[discuss] Possible approaches to solving "problem no. 1"

Thu Feb 20 20:24:42 UTC 2014

On Feb 20, 2014, at 3:00 PM, Milton L Mueller <mueller at syr.edu> wrote:

> Speaking of false dichotomies, what the heck are Mike (or Jefsey) talking about when they defend the need for government "involvement"????
> Have they been asleep since 1998? Have they missed more than a decade of state-imposed filtering and censorship, ICE domain seizures, cybersecurity initiatives, cyber espionage, kill switches, data retention, surveillance not only by NSA but most others, etc., etc., etc? Did they overlook the existence and growing influence of the GAC within ICANN? Did they overlook the takeover of various ccTLDs by national governments ranging from Korea to Kazakhstan to Ukraine? They are already involved.

Milton - 

Your examples predominantly refer to governments taking unilateral actions 
against the Internet, as opposed to what I suggested - "... continues via 
the present model, with a significant addition of efforts to facilitate 
government involvement in the process, both by increasing the awareness of 
the ongoing policy development efforts underway at any moment in time, but 
also through the encourage of governments to work towards common expression 
of clear high-level standards and norms which may be applicable inputs into 
the technical coordination process (e.g. EU Data Privacy Directive, UN GA
68/167, etc.) "

specifically - 1) governments participating in the existing processes for 
coordination, and 2) governments working together on common expression of 
high-level standards and norms as input into these processes.

> I get rankled about this kind of stuff because when Mike and John make these soothing overtures to states, the actual bargaining chip that they offer those poor confused states usually ends up being _my_ rights and _my_ freedom and that of billions of other individual internet users. 

If you're referring to your rights being impinged upon because of the actions 
you listed above, those don't appear to be the result of governments getting
involved in Internet coordination; to the contrary, they're the consequences 
of them not being involved and seeking other means to fulfill their perceived 
duties.

Thanks!
/John

Disclaimer: My views alone. 