[governance] Re: IG questions that are not ICANN [was: Irony]

Milton L Mueller mueller at syr.edu
Sun Dec 9 21:14:54 EST 2007


> -----Original Message-----
> From: William Drake [mailto:drake at hei.unige.ch]
> See above.  Re: flawed yes, but fatally---this obviously depends on the
> issue, the industry players involved, their degree of consensus and
> support
> for the approach taken and their ability to implement it, which with
> respect
> to security I wouldn't make a sweeping statement about before actually
> investigating.  When law enforcement, national security, and intelligence
> agencies work with major telcos, manufacturers, applications providers etc
> it seems odd to just assume this cannot matter at all. 

That kind of work is going on in many places, and the ITU is not the most significant place for it. Indeed, the ITU is rather marginalized these days. And if civil society critics succeeded, after the kind of HUGE effort that it would take, in getting an influential seat at some ITU table then the chances are great that certain parties would forum-shift to somewhere else. 

No one said the issues of lawful intercept and cybersecurity "don't matter." Indeed, if you've been paying attention to IGP's work at all you should know that we've been focusing on that quite a bit, with some relatively good results in the DNSSEC sphere. 

But this kind of politics is trench warfare and it makes little sense for CS groups to enter into a battle on the terms and conditions set by industry and govts, which is precisely what you are inviting us to do. 

> processes are nonetheless consequential, no?  Re: top down, ok if by this
> you mean CS is excluded and a number of segments of relevant Internet
> industries opt not to get involved.  But for those industry groupings that
> opt to be involved, it is as bottom up as any other standards process.

Sure. But think of resource allocation. Scarce time, labor money. I don't see the case for CS involvement in ITU processes, or for fighting a process battle in that forum. 

You give me a specific issue worth fighting for, and show me that ITU is the best place to fight it, then I'll be there. But if you want me to knock my head against the wall of a 150 year old bureaucracy trying to gain some generic recognition for something called "civil society" no thanks. 



No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Free Edition. 
Version: 7.5.503 / Virus Database: 269.16.17/1179 - Release Date: 12/9/2007 11:06 AM
 
____________________________________________________________
You received this message as a subscriber on the list:
     governance at lists.cpsr.org
To be removed from the list, send any message to:
     governance-unsubscribe at lists.cpsr.org

For all list information and functions, see:
     http://lists.cpsr.org/lists/info/governance



More information about the Governance mailing list