[governance] Inter-stakeholder issues in a multi-stakeholder environment

[George Sadowsky]

Mike, and all,

Thanks, Mike, for your patience in obtaining a reply.  Real life sometimes interferes with what one would prefer to do.

I welcome the opportunity to respond, in part because it really forces e tho think how I feel about the points raised.  It's quite easy for any of us to become used to living in environments of like-minded people, akin to an echo chamber that amplifies what we think instead of challenging.  The interaction of the political parties in the U.S, parliament is a very visible, and destructive, example of that.  Unfortunately there is good evidence that the Internet itself encourages such echo chambers to form and to encapsulate people.

I've thought about "Snowden" in my own personal context, and can't come down strongly on either side of the argument.  It's clear that there are "big data" specialists working for intelligence agencies who have the feeling that if something can be done to increase the density of intelligence information available, they should do it.  Their motivations may be good in the sense of enhancing security, but  their disregard of law, societal mores, and even sometimes common sense is evident.    It's also clear that the methods of judicial oversight of the NSA, the FISA and parts of our Congress, have failed rather badly.  I hope that this can be fixed, but I admit that I'm not sure what exactly I mean by 'fixed.'

It's also clear that there are people in the world who would like to kill me and my countrymen (and possibly you and yours also), simply because we have different beliefs, if they could get away with it.  Given the turmoil, largely based upon religious differences, there is a lot of hate that translates into daily violence in many places in the world.  This is a fact.  Now the question needs to be asked: how much intelligence is needed in order to keep people safe?  The question is compounded by the fact that most intelligence operations must be deeply secret in order to be effective, so that unless one is part of a privileged few, one cannot possibly hope to address the question.  That causes me some anxiety, as well as re-examining the level of trust that I place in the actors involved.

I don't have quite the level of moral outrage as some regarding NSA's intelligence mandate; my concern is with both the extent of their activities, as well as their skirting or breaking the laws under which they operate.  I take it as a given that all moderately developed countries have intelligence operations, and that all of them use the Internet to some extent, perhaps some to a large extent, to gather their information and perform other functions.   Some of the events uncovered by Snowden relating to spying on non-hostile countries have led to discoveries that those countries were themselves spying on each other.  So there is some phony outrage involved in the ensuing charges.   I wish that the world were different, and that we could all rust each other, but that is not the world that we live in.

One of my colleagues who works with multiple governments tells me that the Snowden affair has divided governments into two groups: (1) those that have NSA-like capabilities, although they may utilize them differently; and (2) those that don't have such capabilities, and are envious of NSA and want to acquire them.  I believe that statement is largely correct, and it highlights that governments themselves are heterogeneous organizations.  For example, the U.S. State Department funds projects in countries that provide TOR and useful encryption tools so that civil society activists in those countries can be more effective, while the NSA tries to decode TOR traffic. I suspect that many other countries have the same mixed objectives.  This is the world in which we live, whether we like it or not.  

Thinking about "Snowden" in an Internet governance context leads me to other lines of thought, and your comments are relevant.  It's probably more understandable if I insert my remarks at the relevant places in your text below 


On Nov 24, 2013, at 1:41 PM, michael gurstein wrote:

> Thanks George for a very sober, serious, insightful and dare I say generous piece.  And there is little there that I disagree with including your overall aspirations for and comments on civil society.
>  
> There are however, two issue themes that aren`t included in your discussion which come from two separate pieces of my own personal ecology in these matters that I feel have to be addressed if we are to get to the space that you are urging us toward.
>  
> The first is that you don`t mention Snowden or what we have learned (or perhaps for some, found to be confirmed) through his actions. What we have seen in the starkest of terms in the Snowden documents is how important `control` over the Internet is seen in some quarters, and to what lengths those quarters and presumably others will go to ensure their `dominance` in matters having to do with how the Internet is deployed and used. 

