[discuss] What about sovereignty?: Re: Problem definition 1, version 5

Michel Gauthier mg at telepresse.com
Wed Jan 22 18:08:43 UTC 2014


Soverignty is a key word for the debate. The danger is to confuse three layers:

1. Sovereignty first results from the mutually acknowledged 
legitimate capacity to use violence, i.e. engage in war. UN is a tool 
to help reducing the use of war. The Tallinn manual is the existing 
best publication by NATO of the cyberwar laws.

The two main problems introduced by cyberware are:

- the capacity for an individual or a group of individuals to engage 
combat operations and somatic destructions against a sovereign nation.
- the possibility to totally hide the origin of an attack.

Richard Clarke (author of the first US cyberdefense policy) has 
estimated the cyberthreat on the USA as nuclear equivalent. Snowdenia 
shows the US and non-US alike systems are not protected against NSA 
intrusions. The US internet technology may be reliable but it is untrustable.

This is the concern of everyone before engaging further in DNS, ONS, 
IPv6, DNSSEC, TCP/IP. The technology MUST be harden up before any 
competent lead Gov engage into new internet vital/critical project.

2. Then soverignty results from leveraging taxes/money and enforcing 
hiw own rules without opposition. This layer is what TNCs and crime 
want to share.

3. Then soverignty results from the capacity to be unopposed in what 
one does. Individidual sovereignty is everywhere in the digisphere as 
it is its characteristic: what is in discontinuity, hence automous.

M G

>Fellow Travelers
>
>Even if I seem to repeat myself again and again, but the issue of 
>sovereignty also seems to pop up in one form or another again and 
>again, and maybe, just maybe, it helps to untie this knot by looking 
>at a new definition of it:
>
>The Internet Ecosystem, by its very nature, does not care too much 
>about physical boundaries. This is the fundamental reason why 
>countries, whose authority is based on territory and the concept of 
>sovereignty, struggle to find their place in a digital world. The 
>uncontrolled free flow of data, together with the ongoing speed of 
>innovation, seems to be irreconcilable with the concepts of national 
>territory and sovereign rights.
>
>
>Similar to nation states, many of those organizations and 
>individuals involved in the Internet Ecosystem and its governance, 
>commonly known as the stakeholders, claim "sole-sovereignty" or 
>self-proclaimed sovereignty over specific issues, roles and 
>functions. The stability and security of the DNS, telecommunication 
>standards, security and human rights, to name just some, are well 
>defined "subject-territories" in the Internet Ecosystem.
>
>
>
>Cyberspace today requires a new understanding of sovereignty. 
>Sovereignty in the context of Internet Governance is fundamentally 
>different from the traditional understanding of sovereignty as it is 
>not based on geographical territories and treaties but on the 
>ability of a stakeholder or a group of stakeholders in Cyberspace to 
>have specific expertise and/or infrastructure that is relevant to 
>the Internet Ecosystem and to have the capacity to manage the 
>decision-making and implementation processes in a timely and effective way.
>Yours
>
>Klaus
>
>
>On 1/22/2014 5:52 PM, John Curran wrote:
>>
>>On Jan 22, 2014, at 6:32 AM, Milton L Mueller 
>><mailto:mueller at syr.edu><mueller at syr.edu> wrote:
>>
>>>
>>>-----Original Message-----
>>>From: Brenden Kuerbis [<mailto:bnkuerbi at syr.edu>mailto:bnkuerbi at syr.edu]
>>>
>>>>
>>>>To that point, in option (3) do you mean delegation in the sense 
>>>>of rescindable
>>>>granting of authority to an agent to act on a principal's behalf? 
>>>>And if so,
>>>>what principal(s)? Rescindable under what conditions?
>>>
>>>
>>>Good questions. Answers would represent the various "flavors" of a 
>>>denationalized approach.
>>>Such a delegation could be permanent and not rescindable, in which 
>>>case the USG, which currently controls IANA, would be the principal.
>>
>>
>>Milton, Brenden -
>>
>>Two points:
>>
>>  1) The language "granting of authority" is overly vague in this context;
>>     yes, it is true that the IANA is granted authority to act, but it is
>>     the ability to act in a _administrative_ manner (the NTIA IANA Function
>>     contract, for example, does not convey authority to set policy, only to
>>     implement policy set by other parties.)
>>
>>  2) The USG is not the only party involved in granting such authority; the
>>     IAB/IETF also grants the IANA its authority to administer the various
>>     Internet registries (name, number, and protocol) via its MOU [RFC 2860]
>>
>>FYI,
>>/John
>>
>>Disclaimer: My views alone.
>>
>>
>>_______________________________________________
>>discuss mailing list
>><mailto:discuss at 1net.org>discuss at 1net.org
>>http://1net.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
>>
>
>_______________________________________________
>discuss mailing list
>discuss at 1net.org
>http://1net.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://1net-mail.1net.org/pipermail/discuss/attachments/20140122/96b13ea3/attachment.html>


More information about the discuss mailing list