[Chapter-delegates] An important message from ISOC Bulgaria - your input is needed

Sat Jan 22 01:44:34 PST 2022

Here is another example of what is being said and done at the national level:

  https://committees.parliament.uk/committee/534/draft-online-safety-bill-joint-committee/news/159784/no-longer-the-land-of-the-lawless-joint-committee-reports/ 

Best,

Richard

From: Richard Hill [mailto:rhill at hill-a.ch] 
Sent: Saturday, 22 January 2022 10:43
To: 'Joly MacFie'; 'Veni Markovski'; 'ISOC Chapters'
Subject: RE: [Chapter-delegates] An important message from ISOC Bulgaria - your input is needed

Dear Veni,

Thank you for this. If I understand correctly, the Zoom call will take place on Sunday 29 January, 14h00 UTC.

As complement to what Veni writes below, be aware that several other Member States (mostly developing countries) supported Russia’s proposal to hold an open consultation on certain issues.

After discussions in the Council Working Group, Russia made a statement outlining the issues, it is found in the Annex of the report of the 19-20 January CWG-Internet meeting. That report will be publicly available in due course. For convenience, I reproduce below the contents of the Annex that outlines the issues proposed for consultation.

Since there was no agreement in the Council Working Group, there will surely be extensive discussions at the ITU Plenipotentiary Conference (26 September-14 October 2022) regarding what, if anything, should be discussed in ITU regarding Internet governance.

In this context, it’s worth noting that it is not only Russia and China that are passing laws, rules, regulation, etc. regarding the Internet.  The EU GDPR is of course a well-known example, but more will likely come from the EU, see:

https://www.politico.eu/article/metaverse-new-competition-challenges-margrethe-vestager/ 

https://ec.europa.eu/info/strategy/priorities-2019-2024/europe-fit-digital-age/digital-services-act-ensuring-safe-and-accountable-online-environment_en 

And of course there are various national initiatives to limit or weaken encryption, for example:

  https://www.internetsociety.org/blog/2022/01/uk-online-safety-bill-set-to-weaken-encryption-and-put-uk-internet-users-at-risk/ 

It’s probably not possible to prevent governments from discussing Internet governance issues at the national level. So it seems to me that the questions should be (1) how to ensure informed discussion (2) what should be discussed at the international level and (3) in what forums to hold the international discussions.

Back in January 2018, I made some pretty detailed proposals regarding what to discuss where, see:

http://www.apig.ch/Gaps%20r9%20clean.pdf 

Best,

Richard

===========

STATEMENT OF THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION

*	The Russian Federation notes the ongoing process of fragmentation of the Internet and the degradation of the common digital space and expresses its concern at the lack of a substantive discussion on the issue of maintaining the unified global network and the lack of practical steps to prevent fragmentation of the Internet.
*	The Russian Federation considers it necessary to organize the governance of the Internet in the form of an open democratic process, which is based on the universally recognized principles and norms of international law, focused on the needs of people, protecting their rights and freedoms, including ensuring the personal information security.
*	The Russian Federation calls for the transformation of the existing Internet governance system in order to exclude the influence of any unilateral political restrictions or commercial interests on it and ensure the safety, integrity, continuity, stability, sustainability and security of the global critical infrastructure.
*	The Russian Federation recognizes the need for further cooperation at the national, regional and international levels to resolve issue mentioned above and is open to constructive dialogue and the development of practical solutions to prevent the complete fragmentation of the Internet and encourages Member States to actively participate in such a dialogue within the ITU.
*	The Russian Federation considers it important to continue the work of the CWG-Internet in the next period in accordance with Resolution 102 of the Plenipotentiary Conference.

From: Chapter-delegates [mailto:chapter-delegates-bounces at elists.isoc.org] On Behalf Of Joly MacFie via Chapter-delegates
Sent: Saturday, 22 January 2022 03:45
To: Veni Markovski
Cc: Chapter Delegates
Subject: Re: [Chapter-delegates] An important message from ISOC Bulgaria - your input is needed

Hi Veni,

A couple of questions to get the ball rolling.

What exactly are we afraid of with these proposals?

How, practically, can the RIRs etc be unjurisdictioned?  Presumably the suggestion is the function be passed to the ITU?

Is there any way, as non-participants in multilateral processes, that Chapters can influence the outcome, beyond lobbying their country's representatives?

joly

On Fri, Jan 21, 2022 at 6:26 PM Veni Markovski via Chapter-delegates <chapter-delegates at elists.isoc.org> wrote:

Hi, everyone.
Please, do not share with other lists; this is an issue of relevance for the chapters only! 

