[bestbits] [governance] Whether to participate in NETmundial Initiative - RFC

[Anja Kovacs]

Dear all,

A question. If any of the Brazilians on these lists could perhaps shed some
light on why their government has decided to support this initiative, and
how they see it, that could possibly be very helpful? I have had great
respect for Brazil and its work in the past, and can't help but wonder
whether I'm missing something here.

For the moment, however, knowing what I know, I am still not in favour of
civil society networks giving this their stamp of approval (though as
earlier, I also don't have an issue with individual organisations who want
to participate to continue doing so and report back to the wider
community). A WEF-ICANN alliance, even if backed by the Brazilian
government, is just not the place I want to see emerge as a new power
centre in Internet governance - even less so as they have already given
themselves some fixed seats.

I've in particular been wondering what this selection and committee means
seeing that some of the initiatives the NMI would "foster" clearly are
already on the way. For example, I (and I know many others on this list
too) have already been contacted by the Governance Lab at NYU to give
feedback on a proposed NETmundial Solutions map that would be developed
under the flag of the NMI. It's difficult not to feel like the only thing
we and others would be doing is simply to rubberstamp things that would
happen anyway - but because we okay them, somehow the structure and the
initiatives it gives birth to gain a legitimacy that they would not have
had without. An unwise use of our power, I would say (that they would go
ahead without us anyway is something that a representative from the WEF
made clear enough to me in an informal conversation in October. Some of the
individual initiative, such as that map, might have value, but about the
structure as a whole, I am not so certain)

I would feel far more comfortable if we would instead start exploring the
constructive ways of going ahead with our own work suggested by Amelia and
others. I would love to hear more about what they're thinking, and how we
could operationalize this ourselves and take it forward.

Thanks and best,
Anja





On 19 November 2014 01:12, Nnenna Nwakanma <nnenna75 at gmail.com> wrote:

