[Chapter-delegates] [European-chapters] ISOC 2022 Action Plan

Sat Dec 11 10:32:34 PST 2021

Hi, Andrew. Some comments below.

On Fri, Dec 10, 2021 at 10:37 Andrew Sullivan <sullivan at isoc.org> wrote:

> Hi Veni!
>
> Sorry to read that the 2022 Action Plan appears not to be to your liking.

It seems you’ve misunderstood my email. I don’t have any feelings about the
plan. The issue is if it will achieve what ISOC and the ISOC chapters are
fighting for.

Some specifics below.  (Note that I don't think I'm subscribed to the
> European chapter list, so I expect this will end up in moderation for some
> time on that list.)
>
> On Fri, Dec 10, 2021 at 07:21:38AM -0500, Veni Markovski via
> Chapter-delegates wrote:
>
> >I am not sure what ISOC means by the assumption that we are "building
> >local communities"
>
> I am a little puzzled as to why you call that an "assumption" rather than
> a statement of what chapters do.  It's one of the four things listed under
> "chapter activities" on https://www.internetsociety.org/chapters/.  Do
> you think that page is inaccurate?

What I think is not relevant; I didn’t see what is in the plan on that
page. Could you point out which exactly of these four paragraphs talks
about “building local communities”, so that I don’t comment on the one
called “community programs”, for example, just to find out you had another
one in mind.

>
> >, but it's a good thing that ISOC plans to train our
> >members, though 500 is not that much (ISOC Bulgaria alone has 121
> >members), so I hope the training will reach many more chapter members!
>
> Our overall training efforts, into which we've put a lot of work over the
> last couple years, have so far been received quite positively and have
> generally exceeded enrollment targets.  But of course, we cannot train
> everyone in the world alone, and we are hopeful that chapter members who
> take training we offer then carry what they learn back to their colleague
> members in their respective chapters and share the knowledge.

Great, that’s called “train the trainers”; we did it within ISOC Bulgaria
many years ago, under some of the UNDP and EU projects we were part of.
That’s awesome!

>
> >One would expect to see some ISOC concrete plans in the section about
> >Strengthening the Internet (page 7), but there's nothing about the
> >possibilities for ISOC to engage either directly with the United
> >Nations, the ITU and other UN agencies, where member states are
> >discussing different ways of changing the multistakeholder model of
> >Internet governance (MSM) to a multilateral one, or indirectly - with
> >the help of the chapters through the governmental delegations to these
> >intergovernmental organizations.
>
> We engage with those bodies regularly and remain active in them, but there
> are some limitations (particularly in respect of the UN).  In particular, I
> guess I needn't tell you given your day job, the UN is an intergovernmental
> institution; and so we can act at best in an advisory capacity there.  Even
> though, for instance, we participate in the ITU as sector members, we don't
> have a vote and cannot directly affect the outcome of actvities there.
> This does not lessen our commitment to continued engagement, but it also
> limits what we might call "action" in such environments.

What you’re saying about ISOC not being a member state, is correct, of
course. I believe I was talking about the chapters here, but since I’m on
the phone, it’s not easy to go up and down the text and/or quote.

>
> >However, there is a section called "Shaping Legal Precedent in
> >Alignment with Our Mission", where ISOC states that "As an expert
> >voice for a bigger, stronger Internet, the Internet Society is
> >positioned to offer subject-matter and technical expertise to courts."
>
> Yes, just as we offer such expertise in the other fora you mention.  What
> is different about the amicus program is that it is new for 2022, unlike
> the other activities.  More on this below.
>
> >It is not a surprise that ISOC, which is based in the US, would engage
> >in such actions, but there's not a word about engaging with issues,
> >relating to actions (including court cases) at the European Union
> >level. As we all know from the GDPR experience, some of the decisions,
> >taken at the EU level have the potential to touch upon the Internet
> >around the world.
>
> There is no question that decisions in the European Union affect the
> Internet, but I don't really understand what that has to do with a totally
> new program that is attempting to engage with US courts, which (owing to
> the nature of the US political system) make a _very large_ number of
> decisions about how regulations will work in the US.  The US is, last I
> checked, still pretty influential in the way the Internet develops, and so
> decisions by US courts have consequences for the Internet everywhere.

Of course that the USA is influential, though as we know from the GDPR, the
EU is on the same page. I wasn’t asking for an explanation why ISOC is
engaging, I was asking why it is announcing this concrete engagement, but
is not paying attention to other places, where major developments around
the Internet are taking place.

