The following are the outputs of the captioning taken during an IGF intervention. Although it is largely accurate, in some cases it may be incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. It is posted as an aid, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.
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>> Hi, everyone. Welcome. We're going to take five minutes. So people are still arriving. Thank you for joining, people inside and online. Thank you.
>> RAQUEL GATTO: Hi, everyone. Good morning for those in Japan. Good afternoon, good evening for whatever part of the world everyone online is listening to us.
Welcome. This is the session about digital sovereignty in Brazil for what and for whom? My name is Raquel Gatto. I'm the vice‑president for the Internet Society Brazil chapter. And I have the pleasure here to have the president of the Internet Society Brazil chapter, Flavio Wagner on site. And online I have my colleagues who are going also to present in this session. Ana Paula Camelo from CEPI, welcome. Also online, I have the pleasure to co‑moderate this session with Pedro Lana from ISOC Brazil.
I also want to acknowledge Laurianne‑Marie Schippers online and rapporteur. As well as other members from ISOC Brazil who are on site. Thank you very much for everyone joining.
Without further ado, as my role as moderator, I'm just going to give a little bit of context in terms of why is one of the topics that Internet Society is tackling?
First of all, in the flow of the global vision that Internet Society is putting forward. Then we will have Flavio presenting about the Brazilian situation, the Brazilian scenario and how we're going to tackle the research.
And then Ana is going to give us the detailed version of this project. And then I'm opening up for questions. So we have 45 minutes to go all through.
Let me start by saying, so the question that was put on the table by the Internet Society, the international organisation, is what is the biggest threat for the Internet?
This is such a simple question in a way, but with very complex answers. And it's interesting because there was one big concern that arises from the answers that were collected. And the answer is, the splinternet. I'm not sure if everyone is familiar with that. But the splinternet is when you don't have the network of networks. The Internet is made up of these smaller networks, voluntary adoption of a common protocol that makes the Internet ‑‑ the networks ‑‑ the networking, global, secure Internet.
And when it comes to the threat to divide it, to fragment the Internet, there are multiple ways it can take place from political view. Let's say jurisdiction issues. It might be from digital sovereignty issues, digital, national security issues, from technical challenges, infrastructure challenges.
But in all of those there is a prequestion, which is what makes the Internet the Internet? And what are we going to protect from not being divided, from not being splintered.
So the Internet Society started precisely to define what are those fundamental characteristics, the main values for the Internet to be what it is. It published a policy brief back in 2020. But then it opened up an assessment, a toolkit.
It's not only describing what it is, to keep it open, globally connected, secure to all the Internet. But it is also about how you can assess what it going on in your country, in your region and so on.
And then there are now the chapters and the global community is taking up and is creating this impact briefs, which are basically documents taking one case study. For example, in Brazil, we had one case study about proposal for a bill, for a law regarding content moderation and fake news. So that's one of the examples of those impact briefs that are being published in this main project.
So taking this lead on ‑‑ so here's the biggest threat. Here's what we want to protect. Then what are the main overarching teams that we are seeing this in the public discourse?
So first of all, you have Internet fragmentation, right? It is, by nature, an ISOC DNA to take the technical considerations for Internet fragmentation.
So it's when the Internet is no longer, for example, using common protocol, when the Internet ‑‑ those smaller networks are not connected to the whole Internet is and so on.
But then it needs to be recognised that will are other forms being discussed, including here at the IGF, the policy network on Internet fragmentation is also taking up on the other concepts for Internet fragmentation which will also take the user experience in a sense and the governance, the Internet Governance fragmentation, right?
But we are not going to go in a deep dive on those yet. But just to acknowledge there is this overlapping between Internet fragmentation and digital sovereignty whereas digital sovereignty is one of the conditions, one of the situations where Internet fragmentation is taking place or risks to take place.
Then I come to the main topic of the session today, which is digital sovereignty. And all the different definitions also that you can take in this sense that digital sovereignty is a political view when we take up the nation state concept. It can be a technological matter when we're talking about the appropriation, for example, in developing countries to be more producers than just receivers.
It is also an economic issue. And it is also a power struggle in historical terms for new shapes of digital colonialism.
