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Legislation on the prevention of digital violence:This process, led by the Telecommunications Authority,formally began in 2014 with technical assistance fromthe REDES Foundation. Its approach is to bring theactors and initiatives mentioned above in this report together.It also raises the issue of digital violence in theinternet governance context. The authority has instructedthe REDES Foundation to develop the bill consideringthe new paradigm of internet self-regulation.Action steps: A bill to prevent digital violenceand address mass surveillance of internetcommunicationsBetween August and November 2014 we will designthe Law for the Prevention of Digital Violencein Bolivia. It is important to highlight the preventiveapproach we are using, to open a new era of internet-relatedlegislation we call “regulation ex-ante”(i.e. before unlawful acts occur). It also increasesthe responsibility of actors in the internet ecosystemregarding the prevention and eradication ofdifferent forms of internet violence, including masssurveillance and the violation of privacy.Preventing digital violence involves three majorcategories of actors:• Cases of digital violence by the state: These includecases of digital surveillance, spying andharassment within the state apparatus, by thestate on companies, and by the state on citizens.• Cases of digital violence by companies: Theseinclude cases of digital surveillance, spyingand harassment within companies, actions bycompanies that affect the state, and actions bycompanies that affect citizens/users of digitalcommunications services.• Cases of digital violence by people: These includecases of digital surveillance, spying andharassment by organised criminal groups onordinary people, and cases of violence betweenindividuals (bullying, coercion, mail and wirefraud, child pornography, password theft, impersonationand identity theft, plagiarism, etc.).Preventing digital violence requires multi-sectoralcoordination between government actors, namelythe Ministry of Interior, the Vice-Ministry of Telecommunications,the Telecommunications andTransportation Authority, the Vice-Presidency of theState, the Agency for the Development of the InformationSociety in Bolivia, the Ministry of Education,the Ministry of Communication, and municipal governments.They protect human rights on the internetand prevent all forms of violence online, includingthrough respect for privacy and the requirement ofa court order for surveillance of communications,and through always respecting what is stated in theconstitution.When it comes to civil society, key actors arethe Ombudsman of Bolivia, the National ICT Networkof Bolivia, the REDES Foundation, parents’associations, and the internet and mobile phoneusers’ associations. They all protect privacy, freedomof expression and the responsible use of theinternet among users of value-added services. Theypromote the creation of a responsible digital cultureand freedom of speech on the web.Internet service providers (ISPs) and mobileservices in Bolivia, including companies like ENTEL,Viva and Tigo, need to work in coordination with theregulator and receive technical support from theREDES Foundation. This area of work involves ensuringnetwork neutrality, communications privacy,and the impartiality of ISPs and mobile communicationscompanies. It also involves consumerprotection and the preservation of the multi-stakeholderbusiness model.Addressing the monitoring of communicationsand the protection of privacy is currently movingforward in Bolivia under the larger umbrella ofdigital violence. This approach allows us to unitescattered initiatives, and to promote communicationsmonitoring on the grounds of public security,state security and child protection.The categorisation of digital violence committedby states, companies and individuals allowsus to organise and coordinate the national regulatoryframework in line with the constitution, whichprotects privacy and freedom of expression. It alsoallows us to contextualise this debate within theparadigm of internet governance and the need todevelop a new preventive law drawing on the multistakeholdermodel.Developing a digital violence prevention bill allowsdelegating new functions and responsibilitiesto all actors that are part of the internet ecosystem,including government actors, private users, civilsociety, international cooperation agencies and thetechnical community.Bolivia is facing a new opportunity to developbills under the paradigm of “ex-ante regulation”and to develop co-responsibility between all actorsunder the model of self-regulation. The challengeis out there, and it is a civil society actor that isproviding technical assistance to guarantee an approachthat ensures that no arbitrary action is takenagainst internet or mobile phone users in Bolivia.Bosnia and HerzegovinaThe continuum of surveillance in Bosnia and HerzegovinaOneWorld Platform for Southeast Europe(OWPSEE) FoundationValentina Pellizzer and Aida Mahmutovicwww.oneworldsee.orgIntroductionDissent has its grounding in the understanding ofindividuals, groups or communities about theirentitlement to rights. When it comes to privacy, security,and the internet in general, citizens in Bosniaand Herzegovina are still far from considering themselvesentitled to rights. Yet like anyone else in theworld they actively use technology and social mediato get informed and communicate with friends.Activists use the internet and in particular socialnetworks such as Facebook to engage the generalpublic and to organise protests against the politicalestablishment. For many who do not know muchabout Bosnia and Herzegovina, the immediateassociation is with the Balkans War of the 1990sand the fall of Yugoslavia. For human rights activists,Bosnia and Herzegovina holds the title of themost corrupt country in the western Balkans. It isalso the only country in the region which still has tosign the pre-accession agreement to the EuropeanUnion due to a stalemate on constitutional reformand the unwillingness of its politicians to negotiatenecessary cross-party agreements and to gobeyond rigid ethnic quotas. A good example of thissituation is the country’s failure to comply with theanti-discrimination decision of the European Courtof Human Rights in the case of Sejdic-Finci 1 regardinghis eligibility for official posts. This meant fiveyears of deadlock on constitutional reforms, andleft citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina trapped inthe narrow and discriminatory framework of theDayton Peace Agreement. 2Policy and political backgroundThe primary purpose of the Bosnia and Herzegovinalegislative and administrative system is to enforce1 Wakelin, E. (2012, October 31). The Sejdic and Finci Case: MoreThan Just a Human Rights Issue? E‐International Relations. www.eir.info/2012/10/31/the-sejdic-and-finci-case-more-than-just-ahuman-rights-issue-for-bosnia-and-herzegovina2 The General Framework Agreement for Peace in Bosnia andHerzegovina, 1995. www.ohr.int/dpa/default.asp?content_id=380the rigid ethnic divisions in the country set up bythe Dayton Peace Agreement, rather than developingpolicies and laws which respond to the needsof the country and its people. This ethnic structureconstantly traps any new policy, law or decision thatneeds to be taken or developed in futile disputesabout jurisdiction among the existing 14 governmentalor legislative levels: the state, two entities,one district and ten cantons.The agency for the information society wassupposed to be the state’s concrete mechanismfor developing, coordinating and overseeing theinformation and communications technology (ICT)sector, as described in policy and strategy documentssigned by the Council of Ministries in 2004.But this never happened, with the effect that thesector lacks a serious and consistent developmentstrategy.Dependent on a plethora of bodies and authoritieswhose mandates are often not understood,citizens struggle to believe in or even follow thework they do, and very often remain passive spectatorsof violations.The bodies with competences on security, privacyand surveillance at state level are the PersonalData Protection Agency (AZLP, Agencija za zaštituličnih podataka u Bosni i Hercegovini); 3 the Agencyfor Identification Documents, Registers and DataExchange (IDDEEA, Agencia za identifikacione dokumente,evidenciju i razmjenu podataka); theMinistry of Security; the sector for combating terrorism,organised crime, corruption, war crimes andmisuse of narcotics; the sector for IT and telecommunicationsystems; the entity ministries of interiorand the Brcko district; police apparatuses at entityand cantonal level; and the judiciary. In 2008 theRepublic of Srpska created its own agency for theinformation society to act as a central body for policyand regulation on ICTs and the internet.From wiretapping to the internet:Someone is listening to us…When we started to research the right to privacy andsurveillance in Bosnia and Herzegovina, we suddenlyrealised how short our memory sometimes3 www.azlp.gov.ba/o_agenciji/nadleznosti/default.aspx78 / Global Information Society WatchBosnia and Herzegovina / 79