Internet & Digital Ecosystem Alliance

Europe is at the forefront of the global debate about data protection and privacy. Unfortunately that debate is characterised more by hyberbole and scaremongering than real discussion. Europe deserves better.

We need a paradigm shift away from a world where everyone is 'fair game' for unlimited surveillance by every country except (perhaps) our own. That requires very powerful interests to give up power they have which won't happen unless they get something they need more in exchange. This is a proposal for how to make that happen.

The Co:llaboratory's publication "Multistakeholder Internet Governance (MIND) 7th edition focusses on privacy. IDEA's Nick Ashton-Hart is a respondent to Peter Schaar, Chairman of the European Academy for Freedom of Information and Data Protection, and his proposition "The Internet and Big Data: Incompatible with Data Protection?"

Nick's response "The Internet is not incompatible with data protection, but the debate we currently have about privacy largely is" can be read by clicking the headline above. The entire MIND volume may be retrieved here in various formats.

We need a common understanding of what it means — and what it doesn't. Here's one proposal for how to do that.

The worldwide public discussion about surveillance produced by the Snowden revelations has so far largely missed a major strategic fault with national security arguments for continued mass surveillance: that economic damage to the technology sector but more fundamentally to the wider economy is a likely result.

The Internet policy community doesn't often think of trade rules as an opportunity - but it is. Here's why.

We have a paradigm for surveillance that's fit for the analogue past, not the digital present, let alone the future. The internet cannot fix that problem - but using it to try can certainly screw up the Internet.