This is something as an overview that we wanted to bring in terms of how it has evolved the discussions in terms of assessing the risks for the Internet, getting it to understand what is the Internet that we want to protect, and what are the shapes that is taking place and the discussions on the Internet ecosystem.
And then I'm going to give the floor next to Flavio, who is going to tell us how this is taking place in Brazil scenario of the thank you very much, Flavio.
>> FLAVIO WAGNER: Thank you, Raquel. Hi, everybody. Nice to have you with us here this morning in Japan.
So Brazil is a very large country, one of the ten largest economies in the world with a strong industry in various sectors and also in a digital role. Brazil has a lot to show. And because of this context, Brazil has proposed the implemented various local regulations regarding the Internet. For instance, the so‑called Marco civil Internet bill of rights which was approved in 2014 setting a whole set of rights, principles. It's a principle‑based law.
Later on in 2019, we approved privacy law, very similar to the GDPR, for instance, in European Union. And these laws are very compatible with international standards regarding rights and duties.
There are many other discussions going on in Brazil. There are regulatory proposals being discussed in the national Congress, such as the artificial intelligence bill, the Fake News Bill for content moderation. There are many discussions in the country regarding local law on cybersecurity, various discussions on the mentions of platform regulation, not only the question of content moderation and information, but also economic issues.
There are open discussions, not already in the form of bills in the Congress but discussions about data sovereignty. This was a large it discussion when we approved the Marco civil many years ago. For instance, on data localisation, so there are discussions that come again and again in the country.
And the term digital sovereignty is cited in the Brazilian bills and public documents. If we take for instance current discussions on platform regulation and cybersecurity proposals, they include explicitly sovereignty as a strong motivation for the proposal of bills.
But, of course, this is a question that's not only a problem in Brazil, but overall, there is no clear or shared definition of what sovereignty means. There are many flavors of sovereignty. For instance, the economic issue, as Raquel has presented before, the technology question, the data sovereignty and so on.
So which then is our proposal. Next slide. Yeah. We partnered, the Brazilian chapter with the Internet Society. We partnered with CEPI, FGV in Brazil to develop a project which is partly funded by Internet Society Foundation, started about one year ago, and is going on.
And the main project objectives is to qualify the academic and public policy debate on sovereignty, starting with an analysis of the Brazilian context. Explore all the social technical dimensions of this debate and its technological and legal challenges.
Because there are so many flavors of sovereignty and sovereignty is in various proposals in the country and elsewhere, we tried to identify notions of sovereignty built from various stakeholders' narratives from various sectors. Taking into account the legal, social, economic, and politicism applications, and trying to connect this analysis of the Brazilian context, connect not only to the local level but also to the regional and global levels.
So as concrete goals, the project aims to map and discuss first whether and in which sectors the discussion on digital sovereignty has emerged as a trend. In second place, which narratives have guided this debate in an attempt to secure public support and based on which justifications? So why is sovereignty been used as a motivation to secure public support for various proposals? That are going on in Brazil.
In third place, how the relationship between digital sovereignty and the Internet takes place in the Brazilian debate. And the final goal is, how the creation or change of policies and legislative instruments are linked to these narratives from the various sectors implies local and global challenges, both in technical, political, and social terms.
As Raquel said, one of the global challenges we have is how we can avoid fragmentation. And sometimes some regulatory proposals or legislative proposals motivated by a fair claim of digital sovereignty may have unintended consequences for the fundamental correctness of the Internet. We are trying to explore those relationships.
So now I go to pass to Ana, which is online and will continue this presentation.
>> ANA PAULA CAMELO: Thank you, Flavio. Thank you, Raquel. The Brazilian context that creates the greater opportunity for our research. I may sad I couldn't be with you but I'm glad we have this online to participation that allows me to be with you from São Paulo. Thank you for attending and your time before.
As mentioned before, the digital sovereignty team is in the Brazilian legislative bills and public documents. But this is something that we are willing to work in our discussions. Can creates for us as academic researchers an important opportunity to identify and relate with understandings, as Flavio has mentioned just before.
Most cases refer to digital sovereignty related to Internet, we are also open and interested to connect our local contexts. Here is a great opportunity about our project related to this.
