[governance] WSIS 10+

Mon Aug 4 12:09:29 EDT 2014

Thanks Daniel, for your point about Democracy. We all agree that Democracy is a fragile world that can easily be twisted or lost. It is rather difficult to admit that such a failure or loss can be the result of the wrong acting by a dominating player, presumably not a rogue state.

Applied to mass surveillance, it seems indeed a good idea to put Democracy in practice: a well-balanced (and checked) democratic system allows separation of powers (1), and counter-power (2) within its own governing system. I am glad to act as a responsible citizen, as you suggest, and bring my voice to the protesting ones, but that still sounds a bit naive without the two previous settings. So it seems to me that the surveillance planet is not a flat one where all countries show the same surveillance power and desire. So maybe we should not close our eyes so to pass on from on secret to another, concluding that all secret services are equal. I don't think secret services are supposed to spy simply every citizen on this planet. That was the Stasi dream, or the Stalinist bureaucratic terror. In Democracy, where trust and willingness to act together are fundamental assets, this is a great loss of taxpayer money. So, please allow me to disagree: the US have to prove better, and not worse. See their whistleblower new legal vision: a whistleblower should be allowed to speak to its boss! This is presented as a progress, when it is just the opposite.

As Internet governance cannot be contained within the boundaries of one single country, neither be managed by one single country, how do we deal with a democratic approach taking into account the two previous points (1) and (2)?

Publicity is a good starting point at citizen level. But CS might push a little further its thinking and influence to offer governance innovation to politicians if they have some trouble to understand what citizens are concerned about, and not just lobbyists or PR consultants are telling them over a nice gastronomic table.

Another good point for a good start would be to call a cat a cat: I know only one country, moreover a self-proclaimed champion of freedom of speech that has the technical power to organize and handle mass surveillance, thanks to its dominant private sector champions. So even though we can agree on the idea not to play the antagonistic game, we still have to agree on definitions and meanings, we still need to have acceptance for diversity of views and opinions. We also have to accept to speak truth to power: there was no power grab attempt from ITU in December 2012, neither before, nor after. And there is still not. The current asymmetry cannot be but condemned. And we need more US voices to honestly admit that things have to change. 

All of that means democracy. To cherish it means to use it.

JC

Le 4 août 2014 à 17:04, Daniel Kalchev a écrit :

> 
> On 04.08.14 12:18, Jean-Christophe NOTHIAS I The Global Journal wrote:
>> Nota Bene: Wolfgang, I hope you noticed that I did not mention the troubling fact that the US surveillance of all Internet users browsing and emailing over the beautiful unified, un-fragmented Internet under one single root-zone management, and of all phone users, including president Rousseff, Chancellor Merkel, European diplomats, BRICS diplomats, all diplomats, politicians, citizens, that were hostage of the US surveillance paranoia and infernalia. We all pay for that.
> 
> Yes, we do all pay for that.
> 
> But then, what can we do to resolve this situation? The US secret services agencies will continue to do all of this, no matter what. This is why they exist. Most of them run on military style management, and obeying orders is mandatory there. The same can be said about the secret services of any other country. Or any special interests group.
> 
> My experience dealing with this kind of 'operations' is that your working route is publicity. Talk about it. Don't let them do it in secret. Cops hate being exposed. Let Internet users become aware what is going on. Don't waste your time politicizing it, in the sense of "those bad XYZ spying on us good ABC", because this is nonsense (and not true in general). If Internet users don't mind being subject of surveillance, who are we to force them?
> 
> If Internet users are so upset about this situation, they as individuals having (whatever - voting, buying, etc) power will act up and fix it.
> 
> Isn't this how democracy should function? :-)
> 
> Daniel
> 
> 
>> 
>> So yes let's the CS write to USG and its digital champions. Let's start to balance our role.
>> 
>> That is something everyone has obviously in mind when considering the fact that governments are no longer to be seen out of the IG game. One good reason to have CS coming strong into the democratic multistakeholder model, JNC and others are advocating.
>> 
>> JC
>> 
>> Le 4 août 2014 à 10:46, Kleinwächter, Wolfgang a écrit :
>> 
>>> http://www.outlookindia.com/news/article/UN-Adopts-Resolution-on-Bridging-Digital-Divide/852511
>>> 
>>> Outlook India:
>>> The resolution decided that the overall review will be concluded in December 2015 by a two-day General Assembly high-level meeting to be preceded by an inter-governmental preparatory process that also takes into account inputs from all relevant stakeholders of WSIS.  The intergovernmental negotiation process would begin in June 2015 and lead to an inter-governmentally agreed outcome document for adoption at the UNGA meeting. The process retains the ownership of the preparatory meetings and the final outcome document with member states alone. Mukerji said the resolution ensures that leaders, "at the highest possible level" will meet at the high-level plenary meeting in December next year to adopt the outcome of the intergovernmental negotiations.
>>> 
>>> Wolfgang:
>>> One of the big achievements in the WSIS process was that civil society got a voice in the process. A Milestone was the CS WSIS Declaratzion from December 2003 which was handed over to the president of the first summit, WSIS 1. It became an official document. The Tunis Agenda confirmed and enhanced the role of civil society. As you can see from the text above, ten years later this process is back in the hands of "governments only". The final outcome document will be with member states only by taking into account inputs from all relevant stakeholders (which sounds like a joke with the experiences of a enhanced communicartion and cooperation over the last ten years, including the UNCSTD WGs. Should civil society write a letter to UN Secretary General Ban Kin Moon?
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