Let's Get Real Folks--Re: [governance] Re: [bestbits] DISCLOSURE REQUEST Re: Funding Available for Strengthening Civil Society

[michael gurstein]

As we all know the Internet Governance space is becoming a very hot topic
and subject to increasing scrutiny, internal manoeuvering and external
intervention. 

This isn't at all surprising given the vast, even world altering resources
of wealth and power (both of the passive informational and aggressive
cyberwar varieties) that are potentially being affected.

Any adjustment, however minor in the overall (governance or other) ecology
of the Internet now has likely ramifications impacting everyone,
everywhere, and in a vast multitude of ways both visible and invisible.

Notably, the overwhelming thrust from a variety of directions is that the
form that this Internet Governance takes is to be "multi-stakeholder" where
the "stakeholders" are roughly defined as governments, the technical
community, the private sector and civil society.

The recent Snowden revelations have shaken the on-going rather comfortable
and even Pollyanna-ish sense that the overall deployment of the Internet was
somehow being done in a manner and with effects that were supportive of the
broad well-being of humanity.

The revelations have for many shattered this belief along with the trust
that underlay so many of the relationships and transactions on which the
Internet is built and continues to operate. This framework of trust has been
in in the words of many at the recent IETF meeting, "attacked",  and for a
significant proportion of those thinking of such matters it has been fatally
undermined.

The Technical Community appears to be still reeling from the discovery that
the "good faith" of many of those that they considered colleagues and
partners was in fact "bad faith"; and the associated interventions were in
various instances undertaken not in the interests of humanity as a whole but
rather in support of narrow and self-serving national (and it would appear
corporate) interests.

The further revelations of the systematic incursions into the internal
technical operations of certain US based Internet mega-corporations has
evidently resulted in both anger and an associated recognition on their part
that the agencies and interests involved were not operating in a manner in
keeping with normally recognized business practices and interests.

It is thus astonishing that Civil Society, in the IG context the weakest and
least resourced of the "stakeholders", should be asked to accept on "good
faith" that its activities and on-going deliberation will not have been
subverted in precisely the same ways and in support of the same interests as
have been the on-going activities of the Technical and Business Sector
stakeholders.

In fact it would be astonishing in the process of subverting the Internet to
certain national and corporate interests, if CS as a key component of
Internet Governance were to have been overlooked.

The sad but I think inevitable conclusion is that  I can see no basis on
which to have continued "trust" in the various CS institutions or activities
since I see no basis on which I can determine the good/bad faith of the
various actors/interveners in those spaces. 

While I can see a basis for finding collaborators and like-minded folks to
pursue specific activities/interventions based on a clear articulation of
shared norms/visions, beyond that I see little basis for going forward in
the current CS formulations and significant dangers more generally if the
current CS spaces are taken as sole or even significant representations of
the policy positions of global CS in relation to Internet Governance.  

(It follows as well given the above that the overall commitments and
celebration of Multi-stakeholderism as the preferred model for Internet
Governance (and increasingly for governance overall in the Internet age)
needs to be seriously re-thought as per my recent blogpost.

http://gurstein.wordpress.com/2013/10/18/the-open-internet-society-and-its-e
nemies-can-multistakeholderism-survive-information-dominance/

M




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