Joe Cannataci

The second session of the MAPPING Assembly (on which see earlier Katpost here) addressed mass surveillance on the internet and the balance between the interests of security and privacy, asking whether there was a need for an international treaty on the topic. Following a discussion during the coffee break, at which this Kat pressed for abrogation of the Chatham House Rule, it was decided that any speaker who is happy to be attributed as the source of his own comments should say so.  First to do so was Joe Cannataci, who gave an engaging talk (the contents of which are to be published) on whether the legal infrastructure of internet governance systems via NETmundial would fade away once consensus among interested parties coalesced. No, said Joe, internet governance systems might be expect to evolve rather than to fade away, particularly where issues like mass surveillance are involved.

There's currently a piece missing in the jigsaw from which an all-embracing internet treaty might be produced: mass surveillance. Has there been any serious discussion of this issue since Edward Snowden's revelations? It appears that the answer is "no".  Should we be sympathising with GCHQ in the United Kingdom's technical surveillance problems, or should we be keeping pressure on them and on other governments with 'extreme' surveillance policies, he asked. Have there been any UN votes in which the US, UK and Australia have been more isolated than that engineered by Brazil and Germany on this topic?

Pangaea: an apt metaphor?

So do we then need a framework convention, which does not regulate the internet but provides a list of rules as to what can or cannot be done? Any convention would be based only the internet as it currently stands -- but things change, technically and otherwise. An unfragmented, interconnected,  interoperable, secure, sustainable internet is what Netmundial calls for, but might not a system of several separate internets not do as well, perhaps with China or Iran taking their own paths and adopting different rules? Might not a fragmented internet be more trust-building, pondered Joe, taking a provocative line, and is there only one way to complete the jigsaw of an internet treaty? "Balkanisation" of the internet is actually nothing new: it has been discussed for almost the past two decades and is to some extent reinforced by our own search engine operations. "Parallel internets" can be run as distinct, parallel universes (see the splinternet entry on Wikipedia). Ultimately, Joe noted, things are cyclical: unification is followed by fragmentation, which in turn is followed by a return to unity, and so on -- like Pangaea.

In conclusion Joe asked us to dream about what an international internet treaty might contain.  It might provide for lawful monitoring, in accordance with specific criteria and procedures.  The physical means of
tapping a fibre-optic cable are the same whether you are enforcing public security or are a private individual, a factor that should be borne in mind when thinking how to control or regulate it.

Answering many questions, Joe amplified on the question of private internets: they might be privately owned or shared by a private-public partnership. The biggest problem facing them is how to appeal to their prospective market. And how do free market principles operate within this market?

The next speaker discussed the evolution of cybercrime. Unlike Joe, he did not avail himself of the Chatham House Rule opt-out, so this Kat will content himself by saying only that he looked very smart in his jacket and tie. This is what he said:

Your Fitbit: your telltale

Old-style surveillance simply doesn't work any more, now that the technology of the smartphone has been introduced. Cyber-criminals recognise the value and the accessibility of information available via the internet, particularly now that we live with the internet of things, things that not only contain our information but learn about us all the time: there are literally thousands of points of vulnerability for each of us.  Fitbits are a good example; their information may not be handy for criminals but they can give away important data for the purposes of espionage.

The speaker's interest in this topic was not limited to use of the internet alone, but covers all technological aids to crime. Three dimensional printing and toy aeroplanes are among other technologies that fall within its scope. Singapore and Dubai -- both business hubs -- are the main target areas for cybercrime. The legionnaires fetch the information, which is then worked on by cyber-analysts who sell it to investors. Information on new products, for example, can lead to the creation of  'inside information; that enables investors to gain a lead over the rest of the market.

The speaker then addressed the use of USB ports, which are increasingly found on aeroplanes. Handy for businessmen, they are even more useful for cyber-criminals. Some 'patching' with security measures has taken place, but there are no technical standards or norms for aviation security, nor any implementation model.

Always a surprise?

Mass surveillance, particularly for safety purposes such as guarding against terrorists at sports events, depends on recording and analysing of communications between criminals. The more devices are used, and the more irrelevant 'trash' is generated, the more difficult it is to detect and deal with threats.  Making an event or system 'safe' is not at all the same thing as making it 'secure'. One has to start from the assumption that one's security is compromised and that it has known vulnerabilities, otherwise it is not possible to deal with threats. Black swan theory is invoked [this deals with the effect of surprise events that are tackled only with the benefit of hindsight], since preventing damage is vastly more useful than addressing it after the event.

