to promote sharing of standardised digital data

to promote digitalisation and data sharing in favour of sustainability and the SDGs

Public diplomacy

funding to combat Internet shutdowns

by fostering digital literacy

19.

n international standard-setting processes

the whole life-cycle of digital technologies

18

he Declaration for the Future of the Internet.

with like-minded partners

to promote new and innovative digitalisation tools d

a global tech panel

for continued dialogue and cooperation with the private sector, including online platforms, and civil society

a Team Europe approach

as part of the implementation of the Global Gateway strategy.

o increase the visibility of the EU globally

the digital trade provisions in existing EU trade agreements

Eastern Partnership’s EU4Digital Initiative

the UN Tech Envoy

he third committee of the UNGA,

he Human Rights Council,

10.

EU coordination on elections and appointments for positions at UN and other relevant multilateral bodies

particularly in standardisation bodies,

as appropriate, including multi-stakeholder

EU Digital Diplomacy and Cyber Diplomacy

to monitor global digital regulatory activity

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a climate neutral economy

-

promote European examples of ethical approaches to data usage

-

-

Exchange with stakeholders from business, academia and civil society as appropriate, both in the EU and beyond

-

through support for the Paris and Christchurch Calls

-

-

-

11406/22EA/fa4ANNEXRELEX.1EN-

theInternational Telecommunications Union (ITU), International Organization for Standardization (ISO), International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC),

he Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE).

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based on the multi-stakeholder model of Internet governance.

-

-

a human-centric and human rights-based approac

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common geopolitical priorities

5.

built on universal human rights, fundamental freedoms, the rule of law and democratic principles.

its technological and digital sovereignty

Virtual interaction is a simulation of real human life.

my temporal body to be genuine flesh and my soul something that is authentic and eternal

Many scientists and philosophers have suggested that we all might be living in a simulation of some advanced civilization. As fantastic as it sounds, Scientific American reported in 2020 that the odds of this are probably about 50–50.

no-Zoom weekends and a complete moratorium during your summer vacation

on boundaries around our use of the technology

good Zoom hygiene

keeping virtual meetings, classes, and conversations short and to-the-point.

For happiness and productivity, virtual interactions are better than nothing. But in-person interactions are better than virtual ones for life satisfaction, work engagement, and creativity.

videoconferencing inhibits the production of creative ideas.

the Journal of Applied Psychology, researchers who monitored 103 virtual workers’ fatigue during meetings found that when workers used their camera (versus having it turned off), they were less engaged during meetings that day and the one after as well.

One 2021 study in the journal NeuroRegulation found that almost 94 percent of undergraduates had “moderate to considerable difficulty with online learning.”

may be better for well-being than having no social interactions, using video-calling to the point of fatigue has been shown to predict high rates of depression, anxiety, stress, and dissatisfaction with life.

it mutes mirror neurons (which help us understand and empathize with others) and confounds our Global Positioning System neurons (which code our location).

Zoom fatigue has six root causes: asynchronicity of communication (you aren’t quite in rhythm with others, especially when connections are imperfect); lack of body language; lack of eye contact; increased self-awareness (you are looking at yourself a lot of the time); interaction with multiple faces (you are focusing on many people at once in a small field of view, which is confusing and unnatural); and multitasking opportunities (you check your email and the news while trying to pay attention to the meeting).

Zoom fatigue rises with frequency and duration of meetings.

Videochatting may promise the benefits of face-to-face meeting without germs and commuting. But it can provoke burnout for many, and even depression. When it comes to human interaction, it is like junk food: filling and convenient, but no substitute for a healthy diet.

ISBNs will need to be changed if certain changes are made to your book.

The 13 digit ISBN number is broken up into 5 parts that identify the following:

But, as we will mention further along in this post, be sure you have only one ISBN number registered to your self-published book and not multiple numbers spread out over various platforms.

Most important ap

African youth consider universal WiFi to be a fundamental human right

The majority (53%) of youth believe that Western style democracy is not necessarily suitable for the African context, and contend that African countries will need to find their own democratic systems and structures that work for the continent and its people.

African youth see equality of all citizens under the law as the most important democratic value.

equality of all citizens under the law as the most important democratic value.

equality of all citizens under the law as the most important democratic value.

