[governance] Secret Surveillance Puts Internet Governance System at Risk

[michael gurstein]

This position strikes me as either naïve or duplicitous in the extreme.

Does one really believe that the USG and its "Internet Freedom" allies were
supporting Internet Freedom because they believed in a free Internet (while
they were using the Internet to build the capacity to undermine the
fundamental human rights/freedoms of us all).  

Rather, it should I think, be evident that their real motivation was to
ensure that there were no structures or mechanisms of whatever sort
(governmental, inter-governmental, multi-stakeholder or whatever) that
are/were in a position to protect those human rights and against the
depredations which they were secretly constructing with which we all are
being threatened.

Do you really believe that the good folks who built and/or funded the
current systems are going unbidden to build/fund out of the fineness of
their principles the systems that you are suggesting would "protect us from
government intrusion and ... revise Internet architectures so as to
eliminate the points of control that governments are so successful at
exploiting". 

Our strength such as it is, comes from the possibility of creating and
implementing democratic processes and mechanisms through which governments
and the increasingly global commons can be made transparent and held
accountable and through which the protection of human rights and fundamental
freedoms can be protected and extended.

Mike

-----Original Message-----
From: governance-request at lists.igcaucus.org
[mailto:governance-request at lists.igcaucus.org] On Behalf Of Avri Doria
Sent: Monday, August 05, 2013 3:06 PM
To: IGC
Subject: Re: [governance] Secret Surveillance Puts Internet Governance
System at Risk


On 2 Aug 2013, at 18:35, Diego Rafael Canabarro wrote:

quoting:

> Secret Surveillance Puts Internet Governance System at Risk Friday 
> August 02, 2013
> 
> http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/6926/135/

> the U.S. has ceded the moral high ground on the issue.


Anyone who believes that any government anywhere occupies high ground is
likely to be disappointed.  Governments, while unfortunately still a
necessary evil in this stage human moral development, are not to be trusted
but to be controlled and treated with suspicion by the people as much as
possible.  sure there are good people in all governments, but government
themselves are not those good people, rather they are bureaucracies
motivated by a complex of intractable and often negative forces.

The high ground in Dubai was not an issue of which government should be
trusted, it was the point of trying to remove all governments as much as
possible.  Governments cannot be trusted.  History shows us that they never
could be and it is only blind faith that indicates someday they may be
trustworthy.  Of course when governments are the only voice we have for
limiting government intrusion - as they are in the ITU,  the topic can get
perverted.  

But to view the confirmation of what we all knew, that all governments
monitor all people at all times as much as they can get away with, as an
excuse to give other governments more oversight is a bit confused to my
mind.

I think all this has shown is that an Internet that allows any sort of
government interference is likely to be used by those governments for their
own purposes, whether they are, surveillance in the service of perceived
terror, pedophilia or intellectual 'property' threats , the silencing of
dissidents or the persecution of minorities such as the gay population and
other cultural/nation/racial minorities.

While we can and must fight on the policy front to defend ourselves against
the vulnerabilities created and already exploited by the current Internet's
control points, we must put more and more focus into creating technologies
and processes that protect us from government intrusion and must revise
Internet architectures so as to eliminate the points of control that
governments are so successful at exploiting.

avri


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