Submission to ITU by 5 Indian civil society organisations

[Anja Kovacs]

Dear all,

Please find below the statement that 5 Indian civil society organisations
jointly submitted to the ITU Public Comments system yesterday.

Best regards,
Anja

We, the undersigned civil society organisations from India, respectfully
acknowledge the important role that the ITU has played in the spread of
telecommunications around the world. However, we are concerned about the
lack of transparency and openness of the processes related to the WCIT: the
WCIT/ITU excludes civil society, academia and other stakeholders from
participation in and access to most dialogues and documents.  The documents
that are publicly available show that some of the proposals might deal with
Internet governance. According to established principles as laid down in
the Tunis Agenda - which process the ITU helped to lead - Internet
governance processes are required to be multistakeholder in nature. The
WCIT and ITU processes require urgent improvement with regard to openness,
inclusiveness and transparency. While we appreciate the current opportunity
to share our comments, we would like to encourage the ITU and its Member
States to adopt a genuine multistakeholder approach at the earliest.


As mentioned, we do welcome the current opportunity to share our thoughts.
Though this list is not exhaustive, some of our major concerns are as
follows:


We believe that, given the historical development of present methods of
internet regulation, aspects of Internet governance that have been and are
presently addressed by bodies other than ITU should not be brought under
the mandate of the ITU through the ITRs.


We therefore strongly recommend that the ITRs continue to be restricted to
aspects of the physical layer that have traditionally been the areas of its
focus. The ITRs scope should not be expanded to other layers, nor to
content - any measure that impinges on these layers should be kept out of
ITRs and taken up at other appropriate (multi-stakeholder) fora. In
addition, it is crucial that “ICTs” and the term “processing” be excluded
from the definition of telecommunication as this clearly opens up the
possibility for Member States to regulate/attempt to regulate the
“content/“application” layer on the internet at the ITU.


We also recommend that provisions regarding international naming,
numbering, addressing and identification resources will be restricted to
telephony, as should provisions regarding transit rate, originating
identification and end-to-end QoS. Provisions regarding the routing of
Internet traffic should not find a place in the ITRs at all.


We recognise that concerns regarding cyber security, spam, fraud, etc. are
real and that some of these concerns require to be addressed at the global
level. However, as these are being discussed in many other fora, we believe
that the ITRs are not the best place to address these. Their inclusion here
could inhibit the further evolution and expansion of the Internet. We also
believe that any fora discussing cyber security should be multistakeholder,
open and transparent.


We note that the proposal ARB/7/24 defines an “operating agency” as “*any
individual, company, corporation or governmental agency which operates a
telecommunication installation intended for an international
telecommunication service or capable of causing harmful interference with
such a service*” and believe that this definition is too broad in scope and
ambit. Inclusion of such a term would broaden the mandate of the ITU to
regulate numerous actors in the Internet sphere who do not fall under the
infrastructure layer of the Internet. The term “operating agency” should be
defined in a narrower or more restrictive manner and, irrespective of its
exact definition, only be used in exceptional cases. Normally, the
obligations of member states should be with respect to “recognised
operating agencies” and not omnibus all “operating agencies”.


Signed:

Centre for Internet and Society

Delhi Science Forum

Free Software Movement India

Internet Democracy Project

Knowledge Commons

(India)


-- 
Dr. Anja Kovacs
The Internet Democracy Project

+91 9899028053 | @anjakovacs
www.internetdemocracy.in
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