> Dear Governance and Best Bits listers, and especially African Civil
> Society members here.
>
> My opinion is that Civil Society should participate. It is okay to table
> our "fears" and let NMI know that our participation may be withdrawn if XYZ
> is not met.
>
> I think it is fine for certain networks to say "No", but in Africa, I dont
> think we should miss out.
>
> NMI may also just make a public call for CS who wants to participate.
> From the launch, I already saw that some CS persons were already very
> interested in the NMI.
>
> I see it is okay if one network or list  or platform  decides NOT to
> participate but we cannot ask others not to.
>
> Me, I am in favour of Governance and BB lists nominating people. And at
> the same time, saying that it is important for African S to participate.
>
> All for now
>
> Nnenna
>
> On Tue, Nov 18, 2014 at 6:06 PM, Jean-Christophe NOTHIAS I The Global
> Journal <jc.nothias at theglobaljournal.net> wrote:
>
>> Jeremy,
>>
>> Thanks for your email.
>>
>> Looking after pathologies is certainly a noble cause, but as we both do
>> not belong to the medical corpus, maybe it would simply be wise to
>> terminate this, and cool down a bit. Even though we are in real politics.
>>
>> Go after the arguments put on the table is probably of better effect and
>> impact.
>>
>> What I wanted to say using quotes from an array of observers or
>> participants is that the initiative has more than a troubling set of
>> definitions, expectations and leading to an overall confusion. It looks
>> more or less like "un chèque en blanc" to illegitimate grouping of a
>> wealthy elite (the three players of NMI have deep pockets, and friends with
>> deeper pockets). I am not even trying to clarify the obvious tactics behind
>> all their gesture. I had an intermezzo as a consultant for 10 years in my
>> life, and can more than easily read the partition behind all of that
>> smoking screen. In the army, you always call some troopers from the "génie"
>> when you need a screen of smoke to cross a street, a bridge or a simple
>> line. No, let's stay on what is at stake such as
>> - why part of civil society in Busan accepted the fact that the US
>> refused to discuss mass surveillance?
>> - why is the IGF not the best bet for civil society to keep maturing and
>> growing?
>> - why is encryption, I know EFF is working hard on this topic,
>>  insufficiently at the center of the IG debate? Isn't encryption part of
>> the mass surveillance issue? So then why to please the US, in Sao Paulo,
>> then in Busan by refusing to really go after it? Mass surveillance has
>> nothing to do with IG they told us.
>> - why civil society not more vocal on the Google Tour against the EU
>> decision to protect personal data, considering rightly in my view, that
>> search engines are touching at personal data, beyond the simple links they
>> assembled in their result pages? This is a real good debate for CS.
>> - why not to discuss the IETF and its roles in the IG? More important
>> than IANA for example?
>> - why CS seems deprived of imagination and innovative ideas when it comes
>> to create a new coordinating body/system, as the ICANN is saying the
>> political aspects of IG is beyond its mandate? How can we help ourselves to
>> have these ideas popping out of CS minds? Looking at all the NGOs we are
>> currently ranking, I am positively impressed with their innovative
>> abilities, much more powerful than classical corps. They also create more
>> "values".
>>
>> I am not naive, and have probably a few answers in mind. Nevertheless, CS
>> should really act differently. The NMI story is relevant of the weakness
>> that anyone can perceive among CS, and this is not to blame JNC or anyone
>> else. A leadership crisis wrote someone today.
>>
>> Remember the preparation of Net Mundial? Did the ICANN handle CS in a
>> satisfactory fashion? Haven't we seen the trailer? We had to twist their
>> arm every minute to get info, to get principles, to simply get it not that
>> bad. Why is it so difficult for the 'nice guys" not to go directly after
>> the right ideas, proposals and suggestions when launching an open, honest,
>> transparent debate? Instead they keep creating distrust with their
>> committees, high level panel, advisory boards... Trust is critical. "Please
>> energize me! should we all cry. We are all losing. Terrifying, I would say.
>>
>> So why don't you and other leaders of CS decide to meet, have a debate
>> and launch a true CS initiative, calling governments, citizens and
>> corporations to join in a effort to rebalance the growing asymmetry we live
>> in since the mid-nineties? In the face of History, and our fellow citizens,
>> we are failing, because CS is not united. To do that you do not need any
>> WEF. You only need to trust, share, and confront the realities that are
>> taking away our rights. This is what should be done, now, instead of
>> wasting our time and little money to debate about the comfortable sofas of
>> the WEF.
>>
>> Somehow BB is a failure, as it has not delivered to its own mandate. JNC
>> is not getting more isolated, it is growing and reaching more and more
>> people. We should not care about that. We should care about having a
>> collective action that would oblige governments, corps and the current
>> mandarins to take more progressive steps. Multistakeholderism when it comes
>> to convene and consult many participants is certainly nice. This has often
>> been done, long before we began to put in our mouth the MS narrative. When
>> it comes to make decisions at least on the public policy level, MS simply
>> doesn't work. If the coders had to go through MS to make decision, they
>> would have simply gone nowhere. Only a few guys fixing better than other
>> few guys technical issues doesn't equate a political model. It could work,
>> but then it would lead to some social disaster, a disruption that would
>> unleash violence.
>>
>> JNC has no monopole of ethics, but because we are poor enough, our bias
>> is somehow limited. We are paid by no government, no corporation, no
>> barons. We are simple citizens, with a profound democratic concern (to
>> avoid another asymmetric wars), and we are ready to go into rationales as
>> long as we are not characterized as psychotics or lunatics.
>>
>> There is no way that we can really have a strong impact as civil society
>> participants if we do not go after unity. And we all agree that we should
>> pay more respect to each others, as long as we do not have hidden agenda,
>> and gentle philanthropes putting their money in the debate. That would be
>> fair.
>>
>> JC
>>
>>
>>
>> Le 18 nov. 2014 à 17:55, Jeremy Malcolm a écrit :
>>
>> On Nov 18, 2014, at 1:49 AM, Jean-Christophe NOTHIAS I The Global Journal
>> <jc.nothias at theglobaljournal.net> wrote:
>>
>>
>> I leave to Norbert co-convenor at JNC to answer your first email. On a
>> personal note, I would appreciate you to elaborate about the "dumping on
>> civil society colleagues" you are referring to,
>>
>>
>> Within the next few days I’m going to write a separate blog post about
>> this at igfwatch.org, because JNC’s pathologies are off-topic for this
>> list.
>>
>> The WEF/ICANN/CGIbr project is not in lack of clarity. If I do listen to
>> non JNC members:
>> - Wall Street Journal reporter: "The NetMundial wants to spread Internet
>> Governance more evenly across the developing world". (Ask Drew Fitzgerald
>> about the source for that understanding of what is the WIB Initiative)
>>
>>
>> Which is roughly opposite to what JNC is saying.
>>
>> - McCarthy at The Register: "ISOC has blasted efforts from some quarters
>> to create a "UN Security Council”
>>
>>
>> A fatuous analogy, do you take it at face value?
>>
>> - Eileen Donahoe, ... Virgilio Almeida, ... Richard Samans, ... Fadi
>> Chehadé: ...
>>
>>
>> None of these statements support the characterisation of the Initiative
>> as in your letter as “being ’the’ mechanism for global [Internet]
>> governance”.
>>
>> Based on these official and public statement, I can only read JNC
>> statement as an interesting analysis and agree with JNC reluctance to
>> participate or endorse such following-up (hijacking might be to blunt) of
>> the NetMundial meeting. Nor the WEF, ICANN, or CGIbr are owners of what
>> was stated ultimately in Sao Paulo, with all due reserves by different
>> participants.
>>
>>
>> I’ve also said, and maintain, that I regard the NETmundial Initiative
>> (particularly the naming thereof) to be a hijacking of the NETmundial
>> meeting. On this much we agree.
>>
>> So instead of trying to grab a comfortable seat in that convoy ...
>> should for once, Civil Society ... acknowledges the serious concerns seen
>> in the making of, and in the diverse objectives presented by the WEF, ICANN
>> and CGIbr.
>>
>>
>> Ian has taking a more neutral position, but for my part personally I
>> certainly have (
>> http://igfwatch.org/discussion-board/netmundial-initiative-takes-a-top-down-approach-to-implementing-the-netmundial-principles).
>> What prompted my last email was not that JNC opposes the NETmundial
>> Initiative, but that it has to do this by impugning the motives of other
>> civil society groups and falsely attributing them with their endorsement of
>> the Initiative.
>>
>> Also for the avoidance of doubt, nobody else endorsed my rant which was
>> sent in a personal capacity (though I have subsequently received, off list,
>> two emails in support, as well as one against).
>>
>> By the way, could you explain us (subscribers of the BestBits list):
>>
>>
>> I do not have time to respond to the rest of your mail right now because
>> I am speaking at a conference today and will be boarding a flight a few
>> hours later.  But I write this brief response just because you suggested in
>> most recent mail that I was ignoring you - I’m not.  Anyway, others can
>> respond to the balance of your questions rather than me monopolising the
>> conversation.
>>
>> --
>> Jeremy Malcolm
>> Senior Global Policy Analyst
>> Electronic Frontier Foundation
>> https://eff.org
>> jmalcolm at eff.org
>>
>> Tel: 415.436.9333 ext 161
>>
>> :: Defending Your Rights in the Digital World ::
>>
>>
>>
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-- 
Dr. Anja Kovacs
The Internet Democracy Project

+91 9899028053 | @anjakovacs
www.internetdemocracy.in
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