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A digital cold war?

2012-12-18 10:24:59

THE International Telecommunication Union (ITU) has always prided itself on

being one of the most pragmatic organisations of the United Nations. Engineers,

after all, speak a similar language, regardless where they come from. Even

during the cold war they managed to overcome their differences and negotiate

the International Telecommunication Regulations (ITR), a binding global treaty

that even today governs telecommunications between countries.

But the internet seems to be an even more divisive than cold-war ideology. The

World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT) in Dubai, where the

ITU met to renegotiate the ITR, ended in failure in the early hours of December

14th. After a majority of countries approved the new treaty, Terry Kramer, the

head of the American delegation, announced that his country is not able to

sign the document in its current form. Shortly thereafter, at least a dozen

countries including Britain, Sweden and Japan signalled that they would not

support the new treaty either. (Update (December 14th, 3.20pm): Of the 144

countries which had the right to sign the new treaty in Dubai, only 89 have

done so.)

The main issue was to what extent the internet should feature in the treaty.

America and its allies wanted to keep it from being so much as mentioned mainly

out of fear that any reference to it whatsoever would embolden governments to

censor the internet and meddle with its infrastructure. For some time a

compromise among the more the 600 delegates, who were confined to an oppressive

convention hall, seemed possible: the binding ITR would indeed hardly make any

mention of the internet, but China, Russia and many Arab countries would get a

non-binding resolution on the internet (with the awkward title To foster an

enabling environment for the greater growth of the Internet ).

Yet this package did not fly because for America both the ITR and the

resolution crossed several red lines. One section of the draft treaty calls for

the regulation of unsolicited bulk electronic communication , commonly known

as spam . But prohibiting spam in an international treaty, the Americans

argue, would require some definition of the kind of content intended which

could thereby limit the freedom of expression. Russia also insisted that the

relevant entities in the treaty be defined as operating agencies , which would

include internet services providers (ISPs) and other internet firms. (America

wants the entities to be classed as recognised operating agencies , code for

old-style telecommunication carriers.)

America s willingness to stand up for the internet should be welcomed. But it

has to be said that in doing so it also defended its interests: no other

country benefits as much from the status quo in the online world. Since much of

the internet s infrastructure is based in America and most of its traffic zips

through it, America is in a unique position to eavesdrop, should it be so

inclined. America s internet firms also capture most of the profit pool of the

online industry.

Only the host country had a larger delegation than America, which sent more

than 120 people to Dubai. The American representatives included officials from

the department of defence as well as from internet firms like Facebook and

Google. It was not just for fear that it might have a chilling effect on

freedom of expression that America did not want the word security included in

the treaty it also has a stake in keeping other countries from catching up in

such matters. And America s negotiators were not just worried about a digital

divide when they pushed back hard against any attempts by European telecoms

operators to introduce language about internet charges. The proposed changes

could have helped the European firms in their efforts to get big internet firms

to pay them for passing on their traffic.

The immediate impact of the WCIT s failure will be minor. Despite the

opposition from America and its allies, the ITU will have the remaining

countries sign the new treaty on Friday in the hope that the other member

states will come around eventually. What is more, the treaty may be binding,

but a new version will have to be ratified by the ITU s member states, which

can take a couple of years. And it is not clear how it can be enforced.

In the medium term, however, the outcome of the conference in Dubai will weaken

the ITU which may not be such a good thing. Among all the controversy it was

forgotten that the organisation actually does very useful work, for instance in

managing the international radio-frequency spectrum and developing technical

standards. And some of the good ideas about which the delegations could agree

may now fail to come to fruition. The WCIT reached consensus on a resolution to

create a worldwide emergency number (although this would take years to

implement). It also agreed on wording to make it easier for landlocked

countries and certain island states to get into international fibre-optical

networks.

The most important result of the conference has been to demonstrate that the

world now splits into two camps when it comes to the internet: one is comprised

of more authoritarian countries, which would like to turn back the clock and

regain sovereignty over their own national bits of the internet; the other

wants to keep the internet and its governance as it is (bearing in mind that

some of its members motives may not always be as pure as they pretend).

This sounds much like a digital version of the cold war. The funny thing is

that the leading countries in the two camps are the same two that were at

loggerheads until the iron curtain parted. One must hope that the failure of

the WCIT is not a first step towards raising a digital one.