00:00:02 Domen Savič / Citizen D 

Welcome everybody. It’s the 10th of October 2023 and you’re listening to this episode of Citizen D podcast on the 15th of October 2023. We’re cutting it really close today, with us is Callum Voge, director of government affairs and advocacy at the Internet Society… and obviously, we’re going to talk about the state of the Internet. So first, hello, Callum. 

00:00:26 Callum Voge 

Hello, thanks for having me here, Domen. 

00:00:29 Domen Savič / Citizen D 

Before we dive into the prepared questions, I’d like to hear your thoughts on the intersection between technology and politics. This is sort of a broad umbrella topic we’re going to be addressing today. I know it’s extremely broad, but I’m curious to hear your thoughts on the issue on what are some of the elements that Internet is turning into a prime political topic worldwide? 

00:01:01 Callum Voge 

Yeah, sure. Thank you. Thanks for the question, Domen. So you know, for us at the Internet Society… just to explain a little bit… we’re a global nonprofit organization that’s focused on building, promoting and defending the Internet, our kind of slogan is that the Internet should be for, for everyone. And I think what makes our organization kind of unique is that we have a really strong global community. So you know, in addition to the headquarters, which is where I work we have over 100 and 10 chapters around the world, as well as over 100,000 individual members that kind of support our cause and believe in our issue and our kind of vision for the Internet, and I think …to answer your question why that’s compelling not just for us, but for our community of supporters is that the Internet and digital topics are just such a fast moving field. You know things are developing very quickly and the reason that they’re intersecting with politics is that we see every issue, case or political issue being amplified or kind of echoed on the Internet. So when we’re deciding about these issues in real life, there’s always a digital element that also needs to be decided. So I think they’re really interlinked when it comes to you know things like illegal content, legal content, hate speech… You know, health rights. These are all actually being amplified on the Internet as well. So I think that’s why we care about it. That’s why our supporters care about it and probably a little bit of what we’re going to talk about today, I guess. 

00:02:30 Domen Savič / Citizen D 

Great, sure. But to sort of further this question or to take a deep dive, so, these issues of hate speech, of privacy, of security of… all these issues have been around, I’m not going to say for centuries but for a while, right, but now it seems that the debate is moving from this fair and coherent battlefield, where you had the good guys on one side and good guys would be, in the past at least, digital intermediaries or big tech companies. And on the bad side, you would have the evil governments. Right now, it seems like the the battlefield is sort of murkier in terms that there’s no good guys here, but at the same time, you know, everybody’s pulling to their side. So, what do you think, how did we come to this situation, where to put it, a bit paranoid, who to trust regarding these issues? 

00:03:45 Callum Voge 

Yeah, definitely. I mean, yeah, if you compare it to the past, I think it is a lot murkier, right, because I think there’s a better understanding about the different actors. You mentioned the big tech providers, the government, good guys and bad guys, it’s all kind of twisted in our minds and I think that kind of lack of trust is what is at the heart of this. 

I think that pandemic accelerated public awareness of this issue, with us moving so many of our activities online and this process was already happening before, but of course just accelerated so quickly during the pandemic. And I think you know that really is kind of what motiva ted, you know, a lot more scrutiny I guess on the actions of different players and the understanding that there are, of course, business interests behind everything.

So it’s not as simple as good guys, bad guys, someone who might be your enemy in one field might be your partner in another field because you have shared values related to something. So, as you said, it’s not black and white anymore. And I think it makes it interesting.  

I really enjoy working in this area, but for sure it makes it very challenging as well. But yeah, I would say the public awareness is a key kind of aspect here, which of course then echoes up to policymakers, you know, who have their own views on big tech and the relationship between them, big tech and the public. So yeah, very, very fast-moving space. 

00:05:09 Domen Savič / Citizen D 

And speaking of privacy and encryption and public awareness, your organization, the Internet Society is participating in the global encryption day that is planned for the 21st of October this year. And it focuses on the importance of privacy and secure data transfer and security in that regard. And again, you know, we are seeing more and more regulation proposals in US, in the European Union, but also more global to sort of address the issue or try to, not to destroy encryption but to weaken it, right, so again to start us off, why did encryption become such a huge topic, and why is it such an uphill battle to just say, OK, you know, we’re going to encrypt everything end to end permanently and that’s not up for a discussion anymore. 

00:06:18 Callum Voge 

Yeah, sure. So, yeah, I’m, I’m glad you gave a shout out to global encryption day. As I said, it’s on October 21st, so its approaching very quickly. You know that’s an initiative that we at the Internet Society, we care a lot about and something we were involved in from the beginning. So, we’re one of the founding organizations of the Global Encryption Coalition, which is a coalition of 350 organizations around the world from 104 countries, which you know at the heart of it, has its mission to protect encryption when it is under threat, but also to support companies that do offer encryption to their users. So we want to see more encryption everywhere, basically, if you put it simply. But you know why this is a tricky topic? Or why it is getting so much attention? 

Now, well, the truth is that this is not a new debate. This is an old debate which has kind of reared its head a few different times. So, in the early days the debate was very focused in the US, especially on terrorist content. Terrorist content, online encryption, could be a tool used to give privacy not only to normal people, but also terrorists… they would say, right? And this is an issue for law enforcement and they need to access data to get and do their prosecutions right. That debate didn’t work. Back in the day, I think one of the main reasons would be that terrorist content actually wants to be public. It wants to be seen by many people to amplify messages. 

And so actually the arguments with the justifications were not very convincing at that time. And so, the debate kind of died, but now we see it reemerging and the focus has shifted more to online safety as far as you know, child sexual abuse and some activities that actually do happen more in kind of private for example encrypted environments. 

This is something that, of course, law enforcement cares a lot about. And so that really has, as you said, kind of pushed for a lot of these new regulations coming in. As you mentioned, they’re kind of around the world. 

I think the interesting thing here is that the leading countries are actually very established democracies, so like two that I would point out would be the UK online safety bill, which was actually passed e