So if you could go to the next slide, Raquel, thank you. To achieve the goals and the objects mentioned, research is based on free sources of data and information. First, I highlighted research to collect documents and other types of publications from different sectors and to map our stakeholders in Brazilian debates. This is our main ‑‑ the base of our research.
The database built with all the documents collected has been studied with technical analysis. And we want to identify the narratives that are at play who has been part of this discussion, which instruments are considered and for what reason? At the end of the project, we will share impact brief and other documents showing all these relations and the results of this.
Alongside this we have study group with experts and researchers on the Internet Governance. And we have conducted several interviews with researchers with these debates. I must say some of our colleagues are there with you in Kyoto and online attending this. So they're also welcome to join the discussion later.
Then I can summarize this is our main methodological approach regarding the research. Now we are almost reaching the one‑year project milestone, as Flavio mentioned. In our conversations and the study group, they started even before the project. And now we are going to important and second phase of the project.
You can go one slide, another slide, please. Here you can see our project timeline as a reference. The preliminary result I will share in the next slide are based mainly on this great effort of the first year. So considering the documents mapping, and the interviews, and also the conversations and the discussions with researchers and experts.
And we are very excited that soon we will start ‑‑ we will begin an open and free online training course exploring the digital sovereignty issues, some topics that we discussed and collected and join the research. This is the third year for this experience with CEPI and ISOC Brazil has partnered together.
It works with (Audio breaking up) for applicants that want to attend the course. And the people, the students, the participants are selected based on gender, race, sector, professionals, regionals, diversity. We want and we try to make very diverse public to join the initiative of this.
We're also working a lot to have public agents and also journalists with us so we can help them to reflect the theme in their daily activities.
The course will be based on recorded lectures, suggested bibliography, and activities. And if you have interest in the end all the content and all the videos and the material will be shared at ISOC web ‑‑ ISOC Brazil and web page. It will be open content for everybody who has interest in this theme.
Also, focused in community outreach we'll have webinars, public events, and the impact brief that I have mentioned. That will be launched in the end of the project. We will share with you videos you can follow and you can know the updates about the project.
I cannot stop my participation here without talking about the main results until now that we have in the research. With the literature, the desk research with the literature review, it brings us main challenges regarding the theme and considering compatibility between traditional sovereignty of states and open and (?) nature of the Internet as Raquel has mentioned. But many of the concepts and impacts from the Global North do not necessarily apply to the reality of the Global South.
So it's a very important space for us to discuss our perspectives, our realities, and to connect all these agendas. Our effort is an ongoing task due to the theme relevance nowadays in the country. By now we have more than 245 documents gathered and analyzed, as I mentioned, regarding our methodological approach.
And this database contains bills, laws, reports from different instances and also news articles, media articles that helps us to understand how the theme that digital sovereignty has been an important issue in the Brazilian context.
Since the beginning of the mapping, it's also possible to verify and to discuss that ‑‑ using the term digital sovereignty did not provide us meaningful results when used as a key word. Then we needed to amplify our strategy and look for themes that were related to the thematic but sometimes without the explicit use of the term, so we could reach more publications that are connected to the agenda.
After this diverse and understandings are at stake, we bring them to some main context, some main understandings that it's important to share with you that are relations between digital sovereignty and self‑determination, data digital self‑determination, state power to regulate scientific development, national security, open source softwares, among others.
So it's like some of the key themes related to the discussion. But there are more. These are the main ones. And regarding the 15 semistructured interviews that we carried out, they confirm some of the results we had collected and analyzed from the desk research.
And the main ones that only when (?) indicated and he saw he could identify consensus about the definitions of digital sovereignty in Brazil. He associated it to the governance ‑‑ to the government and to the society capacity to rule the development of the country and to use digital technology to collect data.
But if he was the only one. The other 14 interviews, they shared different perceptions and all of them were very (Audio breaking up) a consensus. We don't have a common, a shared definition or shared understanding about it. But many of them associated to artificial intelligence and to misinformation, fake news agenda as the context Flavio shared in the beginning of his presentation.
So the interviews, they also provide us with very different perspectives related to political, legal, and technical lenses as Raquel mentioned. And it's interesting to say that they related at the same time, the digital sovereignty as an instrument to guarantee rights to citizens in different areas such as consumer and minority groups' rights. At the same time, we are afraid of (?) and somehow the impact outside the Brazilian, so this is something I would like to highlight.