Political instability may be another reason for the decline in Afro-optimism, particularly in countries afflicted with conflict, civil war, and violent extremism in recent years

hree-quarters of African youth believe that owning land is essential for their financial wellbeing

early two-thirds of African youth find the price of mobile data coverage to be high, and just one-in-eight can afford data coverage at all times. In terms of news outlets,

equality of all citizens under the law, freedom of speech, and free and fair elections as the most important pillars of democracy

for African-style democracy

remain optimistic about their personal future and look ahead into an African century.

t is crucial that African governments adopt multi-stakeholder policies and legal frameworks that leverage nongovernment expertise and ensure adequate oversight of security actors wading into the ICT arena.

The lack of knowledge of cyber issues has contributed to a lack of effective regulation and oversight, while amplifying opportunities for abuse.

Eighteen have established the equivalent of national computer incident response teams (CIRTs), or multi-stakeholder groups of cybersecurity professionals who help countries respond to and recover from major security incidents.

Governments frequently fail to monitor threats, collect digital forensic evidence, and prosecute computer-based crime.  Ninety-six percent of cyber security incidents go unreported or unresolved, meaning that cyber threats in Africa are likely much worse than recognized.

Drones are already used by 14 African countries and have been acquired and used for intelligence purposes by African militant groups.

Despite Liberia’s appeals abroad for assistance, authorities did not make arrests until after the software employed in the attack was used to disable Deutsche Telecom, the German telecommunications giant, months after the attacks began.

In Africa, attacks on critical infrastructure are becoming frequent. Banks are particularly common targets, losing billions of dollars to theft and service disruption. The National Security Agency of Nigeria and the municipal government of Johannesburg have each been victims of attacks that shut down services or leaked sensitive information. With cyberattacks against maritime infrastructure on the rise ranging from piracy to stealing database logs, experts worry that Africa’s ports and shipping industries could suffer an attack causing major disruptions in trade and commerce.

China may have similar capabilities elsewhere in Africa, where it has built up to 80 percent of all existing telecommunications networks and set up government networks in over 20 countries.

For example, Pegasus malware, among the most sophisticated pieces of espionage software ever invented, was recently discovered to have infected systems in 11 African countries.

In June 2020, the Ethiopian Information Network Security Agency (INSA) thwarted a cyberattack from an Egypt-based actor known as the Cyber_Horus Group.

These include the Policy and Regulation Initiative for Digital Africa (PRIDA), the West African Response on Cybersecurity and Fight against Cybercrime  (OCWAR-C), the AU Commission’s-Global Forum on Cyber Expertise (GFCE) joint cyber capacity building initiatives, and efforts by the Africa Computer Emergency Response Team (AfricaCERT

More cyber-mature countries should focus on overcoming obstacles to interagency coordination, regularly updating their strategies, and attempting to look ahead to meet the next generation of threats. They can and should play a leading role in establishing good practices, building capacity, supporting indigenous research and development of digital tools (including algorithms and encryption technologies), and improving regional and international cyber cooperation in Africa.

As a result, most African nations are woefully underprepared to confront advances in artificial intelligence, wireless communications, quantum computing, and automation that are likely to characterize the coming decade.

A central challenge for African legislatures, then, is to enact laws that empower regulators to quickly adapt in a dynamic environment without trying to legislate minutia.

national cybersecurity strategies should ideally be updated every 5 years as a matter of course.

the five African countries that have not updated their national cybersecurity strategies in the past 5 years—Kenya, Mauritius, Morocco, South Africa, and Uganda—are widely considered to be among the continent’s most cyber mature.

Strategies are key instruments that designate society-wide roles and responsibilities, in part to overcome obstacles to interagency coordination

For example, because the African financial sector is a primary target for cyber fraud, Africa-based banks invest significant resources in complying with international cybersecurity norms, regulations, and standards.

The logic for including private sector actors and making public-private partnerships a focal point of national cybersecurity strategies is straightforward.

Fewer than half of all countries with national cybersecurity strategies possessed either threat assessments (which help justify the strategy’s existence and tailor the response to the threat) or resource allocations (which are necessary to ensure a strategy’s implementation).

about a third (17) of Africa’s 54 countries have completed a national cybersecurity strategy, which is less than half the global average.

At the regional level, there is no dearth of initiatives that aim to address the continent’s growing cyber-related threats and challenges. Beginning in 2019, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) Commission, in partnership with the European Union (EU), initiated the West African Response on Cybersecurity and Fight against Cybercrime (OCWAR-C) and adopted a Regional Cybersecurity and Cybercrime Strategy. The African Union Mechanism for Police Cooperation (AFRIPOL) created a Cybercrime Strategy 2020-2024 that seeks to enhance coordination, develop specialized police capacities, and harmonize legal and regulatory frameworks. Meanwhile, the African Union (AU) is working to craft and implement its own continental cybersecurity strategy through its recently established Cyber Security Experts Group. Through the formation of the Africa Cyber Experts (ACE) Community, the AU is partnering with the Global Forum on Cyber Expertise (GFCE) to support cyber capacity building.

