[governance] All power should be in the hands of the engineers? (was Re: HLLM in LOndon - CS reps)

[Carlos A. Afonso]

One interesting (if we can say so) aspect of the comments mentioned by
JC and Norbert in the ISOC meeting video is at the beginning around
50:00, in which he says that the relation of the surveillance
disclosures with the Internet sits at "layer 11" ("snooping governance").

Totally out of the mark. One of the main sources of data captured by the
surveillance agencies is through tapping directly into the main cables
(as the findings regarding Level 3, AT&T and Verizon, to quote a few of
the large backbone providers involved, show), as well as routers and
switches at key exchanges -- so at the lower layers of the Internet
stack. Thanks to the revelations we discovered that large providers
interconnect their datacenters without data encryption of any sort. This
if far from being a "layer 11" problem.

The technical organizations of the Net are justly concerned and getting
organized to seek alternatives to countervail this extensive
vulnerability at these levels which enables most of this massive
violation of rights. And civil society is of course also absolutely
worried by these vulnerabilities.

It is an obvious issue of Internet governance. I do hope, however, that
this issue does not determine the focus of the IG debate in April --
the proposal is to focus on building consensus around a set of
international IG principles.

fraternal regards

--c.a.

On 12/10/2013 07:28 AM, Norbert Bollow wrote:
> In relation to Jean-Christophe's posting quoted below...
> 
> Those remarks of Alejandro Pisanty (who by the way is not only Chair of
> ISOC Mexico, but also definitely an influential person in the global
> technical community, for example he has served three terms as an ICANN
> board member, and he is currently on ISOC's Board of Trustees) are at
> minutes 50:00-57:00 in this video:
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TtOfsC2n_lQ
> 
> Although the agenda that he is promoting is absolutely shocking when
> looked at from any mainstream civil society perspective (in the sense
> of what is mainstream among civil society movements in general, if we
> look beyond the community of those who specialize on Internet
> governance), what he is saying is unfortunately an influential view
> among many technical people.
> 
> In effect, he's saying that all power should be in the hands of the
> engineers and by implication in the hands of the companies for which
> they're working, and he is promoting the use of smoke screen tactics
> that aim at preventing anyone else from gaining an effective influence.
> 
> Civil society absolutely needs to find a good way to deal with this
> kind of tactics.
> 
> These tactics have been successfully used *within* civil society
> networks such as the IGC with the aim of preventing IGC from being an
> effective civil society voice (again in the sense of what is mainstream
> among civil society movements in general, looking beyond the community
> of those who specialize on Internet governance).
> 
> If IGC in its current incarnation is not capable of dealing with this
> challenge effectively, we need to create an IGC v2 that has that
> capability.
> 
> Greetings,
> Norbert
> 
> 
> 
> Jean-Christophe Nothias <jeanchristophe.nothias at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>> All of this is very impressive! Does the lists feel comfortable with
>> that type of situation?
>>
>> It seems that, in this IG world, many things have no stable
>> definition at all. 
>>
>> What's about the definition of 'trust', or 'respect'? Too complex?
>>
>> I think what we observe here is not the right path to heal the
>> 'governance gap'* , nor to come to a 'single definition of Internet
>> Governance'**, nor to address 'orphan issues'*** and certainly not a
>> good way to look at a 'single list of governance issues'****. And
>> obviously not help to define a 'single set of principles'*****. We
>> should not worry about that. Why? see below.
>>
>>
>> These 'expressions' are forbidden since ICANN48, as per Alejandro
>> Pisanty, chair of ISOC Mexico, stated that these expressions have to
>> be banned from the I stars (I*, 1Net, ISOC...) narrative.
>> Surprisingly everyone in the room seemed to enjoy that rather odd
>> collection of 'NO'! I need t to find a couple of speeches by
>> notorious totalitarians using such a restrictive vision of a
>> democratic debate.
>>
>> Here what ISOC Mexico Chair suggested to all ISOCs around the planet:
>>
>> *
>> "We should not accept the term 'governance gap'. That’s an invention
>> that has been a very popular invention (inaudible) but we should not
>> use it in our vocabulary."
>>
>> **
>> "We should have 'no single definition of Internet governance'. We
>> should push against the idea that the Brazil meeting, or anything
>> else, will produce a definition of Internet Governance which would be
>> good for everybody, every time and for many years. We have different
>> definitions of Internet Governance depending of countries, regions,
>> interests, religions and so forth and we should thrive for them to
>> stay diverse."
>>
>> ***
>> "We should not use in our vocabulary  ‘orphan issues’. It might be
>> argued that there are organ, sorry orphan issues in IG but most of
>> the time if something is an issue, there is already someone, some
>> organization, couple of engineers trying to work on it. They may be
>> not of enough scale or expertise to grow globally or to split up
>> multi regionally. There are very few real orphan issues in IG. Many
>> of the things that appear as orphan issues are not IG issue but legal
>> issues. Your judges are not well trained to identify cybercrime as a
>> form of crime, or you do not have that law but it’s a national law
>> not a global law."
>>
>> ****
>> "We should not have a 'single list of issues for governance'. There
>> are people who got it one way, people who got it another way. There
>> are people who put spam and pfishing together. Other pfishing and
>> cybersecurity together. Let that happen. Let these thousand flowers
>> of definition blossom."
>>
>> *****
>> "We should avoid to establish a 'single set of principles' which is
>> among other things, one declared an objective of the Brazilian
>> meeting. During the eight years of IGF, there are already been two
>> dozens or so of IG definition. They are not all compatible."
>>
>> etc, etc, etc...
>>
>> Former president of South Africa, back in the 50's once explained to
>> the media and their audiences, the meaning of 'APARTHEID'. "This
>> Afrikaner word meant 'GOOD NEIGHBORING'. An expression of progress".
>> A beautiful way to twist reality. Manipulating and alluding people,
>> erasing definitions, avoiding debates... All of these drive toward
>> what the worst regimes can offer to its subordinates.
>>
>> "We are the revolutionaries. They are the counter revolutionaries."
>>
>> Comfortable? 
>>
>> JC
> 

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