There is a sort of nested internet. Beneath our usual internet is the deep web -- which is like a house -- with dark net being like a room in the house. These are difficult to find and even more difficult to penetrate. Dark nets are useful for all sorts of illegal purposes, including commissioning crime and buying false passports.  Payment is usually made through Bitcoin, a decentralised currency based on open source software, leaving no trace of bank accounts, payees etc (there are more than 800 digital currencies at present).  Sites even provide for crowd-funding of assassinations.  Law enforcement agencies are mere spectators unless they can undertake technically intrusive action. The criminals are hard to find: they are young, super-educated and have not been caught before.  Dark nets are self-managed by criminals and are self-hosted, which makes it even more difficult to obtain information about criminals or serve subpoenas on them since there is no legal entitlement which enables the necessary information to be obtained [during questions, it was pointed out that not all dark nets are used for illegal purposes and that the rights of privacy and security of lawful users are entitled to respect, a point which the speaker readily conceded].

The final speaker in this session, who also chose the shelter of the Chatham House Rule, had little time to speak on account of the prolonged questioning of the earlier speaker. He looked at the prospects of a new convention on surveillance, in the context of existing documents such as the OECD guidelines, other non-binding arrangements, provisions relating to security and so forth, and reviewed complementary and conflicting policy issues including privacy, political freedom, business innovation and the use of personal data and the principle of proportionality. He also reviewed the recent ruling of the Court of Justice of the European Union in Google Spain (on which see earlier Katposts here and here), on the presumption in favour of privacy over freedom of information on the internet.

Apology: this blogger could not do justice to this talk, since he had to stop taking notes in the middle of it in order to hunt down somewhere to plug in his depleted laptop.

MAPPING is the acronym of Managing Alternatives for Privacy, Property and Internet Governance [Merpel prefers MAPPIG], a project funded by the European Commission to draw together people from different strands of life within the information sectors and allow them to discuss their differences and points of common interest. For two whole days, 20 and 21 May, over 100 invitees participated in an Extraordinary General Assembly in Rome's lovely Casa dell'Aviatore (suits and ties mandatory!) -- this Kat being among the small number of IP folk among the privacy and data protectionists, surveillance experts, internetters, governance folk and so on. This Assembly was intended to be something of a kick-start to the project and, while invitation-only, is seen as a means of identifying and inviting others to participate in what will be a four-year project.

The list of invitees (excepting this blogger, who is not qualified to comment on himself) was pretty impressive. If the EU had four corners, they could all be said to be represented, as were Europe's non-terrestrial territories. Invitees were also spotted from points beyond the EU, not excluding the United States.

Chatham House: an effective silencer?

The opening session contained the usual welcomes and explanations as to what everyone was doing here. Several minutes into this session, we were told that the Assembly was to be conducted under the Chatham House Rule, which this Kat is increasingly coming to regard as an impertinence where public money is being spent on bringing together quantities of people for a meeting at which most if not all are either repeating the positions of their employers or saying things that they have already published in print or on the internet. Merpel for once agrees, since it seems to her that the Rule is often apparently invoked as a means of making people at meetings governed by it feel more important in that they are invited to believe that they are hearing things that are so sensitive that they can't be attributed.

Be that as it may, an unnamed speaker at the opening session observed that there are two Europes -- one of the 28 Member States and another, wider one that is the Council of Europe. The latter has taken a lead in setting norms for 48 nations, particularly in the field of human rights, internet governance and cyber-crime, where its positions, agreements and judicial law-making have proved highly influential both in Europe and in over 100 countries worldwide where it has assisted in capacity-building. Interesting -- and worth a closer look.

Katfriend and occasional guest blogger Valentina Torelli  -- she of the warring chocolate cows -- has been turning her attention to new horizons, indeed to the European Commission's Horizon 2020 programme and some other initiatives that have been vested with memorable acronyms.  Haven't heard about Horizon 2020?  You may not be the only one, it seems, since not many people are talking about it -- but it is all over the internet, with a search for the words "Horizon 2020" attracting over 17 million hits.  Anyway, this is what Valentina has to tell us about, among other things, the three-dimensional shape of things to come:

Copyright in the EU: midway between heritage and new Horizons

The 2014 seems to be generating great expectations in all those enthusiasts of copyright-related matters who believe it will be a promising year for a wind of change in the European creative industry and cultural heritage.

Along with the Commission's progressive work on the draft Impact Assessment on the modernization of the EU copyright acquis , as promptly reported on this blog here, here, here and here, new horizons will open up to the EU research and innovation framework in the next seven years. This is where the Horizon 2020 programme (here) fits in, particularly for those copyright issues which may stem from it in regard to the EU's heritage and cultural assets.

Briefly, Horizon 2020 is described as a financial instrument aimed at creating a single market for knowledge, research and innovation, where the private and public sectors will match know-how and investments, particularly in the sign of digitization. Nearly €80 billion funds will be made available by the European Union within the programmefrom 2014 to 2020. In this vein, the Commission gathered all the previous EU research and innovation funding under the Horizon 2020 umbrella and launched consultations at the end of 2013, in order to contextualize  new job opportunities as well as related economic growth.

