[governance] [bestbits] Remarks at UNESCO Closing Ceremony of "Connecting the Dots Conference"

[David Cake]

Sorry to jump into an old discussion thread, but
> On 8 Mar 2015, at 5:00 pm, Michael Gurstein <gurstein at gmail.com> wrote:
> [MG] sorry I’m not following this… If you are saying that Civil Society has already accomplished a great deal with respect to Internet Governance I would ask that you point to these specific accomplishments.  What I see is a more or less out of control dominance by the status quo with little policy advance to check the power of the elites who control that status quo in the crucial areas such as privacy, surveillance, resource (Internet based wealth) distribution, concentration of decision making power, increasing corporate control and so on… but maybe I’m missing something.

	I think perhaps you are missing something. Perhaps what you are missing is that maintaining ‘the status quo’ (meaning keeping a relatively similar position with regards to rights, etc) is something we have to constantly fight for. And a commitment to ‘democracy’ is not the magic bullet that would win that fight - it is largely pressure from the governments, and particularly law enforcement agencies, of democratic nations that we are fighting against.
	I know that a lot of us in the ICANN world go in to fight for privacy in particular every week. If it seems like the status quo isn’t changing, it is because we are pushing back as hard as we can against a constant push to decrease privacy (from both law enforcement and corporate groups such as intellectual property interests - but the internet industry itself, such registrars, are generally very strong on maintaining privacy).
	And FWIW, as I’m sure you’ve seen - using democratic means to push back against the surveillance state has so far had very little effect. None of the 5 Eyes nations, democracies all, seem to have significantly reduced the power of the surveillance state since the Snowden revelations, and several (sadly, including my country, despite the lobbying campaign my organisation and others have run against it) have increased them. The only meaningful hope we have to reduce mass surveillance significantly in the short term so far comes from technical means, e.g. via the MS internet standards bodies like the IETF. This doesn’t mean we should stop trying to fight mass surveillance by democratic means, of course, but positing mass surveillance as a problem that can and will be solved by adding more democracy to transnational fora seems quite naive.

> Needless to say, I don't believe such a conspiracy exists. I, as many others, would like to see the interactions of these multistakeholders become more transperant, inclusive and democratic, and in that context, I don't see multistakeholder participation as existing for multistakeholderism's sake, but rather as a means to achieve inclusive, transperent, and democratic internet governance.
> 
> [MG] Again I think it is important to distinguish between processes of consultation where multistakeholder along with other processes of participation and engagement are absolutely desirable and processes of decision making which require a degree of formality, structure, broad based accountability, inclusiveness, and transparency – none of which characterize Multistakeholder processes as currently constituted.

	Michael, I find that almost all of your criticisms of MS processes are clearly from the perspective of someone who has little experience in participating in them, and has sort of made up a version of what they are like in their head that can’t be moved. Almost all MS processes within ICANN, IETF, RIRs are very transparent (every meeting is open to anyone to listen to, transcripts and audio recordings are made available to the public, every participant has a public SOI, every major output is put out for a public comment period, etc.). Most have a fair degree of formality and structure, with very clearly defined processes documents available, and so on.
	I do think inclusiveness is a constant struggle, but MS processes are, in general, inclusive by design in that they are open. It is true that simply wanting your processes to be inclusive is not enough, but still, it remains the fact that MS processes are open to participation by default, with no active gatekeeping to participation (though of course there are structural barriers to be overcome, and the efforts to overcome those barriers, while well meant, are not magic). This compares with many government processes that are actively gatekeepered.

	And of course, there are processes like the WEF that are not open - and you’ll find most of those who you would claim to be MS advocates here treat those gated processes with great scepticism and do not regard them as being the same kind of process and do not advocate for their use.

	Seriously Michael, come take a closer look at some of our actual MS policy processes. Maybe not participate directly (though if you are really committed to privacy etc, we have plenty of useful work for people to do), but at least follow some processes in real detail - listen to some calls, look at how our processes work. I’m sure you might still be critical of them afterwards, but your criticism would be more valuable if it was better informed.

	David
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