[governance] Reconstituting MAG

[McTim]

<Warning lengthy reply-no asbestos underpants needed>

On Feb 12, 2008 9:53 AM, Parminder <parminder at itforchange.net> wrote:
> McTim
>
> Thanks for responding.
>
> I will discuss the main issue of tech community representation first, and
> respond to others a little later.
>
> Your analysis of the possible practical consequences of a simple 3 way
> division of members for CS membership is quite logical.  I quite understand
> that most of these IG institutions will need to be represented in the MAG
> for it to do any meaningful work. I am willing to consider a separate
> category of 6-7 'institutional members' (representing existing IG
> institutions) in the MAG, and the rest of the numbers equally divided among
> three stakeholder groups (gov, CS, business sector). I seek your and other
> members response to this proposal.

Is this "enhanced cooperation"?  If Adam's count is correct, then
cutting the number of Internet community/technical community reps on
the MAG in half seems to me to be  "reduced cooperation".

>
> In this case one will know that each member clearly represents a particular
> institution (and, if it makes any sense, they collectively represent the
> interests of the extant IG establishment). These institutions surely have
> legitimate interests and the right to represent them.
>
> The problem is of mixing of these interests with those represented by CS. CS
> by definition represents non-institutional interests(non-gov, non-market,
> and if now we have add another category, non- existing IG bodies). That's
> the meaning of CS.

Well that's A meaning, but not THE only meaning:

I have given this before, but for those not on the list at that time:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Society#Definition

by any reasonable (IMHO) definition, ALL of the pre-exisitng "IG"
bodies are squarely in the mainstream of CS.

Before we define "internet Technical Community, I would say that we as
a group need to define what is CS.  However, since, in our charter, we
have "The Internet Governance Caucus (IGC) was originally created by
individual and organizational civil society actors who came together
in the context of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS)
to promote global public interest objectives in Internet governance
policy making.", I would say CS for us are those folk whose interests
are to  "promote global public interest objectives in Internet
governance policy making."

Is this an acceptable definition?

>
> With technical community I understand a community of people with high degree
> of technical expertise. But this expertise can be used to further X
> company's interests of propertisizing as much of the global ICT
> infrastructure as possible,

Can you give examples of this in the IG field?  From my perspective, I
don't see this happening, although in theory, it's certainly possible.

 as much as for Y country's censorship and
> surveillance system. Association with these activities will not make them
> any less 'technical' or take away their membership of 'technical community',
> or will it.

probably not, it's a "big tent" kind of thing, with no one excluded
because of their day job.

>
> And there are those technical community members who spend a lot of time and
> resources to uphold public interest values, which makes them worthy civil
> society members/ leaders.

This is one of the "criteria" I used when I went through the list.  I
looked for names and emails that I am familiar with from
IETF/numbering/ICANN/infrastructure operation lists., people I have
met at various meetings etc. I probably skipped some folk I am not
familiar with. it was a quick "back of a fag packet" count.  My point
was that there are lots of those folk on this list, enough to make the
notion of eliminating (maybe even reducing) the 4th stakeholder group
a non-starter.

>
> But when I said every group should bring in adequate technical expertise in
> their nominations for MAG, I wasn't looking for all the kinds of expertise
> represented in the above list you have given. Many of these have no
> technical expertise at all.
>
> In this list many of those passing off as 'technical community members' have
> had nothing to do with technology. Theresa Swineheart representing ICANN is
> a lawyer ( a law graduate at least) and so is the new ICANN chair (with a
> long background of representing the IPR constituency), and I am sure many
> others in the above list may not be technical persons.

Here is where lots of folks go awry when they speak of "technical
community". Much of the work of the "technical community" is simply
administrative.  Boring, mundane, sometimes arcane administrivia, but
needs to be done.  Lawyers can do it, and in fact are quite useful at
times.  I certainly think that the lawyer in question in this example
has a strong desire to "promote global public interest objectives in
Internet governance policy making."


> So, what really is the definition of this technical community - on what
> criteria do you exclude someone who may be an outstandingly capable
> technical expert leading a country's surveillance activity, and include
> lawyers in this category.

what really is the definition of this technical community??

