Chema Alonso
Chief Data Officer, Telefonica.
The Industry Dialogue have just published a report on the legal framework of five countries – Colombia, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Pakistan, and Russia – which describes the existing procedures and public institutions related to freedom of expression and privacy. This study represents the diversity of its companies’ global footprint.
Other companies within the Industry Dialogue have already published other reports that are available in one online resource, which we hope will be useful to civil society organisations, academics, investors, and others who study the norms regulating government access to communications and capacity to restrict content.
Looking at the letter of these laws, some of the challenges facing our companies must be solve through an open dialogue with policymakers and governments in order to respect and protect privacy and freedom of expressions rights.
The reports reveal good practices in terms of clarity, oversight, and access to remedy. The members of the Industry Dialogue regularly participate in diverse forums worldwide where we share our experiences, the barriers we encounter or proposals we make to respect the legitimate rights of our customers. We took the opportunity to highlight some of these good policy practices during a panel discussion at the 2015 Freedom Online Conference.
We also welcome your efforts to highlight more good practices or to compare and analyze these legal frameworks, and for that reason, all of this information is available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license (CC BY-SA 4.0). We will do our best as individual companies and as a group to build on this resource and to update it periodically.
In the coming weeks, we will be presenting this resource to experts and stakeholders, starting with a discussion to take place during our quarterly meeting in London on July 1. We invite you to send us your feedback, questions, and opportunities to carry the conversation forward.
If you want to know more about Industry Dialogue activities read the 2015 Annual report here.
