ESRC Workshop on Civil Society Participation in Internet Governance – 23rd May 2018, Brussels

Around 50 invited delegates attend the final workshop of the Project led by Professor Alison Harcourt,  'International Profession Fora: A study of civil society organisation participation in internet governance'.

The event, entitled 'Multistakeholder participation in global Internet standard setting', takes place on 23rd May in Brussels.

The invited delegates include experts drawn from academia, SDO participants, representatives from governments, the European Commission and civil society groups.

The morning session covers conceptual work on opening new spaces for societal actors within global governance.

The afternoon session discusses key findings of the project related to civil society activism within SDOs. Key themes of the discussion include issues affecting SDO decision-making, mainly the increasing need for interoperability across sectors due to the Internet of Things, the dramatic rise in security issues and IPR. Some topical issues discussed include:

• The HTTP status code 451 “unavailable for legal reasons” - a very important development for activists working against internet censorship across the globe.
• Fingerprinting: Devices such as computers, cameras and mobile phones can be identified by remote observers based upon device users’ activity. Big data companies then sell software which ‘fingerprint’ web browsers and analyse use without users’ knowledge even when these users are aware enough to block browsing cookies and / or use VPNs. This has raised significant interest and concern from the engineering community which prompted a number of initiatives within the W3C and IETF which mitigates the identification of user devices.

Further details of speakers and topics can be found here.