[discuss] surveillance governance, was Re: [governance] NTIA statement

[parminder]

Wolfgang,

Thanks for your response. Pl see inline..


On Tuesday 18 March 2014 03:28 PM, "Kleinwächter, Wolfgang" wrote:
> Parminder:
> In the circumstances, we need a standing global mechanism where such discussions of Internet related social issues (the top layer in Vint Cerf's paper) could take place, and appropriate measures begun to be shaped; which would of course eventually involve a lot of different actors . The biggest existing global Internet governance issue or problem is the absence of any such standing global forum or mechanism.
>
> Wolfgang:
> Mechanisms should emerge on the basis of concrete needs and identified gaps. The first thing you have to do is to define the issues which have no existing natural home.

There is a huge list of such issues. WGIG mentioned some. Many 
contributions to WG on Enhanced cooperation list them (see, for 
instance, Brazil's and IT for Change's contributions). Now if this is 
not enough I can remind you that you chaired the Council of Europe (CoE) 
Experts Group on Cross Border Internet, which refers to some key global 
or international public policy issues like cross border Internet 
traffic, net neutrality and principles for technical administration of 
CIRs (and this is a very incomplete list, from a narrow geo- political 
perspective).... All these issues do not have an existing natural home 
in global space.

Your expert committee's own mandate came from the CoE 
(inter-governmental) committee on media and information society - which 
need not exist if Internet or information society issues are in fact 
either non existent, or adequately spread over other sectoral bodies (a 
huge number of which exist in CoE as well)

Your own report while outlining some international Internet related 
public policy issues recommended to the mentioned CoE 
(inter-governmental) committee " to continue action aimed at drawing up 
new international legal instruments on cross-border Internet, which may 
include the development of mechanisms to identify issues where 
commitments or regulation are needed ......."

Where from then does your scepticism arise when we discuss cross border 
Internet related public policy issues on a truly global stage, to the 
extent that you doubt whether any such issues exist at all? I think you 
need to explain what to me clearly looks like double standards.

In your report, you have not recommended that the CoE Committee on Media 
and Information Society should abolish itself, which you should have 
done as the chair of the mentioned expert committee if you really 
believe and advocate that no similar committee is needed at the global/ 
UN level . Again, please explain the apparent double standards.

And also of course the OECD has similar inter-governmental committee on 
Internet issues called the Committee on Computers, Information and 
Communication Policies. Why and how do you, and others who work with 
these inter-gov committees of rich nations, advocate against any similar 
committee/ body where all countries are present/ represented? Does such 
apparent double standards not amount to supporting the rule of the 
richer nations over the less developed ones? Because when these rich 
country Internet policy bodies are working overtime and there is no 
policy space with globally democratic representation, it is the policies 
developed by these rich country bodies that become the default global 
laws and policies. Numerous instances of such default or 
force-negotiated global application of Internet related public policies 
developed by rich countries can be cited, and if you want examples, I 
will be happy to give them.

It is not the first time that I have posed these questions to you and 
others, but I never seem to get a response. Trying once more, in a 
different space, since NetMundial is about institutional development in 
the global IG space, and the meeting is hosted by a developing country.

>   Many public policy related Internet issues have a natural home. There are about 50 governmental and non-governmental global organisations dealing with various Internet related issues: From UN bodies like the Human Rights Concil to the I*Organisations.

Even issues like e-commerce and Intellectual property rights and access 
to information in relation to Internet flow, which may have an apparent 
home like WTO and WIPO, need a new kind of Internet specific treatment, 
in addition to existing sector specific treatments. This Internet 
specific treatment has to holistic, taking into account many other 
connected Internet-related issues. For instance, e-commerce, has a lot 
to do with Internet related privacy, technical standards, internet 
security, data rights, Internet traffic exchange agreements, specific 
nature of  cultural products and services, banking and payment services, 
micro or retail taxes, general jurisdiction issues, and so on..... 
Similar breath and variety of Internet specific correlations can be 
shown for practically every Internet related public policy issue.

Of course this is the reason that CoE and OECD has specific Internet 
policy related organs, even when they have scores and scores of sectoral 
committees dealing with issues like trade, IP, culture, security, and so 
on.... Can you tell me your specific reasons that developing countries 
too should not avail of participation in such global Internet related 
policy making?

Regards

parminder


> To find out what the missing link is and where we have a gap (or a malfunction) we need first of all  something like a Multistakeholder Internet Governance Clearing House (I have called this MIPOG / Multistakeholder Internet Policy Group). If a stakeholder, including a national government, has a problem, it could go to MIPOG with a request and MIPOG would recommend how to move forward by delegating the request to an existing  mechanism or by launching a (multistakeholder) process in a bottom up, inclusive, open and transparent way to develop policies (as an RFC) which could, if needed, also include the launch of new multistakeholder mechanisms.
>

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