[governance] Civil Society (was Re: caucus contribution, consultation and MAG meeting)

Suresh Ramasubramanian suresh at hserus.net
Sat Feb 16 23:09:28 EST 2013


This is nothing to do with corporate efficiency as much as it is to do 
with personal privacy and efficient guidelines for marketers to operate 
in a privacy sensitive manner, including a graded series of 
administrative actions ranging from warnings and fiena to other 
penalties such as jail time in case data theft, malware etc figure in 
the marketing campaign.

It also means producing sufficient arguments to counter heavy lobbying 
from some marketers who try to influence the law so that they can 
continue to violate internet user privacy while delivering unsolicited 
communication that is targeted by, for example, gathering a list of 
email addresses from God knows where, and trying to match them up with 
paper databases gained from postal junk mail, supermarket coupons / flyers etc

--srs (htc one x)



On 17 February 2013 9:09:38 AM "michael gurstein" <gurstein at gmail.com> wrote:
> Suresh, I'm not the CS police or any sort of arbiter but FWIW to my mind
> simply saying that you "support good antispam laws and on public / isp
> education on Internet security" doesn't really make it "civil society"...
>
> The question is what are the underlying values/public interest that you are
> trying to achieve with or through "good antispam laws and on public / isp
> education on Internet security".
>
> It seems to me that achieving increased corporate efficiencies (and thus
> corporate profits) is as, or more likely the "interest" that is driving
> your/your employers actions as anything to do with enhancing the public
> good.
>
> M
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Suresh Ramasubramanian [mailto:suresh at hserus.net]
> Sent: Saturday, February 16, 2013 7:18 PM
> To: michael gurstein; governance at lists.igcaucus.org; 'Roland Perry'
> Subject: RE: [governance] Civil Society (was Re: caucus contribution,
> consultation and MAG meeting)
>
> In my case, my activism so far has been on good antispam laws and on public
> / isp education on Internet security. Here, funnily enough, my interests and
> views are actually congruent to the interests and views of my current and
> past employers on a number of occasions. Though I obviously leave my work
> affiliation behind me when I participate anywhere in my personal capacity
>
> --srs (htc one x)
>
>
>
> On 17 February 2013 1:44:17 AM "michael gurstein" <gurstein at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > My own opinion on this would be that folks such as you are describing
> > would in fact need to become somewhat pro-active to be "of" civil
> > society -- whether they joined a specific group would depend on the
> > circumstances. But if they were concerned that certain norms were
> > being expressed (for example
> > anti-stalking) or that normative based actions (anti-stalking
> > measures) were being proceeded with they would probably need to become
> part of some "group"
> > or other. However, the specifics of that "becoming part of" or of
> > those particular "groups" would vary dramatically all the way from
> > "likes" on a Facebook group to joining issue based organizations/demo's
> etc.etc.
> >
> > As for the person from the industry group... as I understood it, he
> > was arguing that as a citizen he was "in" civil society at least for
> > part of his personal "situationalization" (grr... not a good word but
> > I can't think of another at the moment...
> >
> > The question of his being "of" civil society really came down to
> > whether there was a personal normative alignment with his articulation
> > of, and identification with his corporate interests (wearing his
> > corporate situationalization hat) or with his "interests" as a
> > citizen, wearing another hat.
> >
> > Personally, at this point I would see whether someone was able and
> > willing to, for example, sign on to the normative (and programmatic)
> > positions as articulated by CS in WSIS 2003 and WSIS 2005 as a
> > reasonable indication of whether they were in alignment with CS in the
> > IG space i.e. whether they were "of" CS in the IG space. If yes,
> > "yes", if no, "no"... (and for the record, I see updating and adapting
> > those normative (and programmatic
> > positions) as being the primary mission for CS going forward at least
> > to WSIS 2015).
> >
> > Others may (and very likely will) want to develop their own normative
> > position going forward toward WSIS 2015 (without an initial agreement
> > to align themselves with CS WSIS 2003 and 2005) or whatever, and they
> > may also choose to call their postioning as CS, and who is to stop
> > them; but for the purposes of my own activities in this area that is
> > how I will look to proceed.
> >
> > M
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: governance-request at lists.igcaucus.org
> > [mailto:governance-request at lists.igcaucus.org] On Behalf Of Roland
> > Perry
> > Sent: Saturday, February 16, 2013 11:13 AM
> > To: governance at lists.igcaucus.org
> > Subject: Re: [governance] Civil Society (was Re: caucus contribution,
> > consultation and MAG meeting)
> >
> > In message <00ef01ce0c6e$60a5fd70$21f1f850$@gmail.com>, at 09:52:11 on
> > Sat,
> > 16 Feb 2013, michael gurstein <gurstein at gmail.com> writes
> > >To be a wee bit philosophical here... We should probably be talking
> > >about those who are "in" CS (as for example, as a descriptive
> > >category for those not in government, business etc.etc.) in contrast
> > >with those who
> > are "of" CS (i.e. those who have ascribed themselves or could be
> > ascribed to sharing/advocating in support of some set of normative
> > principles/values associated with CS...
> > >
> > >In this determination, "stalkers" could be seen as "in" CS without
> > >necessarily be "of" CS (unless there was a grouping supporting
> > >"stalker rights" as part of a large CS rights and principles
> > >initiative :)
> >
> > I understand the distinction you are trying to make, but how does it
> > work in practice?
> >
> > Recently a contributor here who is "in" a trade association was in
> > effect accused of being inextricably "of" that trade association
> > (although he very plausibly denied it).
> >
> > On the other hand, we all know about the professional difficulty
> > Government employees have with trying to express "a personal view"
> > divorced from their day-job.
> >
> > The group of people I'm trying to place somewhere within the
> > eco-system are those "in" civil society who have been affected by
> > "something bad happening on the Internet". Do they have to join some
> > sort of lobbying group in order to become "of" something, and is that
> > something within Civil Society, or one of the other stakeholder groups (if
> the latter, which...)?
> > --
> > Roland Perry
> >
> >
> >
>
>



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