Islamic advisory body — Dar-al-Ifta — released a decree declaring cryptocurrencies as Haram (something prohibited in Islamic law). Islamic finance does not allow the concept of “riba” or interest. To bypass this, they introduced the Sukuk. Sukuk is an Islamic financial certificate similar to a bond in Western finance but complies with Islamic religious law. However, the income derived from the Sukuk can not be speculative, or it would no longer be permissible. That eliminates bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies because they are speculative.

Unfortunately, CISOs struggle to find competent staff that can handle the security alerts they receive daily,keep up with data protection regulations, andprotect networks from cybercriminals.

Currently, however, only 14out of the 54countrieson the continenthave enacted specific laws against cybercrime. Another 11countries have partial laws, and 30 have no meaningful cybercrime laws. As noted previously, only 14 countries had agreed to join the 2014 Malabo Convention framework at the end of 2019

only14 out of the 54countries in Africa havesigned thistreaty,and only eighthadratified the treaty atthe end of 2020.

Report:

“In addition, one out of every three companies believes that there is insufficient integration between security and IT teams with 30% saying that hiring and retaining security skills is a challenge.”

The top threats facing organizations in SSA in 2022 are data leakage (61%), insider threats (43%); targeted attacks using phishing (37%); cloud-related attacks (34%); and ransomware attacks (30%).

This opens up the threat landscape considerably and puts organisations at greater risk.

There is a linear relationship between GDP and cybercrime.

increased national commitments (NDCs) and net zero targets

to accelerate transitions to clean growth

or a successfully negotiated outcome and overall event

Allocations were made by prioritising funding for regional events, SIDS, climate vulnerable countries, smaller posts, and the four campaign goals.

There are also overlaps with the eu’s Global Gateway scheme, launched in December to “mobilise” €300bn ($340bn) in infrastructure investment by 2027, and Britain’s Clean Green Initiative, unveiled a month earlier with a pledge of £3bn ($4.1bn) for sustainable infrastructure in developing countries.

t is a repackaging of an idea called Build Back Better World that was launched at the group’s summit last year.

the Partners in the Blue Pacific pact, aimed at offsetting Chinese influence in the Pacific islands.

by focusing on “soft” infrastructure where they have comparative advantages, Western countries aim to boost exports of their own technology and services in areas such as 5g telecoms, blockchain and clean energy.

the Global Development Initiative, which is expected to focus more on sustainable development.

Western officials say the scheme will not compete directly with the bri, which has focused on ports, railways and other “hard” infrastructure. Instead, it will try to play to the g7’s strengths by prioritising climate and energy security, digital connectivity, health and women’s equality.

the Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment (pgii)

On June 26th the rich democracies of the g7 unveiled a plan to mobilise $600bn of private and public investment in infrastructure in low- and middle-income countries over the next five years

And every time America criticised China’s “new Silk Road”, the riposte came: “What are you offering instead?”

Perhaps the labour market will regain some slack as Europe’s economy slows down. Soaring energy prices have soured the mood in recent weeks, as has a resurgence of covid. That would hardly be good news, except for hard-up employers—and those looking to catch a bit of downtime on a far-flung beach.

handling e-commerce packages for decent pay while listening to podcasts beats arriving at 5am to ask passengers whether they have packed any liquids in their carry-on.

“Everyone’s asking, where have they all gone?” pondered Tim Clark, the boss of Emirates airline, according to Bloomberg. “And the answer is always: Amazon.”

Poles and Bulgarians now find plenty of good jobs at home.

Unemployment in the euro area, at 6.6%, is at its lowest since the single currency was launched two decades ago. Some places have all but run out of workers: Germany’s jobless rate is just 2.8%.

But airports’ difficulties are not merely the result of local labour troubles.

Airports should have been prepared. Forecasting the number of travellers on a given day is not unreasonably complicated, given that they have bought tickets well beforehand.

Instead it sent the euro tanking (to near parity with the American dollar), making Greek tavernas and Baltic beaches irresistible.

For Europe, which attracts half the world’s international travellers, that ought to be a boon.

In no sector is the lack of staff so glaring as in air travel.

