. The Internet Society Leaders Programme aims to safeguard and promote the continued healthy development of the Internet.

This is from Computers, Freedom and Privacy Conference happening (June 1 – June4, 2009) at Washington DC, with the theme “Creating the Future”. The video in this post is the webcast of the opening session Computers, Freedom and the Obama Administration – A look at the short history and future prospects for Obama Administration policies in areas involving technology and liberty with Opening remarks by Susan Crawford, Special Assistant to the President for Science, Technology, and Innovation Policy; member, National Economic Council

This is from Computers, Freedom and Privacy Conference happening (June 1 – June4, 2009) at Washington DC, with the theme “Creating the Future”. The video in this post is the webcast of the opening session Computers, Freedom and the Obama Administration – A look at the short history and future prospects for Obama Administration policies in areas involving technology and liberty with Opening remarks by Susan Crawford, Special Assistant to the President for Science, Technology, and Innovation Policy; member, National Economic Council

This is from Computers, Freedom and Privacy Conference happening (June 1 – June4, 2009) at Washington DC, with the theme “Creating the Future”. The video in this post is the webcast of the opening session Computers, Freedom and the Obama Administration – A look at the short history and future prospects for Obama Administration policies in areas involving technology and liberty with Opening remarks by Susan Crawford, Special Assistant to the President for Science, Technology, and Innovation Policy; member, National Economic Council

. The Internet Society Leaders Programme aims to safeguard and promote the continued healthy development of the Internet.

This is from Computers, Freedom and Privacy Conference happening (June 1 – June4, 2009) at Washington DC, with the theme “Creating the Future”. The video in this post is the webcast of the opening session Computers, Freedom and the Obama Administration – A look at the short history and future prospects for Obama Administration policies in areas involving technology and liberty with Opening remarks by Susan Crawford, Special Assistant to the President for Science, Technology, and Innovation Policy; member, National Economic Council

The first 23 minutes of the video does not contain any conetnt. Fast forward to 23minutes and 49 seconds

. The Internet Society Leaders Programme aims to safeguard and promote the continued healthy development of the Internet.

Nominet Trust, a charitable organisation that funds Internet education, inclusion, and safety initiatives today announced it has awarded the Internet Society (ISOC) with funding to rapidly expand its Internet Leaders Programme, which strives to strengthen the global Internet community and to ensure the continued growth of the Internet.

The first two Internet Leaders programmes to benefit from the funding will be the Internet Society Fellowships to the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) and the ISOC Internet Governance Forum (IGF) Ambassadors Programme. The programmes aim to diversify the voices that participate in global forums for Internet standards and policy, and help developing countries participate more fully in the Internet’s development.

About the Two Leaders Programmes:

The ISOC Fellowships to the IETF aim to identify and nurture technologists and potential Internet leaders from developing regions, as well as diversifying the input and experience represented at IETF meetings. The IGF Ambassadors Programme aims to give voice to local and regional stakeholders, as well as identify regional challenges and local solutions to policy related issues.

The Internet Society encourages the two-way sharing of knowledge and information between local and global Internet communities. Both programmes require that participants complete outreach and advocacy work in their local area and report back to ISOC.

Lynn St Amour, CEO of the Internet Society comments: “The Internet Society is committed to fostering the continued responsible growth and development of the Internet. Our Internet Leaders programme helps achieve that by supporting talented individuals as they strengthen their local communities, and by bringing local Internet-related issues and ideas to the global stage.”

Jonathan Welfare, Chairman of Nominet Trust Board comments “The ISOC Internet Leaders programme aligns with and reinforces Nominet Trust’s aim to assist the development of the Internet in developing countries to relieve financial hardship and advance education. Projects within the programmes directly impact the development of the Internet, introducing diverse voices to the forum of Internet standards development and governance issues.”

Lord Steven Carter, Communications Minister said: “I am pleased to see that Nominet Trust has funded projects that will have a quick and positive impact on the UK and global Internet landscape. Nominet Trust will make a positive difference by funding worthy projects in online education and inclusion to help to ensure the responsible growth of an inclusive Internet.”