I think that some may see in this wording an implied connection between ICANN's relationship with the U.S. government and NSA's ability to use the Internet for its extreme surveillance activities.  I hope not, because the implication is false.  The control that the US government has over ICANN is the result of a completely independent history, and does not confer any advantage to NSA.  With sufficient resources, any other government's intelligence service could do the same thing as NSA does  --  although I hope that doesn't happen.  I can understand that the correlation between NSA/US and ICANN/US can arouse suspicion in people's minds, but those who take the time to understand the facts will allay the suspicion.

> Your technical community colleagues have characterized this as an ``attack`` on the Internet.  From my perspective I see it as a full-on attempt to subvert the Internet in support of certain interests—and at this point it is unclear whether those interests are national security, national strategic, economic, political or some seamless integration of all of these.

My technical colleagues are quite unhappy, as am I.  For me, the worst part of what has happened, if true, is the covert seeding of weaknesses into encryption and similar software designed to enhance privacy and protect confidentiality of communication.  I don't see any specific proof of such accusations yet, but I am sure that this is going to be thoroughly examined by technical people who are independent of the US government.  If such seeding is confirmed, there will be people and agencies in the technical community who will never be trusted again.

You'll note that the IETF is starting a concerted effort to build new tools that are, by community inspection, much more likely to be free of such intrusions.  I welcome this effort, and I would like to think think that civil society actors would welcome it also. 

> Among the most damaging outcomes from Snowden is a general breakdown in trust (or confirmation of the reasons for an on-going lack of trust) concerning I would say, all matters having to do with the core elements of the Internet of which certainly, Internet governance is one. Again your technical community colleagues well recognize this development (as of course does the Business Community) and the extremely corrosive and destructive elements that this lack of trust has introduced into what had previously been on-going collaborative relationships of all sorts with respect to Internet related activities.  This lack of trust is certainly no less in Civil Society (and dare I say no less warranted) than for the other stakeholder groups and given the lack of normative coherence and even of a shared self- definition that we witness in Civil Society discussions on a daily basis it is perhaps even more explicable for CS, even if no less damaging.

I agree that the loss of trust, very important in being able to work together, is a major casualty from Snowden's disclosures and the reactions in the U.S. Congress.

One of the things that I have heard over and over as a consequence of this affair is that we have to re-examne the balance between privacy and security.  I agree with the sentiment, but I think that the rebalancing is not something that can be discussed as if it were an intellectual exercise.  That side of governments concerned with security, and possibly espionage also, has probably learned a different lesson from this affair: don't get caught!  They are likely to continue their undercover activities, perhaps in a more limited fashion, but they will continue.  The balance in this case comes from the Snowden revelations that empowers many people to push back agains such excesses.   That is, the balance will never be established as a static balance, but depends upon both an intelligent intelligence agency and an active citizenry to maintain it in a position that both can accept.
> 
> 
> I don`t know what to do about this. Perhaps given the lack of resources for facilitating the kinds of (generally face to face and purpose driven) encounters in neutral disinterested spaces that are usually involved in `trust building` perhaps nothing can be done, but I do know that not facing the issue of trust directly and recognizing it in its full (and very ugly) reality means I think that it is more or less impossible to go forward in the ways that you are not unreasonably suggesting.

I understand, but think that we need to understand exactly what bonds of trust have been weakened, between whom, and by which actions.  I worry that there is a tendency to associate actions taken by or in the US to impute blame on all actions and actors associated with the US.  I understand that it is a convenient thing to do, and it's a correct thing to do with respect to some actors and some events, but not all.

At the same time, I can understand that understanding the logic of a situation may not be sufficient to overcoming the emotion associated with the judgment.    
>  
> The second issue that I would want to add to your commentary is a different one and comes from quite a different background.  Many here began this particular odyssey in relation one way or another to WSIS.  And certainly for me working in the grassroots use and among grassroots users of ICTs, WSIS was the doorway into these broader Internet Governance concerns.
>  
> Notably, many in CS see WSIS as a significant success and one whose gains they currently appear reluctant to put in jeopardy by re-opening those discussions. I see it rather differently in that for me WSIS was largely a continuation of the pattern of top-down processes (the DotForce, the ICT4D Task Force etc.etc.) trying to solve ICT for Development issues without giving those most directly involved a chance to participate and provide their own insight into these matters.

