[governance] Press Statement from Privacy and Security Working Group on Subcomm A

[Ralf Bendrath]

FYI. Just sent it to CONGO.
Ralf

---------------------

30 September 2005

The Civil Society Privacy and Security Working Group issues the following
statement at the closing of the 3rd Preparatory COnference of the World
Summit on the Information Society (WSIS):

We, together with the Human Right Caucus, were very concerend about a new
paragraph that would condemn the use of the Internet for terrorist
purposes. We issued our protest, criticizing the vague language that would
have opened it to all kinds of arbitrary interpretation and misuse, and
the lack of any reference to human rights protection. We are satisfied
that our calls were heard. The current version with the paragraph cut down
to one short sentence is much more acceptable, especially because of the
reference to human rights protection. We still are not convinced that the
proble of terrorism belongs into an "Internet governance" document, as
nobody would put a reference on the "terrorist use of streets" into a
summit document on public trasportation infrastructures. We would have
preferred a language that makes clear the positive contribution of the
Internet for international solidarity, understanding and tolerance.

We are happy to find much better and more comprehensive language on
privacy protection in the current draft Tunis documents than in the WSIS
Geneva Declaration of 2003. We would have preferred to see the language
originally proposed by the Working Group on Internet Governance (WGIG) and
the chairman of the respective subcommittee B, which called all
governments for "legislation on privacy and/or data protection". The
version agreed upon now unfortunately is less binding. On the other hand
it takes into account all measures available for privacy protection to all
stakeholders.

It is important now to seriously follow up on this and establish a Global
Privacy Forum on a multi-stakeholder basis, as was suggested by the recent
Montreux Declaration of Data Protection and Privacy Commissioners and by
the International Working Group on Data Protection in Telecommunications.

The Privacy and Security Working Group will closely monitor further
developments before and after the Tunis summit, and will make its
contribution to a serious follow-up process on the respective parts of the
summit documents.

Contact:
Ralf Bendrath
<bendrath at zedat.fu-berlin.de>
Tel. +49-179-215 4614
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