The core Internet institutions abandon the US Government

http://www.internetgovernance.org/2013/10/11/the-core-internet-institutions-abandon-the-us-government/

by Yakulu • 13 years ago

183 41 13 years ago

a3n2• 13 years ago

A good thing. The US has squandered its right to lead.

Who says that any single governing national body should ever have the right to be an all-but-unchecked international leader, the way the US has?

a3n2• 13 years ago

To the extent that the US provided technical leadership, resources, stability and benevolent dictatorship, they could hope for the community following them as the best alternative. There is no longer any basis for such hope or expectation.

It's probably been a long time coming, and too bad it had to happen the way it did, but that seems to be the way these days in so many areas of US "leadership." We can't be trusted.

tokenizer• 13 years ago

While this is necessary knowing what we now know. I really hope it isn't continued by the UN as a tool for the countries with worse human rights violations.

jafaku• 13 years ago

Would you mind using a stronger font/color? This is unreadable for me.

tux• 13 years ago

Yeah that exactly what I thought. Could not even read first sentence of that page. Even after zooming the page ^_^

gcb13• 13 years ago

at least you can zoom.

death to all lazy slobs who just cancel zoom on mobile instead of doing his/her work.

aethertap• 13 years ago

If you have a javascript console handy, this helped for me:

document.getElementsByClassName('content')[0].style.font="14pt arial bold"

bengtan• 13 years ago

For Firefox, goto View => Page Style => No Style

Draiken2• 13 years ago

Saying Dilma Rousseff "has been intensely critical of the US government and the NSA spying program" is a big overstatement.

Regardless, let's hope this segregation happens and the internet can get a little bit of freedom from the greedy hands of the US Government.

gcb13• 13 years ago

the day snowden announced that a bazilian company (vale) was spied she cancelled a trip to washington if no official explanation was given before her visit.

on her latest UN adress, which btw was right before obama's, she ended with strong criticism and call to action about the program.

speeder3• 13 years ago

She cancelled US visits and contracts. Complained on the UN assembly.

And even raged on twitter (yes, raged on twitter, teenager style).

How that is not being intensely critical?

Draiken2• 13 years ago

That's showing off as a critical. Nothing was DONE. A lot was said.

If she had actually taken action against it, I'd buy it. She didn't and she won't, so I (and you should too) assume that's just propaganda. At least in Brazil it's how every politician plays the game.

generj• 13 years ago

I guess hoping for a dramatic dismantling of Bluffdale and Clapper's arrest on perjury charges was always unrealistic.

In reality, we've already started to win. Jewel v. NSA, rather than being dismissed under executive privilege and placed into the realm of "paranoid nutjobs" is proceeding strongly, as are a multitude of other lawsuits with strong merit.

There's been a renewed interest in stronger systems, which will ultimately be the only way to prevent against surveillance. After all, policy changes only are secure and trustworthy of the government that makes them.

The transfer of Internet institutional power away from the US is just another step, even if it's probably a bit less useful than you might suppose, given that every major technological power has also participated in similar surveillance schemes.

So while I still wish for political reform in the short-term, I am continually re-assured by other efforts which will solve this issue in the long-run. So long as we don't forget about this issue, it will be solved one way or another.

curiousdannii• 13 years ago

What differences will this make now?

gcb13• 13 years ago

good point. the article is thin on this topic.

my guess is that latin countries will have a local exchange instead, which is about damn time to be honest.

which happens regardless of that meeting...

tptacek2• 13 years ago

Insofar as the Internet is an "entity" with any of the kind of agency that would allow it to "abandon" anything, it is governed by telcos, 5-6 major US Internet companies, and the content industry.

mrleinad• 13 years ago

Brazil's government (and UNASUR as well) is pushing for building connectivity for all of South America, excluding the USA, so all information flows between countries without going through US companies.

a-priori3• 13 years ago

As a Canadian, I wish this were possible for us. Virtually all of our Internet traffic, even to hosts in other parts of Canada, go through American territory. I'm not sure if it would even be possible to route our traffic around the US.

tptacek2• 13 years ago

This makes sense for any number of simple logistical reasons, none of which have anything to do with the principled stands of ICANN, IANA, or the IETF.

