Are freedom and safety in cyberspace an “either or” choice, or a “both or neither” challenge?
We believe it is the latter, and that proper international certification could deliver both.

Following 4 previous editions in Brussels, New York, and Brazil – Free and Safe in Cyberspace comes for the 1st time to Rome, Italy.Free and Safe in Cyberspace is a global event series that is catalysing a constructive dialogue and a wide informed consensus on new international standard and certification governance bodies for ultra-high assurance IT systems and lifecycles – for communications, constitutional lawful access and autonomous systems – which are suitable to deliver to all access radically-unprecedented and constitutionally-meaningful privacy and cybersecurity, while increasing public safety and cyber-investigation capabilities.

We’ll discuss how new standards, certification, and policies can radically minimize threats and maximize the opportunities of IT and AI security for the democratic accountability of our public institutions and for the economic development of Europe, Italy and Lazio Region.

The cybersecurity market has grown 30 times in the last 10 years to $120 billion. Yet the cost of cybercrime will accrue to $8 trillion by 2022. Not to mention that our democracies appear increasingly held for ransom by the best hackers. Large-scale hacking of critical autonomous systems and social media is fast becoming the most dangerous criminal weapon. Military systems are no less immune, but less is publicly discussed since their hacking becomes state secret as it happens. Meanwhile, security agencies wildly overstate the security of secure apps and devices to push less expert criminals to use them.

Nearly all IT systems today, even those for the most sensitive uses, are hackable by even mid-level attackers, due to hyper-complexity and backdoors that states have been unable to keep for themselves. The World is turning into a Hacker Republic, where the most economic and political power accrues to those with hacking and informational superiority in IT and AI.

How did we get here and what can we do about it? For starter, the speed of IT for everyday computing requires complexity that is hopelessly incompatible with constitutionally-meaningful* privacy. There is nothing we can do about it, democracies will need to adapt their rules around it, but we are ready to accept that for 99% of our computing. But then again, there is a 1% of sensitive critical functions where citizens, enterprises, and governments have a huge need and demand for IT and AI with constitutionally-meaningful cybersecurity, even if it comes at a great sacrifice in speed, features, and cost.

But then why are these not available even for nearly all the richest and most powerful? Because powerful nations understandably felt the need that every IT system and all times is promptly hackable – in an era of rampant terrorism, unbreakable encryption, and lack of remote lawful access mechanisms. They resorted stockpiling discovered vulnerabilities instead of fixing them, promoting inadequate and flawed standards, and outright inserting backdoors all the way down to CPU and chip fabrication.

Can constitutionally-meaningful* cybersecurity be transparently reconciled with lawful access, so that it can be made available to our institutions, enterprises, and citizens without creating a public safety risk? Can we be both Free and Safe in Cyberspace? or do we have to choose? Can we even choose, really, or is it a “both or neither” challenge?

Can a few EU members states, regions and other stakeholders lead, by leveraging open components to build an entire new ultra-secure computing ecosystem and standard – parallel and not alternative to everyday IT devices – whereby transparency, oversight, accountability, and extreme levels of inspection in relation to complexity, become the secret sauce to ensure both the individual freedom, lawful access and public safety?