More information about the Internet Society’s Internet Leaders programme can be found at: http://www.isoc.org/leaders

( as issued by Greg Wood )

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Washington, D.C., USA–4 June, 2009–The Internet Society (ISOC), a global non-profit organization founded to provide leadership in Internet related standards, education and policy, has recommended that the Joint Project Agreement between the U.S. Department of Commerce and the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) be concluded on its expiry 30 September, 2009. The Internet Society believes that the continued success of the Internet depends on private leadership and the multi-stakeholder governance model.

The Internet Society thanks the United States government for fulfilling its responsibilities to the global Internet community as set out in its landmark 1998 Policy on the Management of Internet Names and Addresses, and submits that the goal of the current agreement–transitioning the technical coordination and management of the Internet’s domain name and addressing system to ICANN–has been achieved.

The Internet Society highlighted the government’s original view that “a private coordinating process is likely to be more flexible than government and to move rapidly enough to meet the changing needs of the Internet and of Internet users. The private process should, as far as possible, reflect the bottom-up governance that has characterized development of the Internet to date.”

“The Internet Society strongly believes that ICANN must focus on its role as steward of the shared public resource that is the domain name system within the multi-stakeholder model,” said Lynn St. Amour, Internet Society president and CEO. “The Internet Society is committed to playing its part and calls on the United States government to join with other stakeholders in support of the evolution of this approach after the end of the Joint Project Agreement.”

Full text of the Internet Society’s comments are available at:

http://www.isoc.org/isoc/media/ISOC-NOI-comments.pdf

To reach another person on the Internet you have to type an address into your computer – a name or a number. That address has to be unique so computers know where to find each other. ICANN coordinates these unique identifiers across the world. Without that coordination we wouldn’t have one global Internet.

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) coordinates the Interent’s Naming system. ICANN was formed in 1998. It is a not-for-profit public-benefit corporation with participants from all over the world dedicated to keeping the Internet secure, stable and interoperable. It promotes competition and develops policy on the Internet’s unique identifiers.

It was a US Presidential directive in 1997 that led to the formation of ICANN as not-for-profit corporation based in California. The Department of Commerce maintained its oversight of ICANN through an agreement known as the Joint Project Agreement which is a topic of global discussion as the world considers it fair that Internet Governance is a muti-stakeholder affair, that needs to extend beyond the oversight of any one nation.

The JPA is under review. In this context, Paul Twomey, the CEO of ICANN filed a written testimony before the Subcommittee on Communications, Technology, and the Internet of the United States House of Representatives on June 4, 2009 on Issues concerning the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), including the expiration of the Joint Project Agreement between the U.S. Department of Commerce and ICANN at the end of September and the creation of new global top level domains (gTLDs).

Apart from stating his postion on the JPA, the document summarizes the elaborate participatory, transparency and accountability systems that have evolved over the years to make ICANN a model of a global public organization. ICANN has impressively taken shape with its accountablility mechanisms in three spheres as Paul Twomey narrates and it would evolve even more as a fully independant organization

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ISOC has participated at all stages of WSIS and the follow-on IGF. In this process we have succeeded in gaining significant recognition for our positions which support an open and globally accessible Internet. Much of this has been achieved through cooperation with our Chapters, members, and partner organizations from around the world. We believe that the IGF provides a very useful platform for open dialogue on the challenges and opportunities that face the Internet, its governance and the role it will play in empowering individuals and contributing to social and economic development around the globe.

Applications for IGF Sharm El Sheikh are open from 4 to 29 June 2009.

China’s Spy in the Home

Commentary by Danny O’Brien

The Chinese Ministry of Industry and IT’s announcement that all PCs sold in China must include government-approved filtering software is a profoundly worrying development for online privacy and free speech in that country. While the application, “Green Dam Youth Escort”, claims to only block pornographic sites, the access to a home computer such filtering software requires means that it could also have the power to conduct all sorts of other surveillance and control — far more than China’s current monitoring and blocking systems at the ISP level permits.

On present day operating systems, government-controlled software that are granted such admin rights would be able to collect IM and email conversations, install keyloggers, relay microphone and webcam recordings. It could prevent or detect the use of web proxies (the primary method of Chinese citizens seeking an uncensored Internet), and scan for privacy-protecting software like Tor and PGP. Business users of Chinese PCs will be vulnerable to state-sponsored corporate espionage. Foreign users of computers in China will be unable to guarantee the security of their communications.