At ISOC Bulgaria we have been following the discussion at the ITU Council Working Group on International Internet-related Public Policy Issues (CWG-Internet <https://www.itu.int/en/council/cwg-internet/Pages/default.aspx> ), which this week was discussing the topic for the next open public consultations. 
I wanted to give you some feedback and ask you to step up your contacts with your national telecom administrations (usually this would be the Ministry for Communications or some other Ministry or governmental agency. A list of all the members, including which governmental agency/ies represent them at the ITU is here: https://www.itu.int/hub/membership/our-members/directory/?myitu-members-states=true <https://www.itu.int/hub/membership/our-members/directory/?myitu-members-states=true&request=countries> &request=countries

You may have read* in the last year about the the attempts by the Russian Federation to drive the ITU in discussion of issues, related to the Internet; within the European Chapters (in CC:) we spent some time last September talking about what's going on. Perhaps we could organize ourselves and have an all-chapter Zoom call among all chapters? See more on that further below.

This past week the Russian federation proposed two topics for discussions, they are both publicly accessible here <https://www.itu.int/md/S22-RCLINTPOL17-C/en> , but I am attaching them for your convenience. You will see details in these documents; the summary is that Russia proposes member states to discuss among themselves the following issues:
·      risks for reliability and stability of existing model of the operational activities organization/operators of critical Internet infrastructure;
·      Member States’ inputs and proposals on possible ways to overcome existing challenges and neutralize risks for operational activity organizations/operators of critical Internet infrastructure;
·      what international structures and procedures can overcome the existing challenges and risks. 

And for the public consultations they proposed the topic: 

"Reliability and stability of the operational activity organizations/operators of critical Internet infrastructure: key and challenges of their operating activities, in particular the risks of being in national jurisdictions." 

See their arguments and details in the attached documents. 

This is not the first time they are proposing a topic, related to "critical Internet infrastructure", as described in the articles* below. 

At ISOC Bulgaria, where we have participated for the last 23 years <http://isoc.bg/kpd/index2-eng.html>  in helping the Bulgarian government making sure the telecommunications laws are Internet-friendly and to ensure that the Internet develops open, unregulated and without restrictions <https://isocbg.wordpress.com/2010/10/20/bg-itu/> , we raised awareness to the newly elected Bulgarian government (December last year) about the latest Russian proposals, as they touch on the more than two decades Internet-friendly environment in the country - result of policies, which have been discussed between governments and the non-governmental sector for years.  

Of course, there's always more that could be done, and this is where all chapters cold not only join forces, but also try to make a difference. That is, of course, if you care about keeping the Internet open, interoperable, stable and developed, as the WSIS Tunis Agenda <https://www.itu.int/net/wsis/docs2/tunis/off/6rev1.html>  (art. 35 and others) says, with participation by all stakeholders, in their respected roles. 

I personally think we should not be asking ISOC.org to help us in setting the call, but if they say they would, that would be great. If not - ISOC Bulgaria will be happy to provide a Zoom link. To include as many chapters as possible, we suggest to have it at 6 am California, 9 am New York, 3 pm Brussels, 7:30 pm in Delhi, 10 pm  in Singapore. We understand that some chapters might not be able to join, and others (Australia, New Zealand) perhaps definitely won't be able to join (midnight in Brisbane), but nevertheless, we should try to include as many as possible. 

ISOC Bulgaria urges you for a quick and focused discussion on here first, and then we meet next Sunday, January 29th in order to make sure people can join. I understand that for some working day might be easier, while a Sunday impossible, but there always will be some percentage of people, who won't be able to join, so we have to choose one day anyway. 

Hope that this is helpful, and enjoy reading the articles and documents.

_______
* - See the articles below. Disclaimer: ISOC Bulgaria does not necessarily reach to the same conclusions or share the same ideas as the author.

February 1, 2021: Russia is trying to set the rules for the Internet. The U.N. saw through the ruse. 
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/02/01/russia-internet-rules-united-nations/

March 30, 2021: How Russia and China are attempting to rewrite cyberworld order
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/how-russia-and-china-are-attempting-to-rewrite-cyberworld-order/2021/03/30/16030226-9190-11eb-a74e-1f4cf89fd948_story.html

May 4, 2021: Russia’s plot to control the Internet is no longer a secret
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/05/04/russias-plot-control-internet-is-no-longer-secret/

July 20, 2021: Russia and China’s hypocritical attempt to control cyberspace 
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/07/20/russia-china-are-trying-control-internet-even-they-censor-it/

-- 

Best regards, 
Veni
Chairman of the Board
Internet Society - Bulgaria 
https://www.isoc.bg 
pgp:5BA1366E veni at veni.com

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