On 13-14 September 2007 the French Commission for UNESCO, UNESCO and the Council of Europe organised the conference "Ethics and Human Rights in the Information Society" in Strasbourg, to which EDRi was invited to contribute.

This conference was the third in a cycle of regional conferences on the ethical dimensions of the information society, which aims to contribute to the WSIS process and the Internet Governance Forum (IGF). The first two regional conferences took place in Latin-America and Africa. While the Latin-American conference contributed to the exchange of views in the region, the African conference was suffering from a lack of participation of local stakeholders. There, mainly African expatriots from the USA and Europe and representatives of South Africa were present.

At the conference in Strasbourg some estimated fifty participants were present. With equality of access, freedom of expression, identity and social networks and security and governance, the presentations and discussions covered the topics of the four round table sessions on a rather global level, while the draft code of ethics presented by the organisers was hardly discussed.

Different views on codes of ethics in general were expressed in the presentations and discussions. Questions like if soft law (like codes of ethics) is the right mean to address the global challenges of the Information Society, if the different ethical standards around the world can reasonably be merged into a single code of ethics, if it had been better to choose a multi stakeholder bottom up or a closed doors top down approach were addressed in various contributions but not finally agreed on.

There was mutual consent that human rights are the core ethical basis on which any regulation of the Information Society has to be built. Unfortunately it remains questionable if all participants share the same perception of what defining human rights as the core ethical basis means in practice. While for example some consider the CoE Cybercrime Convention to be a basis for a global regulation of the Information Society (this convention lacks - amongst others - privacy and civil rights protections and covers any crime where the evidence could be in computerised form), others like EDRi (and myself) argue that this convention should be rejected and is now more dangerous than ever.

In my presentation at the security and governance round table I consequently addressed the question if all the anti terror measures adopted in the last years in Europe were proportionate to the threat stemming from terrorism in this region. To this end I presented the findings on terrorism submitted by Europol.

According to Europol "EU Terrorism Situation and Trend Report TE-SAT 2007" terrorism in the EU is basically a local problem in France (separatists in Corsica) and Spain (separatists in the Basque region). The vast majority of terrorist attacks in the EU in 2006 was carried out in these regions (419 of 498 attacks). The rest were left or right wing motivated attacks. There were no successful Islamist terrorist attacks in 2006 and the vast majority of all attacks was not intending to kill. The number of arrested individuals differs. Of the 706 suspects 257 were suspected of islamism, 226 of separatism, 52 of left wing and 15 of right wing terror. Of the approx. 260 suspects of islamist terror less than 10 % (meaning less than 26) were suspected of the preparation, planning or execution of terrorist attacks.

Given this figures it is certainly questionable if measures like:
- mandatory data retention, that infringes the human rights of all 450 million Europeans,
- the transfer of passenger name records and SWIFT financial data to the US,
- the introduction of biometric identifiers in European passports,
- the mutual access of member states to police databases (Prüm Treaty)
and
- the central EU fingerprint database, that is planned for 2008,
are proportionate to the threat stemming from terrorism in Europe.

Given the series of measures for fighting terrorism and crime limiting the freedom of individuals and infringing human rights, it is necessary to reconsider their impact on human rights, which are the foundation of our society, and to rediscover the protection of human rights as a core obligation of all European states.

To this end, a multi stakeholder approach should be taken, involving all relevant groups, governments, the private sector and civil society alike. The first steps have already been taken during the World Summit on the Information Society and the IGF. The concrete outcome will depend on how seriously this process is treated and if the results elaborated will find their way into binding policy.

Ethics and human rights in information society (13-14.09.2007)
http://portal.unesco.org/ci/en/ev.php-URL_ID=24772&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC...

UNESCO Draft Code of Ethics
http://portal.unesco.org/ci/en/files/24935/11841676611Code_of_Ethics.p...

EDRi's Contribution - The Interrelation of Human Rights and Security
http://www.unwatched.org/files/vortraege/Krisch_The_Interrelation_of_H...

German version
http://www.unwatched.org/node/633

Cybercrime Convention
http://conventions.coe.int/Treaty/Commun/QueVoulezVous.asp?NT=185&...

Eight Reasons the International Cybercrime Treaty Should be Rejected
http://www.treatywatch.org/about.html

EDRI-gram: ENDitorial: The 2001 CoE Cybercrime Convention more dangerous than ever (20.06.2007)
http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number5.12/cybercrime-convention-dangerou...

Europol, EU Terrorism Situation and Trend Report TE-SAT 2007 (03.2007)
http://www.europol.europa.eu/publications/EU_Terrorism_Situation_and_T...

(Contribution by Andreas Krisch - EDRi)