[governance] "UN must step in to stop cyber threats"

[parminder]

Below from an Indian newspaper.... 
http://www.deccanchronicle.com/130702/commentary-dc-comment/commentary/un%E2%80%88must-step-stop-cyber-threats 


Now that the chimera of the US as the unique upholder of Internet's 
values and people's rights on the Internet is so obviously 
exposed....... and we know that when US calls for a single unified 
global Internet, and its unique historic role in its governance (read, 
control), what really does it mean....

parminder


from the Deccan Chronicle


  UN must step in to stop cyber threats

DC | 2 hours 7 min ago


"This is not the Cold War anymore,” says an upset Germany. This was the 
mildest of rebukes thus far in the wake of the revelations about the 
American NSA courtesy Edward Snowden.
Spying has been taken into another dimension altogether and the present 
battle could well be called the “Great Cyber War”. The United States, 
caught spying, does not have a fig leaf of deniability.
This is not just Big Brother watching over its citizens, as portrayed in 
the landmark novel 1984. The US has crossed all limits and is now spying 
on its closest friends and thickest allies as well.
European Union nations have been forced to undertake security sweeps to 
ensure their computer systems are not being hacked into and their 
telephone conversations eavesdropped upon.
China, first typecast as the world’s original cyber bad boy, is 
mockingly pointing to its great rival across the seas to show the world 
there isn’t just one culprit in modern espionage. If all nations do not 
get together and sign a treaty to stop cyber espionage, things are only 
going to get worse for those who love privacy.
The United States’ spying on its allies takes the issue beyond the 
fundamental argument that the threat of terrorism overrides the tenets 
of privacy and justifies invasion of individual liberties. What the 
great National Security Agency spy programs of Maryland and Utah have 
been doing is to spy on governments, their trade, science, military and 
political secrets.
All explanations regarding PRISM and other programs studying only 
metadata, and not prying into individual interactions over the Internet 
and telephone, cut no ice with a world that is aghast at the temerity of 
the most powerful nation in a virtually unipolar world.
Much like Germany, India, too, protested so mildly that its voice was 
hardly heard when US secretary of state John Kerry came calling last 
week. So protective of his guest was our foreign minister, Salman 
Khurshid, that the media could not question the visiting dignitary on 
what his country’s real intentions are in setting up this elaborate 
$40-billion-plus spying apparatus that snoops on the world.
China came through far more aggressively in questioning the United 
States on all that the world has heard ever since a sub-contractor went 
on the lam and spilled the beans from Hong Kong with the help of WikiLeaks.
If clarity and transparency are the qualities most needed to cool 
tensions among nations and passions among privacy-seekers, what will 
really serve society is for the United Nations to pay serious attention 
to this crisis of confidence and come up with an action plan to mark 
cyber boundaries and make them as inviolable as possible by common consent.

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