>
> Moreover, it is important to recognize that the US legal system has some
> unusual features, and one of them is the ability of parties who are not
> actually part of a legal proceeding to file "friend of the court" (or
> _amicus curiae_, which is why these get called "amicus briefs") briefs.
> Many legal systems allow the court to reach out to experts to get expert
> advice (which they do more or less often in different places); but the US
> system in effect allows experts to offer their advice unsolicited.  We
> believe that this represents another forum where the Internet Society can
> help shape social policies respecting the Internet, so we have initiated
> this for 2022 in a modest way.  Hence the restriction to no more than 6.
>
> In the event this effort is successful, we will likely have to evaluate
> ways we could undertake similar efforts in other jurisdictions.  But such
> efforts would almost certainly have to be designed differently, because
> most legal systems simply don't work the way the US one does, and much
> rule-making in other places do not depend on the courts quite so heavily
> either.
>
> >ISOC has changed the level of engagement with the EU
> >in the last year*, and the lack of any mentioning of the EU in such an
> >important document says a lot.
>
> If by "changed the level of engagement with the EU" you mean "improved the
> engagement", then I agree with the first part of your assertion.  Your
> footnote seems to suggest you think there is some kind of argument to be
> made on the basis of comparing the titles of certain staff, but I'm not
> sure what you are implying; so I hesitate to say more.

I wasn’t implying anything, just sharing a fact, which some chapters have
noticed, but others might have not.

In any case, the lack of mention of a specific new engagement with the EU
> does not say anything more than that we will continue our engagements there
> as we have done.  We still have three office locations and plenty of staff
> in Europe, and contemplate no change to that.  (If the Internet Society
> listed everything that we would continue to do each year in the annual
> action plan, the plan would be very long and probably not so engaging.  For
> instance, we will continue offering the chapter admin fund, and we will
> continue to pay our rent and bills on time, but I don't imagine you think
> those are elements that ought to be in the 2022 Action Plan.)

:)

>
> >In 2022 there will be a number of major intergovernmental conferences,
>
> I think your verb tense there offers rather more certainty than the global
> health news gives me.

It is based on the facts from the ITU - eg, the WTPF will take place next
week. The IGF just finished yesterday.

We know that these conferences are scheduled.  We certainly maintain our
> good relationships with governments and intergovernmental organizations,
> and where we can be useful at such conferences we will as ever strive to be
> useful.  But it isn't even clear that all of these conferences will be
> held, nor what will be on the agendas of them, so it is hard for us to say
> with much certainty what our actions will be in respect of them.  In any
> case, I do not believe that an action plan is a good place to list all of
> the meetings that some staff will go to during the year: I don't really
> think of that as "action" as such.

Well, you have certainty about participation in up to 6 court cases, but
you don’t know if there will be 6 cases or not. OTOH, there will be several
key conferences and several UN working groups, which are deliberating the
future of the MSM of Internet governance and cybersecurity, but none of
that is mentioned anywhere. So, where can the chapters find out what’s
actually planned, if not in the action plan, I don’t know.

>
> >the mainstream media** about the potential threat to the MSM, and
> >given what is coming in 2022, it's strange that the Action Plan
> >doesn't mention any planned actions by ISOC with regards to this.
>
> The entire plan is about acting to build, promote, and defend the
> Internet, which is _inherently_ a multistakeholder system, so I disagree
> with your claim.

My claim is that the AP doesn’t mention any planned actions by ISOC with
regards to this, as I wrote it. Not sure why you disagree with the fact as
stated?

"The MSM" is not some holy good that needs to be defended for its own
> sake.  It is a model that is appropriate to the Internet because of the
> kind of thing the Internet is, and it is therefore something we continue to
> work defending for that very reason.  We are, after all, the Internet
> Society, not the Multistakeholder Society; so our emphasis is on the
> Internet.

Correct, and there is no MSM, but MSM of Internet governance.

>
> >Strengthening the Internet does not happen only in the US court rooms,
> >but weakening it might happen at many intergovernmental organizations
> >and EU courts, and would have been good to see that ISOC Action Plan
> >recognizes that.
>
> I believe this action plan does indeed recognize that and attempts to lay
> out what we intend to do to build, promote, and defend the real Internet.
> I hope you will look at it again in that light and see how it tells that
> story.

I did, I tried to find what you say is there, but I could not find it. I
didn’t see concrete examples, similar to the ones you gave for the court
system in the USA. If some 6 unknown cases are so important for the
Internet, so that they make it into the plan, why nothing about the EU or
the UN/ITU? The natural conclusion is that they are not as important as the
6 potential court cases. I could be wrong, of course.

>
> Best regards,
>
> A
>
> --
> Andrew Sullivan
> President & CEO, Internet Society
> sullivan at isoc.org
> +1 416 731 1261
> _______________________________________________
> As an Internet Society Chapter Officer of the European
> region you are automatically subscribed to this list,
> which is regularly synchronized with the Internet
> Society Chapter Portal (AMS):
> https://admin.internetsociety.org/622619/User/Login
> View the Internet Society Code of Conduct:
> https://www.internetsociety.org/become-a-member/code-of-conduct/
>
-- 

Best regards,
Veni Markovski
http://www.veni.com
pgp: 5BA1366E veni at veni.com
<http://www.veni.com/>

The opinions expressed above are those of the author,
not of any organizations, associated with or related to
the author in any given way.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/private/chapter-delegates/attachments/20211211/581ebc67/attachment.htm>