[pp.int.general] Răsp.: TiSA - New "Trade in Services Agreement" being negotiated.

[ANDERSDOTTER Amelia]

Hi all,

If I could make a recommendation, please first establish what the actual problems are or could be. I've been on and off following TiSA negotiation rounds in the European Parliament (we are transmitted information by the European Commission), but it's often a bit tricky to know what the challenges could be.

In the field of ICT and electronic services, what are the European interests?

e-commerce includes also delivery services, parcels, et c. ICT includes authorisation to be a telecommunications operator (normally requirements for these licenses should be made transparent, as per the recommendation of the GNI, see also Pranesh Prakant's article below (attached). It apparently ran in NYT but I didn't try to find the link(!) :P

remind also that these forms of licensing requirements are also common in the European Union.

Other areas of interest: e-authentication, a field where EUropean constitutional requirements are often much more privacy friendly than equivalent demands in the US, where the industry is stronger.

One should look out for "fair process" terminology by rights holders and intermediary liability - what is the EU doing to protect that here? Referring back to the copyright consultation and particularly respnses to questions 76 and 73 would be good here (if I recall correctly, its somewhere between 72-77 in either case). If we can show that many citizens and stakeholders feel that intermediary liability for copyright infringement is unsuitable, then we could actually have an impact on that.

I think we may have a team working on automatic handling of copyright consultation responses now, but now sure how quickly they're progressing. You can anyway find stuff here for your own scripting foo: http://ec.europa.eu/internal_market/consultations/2013/copyright-rules/index_en.htm

best regards,

Amelia

=== attached ===

> As bad as the IT Act is, legally the government has done far worse.  In the licences that the Department of Telecommunications grants ISPs, cellular providers, etc., there are provisions that require them to provide direct access to all communications data and content even without a warrant, which is not permitted by the existing laws on interception.  The licences also force cellular providers to have encryption of less than 40 bits.  (Since GSM network encryption systems like A5/1, A5/2, and A5/3 have a fixed encryption bit length of 64 bits, providers seemingly use A5/0, i.e. no encryption, thus meaning any person — not just the government — can use off-the-air interception techniques to listen to your calls.)  
>
> As per rules made by the government, cybercafes — but not phone booth operators — are required to maintain detailed records of clients' identity proofs, photographs, and the websites they have visited, for a minimum period of one year.  Under the rules designed as India's data protection law (oh, the irony!), sensitive personal data has to be shared with government agencies, if required for "purpose of verification of identity, or for prevention, detection, investigation including cyber incidents, prosecution, and punishment of offences".  Along similar lines, in the rules meant to say when an Internet intermediary may be held liable for a user's actions, there is a provision requiring the internet company to "provide information or any such assistance to Government Agencies legally authorised for investigative, protective, cyber security activity".  (Incoherent, vague, and grammatically incorrect sentences are a consistent feature of laws drafted by the Ministry of Communications a
nd IT; one of the telecom licences states: "The licensee should make arrangement _for monitoring simultaneous calls_ by Government security agencies," when clearly they meant "for simultaneous monitoring of calls".)
________________________________________
De la: Jack Allnutt [j.allnutt at pirateparty.org.uk]
Trimis: 27 aprilie 2014 21:32
Către: Pirate Parties International -- General Talk
Cc: Campaigns Team; ANDERSDOTTER Amelia; EU Election coordination group
Subiect: TiSA - New "Trade in Services Agreement" being negotiated.

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Hi all,

I've just become aware (thanks to @glynmoody's tweets[0][1]) about a new(ish) treaty - the Trade in Services Agreement - that is currently being negotiated by WTO members outside of the WTO infrastructure.

So far, countries involved in negotiations are: Australia, Canada, Chile, Chinese Taipei, Colombia, Costa Rica, European Union (representing its 28 Member States), Hong Kong, Iceland, Israel, Japan, Liechtenstein, Mexico, New Zealand, Norway, Pakistan, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Republic of Korea, Switzerland,, Turkey and the United States.

There is an EU document[2] that lists areas that may be included:
> Such proposals are expected to be made in the area of domestic regulation (e.g. authorisation and licensing procedures), international maritime transport services, Information and Communication Technology (?ICT?) services (including cross-border data transfers), e-commerce, computer related services, postal and courier services, financial services, temporary movement of natural persons, government procurement of services, export subsidies and state-owned enterprises. This list is neither an exhaustive list, nor does it mean that it was agreed that in all those sectors there will be new and enhanced disciplines.

References to "liberalisation" earlier in the document and "cross-border data transfers" there have me particularly worried given the EU member states' reluctance to pass the GDPR despite strong Parliamentary support.

According to the Australian Government's website[3] on TiSA, the next round of negotiations will start *tomorrow* (28th April) and last until Friday (2nd May), taking place in Geneva. They also state that at the last meeting (in February)
> [The TiSA parties] agreed to move from proposals to negotiating texts for all of these disciplines.

We should get some very strong wording out ASAFP demanding that this negotiation is fully open and transparent at the very least, and demanding that the TiSA parties release the working texts at the end of every round. If they don't (and I suspect they won't), it's yet another stick we have to beat the opposition around the head with in the EP elections [as if we needed any more ;)].

Also, apparently there is a public meeting[4] being held on Wednesday at The Varembé Conference Centre (CCV), Room A, 17 rue de Varembé, 1211 Geneva 20 between 18:30 and 21:00 - if any French or Swiss Pirates who live near are able to go along, ask annoying questions and report back that would be amazing.


Regards,
Jack Allnutt

EU2014 Candidate,
Dept. Campaigns Officer
Pirate Party UK

[0] https://twitter.com/glynmoody/status/460487172815343616
[1] https://twitter.com/glynmoody/status/460489144004018176
[2] http://trade.ec.europa.eu/doclib/docs/2013/june/tradoc_151374.pdf
[3] https://www.dfat.gov.au/trade/negotiations/services/trade-in-services-agreement.html
[4] https://www.dfat.gov.au/trade/negotiations/services/downloads/tisa-information-session-agenda.docx

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v2.0.22 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://www.enigmail.net/
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=JKCu
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----