But I'm afraid of my time. So I stop here. Reinforcing that I would like to invite you and if you have interest to follow us, CEPI and ISOC Brazil website and social network. So you can be updated about our next steps. And thank you all for your attention. I would be happy to answer any question or comments later.
>> RAQUEL GATTO: Thank you very much, Ana. And you were missed here in Japan. But next time hopefully we're all together.
So with that, we finished the presentations. And the idea just to recap on this session is to share the project that is ongoing between ISOC Brazil and CEPI FGV where we're looking into digital sovereignty, the documentation and the interviews that are being collected are going to draw a course and materials and documents that we are shaping to understand all the nuances and how the sovereignty is understood in the country. But it's also grounded into the Internet Society the global work that is being done also in relations to Internet fragmentation and the understanding of digital sovereignty worldwide.
Now our intent was not only to share what we are doing but also to collect inputs on your views and any other work that is under way that could be useful for us to consider in this project.
So I'm now opening up the microphone. There is ‑‑ thank you. Mark is going. There is a microphone ‑‑ two microphones available if anyone wants to make questions, please go ahead.
>> MARK: Hello. Mark speaking. I'm an Internet Governance consultant. Thank you for sharing the project. I have been following it. It's actually very interesting and deep.
One question that I do have is Brazil has a long tradition of not only the bills that we are discussing but a prior investment in digital sovereignty in the production of technological equipment in the development of open source code and in a series of actions that predate the current discussion.
So in a way the country was already ahead of the country, like so many other countries that preceded this movement. So has the group started looking into that more historical approach and trying to understand if that has any correlation with the current developments, or if this these are different phenomena that are happening in different places and time? Thank you.
>> RAQUEL GATTO: Thank you, Mark. I'm going to take both questions. And then go back to the presenters. Raul.
>> RAUL: My name is Raul. I have two questions. One is that I saw recently a paper published by Luca Belli from FGV about digital sovereignty in Brazil and India. And I wonder if it has any relation with this work or is it parallel line? Okay. Good. I'm seeing your faces. Because I didn't understand if it was related because it's like an anticipation of the results of the work that you are doing.
The second question is, if you are considering one possible ‑‑ you are questioning the de definition itself, digital sovereignty. One question is to find the meaning the expression. But what if the expression has no ‑‑ if it doesn't make sense at all, right?
In fact, every time I rethink about digital sovereignty, really what they are trying to speak is about digital independence or technological independence, the same way that we speak about energy or food. But it doesn't exist such thing like food sovereignty or energy sovereignty because there is no country in the world that is absolutely independent in relation to everybody. I'm just open question. Thank you.
>> RAQUEL GATTO: Thank you very much, Raul, and very good questions. I think there is another question. And then we'll go to Flavio, and I might contribute.
>> ALI: My question has to do with ‑‑
>> RAQUEL GATTO: Can you introduce yourself?
>> ALI: Definitely. I'm Ali (?) I'm also joining in discussions of the FGV ISOC in the digital sovereignty. I'm a fellow at the Institute. I'd like to hear a bit more, but allow me to ask this question. How is it going to really relate with the research conducted by the FGV CTS, because Raul ‑‑ there's a group has been looking at digital sovereignty for a long time. How can we join forces by the research conducted by São Paulo? Thank you very much.
>> RAQUEL GATTO: Thank you very much, Ali. I'm going to give a brief, putting my hat and also part of the ISOC Brazil chapter so say we invited Luca Belli. He joined one of the group sessions precisely so we could find some of the synergies in the project. Luca belly's work is focusing on digital cybersecurity so digital sovereignty is understood those of national security protection. And while we're looking into this project into a wider and broad view of digital sovereignty also including the technological issues and the political and legal implications.
I'm going to pass to Flavio. And if they want to comment, I think this is important to be clear on the parallel work that is being done. But it's not a competition. It's really that we are in this moment in Brazil where this is such an important issue that more and more research is blossoming which is a good way.
And then we're looking for the synergies on how to work together. So that's my reaction. Flavio.
