within national legislative frameworks; in others they are ad hoc and sub rosa. More and more they also include political attempts in some countries to “de-legitimize” the Internet and online media as sources of information, and to control the Internet as a discursive space through spamming and trolling, or through direct pressure on private sector media or Internet companies.

Providing the tools for users to share information and protect themselves technically is an important part of preserving online freedoms, but no less important is making the normative argument for their right to use those freedoms. This interactive dialogue will take a multi-stakeholder, comparative approach to discussing the changing environment for online freedoms and how activist, media, technical, and private sector communities can work together. By bringing together various stakeholders from civil society, media, and the private sector, the session aims to spark cross-disciplinary conversations that would encourage participants and audience to think about how the Internet can be preserved as a platform that facilitates participatory democracy.