[governance] China's next-generation internet is a world-beater - tech - 10 March 2013 - New Scientist

Tue Mar 12 13:29:09 EDT 2013

Michael,

Why would you think we would need a global agreement as opposed to some bilateral or some multilateral agreements between individual states or other actors? 

Why would you want us to believe that a single global agreement would be necessary for the functioning of the Internet in an inclusive manner for the interest of us all when over he past 30 years a loose collection of individual agreements or sometimes handshake agreements between different parties has brought us up to a point where we are today where more and more people enjoy a relatively unfettered Internet as they please?

What do you think is broken about the current Internet that needs fixing? And why should a single global agreement be the better of the choices if other options do exist?

To me, as should be clear by now, there is no clear indication based on these two articles of a need for a global agreement. 

But alas, I may have been both too long on the Internet and have dealt for too long with the UN system to think that there could be a globally negotiated agreement that would be a catch-for-all for all the various aspects of life on the Internet. 

In my opinion, you are jumping to conclusions that are not substantiated by the articles you have posted and I don't see from your explanation how you would arrive at those conclusions, so maybe you wish to expand on this and give a step by step, let's say, more rigorous (academic) elaboration of your thinking in this regard. 

Peter

On 12.03.2013, at 17:30, "michael gurstein" <gurstein at gmail.com> wrote:

Peter and all,

I don't have any opinion on this or on the previous article that I posted on the US concern re: cybersecurity… It seems that these are statements of fact or at least intention and the proponents in both instances could care a fig about my opinion on their actions one way or the other.

What does occur to me from both of these however, is that they (together) clearly indicate the need for some sort of global agreements concerning the overall governance (development/deployment) of the Internet (including issues of cybersecurity and content flow) if it is to continue to operate in an effective and inclusive manner in the interests of us all…

M

From: Peter H. Hellmonds [mailto:peter.hellmonds at hellmonds.eu] 
Sent: Tuesday, March 12, 2013 8:16 AM
To: governance at lists.igcaucus.org; michael gurstein
Cc: governance at lists.igcaucus.org
Subject: Re: [governance] China's next-generation internet is a world-beater - tech - 10 March 2013 - New Scientist

Mike,

you post a link to an article without making a commentary as to whether you endorse the views expressed or not. What are your opinions on this?

Here are some of my preliminary observations and remarks, based on a quick reading of the article but not on a comprehensive study of the underlying paper. 

Key in this article, and perhaps one of the reasons why the West is hesitant about some of these advances would be this part sentence from the article:

"It is the basis for a system that monitors and controls traffic flow over the internet [...]."

While I know that telco operators need to monitor and control traffic in order to assure that there is no traffic congestion (especially on mobile networks), they do this without regard for the specific content (instead rather based on content classes or protocols), whereas if you combine monitoring and control with content filtering (as the article claims "to block malicious traffic as a whole"), then there is a not just remote possibility that this could be abused in a way contrary to the open and free Internet.

Add to this the notion of "China's advances in creating a next-generation internet that is on a national level", then you also add a certain level of fragmentation to the net that counters the end-to-end principle of the net. 

Finally, Source Address Validation Architecture (SAVA) could be abused by tracing and tracking of users which would make anonymous access to information or anonymous sharing and expression of information impossible. Right now, proxies and VPNs allow for such things but if a network of trusted computers maintains a database of computers and their IP addresses, then masking one's identity might become impossible, with all its consequences. 

Just my 2 cents on this.  

Peter

On 12.03.2013, at 15:48, "michael gurstein" <gurstein at gmail.com> wrote:

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21729075.800-chinas-nextgeneration-internet-is-a-worldbeater.html
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