Internet Freedom Won't Be Controlled, Says UN Telcom Chief

wiredmikey writes "The head of the UN telecommunications body, Hamadoun Toure, told an audience at the World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT-12) in Dubai on Monday that Internet freedom will not be curbed or controlled. 'Nothing can stop the freedom of expression in the world today, and nothing in this conference will be about it,' he said. Such claims are 'completely (unfounded),' Toure, secretary general of the International Telecommunication Union, told AFP. 'We must continue to work together and find a consensus on how to most effectively keep cyberspace open, accessible, affordable and secure,' UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon said. Google has been vocal in warning of serious repercussions, saying that 'Some proposals could permit governments to censor legitimate speech — or even cut off Internet access,' noted Google's Vint Cerf in a blog post."

Comments

Really?

[Millennium]

If the goal is not to curb internet freedom, then why are the foxes the ones at the forefront of the effort to build a henhouse?

Re:Really?

[Attila Dimedici]

That is exactly what I was thinking. I am confused as to why the people who are most vocally calling for the ITU to take active control over governance of the Internet are representatives of the governments with the strongest history of actively suppressing freedoms if the only reason for this discussion is to ensure that the Internet remain open.

Re:Really?

[icebike]

Exactly!

Dear Mr Hamadoun Toure: If it won't be curbed or controlled why not define attempts to do so as a crime against humanity and access to the internet a human right?

Could it be that you know it is already curbed and controlled and monitored and blocked.

Oh, look, your nose is growing and your pants seem to be on fire.

Re:Really?

[jfengel]

It may be their goal, but they won't get it. It's not what the ITU does and they won't succeed in their ludicrous proposals. They only make those proposals because they have no idea what they're talking about.

In fact, most of it is political theater. The ITU attendees themselves are well aware that these proposals stand no chance of passage. But the religious zealots in their countries are as ignorant of that as they are about everything else, and enjoy being pandered to. So when the proposals fail, the government can claim that they tried to prohibit blasphemy, but those blasphemous bastards in the West defeated it.

It's a dangerous and ugly game, because some of these zealots will take it as an excuse for violence. But as far as the leadership is concerned, as long as it's directed against us rather than them, it's all good.

Re:Really?

[betterunixthanunix]

Why bother with words? Let's look at actions.

The US government is certainly not an organization that values freedom over money. Yet ICANN has not done any of the following things that the ITU has proposed:

1. Unique identifiers for Internet users or their computers
2. Separate "service classes" for servers and client computers
3. A system of fees, surcharges, etc.
4. Special licensing for providing particular kinds of Internet services

These are the sort of things that, despite intense pressure from various industries, we have not seen on the Internet as controlled by ICANN. Sure, we've seen some censorship, but at the end of the day I can still use PGP and I can still run my own mail server, and I can do so without needing to obtain anyone's permission. This morning I ssh'd to my mother's computer to help troubleshoot a problem she was having -- and nothing stopped me, despite the fact that her computer is connected to the Internet through a "consumer grade" cable package.

ITU has a long history of designing communications systems that cement the power of monopoly service providers and which prevent people from hacking or coming up with their own solutions to problems. ITU's approach to the telephone network reflects its mindset; likewise with ITU's approach to radio. Amateurs? Hackers? You're lucky to get a tiny bit of space to play in, but you better not do anything that could threaten the big boys who provide "real" service to consumers.

To put it another way, if ITU had designed the Internet, there would never have been Google, because there would have been too much paperwork to fill out, too many licensing fees, and too many bandwidth fees to make something experimental like that work. The Internet's most important design feature is not packet switching, it is the idea that all computers connected to the Internet can do the same things, limited only by technical things like CPU or connection speeds. ITU doesn't design that sort of network; ITU designs this sort of network:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X.25

Here, by the way, is ITU's next generation Internet plan:

http://www.itu.int/en/ITU-T/gsi/ngn/Pages/default.aspx

Re:Really?

[sl149q]

Well the ITU and ISO did design an internet... and it was simply politely ignored by the implementors of what we now call the Internet.

Other than governance the ITU/ISO model is one of top down design by committee. Compared to the IETF practice of bottom up implementation and design using RFC's and demonstrable code.

The former model led to X.400 (possibly the best known example, but not the only one) for Email. Pretty much non-implementable in full and with little inter-operability between the implementations that did get done. It died a quick (although very expensive) death.

While the IETF model has problems. They have managed to get the Internet to where it is today. Handing it over to the ITU/ISO would probably not be in the best interest of anyone.

Re:Really?

[Xest]

"Why is the UN this way? unfortunately it is due to past and future conflicts (a legacy of the Cold War, and now influenced by the rise of global Jihad and Salafism). I refer you to this video for an overview (mid-way describes how the Non-Aligned and Islamic movements have joined to form a voting bloc to defeat the interests of the US, Israel and much of the 'Western' World)"

I'm intrigued, pray tell how does an Islamic voting block defeat the interests of the US, Israel and the rest of the West in the UN's organisations that requires a consensus vote? Even if they gain a majority a majority is still meaningless where consensus is required. Majority voting only works in places like the general assembly which is entirely unrelated to the ITU. The ITU for what it's worth was created in about the 1880s, about 60 years before the UN, which is a large reason why it has a very different structure to some other UN organisations.

"Now some on these forums have argued that the ITU has been good at what it does. This is entirely true. However, I would argue that this was precisely because the ITU held no power that it has avoided the manipulating interest of special groups."