Well, IMO, pre WSIS, the "internet community" was those folks involved
in ICANN/IETF/RIR/NOG/INET/ccTLD/ISOC/$NAME_OF_GROUP.
Literally dozens of organisations (maybe hundreds or thousands). Now,
post-WSIS, we include everybody in the world as "Internet
Stakeholders", as we are all affected by the Internet in some way.  So
the previously $NAMED groups are now being called "Internet technical
community".

In short, all are welcome, so I am not sure there can be A definition,
It's certainly out of scope for the likes of me.  It may even be out
of scope for this list (we can define ourselves, but can we impose a
definition on another group, however overlapping)?

Your other question in the above para is an interesting one, and I
have an example for you.  When I went to WSIS, I saw an acquaintance
of mine who works for the Tunisian Internet Agency.  According to
http://www.opennetinitiative.net/tunisia

"Tunisia has deployed the Internet in a way that implements a
multi-layered architecture of control. All of the state's Internet
Service Providers (ISPs) purchase access from Tunisia's Internet
Agency, which performs filtering at the network backbone. "

So the guy's day job puts him outside of CS, but his interests
(hobby?) lead him to participate in the "Internet technical Community"
in a CS role.  I know him, certainly, as someone working "to promote
global public interest objectives in Internet governance policy
making."

Shrodinger's cat, innit!

In short, I don't think it wise or useful for us to exclude lawyers or
folk whose companies work may be involved in some kind of censorship.
If you did that, then arguably, all staff of
Yahoo/Google/Cisco/$NAME_OF_COMPANY would have to be excluded from CS
becasue of acts of commission or ommision by their employer.  Taken to
extreme, that might include everyone on this list who actually went to
Tunisia for WSIS!

>
> We all recognize and greatly respect all the work, sacrifices etc done by
> great technical persons in making the Internet into what it is, and perhaps
> in keeping it so.

If this were really the case, then you would participate with those
folk in the pre-WSIS bodies, no?

>These are the people who stood by public interest values> and did not
allow themselves to be supplanted to narrow insituional
> interests. And as I said they must rate as CS leaders. Our problem is that
> the 'term 'technical community' is deliberated employed in confusing ways to
> use the cover of legitimacy of the great work done by these persons for
> narrow sectional interests.

Can we have examples please?  As above, i don't see this in reality,
but again, in theory, possible.

 And yes, often times, technical experts
> themselves feel the pangs of 'power' going out of their hands as Internet
> becomes something requiring great social and political attention, and
> contribute to this continued obfuscation of the meaning of the term
> 'technical community'.

IMO, it's nothing like "'power' going out of their hands", it's the
wastefulness of building new fora (that aren't as
multistakeholder/bottom-up as the old ones) instead of participating
in the pre-existing fora.

>
> So, lets get our definitions right, and then we can argue about what to do
> with which group. In light of above, can you tell me what you mean by
> 'technical community'.

See above, yes, and no.

>
> If it means technical experts who want to work for upholding public interest
> values, they are simply civil society members, with special knowledge of the
> subject, and therefore deserving special attention from all of us.
>
> It is means any person who have a high degree of technical expertise, I am
> not willing to give someone working on entrenching an x company's monopoly
> on the Internet any special political representation, on account of his tech
> competency, on any public policy body.
>

That's certainly not in my experience.

> If the term means representatives of exiting IG institutions, yes, these can
> together be given 6-7 positions on the MAG. I am open to that. We will then
> know exactly what and whom do they represent.

but there are hundreds of "Internet technical community" bodies that
are then "unrepresented".. What about all the
NRENs/NOGs/whitehats/white(grey or black list operators/non-RIR IPv6
fora and NGOs/etc, etc.??
>From whom do they seek representation?

If there are indeed 11 or 12 on the MAG, I for one am happy to
maintain this "status quo".  It doesn't appear to me to be broken!

</Warning lengthy reply-no asbestos underpants needed>

Can you trim your mails please?

-- 
Cheers,

McTim
$ whois -h whois.afrinic.net mctim
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