[governance] Is 'tit for tat' all that can be accomplished?
parminder
parminder at itforchange.net
Wed Jun 12 04:19:33 EDT 2013
On Tuesday 11 June 2013 08:22 PM, Bertrand de La Chapelle wrote:
> Parminder,
>
> On Tue, Jun 11, 2013 at 3:54 PM, parminder <parminder at itforchange.net
> <mailto:parminder at itforchange.net>> wrote:
>
>
> Also noteworthy - about the point of willing cooperation or not -
> that Google fails to mention this stuff in its so called
> transparency report... What is the justification for that...
>
> Unfortunately the answer is pretty simple: they are prohibited by US
> law to mention this kind of requests. Whether this is something
> appropriate is another matter, but it is US laws.
Bertrand
Google has been very proactive and even innovative in revealing all that
it can in similar cases in other countries... US law may have prohibited
them from telling about each request or even the overall numbers....
However, I dont think it could prohibit them from having told us that
some such program exists about foreign information sources about which
they, i ie is Google, is not authorised to divulge details... Such a
disclaimer should have been carried under the US section in every year's
transparency report.. This is the minimum requirement of transparency..
They do mention in case of other countries when they are not authorised
to divulge information. Why not in the country of the 'first amendment'....
parminder
>
> B.
>
>
> On Tuesday 11 June 2013 07:13 PM, michael gurstein wrote:
>>
>> The difficulty Kerry and all is that even if the US companies
>> were ``cooperat(ing) within the boundaries of the law``, it was
>> (necessarily) a US law bounded by, but enforcing US jurisdiction.
>>
>> The Internet dominant companies involved are of course companies
>> with global reach, global markets, global users and among the
>> most active purveyors of an open and free/boundaryless Internet
>> and what your post and the bulk of the discussion on these
>> matters does not address is that the other (non-US) users of
>> these services have essentially no protection under these laws.
>> They/we are `fair game`.
>>
>> In some cases/places we have some protection under our own
>> national laws but given that these laws have no jurisdiction (or
>> truly effective influence) over the companies themselves (as has
>> been demonstrated in various matters particularly in the European
>> context and as is currently being articulated to her credit by
>> our Canadian Privacy Commissioner) we are truly naked in front of
>> these surveillance mechanisms (and given the current state of the
>> US security panic we are all under suspicion until proven
>> innocent); with by the way no evident means of authenticating
>> one`s innocence in any lasting way.
>>
>> M
>>
>> *From:*governance-request at lists.igcaucus.org
>> <mailto:governance-request at lists.igcaucus.org>
>> [mailto:governance-request at lists.igcaucus.org] *On Behalf Of
>> *Kerry Brown
>> *Sent:* Tuesday, June 11, 2013 8:54 AM
>> *To:* governance at lists.igcaucus.org
>> <mailto:governance at lists.igcaucus.org>
>> *Subject:* RE: [governance] Is 'tit for tat' all that can be
>> accomplished?
>>
>> The language is too confrontational (i.e. “notes with horror”).
>> It will never be taken seriously.
>>
>> There is no proof that any of the companies you mention
>> cooperated willingly. I think that they all have cooperated
>> within the boundaries of the law but that is opinion. I haven’t
>> seen any proof. I think a far more likely scenario is that the
>> NSA uses a variety of methods, some possibly illegal, to collect
>> data that probably includes data from the mentioned companies.
>> That is speculation. If we are going to express opinions and
>> speculation we need to call out that we are doing that.
>>
>> Kerry Brown
>>
>> (Proposed text below - very rough first draft to get things rolling)
>>
>> The Internet Governance Caucus notes with horror the manner in
>> which the global population is being subject to such intrusive
>> and intense surveillance by the US government in complicity with
>> US based companies like Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook,
>> PalTalk, AOL, Skype, YouTube and Apple. Apart from being against
>> all tenets of basic human rights, it exposes the hypocrisy of the
>> claims by the US government of a special global legitimacy based
>> on the 'historic role' vis a vis the governance of the Internet.
>> We are further troubled that in US government statements on the
>> PRISM related disclosures, the main defence it seems to take is
>> to say that they would never do any such thing to any US citizen.
>> What about the non US citizens? And what about the claims of the
>> US government that they are responsible to the 'global Internet
>> community', a refrain frequently heard from the US government in
>> the global Internet governance space? Why the double talk across
>> spaces where technical management of the Internet is discussed
>> and where 'harder' issues of privacy, security and rights – from
>> political and civil rights to economic and social rights - get
>> implicated?
>>
>> We are also extremely disappointed by how the US based global
>> companies - Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, PalTalk, AOL,
>> Skype, YouTube and Apple – betrayed the trust of their global
>> customers in cooperating with the US government in such mass
>> scale surveillance. Reports on how Twitter seems to have refused
>> to cooperate show the kind of options that may have been
>> available to these other companies as well. The denials by some
>> of these companies about allowing government deep and largely
>> indiscriminate access to information on their servers seem to run
>> contrary to most news reports, which have not been contradicted
>> by US authorities on these aspects.
>>
>> We wonder if there is a pro quid quo between the US government
>> and these US based Internet companies with global operations,
>> whereby these companies help further US government's political,
>> military, etc interests worldwide and the US government in turn
>> puts its political might in service of ensuring an unregulated
>> global space for these Internet businesses? A good example of
>> this is the insistence by the US government at the OECD and US-EU
>> trade talks to maintain lowest possible data privacy standards,
>> against considerable resistance by EU countries.
>>
>> The Internet Governance Caucus demand that the Human Rights
>> Council calls for a special report and a special session on this
>> issue. It should also proceed to examine ways to develop
>> globally-applicable norms and principles on digital privacy and
>> basic structures of legal frameworks and due process that ensures
>> people's rights in online spaces – both civil and political
>> rights as well as social and economic rights.
>>
>
>
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>
> --
> ____________________
> Bertrand de La Chapelle
> Internet & Jurisdiction Project Director, International Diplomatic
> Academy (www.internetjurisdiction.net
> <http://www.internetjurisdiction.net>)
> Member, ICANN Board of Directors
> Tel : +33 (0)6 11 88 33 32
>
> "Le plus beau métier des hommes, c'est d'unir les hommes" Antoine de
> Saint Exupéry
> ("there is no greater mission for humans than uniting humans")
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