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

[Milton L Mueller]

________________________________

From: William Drake [mailto:drake at hei.unige.ch] 
 
> I have, as you know, written quite a bit over the years  
> about the historical evolution and contemporary decline  
> of the telecom regime, so I not only get the marginalization  
> argument, but have made it.  
 
You are getting all defensive and prickly again, which doesn't
accomplish anything. 
 
It seems to me that you are making a very strong argument that Bill
Drake believes in the importance of, and wants to get more involved in,
ITU discussions of security. If that is the case, great. Do it! And if
you can convince others to get involved, that's fine. My point is not to
tell others not to do anything they think should be done, and I
apologize if you took it that way. 
 
My debate was about whether this particular grouping of civil society
has the resources and expertise to become deeply involved as a
collectivity. My impression was that this was an internet governance
group, focused on the IGF, not a general ICT policy or telecom policy
group. This collection of civil society actors has its strengths, but it
is barely able to maintain a coordinated presence in the IGF, and is
really only tangentially connected to the nitty-gritty policy work of
ICANN (despite your constant "if it's not ICANN who cares"? comments, I
don't see any but a handful of these people -- except for the employees
-- at ICANN meetings or workgroups). So if you are proposing to add ITU
committees and processes to the group, I am simply questioning whether
it can be feasible. I do _not_ question whether you personally can do
it, and do not question that someone ought to be in there.
 
> I have absolutely no illusions that CS would make a HUGE  
> effort and wasn't proposing this.  But since the Argentine- 
> Swiss proposals to open the door to CS are the focus of  
> active debate right now, it'd be nice if CS wasn't entirely silent,  
> which just makes it easier for the more retrograde governments  
> to say why bother, they don't care anyway.  At a post- 
 > It'd have been nice if we'd had a sign on or something,  
> which is not all that hard to do,  
 
OK, so here's where your argument gets interesting, and complicated. And
it illustrates why I am worried about capacity constraints. Yes, in some
sense CS should respond to proposals to open the door to CS. The
question is, who goes in that door other than you and perhaps Willie?
And I don't just mean signing a statement, which takes a few minutes, I
mean actually participating in these standards committees, which takes
years? And what other processes do you absent yourselves from by virtue
of participating in ITU committees? This group? GigaNet? Your wife? Do
we have the ability to seriously contribute? What happens when they open
the door and no one enters? It's irresponsible not to ask those
questions. 
 
Would it be a great victory for democracy for one guy from this group to
be let into these committees? What would you do? What positions would
you advocate? What is keeping you out now? Why do you need this group to
validate your participation? Does this group have any legitimate ability
to validate your participation? Is ITU really waiting for our word?
These are honest questions, not rhetorical ones. Inquiring minds want to
know.

> FYI, today begins a four day meeting of WP 2 of SG 17 and  
> there's a ton of people from irrelevant outfits like VeriSign  
> over there.  Here's the piffle WP 2 is currently working on: 
 
What follows is a long detailed list of highly technical - policy
-economic issues. Which is precisely my point. Who in this group is
ready to go toe to toe with full-time, paid, telephone company
engineers and government ministry reps on "network security
assessment/guidelines based on ITU-T recommendation X.805? Etc.
 
If you can go to this meeting, go. I have no doubt that a single
dedicated individual can have an impact if they get access, know the
issues, focus their efforts, and devote about 20 hours a week to
following the issue. I would wonder about who pays for the time and
expenses of that person. That's what some of us have done in the
ICANN/IGF complex of institutions, and even that is beginning to strain
our capacity. Now you're multiplying the remit by about ten-fold, in an
environment that is not clearly the most direct and strategic. 
 
Just pay attention to maximizing the effective use of our resources (to
the extent that there is any "our" here anyway). That's all I am saying.
It's easy for folks on this list to cheerlead you on, but when you go
into those committees and have real work to do, take a look around you
and see which of them is there.  
 
 
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