This is interesting, and I think that we have discussed this before.  I myself have never seen any significant positive output from the Dot Force, which was clearly a top down effort to stimulate the use of ICT for development.  That was the era of the dot-com bubble, and there was a wave of optimism at certain levels that we had identified a panacea. Of course, it was far from it.

I was on the Markle Foundation -UNDP advisory group, and I saw first hand how their attempt to address the ICT4D question stumbled badly due to lack of knowledge and experience, and the inability of the sectors to understand each other.  UNDP was, at least, in transition to take more input from the countries in which they worked, which helped them to be reasonably effective.

And later, we were both associated with GAID, a sorry initiative that served as the retirement program for certain UN officials, and never really produced anything of value.  At the same time it occupied official center stage at the top, and thereby pre-empted any other effort from being recognized as a possible improvement to offer leadership in the ICT4D sphere. 

> Few (if any) of the organizations (including it must be said the CS organizations) most directly involved with WSIS were in fact, in a position to give voice to the concerns of the grassroots users or activists/practitioners and unfortunately the train of failed ICT4D policies and programs (and more recently the quite evident donor fatigue with these failed programs) is a direct result.

I think that in the area of ICT4D, the road to hell is surely paved, multiple times, with good donor intentions.  The path to development appears to be deceptively easy at the top, where the real on the ground issues are not clearly observed.  We have discussed this, and as you know, many donor efforts produced but a prototype of some intervention, and then have declared their work a success even though it may not have been sustainable or even capable of replication.

The ICT4D field was littered with 'successful' pilot projects that went nowhere, and a lot of this was due to the top down incentive structure of those who had money to fund them.
 
> 
> I believe even my first intervention into the IG discussion space articulated much of the above and very very regrettably I see little if any, progress having been made in the activities and interventions which have followed.  Rather I see the matters which would be of greatest interest to grassroots users and communities perhaps characterized best through the term ``Internet Justice*`` derided, marginalized and ignored; even dare I say, to the extent that a number of CS groups appear to be opposing a revisiting of WSIS specifically because issues relating to Internet Justice might be introduced including by the G77.

I'm not sure if we have a difference of opinion here or not, and I guess that depends in part upon how you would define the term 'Internet justice.'

>From the point of ICT4D, I see as import the ability to access a reliable, safe, secure, and affordable Internet to accomplish their aims.  Certainly some of that has to do with Internet governance, but I'd argue that the substantial majority of what it takes to produce that environment is a function of national or local policy, not global issues or actors.  

When I ran with GIPI, we worked in multiple countries to bring sectors together to understand and work fora regime of legislation and regulation that would empower use of the Internet by local actors, whether they were from business, academia, or civil society, at least as much as some governments were willing to allow.  Perhaps our projects were in some sense the forerunners of the national IGFs.   I regard these new IGFs at the local level as more important that the global meetings because they can concentrate upon specific local issues, and the people and organizations that can contribute directly to solutions are there.

I am suggesting that if our focus is on ICT4D, and by 'D' I include both economic and social development encompassing at least some of civil society's concerns, then what happens at the global level may be less important than what happens at the local level.  It is at the local level that the issues are most meaningful to people and where the greatest gains may be capable of being achieved.  I don't write off the relevance of global governance issues, but they fall into a somewhat different category.    

>  
> I think it would be very desirable for CS broadly to move in the directions indicated in George`s piece below but only if done in full recognition, awareness and responsiveness to the issues that I have just attempted to articulate.

Mike, I've responded as best I could.  If we do still have points of disagreement, I'd like to understand them.

