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<font face="Verdana">I agree with Norbert that the cost of </font>doing
surveillance has to be increased through appropriate technological
means, to bring it closer to costs that existing before ICTs made it
a kid's game as Snowden would say, to see anyone's communication
with a few strokes of the key pad....<br>
<br>
This is a course that should be systematically pursued...<br>
<br>
However, I am in agreement with Ian that treaties are useful and
needed, and that countries to give in to get something else in
return, and all of it could result in greater global public good.<br>
<br>
To respond to Norbert's specific doubt, about what has US to benefit
from conceding on its global surveillance activities, I think they
have a great lot to achieve. Like in no other business before, US
has a preponderant dominance in global Internet business. It has a
lot to gain if international agreements help develop some level of
global norms, frameworks and rules of at least <i>some level</i> <i>of</i>
cross-national harmony if not homogeneity on how the global Internet
basically works, and what can be expected by and granted to all
global players. No other country has more to gain through such
'global agreements' as the US's economic interests have. <br>
<br>
Earlier, the US thought that they will bring about such 'uniformity'
through steam-rolling what it framed as a global Internet freedom
agenda, which was always clearly a trade and political agenda, and
was always dubious... The limitations of that strategy is
increasingly clear. They would soon realise that they have to get
into global agreements if they have to keep ruling the global
Internet. That is what the US has to gain. <br>
<br>
In a write up last year or so, I made a distinction between regime
development phase and regime enforcement phase. Regime development
phase is when the basic rules of the game are being developed. This
is the phase currently with global Internet governance, In this
phase, US wants others, especially developing countries to be kept
away, and seeks to avoid discussions about global agreements.
(MUltistakeholderism is a very useful device for this purpose.) In
areas like trade and intellectual property, as Norbert rightly
points out, the regime is already formed. US and its allies have
defined the rules of the game. They now want these rules to be
globally enforced, of course to US's advantage. That is the game.
This is what I call as the second stage, the regime enforcement
stage. <br>
<br>
In global Internet governance, at some time, after the regime is
well developed as per the dominant countries' interest, we will see
the regime enforcement stage. UIS and others will suddenly say, well
we must get serious now, twe really need some global rules and the
such....<br>
<br>
The question is, should civil society play the game of the dominant
forces, or, as they say in economics, try counter-cyclical
measures...<br>
<br>
<br>
parminder<br>
<br>
<br>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On Sunday 01 September 2013 07:31 AM,
Norbert Bollow wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote cite="mid:20130901040132.65217d8a@quill" type="cite">
<pre wrap="">Ian Peter <a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:ian.peter@ianpeter.com"><ian.peter@ianpeter.com></a> wrote:
</pre>
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre wrap="">not sure I am as pessimistic about this as both of you. There are
plenty of examples in history where international agreements have
regulated matters where countries have agreed, for the greater good,
to regulate or stop previous actions. The Geneva Convention is one
example, outlawing of poison gases after WW1 (worked for a while) is
another.
I am sure also that regularly in trade treaties countries give up
certain actions in return for other advantages.
In the case of the Internet, it may well be that an open available
trusted global network - which can only be achieved if espionage is
contained - is the greater good that leads to a decent regulatory
regime.
</pre>
</blockquote>
<pre wrap="">
I see two major problems with this optimistic scenario:
On one hand the world trade system is already largely designed around
the vision of the US and like-minded countries on how the world trade
system should work, and the US is already a very central node in this
world trade system. The US already has pretty much all of the advantages
that a country could possibly have. I don't see what “other advantages”
the US could possibly be offered in exchange for the US agreeing to
give up the NSA's foreign surveillance activities which are obviously
very important from the perspective of the US government.
On the other hand, a lot of whatever trust that people used to have for
the US as a “democratic country” that claims to be strongly committed to
human rights has been permanently destroyed. This loss of credibility
affects not only US government representatives and by extension
government representatives from other Western countries. After all the
crap with for example Microsoft claiming “Your Privacy Is Our Priority”
while at the same time secretly cooperating with the NSA's efforts to
undermine our privacy, every reasonable and well-informed person will
similarly distrust technology vendors.
Add to this that the US concerns about terrorist threats etc are not
just a matter of mere paranoia. It would not be reasonable for the US to
agree a simple and straightforward principle like never again wanting
to know the contents of conversations of people outside the US. The US
will have to insist that in situations of legitimate suspicion of plans
for terrorist activities, surveillance activities will have to be
conducted. Regardless of how the rules for handling that kind of
exceptional situations would be designed precisely, if those rules meet
both the requirements of international human rights law and the
requirement of providing effective means of surveillance for suspected
terrorists, those rules are not going to be totally simple and
straightforward. Consequently, although certainly necessary, such rules
are not going to help much in regard to rebuilding the trust that has
been destroyed.
I conclude that without trustworthy efforts to create effective
technical protections of communications privacy, a “trusted global
network” cannot be achieved in the post-Snowden world.
Nota bene, I'm not advocating for trying to make surveillance totally
impossible.
What we IMO need in the post-Snowden world is
1) trustworthy end-to-end encryption of all non-public Internet
communication content,
2) trustworthy protection of the software on the computers and other
communication devices against remote compromise,
3) redesigned communication protocols which ensure that at no point in
the communication channel between the endpoints, information about both
communication endpoints is visible in unencrypted form, and
4) trustworthy anti-surveillance monitoring which would likely detect
the problem in the case of a system compromise that results in
significant quantities of communication channel endpoint information
leaking out.
When all of that has been achieved, surveillance of the communications
content and communications metadata of specific persons will still be
possible, but it'll be expensive enough that cost economics will force
it to be limited to specific persons where there is significant reason
to consider them a major threat.
It is the human rights violating automated mass surveillance which must
be brought to an end.
Greetings,
Norbert
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</pre>
</blockquote>
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