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<font face="Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif">Hi, everyone.<br>
Andrew and I exchanged 2 emails in another list (I CC:ed my
response to him in this group, as I believe it is relevant), but I
thought this discussion is better to take place among the chapters
and Andrew in this list. <br>
<br>
ISOC Bulgaria is concerned when seeing attempts for moving the
multistakeholder model of Internet governance to a multilateral
one. We see it at the ITU, and we see it at the UN. Some major
newspapers have written about it - see for example this article:
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/05/04/russias-plot-control-internet-is-no-longer-secret/">https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/05/04/russias-plot-control-internet-is-no-longer-secret/</a>.
Since it may require subscription, I am copying the text below. <br>
<br>
It would be good to know: a) what ISOC is doing with regards to
this issue, b) what chapters see in their respected countries, and
c) how chapters could help ISOC, assuming that it is doing
something.<br>
<br>
best,<br>
v/ <br>
<br>
</font>Russia’s plot to control the Internet is no longer a secret<br>
by David Ignatius<br>
<br>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt">Russia’s
campaign to control
the Internet isn’t just a secret intelligence gambit any longer.
It’s an
explicit goal, proclaimed by Russian President Vladimir Putin as
a key element
of the Kremlin’s foreign policy.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt">Putin complained
during <a
href="http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/65418"
target="_blank">his
annual address</a> to the Russian federal assembly on April 21
that the
United States and other western countries are “stubbornly
rejecting Russia’s
numerous proposals to establish an international dialogue on
information and
cybersecurity. We have come up with these proposals many times.
They avoid even
discussing this matter.”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt">Asking for
“international
dialogue” takes some nerve, coming from the world’s biggest
cyberbully — a
country that notoriously meddled in the 2016, 2018 and 2020 U.S.
elections, and
has engaged in similar Internet mischief throughout the world.
Controlling the
“information space,” as the Russians sometimes call it, has long
been an
intelligence priority for Moscow.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt">Russia is waging
its
cyberdiplomacy offensive on two fronts: First, the United
Nations has embraced
Russia’s proposal to write a new treaty governing cybercrime, to
replace the
2001 Budapest convention that Moscow rejected because it was too
intrusive. And
second, Russia is lobbying for its candidate to head the U.N.’s
International
Telecommunications Union (ITU) and use it to supplant the
current private
group, known as <a href="https://www.icann.org/en"
target="_blank">ICANN</a>,
that coordinates Internet addresses.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt">These
international
regulatory battles sound obscure, but they will help determine
who writes the
rules for Internet communications for the rest of the 21st
century. The
fundamental question is whether the governance process will
benefit
authoritarian states that want to control information or the
advocates of
openness and freedom.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt">Secretary of
State Antony
Blinken stressed on Tuesday the importance of this contest.
“There are
relatively few items that are ultimately going to have a greater
impact on the
lives of people around the world than the ITU post. It may seem
dry and
esoteric, but it’s anything but. And so we’re very, very
actively engaged on
this front,” Blinken said in an email message, elaborating on
comments he made
to me during an <a
href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/antony-blinken-offers-a-window-on-how-bidens-foreign-policy-decisions-will-be-made/2021/04/08/dce01208-98a7-11eb-b28d-bfa7bb5cb2a5_story.html?itid=lk_inline_manual_10"
target="_blank">April 7 interview</a>.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt">Russia outlined
its ITU game
plan in unusually forthright comments by Ernst Chernukhin, the
foreign
ministry’s special coordinator for political use of information
and
communications technology. He <a
href="https://www.icann.org/en/system/files/files/ge-007-29apr21-en.pdf"
target="_blank">spoke on April 21</a>, the same day Putin made
his speech.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt">“The optimal
option . . .
would be transferring Internet management prerogatives
specifically to the ITU,
as it is a specialized U.N. body, which has the needed expertise
on these
issues,” Chernukhin said. “This strategic objective may be
achieved by electing
or promoting the Russian candidate to the position of the ITU
Secretary-General
in the 2022 elections . . . and by holding the 2025 anniversary
U.N. Internet
Governance Forum in Russia.”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt">Russia’s <a
href="https://www.icann.org/en/system/files/files/ge-007-29apr21-en.pdf"
target="_blank">candidate</a> for ITU secretary-general is
Rashid
Ismailov, a former deputy chief of the Russian communications
ministry and a
former executive at the Chinese telecommunications company
Huawei. In
announcing Ismailov’s candidacy on April 7, Maxim Parshin, the
current deputy
minister, underlined Moscow’s governance takeover plan: “We
believe it is
important to define an entity, within the U.N. framework, that
would develop
and implement legal norms and standards in the field of Internet
governance. We
think that the ITU could become such an entity.”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt">The Biden
administration’s
candidate for the ITU post is Doreen Bogdan-Martin, an American
telecommunications expert who’s currently director of the ITU’s
development
bureau. The State Department, which has sometimes been
lackadaisical in such
international regulatory contests, is <a
href="https://www.state.gov/u-s-support-for-itu-secretary-general-candidacy-of-doreen-bogdan-martin/"
target="_blank">campaigning aggressively</a> for
Bogdan-Martin, and
officials hope she’ll have sufficient support in Africa, Europe,
Latin America
and elsewhere to win the post. The election will take place at
an ITU gathering
late next year in Romania.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt">Internet
technical governance
today is managed by ICANN, which stands for Internet Corporation
for Assigned
Names and Numbers. This gathering of engineers and other experts
was <a
href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/02/01/russia-internet-rules-united-nations/?itid=lk_inline_manual_19"
target="_blank">founded in 1998</a> to supervise domain names
for the
Defense Department’s ARPANET system, and it operated under a
contract with the
Commerce Department until 2016, when it went fully private.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt">The American
roots of the
Internet seem to both upset Putin and fuel conspiratorial talk.
The Russian
leader said during a 2014 interview <a
href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KMj8Er6uh5c"
target="_blank">translated</a> by
RT that the Internet “first appeared as a special CIA project .
. . and the
special services are still at the center of things.” Dmitry
Medvedev, Russia’s
former president, complained in a February <a
href="https://interfax.com/newsroom/exclusive-interviews/70952/"
target="_blank">interview</a>:
“The Internet emerged at a certain time, and undoubtedly the key
rights to
control are in the United States.”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt">Russia is ready
to rumble
over the rules that will shape the future of Internet
communications. Fortunately,
the Biden administration seems determined to fight back hard to
maintain fair
and open rules.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt"> </span></p>
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<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
Best regards,
Veni
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.veni.com">https://www.veni.com</a>
pgp:5BA1366E <a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:veni@veni.com">veni@veni.com</a>
The opinions expressed above are those of the
author, not of any organizations, associated
with or related to him in any given way. </pre>
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