Regards,

George

>  
> Best,
>  
> Mike
>  
>  *Notably the term ``Internet Justice`` follows on from our Environmental CS colleagues who are now characterizing much of their concerns under the rubric of ``Environmental Justice``.
>  
>  
>  
>  
> From: George Sadowsky [mailto:george.sadowsky at gmail.com] 
> Sent: Sunday, November 24, 2013 8:59 AM
> To: michael gurstein
> Cc: governance at lists.igcaucus.org; Peter Ian; Salanieta T. Tamanikaiwaimaro
> Subject: Re: [governance] Inter-stakeholder issues in a multi-stakeholder environment
>  
> All,
>  
> Please note that the opinions that follow are my own personal opinions and are independent of any of the organizations with which I am affiliated.
>  
> I'm suggesting that we should modify both the words and concept of Sala's suggestions and my response.
>  
> Let's not think of doing anything formal; I think that both ends would balk at that, and for good reason.  Instead, I'll just be somewhat more active on this list, and if anything comes up with respect to the technical community that I can clarify or help with on an informal and personal basis, I'll try to do that.
>  
> So with that understanding, I'd like to throw out some thoughts to see if any of them resonate with any of you.
>  
> First, I believe that the introduction of the idea of multi-stakeholder approaches has had a significant negative effect between the Internet technical community and the community that has coalesced to represent classical civil society concerns.  As I recall in the 1990s, these communities were considerably intermingled; the promise of the Internet encouraged us not only to help it evolve in beneficial ways but also to explore how to exploit it for social and economic benefits.
>  
> The solidification of different stakeholder groups resulting from the WSIS process, caused informal differences to formalize.  Issues of representation, power, time at the microphone, visibility on (sometimes competing) lists and victory in arguments on those lists grew, while informal discussion gradually declined.  Polarization of opinion grew as willingness to respect others' opinions and to agree civilly to disagree suffered.  
>  
> Second, I believe that the specific role of the Internet technical community as a stakeholder group for the purposes of participating in the MAG and in the IGF is not properly understood.  At this point in its evolution, the Internet is a very complex system at most levels.  In order to understand fully the implications of policies that have to do with Internet administration, operation and governance, one has have a good technical understand of what the effect of those policies will be at a detailed level.  The primary role of representatives of the Internet technical community, in a MAG and IGF setting, is to study and understand such effects and to inform those deliberating about them.  That function may well extend toward consideration of broader thematic areas and suggestions of what needs to be discussed for continued Internet health, either short or long term, or both.  
>  
> In the grand scheme of things, this is a moderately narrow focus, but it is extremely important.
>  
> Third, I believe that one result of formalized multi-stakeholderism appears to have been to separate groups of people rather than separating groups of ideas.  A couple of examples illustrate the point.  To the extent that the Internet technical community does its work in guiding the MAG well to enhance Internet evolution, I believe that involved representatives of civil society benefit and should encourage their participation.  Conversely, representatives of the Internet technical community are people, and many are very likely to have beliefs that are quite consistent with the positions espoused by those same civil society representatives. The multi-stakeholder approach, however, seems to create a silo effect that minimizes or even denies the overlap of commonality of interest regarding issues by separating people into different silos.  So instead of recognizing positive overlap of beliefs, the approach encourages a focus on inter-stakeholder group separation.
>  
> Fourth, I'd like to propose a reconceptualization of the term "civil society."  In the multi-stakeholder instantiation that is now employed by the UN/MAG/IGF axis , it refers to groups if individuals, some representing organizations of various sizes that agree to various extents regarding the importance of individual rights of various kinds.  These groups represent civil society goals and are therefore grouped as "civil society" to populate that stakeholder group.  And although the goals of that group are generally quite positive, their actions are often based upon pushing back against other stakeholder groups, most notably government but also others.  Perhaps that reflects the reality of the tension between groups, but that tension is not moderated, as it might sometimes be, by people bridging groups instead of being siloed.
>  
> An alternate way to define civil society is to start with all people in the world and remove government involvement, the private sector involvement, and perhaps other large institutional influences.  To borrow a phrase from Apple, what is left is "the rest of us," and it contains fractions, generally large fractions of most of us as individuals.  
>  
