Prism Took Center Stage at EuroDIG

LISBON, Portugal -- The U.S. surveillance program Prism, modes of cross-border, global regulation and net neutrality were among the top issues of this year’s European Dialogue on Internet Governance (EuroDIG). The EuroDIG is the European version of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) of the U.N., supported by the Council of Europe, the European Commission and several EU governments.

"It is not a bad thing that we have this debate now,” said Olof Ehrenkrona, ambassador and senior advisor to the Swedish Foreign Ministry, on a panel about state surveillance. Challenged during the session on why Sweden couldn’t bring a court case against the U.K. for violating the European Convention of Human Rights, Ehrenkrona pointed to a complaint filed against his own country because of the electronic communication surveillance law that targets all communication of foreigners. “Most of us agree there is a need for surveillance, but in our societies that need must be fulfilled under certain conditions,” said Ehrenkrona. “And there is always a question underneath on the legitimacy."

Since the bulk tapping of electronic communication originated from World War II and Cold War espionage, there is a need to reconsider the status quo, especially as technology now allows the collection of such massive amounts of data, said Ehrenkrona. “I clearly agree, the lines between data collection by law enforcement agencies and security services are getting more and more blurred."

A stern warning about this came from Meryem Marzouki, activist for European Digital Rights. She pointed to the proposal on transborder data sharing that is being discussed as a change to the Convention of Cybercrime, to which the U.S. is a party. The convention “doesn’t cover intelligence services work in essence, but only law enforcement authorities. The risk is that these converge in practice,” she told us. “The trend is big data and profiling."

Pedro Verdelho from the Cybercrime Office within the Portugese Prosecutor General’s Office argued for the necessity of more flexibility for cross-border data sharing. “Some countries say the traditional way of international cooperation is no longer useful and cannot be effectively used with good results.” So flexibility is needed, he said, as some countries see it as an issue of keeping their sovereignty. The big question to Verdelho was where to regulate the flexibility, and the Council of Europe Cybercrime Convention is an existing instrument.

"What Russia proposes, instead, is some global mechanism or global framework for fighting cybercrime internationally, using the United Nations as a platform for adopting a universal convention on fighting cybercrime,” said Russian representative at a panel. Even the Tallinn Declaration would be a platform that could be considered, because it’s “closer to the Russian proposal at the U.N.,” he said. “But that is not really multistakeholder.” Linda Corugedo Steneberg, director of DG Communications, pointed to an attempt to solve the issue of cloud computing by bilateral talks. “We will follow-up with international talks,” she said, underlining the importance of the IGF.