Are these realistic threats? Absolutely: indeed, we’ve already seen what many suspect is the Chinese government’s use of software in this way. A localised Chinese version of Skype included backdoors that passed on private IM conversations to third-parties. Tibetan dissidents have struggled with keylogging spyware that is uniquely targetted to this political group.

But until now, such software has relied on duping its users as to its function or on the poor security of their operating systems. “Green Dam Youth Escort” will allow the Chinese state an automatic foothold on every Chinese PC, installing their own code remotely through automatic upgrades.

PC distributors have already reacted negatively to the announcement, not least because of its unrealistic deadline of July 1st. Dell has said that it will only consider installing the software if its only purpose is to block pornographic content from children, and only if it can be disabled.

These companies need to continue the pushback, not just for reasons or practicality, or for privacy and surveillance, but in defence of their users’ right to manage their own property.

Other software companies, like the anti-virus companies, can assist by detecting and removing such programs in just the same way as they defeat other malware that undermines user control (if they do not, they risk having criminal non-government malware use the Chinese program as method to conceal their own intentions, as happened with the Sony Rootkit).

Finally, Western governments need to understand that their own plans to infect computers with such software — under the proposed Loppsi 2 law in France, or the Federal Trojan project in Germany, or via the FBI’s current domestic spyware projects — needs detailed scrutiny and firm judicial controls in place. The modern PC is as private and personal a locale as a citizen’s home. Any state that claims to respect human rights and civil liberties should respect that privacy.

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There are today 1.5 billion internet users worldwide. To all of them, the internet has brought global freedom to communicate and to exchange opinions and ideas. The internet still holds breathtaking opportunities for our civilisation: from omnipresent access to education and healthcare to better government policies through participative democracy. Much of the progress and creativity achieved in recent years has been the fruit of human ingenuity unleashed by the internet’s openness to innovation.

But to continue reaping the benefits of the online world, the internet must evolve on a solid and democratic base. Have you ever asked yourself who actually is in charge of ensuring that millions of computers can connect to each other 24 hours a day? And who decides on new top level domains in addition to the existing ones, such as “.com”, “.fr”, “.de” or “.eu”, we can have? Who decides on the price that domain name registries and end-users should pay for new domain names? Who, in the last instance, guarantees the stability and openness of the internet for users in the whole world?

Today the main player in all those decisions is ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. ICANN is also entrusted with the IANA functions managing the root of the internet, the Internet’s core directory.

What is ICANN? ICANN is a private not-for profit corporation established in California. Since it was created more than 10 years ago, ICANN has been working under an agreement with the US Department of Commerce. At the moment, the US Government is the only body exercising some oversight over ICANN. I believe that the US, so far, done this in a reasonable manner.

Read the embedded PDF below and watch the video to understand the significance of ICANN and about how it ought to be governed.

The Future of Internet Governance- Towards an Accountable ICANN by Viviane Reding

My comments as an individual: To progress from G1 to G12 appears to be a good idea. Viviane Reding proposes G12 as “an informal group of government representatives that meets at least twice a year and can make, by majority, recommendations to ICANN where appropriate. To be geographically balanced, this “G-12 for Internet Governance” should include two representatives from each North America, South America, Europe and Africa, three representatives from Asia and Australia, as well as the Chairman of ICANN as a non-voting member. International Organisations with competences in this field could be given observer status.

The idea is that “it is not defendable that the government department of only one country has oversight of an internet function which is used by hundreds of millions of people in countries all over the world”. At the same time, the accountability of ICANN due to its “unique position of a global quasi-monopoly… requires global management… [as] monopolies always involve the risk of abuse. And who should ICANN be accountable to? Not the UN, because “decisions on internet governance need to be taken swiftly”.

So a G 12.

The G12 for Internet Governance differs from a NATO or OPEC, as it is “informal” and “geographically balanced” with the inclusion of the ICANN chairman as a “non-voting” member with “observer” status granted to International Organizations.

Good progress. But a move by Governments to take over the Internet? Why voting status to the Government 12 and observer status to the International Organizations? I would, in my independent opinion prefer an I 12 for Internet Governance with the twelve governments as Observers….

Sivasubramanian Muthusamy
(individual views)
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