> Most individuals have interests in more than one sector or stakeholder group.  We have interactions with government and may work for it.  Alternatively we may work for a private or other public sector organization.  Almost all of us are increasingly users of the internet.  Using this approach, perhaps an aggregate of 5 billion of us constitute "civil society," as opposed to the people who are now labeled as being in the civil society stakeholder group.   If we are all civil society in large parts of our lives, then we all have some claim to represent our views as we live.  Thus, a representative of Internet technology on the MAG is likely to, and has a right to opine on issues in the larger space, just as self-defined representatives of civil society positions have a right to do.  This illustrates again how the various stakeholder groups, or silos, are really quite intertwined, making the siloed and often competitive relationships between them at a formal level quite unrepresentative of the underlying reality,
>  
> I conclude that the multi-stakeholder approach that is accepted to be an approach to bring us together, has not insignificant negative externalities that serve to keep us apart.  We need to assess the multi-stakeholder approach with that in mind  If it is retained as an organizing principle, we need to recognize and understand those negative effects so that we can minimize them and can exploit the positive aspects of that approach.
>  
> This is a much longer note than I ordinarily write, but it has helped me to understand some of the roots of the often unnecessarily antagonistic relationship between proponents of issues important to civil society and technical community experts guiding the evolution of the Internet.  Thank you for taking the time to read it.  I realize that what I have written, and any discussion of it, is considerably more nuanced than what I have presented above.  However, I have tried to present the core of some ideas that I think may be useful.  The more nuanced discussion can and will come later.
>  
> Your comments are welcome.
>  
> George
>  
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>   
> On Nov 23, 2013, at 1:53 PM, michael gurstein wrote:
>  
> 
> Thanks George and it is a potentially interesting proposition.
>  
> But I must say that I’m unclear as to precisely what role is being suggested here.  If the role is to attempt to frame the diversity of voices being articulated in civil society (in my case including those of the community informatics community for example) in a manner in which it can be more readily understood/assimilated/responded to by the technical community I think that is very useful.
>  
> If it is, on the other hand, to act as a more or less “authoritative”/designated “filter” of communications/voices from Civil Society to the Technical Community then I can see quite considerable difficulty and controversy resulting, if nothing else, from a concern within certain CS elements of being “silenced/ignored”.
>  
> (The same clarification would need to be made if the role is perceived as being more of an “honest broker”—i.e. the question being, particularly on the CS side, how inclusive of all CS interests/voices is the “brokerage” committed/able to be.
>  
> Perhaps some clarification is in order here either from yourself in how you perceive the role, or from Ian or Sala on how they presented the role (and perceive it from a CS perspective).
>  
> (I should also possibly add here that a significant number of those active in the Community Informatics community would, by their background, qualifications, experience and current activities qualify as being “techies” of one sort or another.  Whether they would qualify as being members of the “Technical Community” (TC) under what I understand to be the criteria for inclusion within the TC as currently defined by the formal TC structures I’m not sure, as their orientation tends to be towards technical design and fabrication in support of social/digital inclusion and social justice.)
>  
> Best to all,
>  
> M
>  
> From: governance-request at lists.igcaucus.org [mailto:governance-request at lists.igcaucus.org] On Behalf Of George Sadowsky
> Sent: Saturday, November 23, 2013 8:04 AM
> To: Ian Peter
> Cc: Salanieta T. Tamanikaiwaimaro; governance at lists.igcaucus.org
> Subject: Re: [governance] Fadi Speech to ALAC, Brazil 2014 Meeting and need for IGC and civil society Liaisons
>  
> Hi, Ian,
>  
> Sala and I talked while we were both in Buenos Aires.  Perhaps I can clarify my sense of what she may have been proposing.
>  
> There is at the moment somewhat of a gulf between the technical community and the list(s) used by the proclaimed representatives of civil society.  Sometimes such differences of opinion, as well as fact, can be resoled rather quickly if they are discussed directly by people on both sides of the issue, rather than being left to fester and feed growing suspicion and/or discontent.  I think that Sala thought that having some announced or implied line of communication, clearly non-exclusive, might be helpful at times.  I thought so, too.
>  
> Having seen little response from anyone on this list, perhaps the idea isn't welcome in the more formalized sense in which it has been presented, and I can understand that.  I think that perhaps I could be more active from time to time in the discussions that occur, and that might help to bridge some differences between the communities.  Although I consider myself more technical in the context of Internet governance discussions, I  do have roots in development activities that are quite consistent with some of the expressions of opinion posted to this and similar lists.
>  
> George
>  
>  
> <<trimmed>>

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