>> FLAVIO WAGNER: Yeah. Raul, maybe you're not aware but the FGV is a very large academic institution, many different groups and different countries. Luca Belli is in one group and we are a partner here with FGV in São Paulo, a different group. As Raquel said, we're trying to keep dialogue with Luca Belli with his team and invited him with us. We're taking different directions, I suppose.
Regarding the question from Mark, we are looking for all documents, public documents, bills and public policies that are used explicitly, the concept of digital sovereignty as a motivation or are related to digital sovereignty. In this regard, of course, Brazil has a long past tradition of digital sovereignty approach. The development of local technologies back in the '70s and '80s, we had a very strong policy for development of local technology. So of course, this also is of interest for the project, for the mapping we are trying to build.
But this is more a historical thing. So we are more interested in what's happening now, which are the current discourses of current stakeholders and how this can impact the evolution of the Internet in the country.
Regarding the other question from Raul ‑‑
>> RAQUEL GATTO: Self‑determination. Let's put Ana and I can tackle if needed: We have more questions in a moment. Ana, do you want to make any reactions? We have more questions coming from the floor.
>> ANA PAULA CAMELO: Yes. Just brief contribution regarding the historical approach that Mark has questioned. I can say reinforce Flavio's perspective about our short‑term, I must say, interest looking to the present, looking to the ongoing controversy and debates going on. But we will be able, I'm pretty sure, to build an interesting timeline regarding the main topics and the trends related to the (?) in Brazil that I would say are very recent in the way you're framing and what you're looking for regarding the past.
So related to FGV, thank you Raquel and Flavio thank you for introducing that to your big institution but we have very different but connected centres. I would say that we are very open and connected to CTS agenda. We have great materials and research on this theme.
But in our research we are, I would say, a broader approach. We want to have this kind of understand and have this connection with CTS approach. But as the only approach on the table, we have seen other perspectives and controversial perspectives going on. So we want to understand them and go deeper inside the narratives and the main questions and issues and backgrounds, so we can also even contribute to CTS research in some way. So this is something I would like to add.
And finally, regarding the meaning that Raul shared in his question, the expression sometimes we don't have a sense at all. It's a very good point. Thank you for sharing it. And it's a personal perspective, I would say, sometimes some expressions are used like as ‑‑ people bring them to make sense to very different reasons and subjects and they connect somehow with the connection with the main core it could represent or it could make sense.
So this is one thing that we must ‑‑ we are very worried about. But the main issue, I would say, they are still connected to critical infrastructure when you say ‑‑ talk about the food and the energy. Somehow, we share this kind of relevance. They appear as relevance and let's talk about it. Let's make it happen. But something that we're discussing is that first is the words and not with concrete agendas I would say with concrete initiatives besides the discussions about AI and fake news that we've mentioned. But it's still something more discussed but without concrete impact yet. But many things are happening.
>> RAQUEL GATTO: Thank you very much, Ana. I think in regard to the second questions from Raul, if that's going to be a patchwork where you have an organised view of these meanings or if that's a crazy kaleidoscope, that's going to be at the end of the research. Then we have Milton, you want to take the floor?
>> MILTON: Sure. I missed the first part of your talk. But I know that we're having a conversation about the legitimacy of Internet Governance in the multistakeholder environment and also digital sovereignty.
I think one thing I want to ask you about, when most people talk about digital sovereignty, they think about it only for themselves or their community, right?
The problem with that is that the notion of sovereignty in a political and legal sense inherently means a kind of exclusivity. So if I have sovereignty as, let's say, the United States, then you don't. Right?
And if Brazil has sovereignty over its Internet, then Venezuela and Europe and the US don't.
So I would like to encourage you to think about the international relations aspect of sovereignty and not hold it up as some kind of fantasy where everybody can control everything for themselves, but they don't have to worry about anything else. That's just a fantasy.
And the other thing is you're all involved in ICANN, so you all know that one of the best things we did when we created ICANN was we got it out of the sovereign system. We said, names and numbers are going to be not governmentally run. So that's been very successful at making sure that certain aspects of Internet co‑ordination are not politicized.
I want to make sure people understand that the term sovereignty has an appeal to people, but it's not a one‑way street. It's going to be competing claims of sovereignty. And sometimes those claims can be ‑‑ can kick off power struggles which actually hurt things.
