Panel: Global Standards Linked to Global Value The fundamental right to privacy has become even more important as data becomes borderless. The basic concepts may be articulated differently in different cultures, but creating structures to assure individuals have a basic level of autonomy is universal. This session will discuss mechanisms to push the work from the Madrid conference on global standards forward.

1. Republic of Tunisia
Ministry of Industry and Technologies
The 33rd International Conference of Data Protection and Privacy Commissioners
PRIVACY: The Global Age
Day 3
Panel: Global Standards Linked to Global Value
The fundamental right to privacy has become even more important as data becomes borderless. The basic
concepts may be articulated differently in different cultures, but creating structures to assure individuals
have a basic level of autonomy is universal. This session will discuss mechanisms to push the work from the
Madrid conference on global standards forward.
Moderator: Lillie Coney, Associate Director, EPIC
Speakers: Jörg Polakiewicz, Head of Human Rights Policy and Development Department, Council of Europe
José Luis Rodríguez, Director, Spanish Data Protection Agency
Moez Chakchouk, CEO, Tunisian Internet Agency
Christopher N. Olsen, Assistant Director, Division of Privacy and Identity Protection (US)
Meryem Marzouki, Researcher (CNRS-UPMC), France & EDRI
M. Chakchouk Keynote
Thank you Chairman,
I am honored to participate to this panel; I would like to thank the organizers of the
Conference for all their efforts making this leading event so successfully interesting.
First, I just want to clarify that I am neither a commissioner nor a representative of the
Tunisian National Authority for Personal Data Protection. As you may know, I am the
head of the Tunisian Internet Agency (ATI), the institution that maintained all kind of
Internet censorship and surveillance equipments during the old regime. You have to
know that since the revolution, the role of this structure, and de facto mine, is to
develop this Agency according to international best practices, this, with the respect of
the regulatory framework.
www.ati.tn Follow Us @ati_tn

2. Republic of Tunisia
Ministry of Industry and Technologies
Considering that the Tunisian Privacy and Data Protection regulatory
framework needs an update to reinforce the authority actions in the new era
characterized by the expansion of Internet services and innovative ICT-based
applications usage, I would like to emphasize the following specific remarks that I’ve
fixed during the last eight months of work in a transitional political environment:
First point: Tunisians have more focused on Internet censorship issues; they’re
mostly forgetting their rights in term of privacy and data protection. However after the
revolution, defamation (Rumors) has specifically increased particularly through social
Medias, that implies a lot of cases in the court and the judges have ordered ATI not
just to identify some Internet users but also to block their contents hosted outside of
the country. As I am speaking to you today, the agency is still fighting against a
governmental institution that asked us to censor a Facebook fan page created by one
of its former employees, this beside the “ultra-mediatized” affair of pornographic
websites censorship, a judge's decision to which we’ve made an appeal at the
highest court.
Second, social Medias are used differently from a country to another, for example, on
Facebook, Tunisians are more tolerant in accepting friendship requests from people
that they don’t even know, which could implies a lot of privacy misunderstanding that
somehow legitimated the net surveillance as “a protection”. In my point of view this is
a critical problem of an inexistent regulatory national regulation for such issue, and
ATI as a neutral and transparent IXP has stopped acting like a censorship machine
because of the contradiction between security and Internet content development
promotion.
Third, for a long period a trust problem existed between ATI and the Internet civil
society because of censorship and surveillance equipments that we’ve maintained
during decades. In the transitional post-revolution-period we started being
transparent, we showed up in many occasions our commitment to work with all
actors, towards the respect of the international regulation and best practices,
especially regarding the fundamental principles: net neutrality, freedom of
expression, privacy and data protection. But to do better, a first step would be
realizing a targeted audit (investigation); I think it’s one of the most important action
required for the actual situation in order to be able to take the right decisions for the
future of privacy and data protection in Tunisia.
www.ati.tn Follow Us @ati_tn

3. Republic of Tunisia
Ministry of Industry and Technologies
Finally, as we strongly believe in the importance of engaging and educating citizens
about their fundamental rights in our just-born democracy, I would, particularly,
highlight a fourth point that concerns many countries like mine. It is about the
international companies that provided censorship and surveillance equipments for
different political and national security reasons, and also those multinationals content
and application providers that are acting in global manner without taking into
consideration the specificity of emergent countries. In this sense, I think that they
should more consider and respect the Privacy ethics when developing & selling their
products and solutions. In fact, I fear that they only do in developed countries
because of existing regulations, as well as established cooperation mechanisms and
simply ignore those crucial principles in the emergent one like Tunisia.
Moez Chakchouk
Chairman & CEO
Tunisian Internet Agency
Mexico, Nov.3rd 2011
www.ati.tn Follow Us @ati_tn