Like it or not, the world wants Japan, and Japan needs the world.

The country needs to quadruple the number of foreign workers by 2040 to sustain the government’s modest average growth target of 1.2%, according to a recent study by a group of Japanese think-tanks. (Without sustained investment in automation, the number would have to rise more than ten-fold.)

Japan has already lost a cohort of foreign students, the very people who often go on to become bridge-builders between countries.

Border closures have been popular: nearly 90% of Japanese approved when Kishida Fumio, Japan’s prime minister, tightened travel restrictions in response to the outbreak of the Omicron variant late last year.

Japanese nationals were largely free to come and go. Foreigners, even those with permanent residence, faced restrictions.

If it refuses, the likely result is that TikTok—and more companies like it—will be locked out of the West altogether.

reluctant to cede any corporate control to foreigners.

classified content-recommendation algorithms as a key technology and may object to TikTok’s code being made available for dissection

TikTok should be ultimately responsible to an independent board of its own, with members from outside China

showing the source code and allowing ongoing inspection

to let third parties inspect its algorithm.

data are held by Oracle

Western countries might one day have to shut TikTok down.

Because each user gets a personalised feed, tampering would be hard to spot.

But the app’s algorithm is nurtured in Beijing

A quarter of American users say they consider TikTok to be a news source.

it offers China to manipulate what the app’s vast foreign audience sees.

Most such information could be scraped from TikTok’s front end

risk is privacy

America often accuses China of copycat capitalism. Now the boot is on the other foot.

to reach $12bn this year and $23bn in 2024

user spends 50% longer on the app each day than the typical user spends on Instagram.

sign up its first 1bn users in half the time it took Facebook.

a test of whether global business and the global internet can remain intact as us-China relations deteriorate.

a security risk to the Chinese Communist Party’s enemies

storm in Congress

elections loom in America

the sunny app has a dark side

its 1bn-plus users

as “the last sunny corner on the internet”.

But the predictable is as much a human need as are ruptures from the predictable.

to offer what is so beloved about rules, which is the increase of what Daston terms the “radius of predictability.”

Alice’s Wonderland is a place where the only rule is that the rules will keep changing.

Daston describes how, historically, sovereignty in Europe has been derived from a mix of “divine authority, the patriarchal power of the male head of household over his wife and children, and the power of the conqueror over the vanquished in war.”

Carl Schmitt’s definition of sovereignty as “the power to decide on the exception,”

Rules that allow no exception seem free of human frailty but alien, and unable to admit properly of complexity.

Rules that leave a ruler, or a judge, in charge of interpreting them feel at once humanized and corruptible.

In this way, the nonsense nested within the cadence of sense becomes vivid.

Algorithms, which were closely associated with reason, came to be valued as more ideal than error-prone human judgment.

Daston suggests that rules tend to succeed when they are also norms.

A computer algorithm is an example of a thin rule—long, perhaps, but intended to be deployed without the need of any human thought or intervention.

thin rules “aspire to be self-sufficient.”

they require interpretation, and because examples are given, and because they make room for all sorts of exceptions.

rules were derived from models:

Similarly, the Latin term regula connects both to straight planks used for measuring and building and to a model by which others are measured more metaphorically—the ruler of a nation, say.

Daston helps us see rules (and their neighbors, such as laws and regulations) through the concepts of thickness and thinness, paradigms and algorithms, failures

when reasoning as we would recognize it proves even minimally consequential.

The party can probably tighten security in its own internal networks. But governing in China, as elsewhere, is all about priorities. And continued surveillance over its own citizens will remain far more important to the authorities than protecting those citizens’ data.

the party’s competence.

The hashtag “data leak” was blocked on Weibo, a microblog, soon after news started to circulate. Discussion on WeChat, a messaging app, is also constrained.

“China is a dictatorial state but that does not mean the state can do anything it likes, because individuals are going to get a bit angry,”

the law is enforced less strictly on officialdom, and there is little evidence of any change.

The document is ridiculously broad. It says the state should “promote the culinary and gastronomic heritage” of Chile and recognise “spirituality as an essential element of the human being”. Everyone has a “right to sports”. Non-humans get a look in, too: the state “will promote an education based on empathy…for animals”.

the broad refusal to recognize the right of the West to lead means there will no longer be a world order based on Western rules.

the specter of China looms – a systemic competitor to the West and, even better, an accomplice of ‘the Russians’.

the former third world is becoming more demanding and picky

it has now completely lost the desire to share its advantages.