[governance] Part II - About a single centralized structure +

[Milton L Mueller]

I strongly agree with Katitza's warnings about centralization of power at the global level.

On the issue of a cybercrime treaty, however, I offer a qualification: it is actually the U.S. that is more aggressive, both about cybercrime and cyberwar, and Russia is more interested in a treaty to protect itself, just as militarily weaker nations tend to favor arms control treaties whereas the ones with a military advantage do not.

I also wish to say that I just voted for the Enhanced Cooperation statement but was somewhat surprised to find the reference to OECD in there as a model for governance. I guess the statement intended to praise OECD for creating the CSISAC (civil society information society advisory committee), which is indeed a small step forward. However, the language in our statement implied both that OECD engages in global governance and that civil society would be participating equally in that governance because of CSISAC. Both implications are false: OECD really doesn't do governance, it just supplies research and analysis that states can use; and CSISAC just lets civil society into some discussions, but the actual decision making is made elsewhere on an intergovernmental basis.

--MM

From: Katitza Rodriguez [mailto:katitza at eff.org]
Sent: Thursday, November 11, 2010 1:44 PM
To: governance at lists.cpsr.org; Gwen Hinze; Valeria Betancourt
Subject: [governance] Part II - About a single centralized structure + APEC

Since the call has already being made, I will continue sharing my thoughts on the list.

A few thoughts about a single centralized structure for Internet Governance and Internet policy that was proposed in some emails. I believe is dangerous; I'd prefer to see it split between different regulatory and policy bodies. While there is a cost to follow different spaces, I believe is less than having a single centralized structure. Having a single centralize structure is likely to be a lobbying target; particularly so if the new body has norm-setting power - everyone who has something to gain will have the incentive to spend time and money lobbying there to influence policy or norm-setting in a way that suits their interests.

Civil society is likely to lose out in that world; we usually don't have equivalent time or financial resources compared to other stakeholders, so we can't "lobby" as effectively, and we usually don't have the ability to engage with policymakers as closely as other stakeholders. The concern is regulatory capture - regulators will often be influenced by those views that they hear the most (and with a-symmetric resources, that is more likely to be industry or govt and not civil society views). I do not believe this discussion is about developing country framework vs developed country frameworks (at least not from a public interest point of view). Instead it's about the scope of the new authority and creating "a single point of failure".

I do not like the broad scope either. On the cybersecurity / cybercrime front, we can loose that battle completely. Just see which countries are requesting what?
http://www.computerweekly.com/Articles/2010/04/20/240973/UN-rejects-international-cybercrime-treaty.htm

About other Internet Policy Organizations:

There are several organizations dealing with Internet Policy. One similar to the "model of the OECD" is APEC. I consider APEC a dangerous space, at least on privacy (and may be copyright).

Observer status to APEC is restrictive, and countries like China/US might used veto powers to avoid some civil society participants to join this meetings. Latin American countries members of APEC are: Peru, Mexico and Chile.  Since the meetings are confidential, even if one country opposed to an observer status application, the application is rejected. I consider APEC really dangerous and I think is quite organization. I think, APEC is a close, non-transparent, non inclusive organizations.

There are tensions (in my opinion) between those  OECD/APEC, although they said they "cooperate" . For instance, on privacy, the OECD is placed as a better place for privacy discussion because it has the European countries (with strong privacy safeguards) and the United States in the other hand. While in APEC is mostly driven by United States and its allies (including Mexico). However, you also have the Council of Europe (and Convention 108) which does similar work. And in some way you see different approaches to the same issue from different point of views.

There has been a lot of critics to ITU, Council of Europe for the close, non-transparent, non inclusive, organizations. So I will not enter into detail there.

Note: I do understand the sentiment of Parminder of the lack of a research policy institutes in developing countries that can tackle some internet policy issues. A place that is open transparent, and inclusive. I do not believe that a broad-in-scope is a good idea, nor a global one.   We need regional concerted agendas. For instance, in Latin America, may be ELAC is trying to solve this vacuum. Valeria Betancourt, APC is the liaison for civil society in ELAC in Latin America, and I would like to hear from here how ELAC works, the scope of its mandate, the work they do, etc...

But I fully agree with Lee (which I will quote: " So re-creating an OECD-like public policy discussion forum is no small task and requires a small and very smart core staff to do the work which member countries have to pay for. I don;t see the political will or $ for that. I do see a number of UN-related entities like UNCTAD, ITU-D, UN-GAID, which probably think that is what they are doing but not at least in my view with the impact of OECD."

In addition, I fear any possibility of create a new or enhanced space for discussing global cybercrime/cybersecurity issues.
http://www.computerweekly.com/Articles/2010/04/20/240973/UN-rejects-international-cybercrime-treaty.htm


<1> Accountability Project http://www.hunton.com/files/tbl_s47Details%5CFileUpload265%5C2962%5CBruening_APEC_BNA_Oct-2010.pdf
<2>http://www.privacyinternational.org/article.shtml?cmd[347]=x-347-566294






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