Dear all,
On behalf of the Content Group please find attached the final revised
Tokyo statement. Thanks to those who gave specific suggestions for
revisions: Patcha, Adam, Izumi, Chat, Guarab, Leelangi, Sakiyama. And
thanks to all who have contributed comments and thoughts to the ongoing
discussions related to point 13.
We have in some way or another incorporated almost all those other
revisions that are not related to point 13. We have also reworked the
preamble a bit to make it read better.
Regarding point 13 we took all the proposals into consideration and
narrowed it down to the original wording (Chun/Patcha) and Izumi's
suggested modification, since these both these proposals received
support from others. We also like the formulations we used in our
Bangkok and CONGO statements and for which have already received wide
endorsement. Therefore we have decided to incorporate some of those
wordings and then lead into what we have from Tokyo. To try to make a
constructive resolution to our impasse we suggest to use both "threaten"
and "compromise" together. They don't contradict each other and can
complement each other. So it would be "threaten/compromise."
So for point 13:
"13. Surveillance on people by governments, consumers by entrepreneurs,
employees by employers, by utilizing new information and communication
technologies are a severe threat to human rights. We call on all parties
to
take appropriate measures to protect the right to privacy including
freedom
from surveillance at all levels of information society. We are opposed
to any
kind of censorship imposed by anyone which restricts freedom of
expression.
Privacy and personal security should be ensured in the information
society
when promoting ICTs. Values of human rights, democracy, and freedom of
expression should never be threatened/compromised by any kind of
surveillance
and censorship."
I hope everyone can live with that since this is not a legal document
and we are not drafting legal statutes.
Yes, point 13 raises issues but we are not in a position to discuss them
fully in this statement. These implications--how can we support our
basic stand on freedom of expression, right to privacy and freedom from
surveillance while acknowledging that we have concerns about incitement
to hatred, or acts/threats of deliberate harm, slander etc and how we
can address it--have popped up before in discussions in the Bangkok
meetings and Tokyo and will likely come up again in future occasions.
I guess we should try to find more venues to discuss this and if we are
lucky come up with some common position on it in new statements or
papers.
We hope that now we can continue to add remaining endorsements. Could
you please send your endorsement back to me as soon as possible--Monday
17 5:00 pm Bangkok time latest. We would like to have as many more
endorsements as possible by then so that those going to P2 can take the
statement and endorsements with them. We don't want to encourage late
arriving endorsements but we will add them later and send updates to our
friends at P2, if that's the case.
Those going to P2 (or already there) could you please let me know who
you are so that we can send you any updates on this Tokyo statement via
email and our website.
In case some of those who have already endorsed are not on this mail
list I will forward this to endorsers in a separate message.
All best regards,
Sacha Jotisalikorn
On behalf of the Content Group
532_2.rtf