>> RAQUEL GATTO: That's a very, very good point, Milton. I just want to make sure that also ‑‑ to understand part of the work that we are doing right now, the first phase, let's say, is really capturing the photographs of how it's been used in the documents and how people are really seeing sovereignty. So it doesn't mean that this is the understanding that we have. But it's really capturing how it's being used.
This is going to be really important for the next phase as now we try to organise this into something that is more of a proposition of what digital sovereignty should be understood. But I think, Flavio ‑‑
>> FLAVIO WAGNER: Yeah. You missed the first part of the presentation here. The background is exactly the thing you said, Milton. We also worry about those claims of digital sovereignty, possibly hurting some fundamental aspects of the Internet. And, of course, most people when they talk about sovereignty, about self‑determination, about the local technological development or local control state of Brazilian citizens and data of public citizens. They're not aware of the implications of the legislation or regulations being posed. So this is ‑‑ we in the project are very much aware of those things. And following the line of the Internet Society approach, that digital sovereignty, if not well understood and not well implemented may hurt from the correctness of the Internet. We are very much aware of this.
>> RAQUEL GATTO: Thank you very much, Flavio. We have one last question before we wrap up. Thank you.
>> PETER BRUCK: My name is Peter Bruck, I'm the chairperson of the World Summit Awards. I'm from Austria. I initiated the data intelligence initiative. And we talked a lot about the issue of data sovereignty, especially in the context in Europe.
What Milton was saying was very interesting, because he gives us the legal definition and the legal implications. I see that the term sovereignty ‑‑ I think that this is very much reflected in some of what you have said is a way of asserting control in a situation where you don't feel that you have control.
So it is a process term in that sense. A process term on the way to see if you can empower yourself to get control over something. So you're striving for sovereignty.
And then I think this would be important is that you are then getting into a situation of negotiation with the others. And I think this is something which we need to really see. I'm very interested at the IGF and all conversations here that we are looking at things which are doable and not fantasy.
And I think it's very important that this term sovereignty is seen as a term enabling people to claim control over whatever is happening in the digital sphere on many, many different levels. So I just wanted to add this to Milton's dimension. Thank you also for your very smart conversation and reply.
>> RAQUEL GATTO: Thank you very much for this contribution. I think it's important and adds to our goal here, which is precisely to understand how, first, to understand how it's being used. And then to help educate where we want to take this from.
And then I'm going to give one minute wrap‑up to Flavio and Ana just to say a few thoughts. And then we need to close the session and go for the next.
>> FLAVIO WAGNER: Thank you, Raquel. And thank you for coming and sharing your thoughts with us. As I said, we are trying to have a photograph of what are the narratives from the different sectors in this area in Brazil and try to relate this to the global discussion on sovereignty. And just also a means to educate the people in Brazil.
So we are collecting information, and then we will spread the conclusions of the project so that the wider community, not only in Brazil, but regionally, in America, and globally so that people understand this different flavors of sovereignty and the legal and technological and social implications of those proposals and those definitions so that we are really trying to contribute to the debate and show that the implications of the different definitions of sovereignty and the different implications of public policies or legislations or regulations that are proposed to be implemented following this motivation of sovereignty.
And I close here. Thank you.
>> RAQUEL GATTO: Thank you, Flavio. Ana?
>> ANA PAULA CAMELO: I would also like to thank you all for your contribution and you're very insightful. I want to enforce that at the same time we want to look at the Brazilian context and debate. We have this go to not keep looking insight and looking at to our context and this kind of dialogue with other perspectives and other realities of other understandings and impact. They are very important for us and we will keep this ‑‑ we will keep with this aim until the end of the project to make this discussion broader, but also to contribute as Flavio mentioned, to our country. So I will reinforce you're very welcome and welcome to share feedback and other suggestions and to be connected to our research not only in this panel but after. It would be a pleasure to keep contribute. Thank you again. Raquel?
>> RAQUEL GATTO: Thank you very much, Ana, Flavio, also Pedro and those supporting online. We need to wrap up, because the next session is going to start soon. Thank you, everyone, for the contributions. We keep here at the IGF available for any conversations you want to have and further inputs for the project.
Next is legitimacy of the multistakeholders in IG spaces. Thank you very much.
(Applause)