[Chapter-delegates] What ISOC is doing

Tue Jul 6 05:10:21 PDT 2021

Hi, everyone.
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.

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:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/05/04/russias-plot-control-internet-is-no-longer-secret/.
Since it may require subscription, I am copying the text below.

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.

best,
v/

Russia’s plot to control the Internet is no longer a secret
by David Ignatius

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.

Putin complained during his annual address
<http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/65418> 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.”

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.

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 ICANN <https://www.icann.org/en>, that
coordinates Internet addresses.

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.

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 April 7
interview
<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>.

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 spoke on
April 21
<https://www.icann.org/en/system/files/files/ge-007-29apr21-en.pdf>, the
same day Putin made his speech.

“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.”

Russia’s candidate
<https://www.icann.org/en/system/files/files/ge-007-29apr21-en.pdf> 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.”

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 campaigning aggressively
<https://www.state.gov/u-s-support-for-itu-secretary-general-candidacy-of-doreen-bogdan-martin/> 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.

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 founded in 1998
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/02/01/russia-internet-rules-united-nations/?itid=lk_inline_manual_19> 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.

The American roots of the Internet seem to both upset Putin and fuel
conspiratorial talk. The Russian leader said during a 2014
interview translated <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KMj8Er6uh5c> 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 interview
<https://interfax.com/newsroom/exclusive-interviews/70952/>: “The
Internet emerged at a certain time, and undoubtedly the key rights to
control are in the United States.”

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.

-- 

Best regards, 
Veni
https://www.veni.com
pgp:5BA1366E veni at veni.com

The opinions expressed above are those of the 
author, not of any organizations, associated 
with or related to him in any given way. 

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