Reflective ...

Among Horizon 2020's pillars, listed here, “Societal Challenges” encompasses the Reflective Societies section which will drive the development of research and innovation activity within Europe's digital culture in the next two years (ie 2014-2015). In particular, the Reflective Societies' call for proposals addresses the issues of cultural heritage, identity formation and the intellectual, artistic, creative and historical legacy of the European Union.  As explained in the work programme this call "... will also foster the potential of digital technologies for facilitating the modelling, analysis, understanding and preservation of European cultural heritage, thus allowing richer interpretations and user experiences, as well as creative re-use".

In this regard, among all the Reflective Societies challenges, 'Advanced 3D modelling for accessing and understanding European cultural assets' (here) plays a fascinating role.  To give a couple of examples,imagine that EU researchers and/or citizens want to undertake a joint reconstruction of The Guggenheim in Bilbao and TheNeuer Zollhof in Duesseldorf, both designed by Canadian-American architect Frank O. Gehry, or that Antonio Canova's statue of Cupid and Psyche (right) be simulated in order to prevent material degradation: by means of the automated 3D modelling and analysis a new semantic-aware representation of the objects will be available for  research, interpretation and innovation, far beyond simple digital reconstruction. Besides a better understanding of the European cultural assets the direct reuse, publication and distribution of the models is a primary target of this call for proposal. Consequently, semantic-aware 3D technologies are to be developed in terms of standard format in order to achieve the widest options for the models' archiving, reusability and sustainability.

That said, interest in joining the dots between the upcoming actions in the EU copyright framework and the topics underlying the Reflective Societies projects is easily expressed.

On one hand, a strong interdependence can be found as far as both deal with copyright-protected or public-domain subject matters. In these regards, probably, the first main point is clarifying whether 3D modelling may imply any infringement of the right of reproduction, distribution and communication to the public and, thus, restriction of this activity in the absence of the right holder's authorization. If copyright concerns are to be taken into account a fundamental issue is the provision of clear rules preventing any type of overreaching practices of copyright material, provided that authors' moral rights were always preserved. Accordingly, the provision of exceptions for libraries and archives, for education purposes and for people with disabilities should also be mandatory, an issue that will be solved when a legislative text is passed by the European authorities to facilitate the harmonized cross-border distribution of cultural materials.  

Finally, with reference to the qualification of the 3D models as copyright assets, the automated nature of the modelling should entail only contractual restrictions and call into question the identification of the subjects lawfully and technically legitimated to generate the 3D representation. A different scenario may occur if the 3D models are coupled with original metadata or where the modelling of an earlier cultural asset generates a transformed work and vests it with originality, in that copyright prerogatives may arise. Possibly, in those cases questions about how to address the management of user-generated content should be answered.

Attention must also be paid to both the creation of a regulatory framework for licensing cultural and creative materials and to the solution of technical restraints given by interoperability and portability issues connected to standard technologies. Here the role of  content aggregators may be enhanced as the natural digital places where the semantic-aware 3D models can be searched and displayed. To this extent, the already tested experience of Europeana, another Commission's public funded project, will be brought into the 3D modelling projects later on. Not only is Europeana the digital hub giving access to Europe's cultural heritage, but it is also based on licensing agreements structured on the subscription of standard formats. This time, the controversial issue is whether right holders should always give consent prior to the utilization of 3D modelling upon their works or whether such authorization can be considered implied in belonging the cultural asset to heritage aggregators.

The 3D modelling representation of cultural contents may serve as the next level, after the ongoing process of their digitisation, in order to bring European history and creativity online for the sake of EU and non-EU citizens. The challenge is to give a chance to reproduce in three dimensions potentially any cultural asset according to the interested party's objectives, beyond any curatorial or general selections. Consequently, it is highly desirable that the legal issues and the economical constraints related to the 3D modelling's high costs will not limit the potential of a project positively contributing to the European identity, education and innovation.

While waiting for the close of the call for proposal, scheduled for 30 September, and for the next stage of the project, we already have an idea of how 3D models will find practical applications. Anyone who wants to plan a trip to Asturias (Spain), and to visit Oviedo's Museum of Fine Arts is strongly recommended to look first at the Europeana website, where the paintings' 3D models will be integrated once reproduced, thanks to the integration of technological solutions for imaging, detection, and digitisation of hidden elements in artworks (INSIDDE). 

If instead, you want to broad your possibilities and to create your own personalized itinerary according to your interests and before leaving your home, another new application, Cultural Heritage Experiences through Socio-personal interactions and Storytelling (CHESS), is a project co-funded by the European Commission, that aims to integrate interdisciplinary research which will drive you in a tailor-made and interactive visit in which 3D applications will also be provided.