This workshop will explore efforts by civil society organizations in the global South, with a particular focus on Latin America, in challenging information controls and making meaningful impact on freedom of expression. We believe this topic is central to the “Internet and Human Rights” sub-theme, and will contribute to ongoing efforts to ensure the Internet is preserved as a free medium to share and access information.
The workshop will include participants from government and the private sector, who are tasked with formulating and implementing information controls policies, and provide them with an avenue to discuss the impact of these policies with civil society counterparts.
Citizen Lab defines information controls as actions conducted in or through information and communications technologies, which seek to deny (such as web filtering), disrupt (such as denial-of-service attacks), shape (such as throttling), secure (such as through encryption or circumvention) or monitor (such as passive or targeted surveillance) information for political ends. The workshop aims for a multistakeholder discussion concerning the next billion users on issues of online security, privacy, and freedom, thereby allowing them to exchange knowledge and solutions, and facilitating new collaborations.
Participants will share experiences from Latin America, given that the 2015 IGF is situated in Brazil, while also including varying perspectives from other regions of the world. We intend for the session to be as interactive as possible via the Birds of a Feather format, with the assistance of the co-moderators, to set up the room for group discussion. This will include online participation using IGF’s remote conferencing solutions.