It has no inherent power, nor will it ever do beyond that which is granted through consensus of it's member states - i.e. just about every country in the world. The ITU can only do what the entire world agrees unanimously it can do - you seem to believe it's some kind of entity that exists in a vacuum, that's not true, it only exists and can do things where states unanimously agree to let it do so. To date those powers granted have been things like assigning communication satellite orbits - because someone has to do that and if states do so independently you'll find countries accidently crashing satellites into each other.

"Second example. The UN is working on making criticism of religion equivalent to hate speech. This means you can't say that the beheading of criminals under Islam's Sharia Law is barbaric, because Muslims will almost certainly wail that they have been offended by your statement."

This is simply an outright lie. What would be correct to say is that a few countries have proposed this even though they have no hope of passing it, and even if they did there is no structure within the UN by which they could multilaterally enforce it on those countries who don't want this. It's worrying that to try and make a point you're having to resort to outright literal FUD, but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and pretend that you've said this through lack of knowledge about the topic, rather than an attempt to maliciously manipulate the discussion using the politics of fear.

It seems the majority of your post seems to be a muddle of anti-Islamic paranoia and confusion about how the UN/ITU relationship and governance works. Your post reads like a Fox News fear piece, rather than a factual, useful commentary.

For what it's worth we've already lost our free internet, if you haven't noticed ICE domain seizures are already enforcing global internet censorship at the behest of a single government. This is the flip side of your initial point that you've failed to mention - that ICANN also has to adhere to the bad laws of the US as well as the good due to it being part of a single nation. The situation is hence not quite as perfect as you make out.

If you genuinely care about internet freedom you wouldn't be spending your time spreading FUD about the ITU/UN/Islam, you'd instead be trying to create pressure on the US to make ICANN a special entity that is above US law when it comes to demands from judges in some backwater part of a US state, or customs officials bought off by the MPAA/RIAA to enforce global internet censorship. If you did that, and achieved that, there'd be no valid reason for people to argue for a move to ITU control of ICANN in the first place. You're focussing on the symptom of the problem of calls for changes to internet governance, rather than the root cause - fixing US mismanagement of t

Reality is they are doubling down...

[blahplusplus]

... on media secrecy. Techdirt has more here:

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20121201/01525121195/doubling-down-secrecy-itu-believes-secret-media-strategy-key-to-avoiding-sopaacta-fate.shtml

High priests of do nothing

[h8sg8s]

Is this the same ITU that wanted to charge me $1200 for a single binder of doc back in 2007? They view information as power and want to install themselves as the high priests. Control the Internet? I think not.

Decentralize it, only way to be sure

[magic maverick]

I've said it before: decentralize it, it's the only way to be sure. The USA govt. at the moment (via the Dept. Commerce) has effective control over the generic domain names. And they use that control. They shut down websites for all sorts of reasons, including accidentally. They shut down websites that are operating in foreign countries, hosted in foreign countries, and don't even target US citizens. Oh, but they happen to host links to copyrighted material. Or they happen to be doing a perfectly legal thing in their own country, e.g. providing DRM breaking tools, or online gambling, but which isn't legal in the USA.

And people think that the ITU is some how going to be worse? It would be different, but I can't see how it could be worse (you couldn't get all the countries to agree anyway, and if the USA really cared, they could just veto stuff; I think the ITU operates on a consensus model). (Fun fact: the ITU is older than the UN, and the previous League of Nations; it was setup back in the 1800s.)

Still, the best solution is to decentralize. Perhaps a web of trust; I trust this person (these people) and they (a clear majority) say that this domain resolves to this IP address. Actually, the domain name system is already a trust exercise, with people choosing which resolver to go with (e.g. I currently use Google's 8.8.8.8 as I can't remember the local one, and I'm not sure I would trust it more than Google anyway), and the resolver ultimately choosing a root.

So why can't we decentralize it more? Come on people, I know there are lots of smart people, get together and work out an alternative DNS and make it really easy for everyone to use. And make it not be in the hands of anyway. Perhaps a federalized system. But remove control from governments and corporations and give it back to the people, just like God intended when he created the Internet. (Also more people use FreeNet please.)

Re:Unless you say something negative towards Moham

[Anonymous Coward]

and the camel he rode in on.

Yeah, he probably did.

The big issue has been how it's billed

[isdnip]

As to censorship, the ITU never proposed censoring the Internet. That's not their bailiwick -- national governments can and do censor domestic Internet access, and the ITU can't stop them. Nor can it force a government to do anything. The US can simply declare an Exception to an ITU rule and it doesn't apply here. Enough bilateral Exceptions and the ITU is irrelevant.

I did read the more controversial proposals. What a lot of countries wanted was to treat the Internet as if it were telecommunications (it is seen in the US as the content of telecommunications, not the telecommunications itself) and to apply telephone call-like charging to packets. So if somebody in Benin or Fiji downloaded a movie from YouTube, their country would receive payment from YouTube. In many countries this would go to the government, supposedly to pay for the network facilities but of course many of these countries are remarkably corrupt...

And unlike a phone call, where the party who dials the call pays, Internet payments would be made by the side sending the packets, even if the other side asked them to. This would of course probably cause YouTube and other high-volume information sources to shut off access to those countries. Not censorship per se, but pay to talk.

Other proposals on the table are technically unworkable, but then the old PTT (post-telegraph-telephone) guys who dominate ITU-T don't understand how the Internet works (very, very tenuously).