My point is simply that people shouldn't be looking to the standards bodies for help. They were at best asleep at the switch for the last 20 years, and at worst complicit. The most charitable thing you can say about "Internet governance's" role in dragnet surveillance is that they prioritized internal politics over end-user safety, again and again and again.

I don't blame the people involved with these groups; most of them are involved with the best of intentions. The failures of Internet governance are the expected emergent behaviors of any standards body.

AsymetricCom• 13 years ago

The platform of the internet is not wires. It's not AT&T and it's not switches, it's not deep packet inspection routing "low priority" packets around "congestion" and it's not HTML5 or JavaScript. It's not a cloud, and it's not a PaaS.

The internet is TCP/IP, and on the internet packets are routed by their headers, not by their content.

Some parts of the internet are actually a corporate LAN in america, with it's own rules for routing. So, a lot of routers will route around America since it seems to drop a lot of packets or return corrupted packets. Perhaps what IP really needs is a way for applications to report network degradation so that OSPF can correctly quantify each part of the network, instead smart routers that try to prioritize traffic by capitalist metrics. It's quite clear OSPF is broken when a route is selected that would allow for injecting of protocol/application hijacking packets for network issues to disguise what would otherwise be a congested path.

tonyplee• 13 years ago

A few chinese internet/content companies have hundreds millions users. (more than double the population of US.)

Example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tencent_QQ : As of 20 March 2013, there are 798.2 million active QQ accounts, with a peak of 176.4 million simultaneous online QQ users.

iambateman• 13 years ago

This is a graphic explaining "who runs the internet": http://www.icann.org/sites/default/files/assets/governance-2...

I don't think we fumbled our right to lead. Internet standards are bigger than the US. This is good, imho.

atlanticus4• 13 years ago

The more that people buy into the idea that the only problem is the US the easier it is for the entire West to continue with business as usual, regardless of election time posturing by EU nations.

walshemj• 13 years ago

ah more jollies/meetings in hard to get to 3 world dictatorships so that "civilians" cant hold ICANT to account.

dlitz• 13 years ago

Hopefully, this will just involve transferring the governing authority away from the U.S. government without changing how the IETF/IANA are actually operated.

It would be bad if the traditional, international standards-setting organizations (e.g. ITU, ISO, ECMA, IEEE, etc.) ended up gaining control over the IETF/IANA, and they've been eying for it for some time now.

mcguire• 13 years ago

Many HN readers may support this action (heck, me, too), but this is a ridiculous article.

"...turned their back on the US government..."

"...he conspired with her to convene a global meeting..."

The "major Internet organizations" have about as much organization as a room full of cats. Don't expect this important action to actually mean much.

Except possibly for a new herd of top-level domains, useful primarily to extort money from trademark owners.

suprgeek• 13 years ago

I guess everyone is getting tired of the Arrogance and heavy-handedness of the NSA.

Arrogance - We (NSA) will sabotage, undermine and subvert legitimate efforts at security because we need the ability to Snoop on everybody. Thus making the Internet Unsafe for everybody else as well only to suit their paranoid needs.

Heavy-Handed: We will store all communications that we get get our hands on either directly or thru foreign lap-dog governments(Five eyes). The rights of Americans other nationals and everybody else be dammed.

About time some one held their feet to the fire for this nonsense. Snowden should be given the Nobel Prize for Human rights (A new category that needs to be set up)

snowwrestler• 13 years ago

I find this article to be pretty overwrought.

NSA efforts have focused on exploiting applications, weakening encryption standards, and subverting telcos and big hosted service providers. None of those are managed by Internet governance bodies. Altering the internal structure of ICANN would not inhibit NSA activities one bit.

The revelations of NSA spying have pissed off a lot of other countries, and no doubt increased their desire to splinter the Internet into a federation of national networks, which would be easier for them to each respectively control. That would help them protect from NSA spying... but it would also give them greater capability to control every other aspect of Internet access.

This is the approach that was rejected at the ITU, and recall that we all cheered that result.

I think it's interesting that this article describes the values of freedom and democracy as cherished by the U.S. Aren't they cherished by all people? Who doesn't want to be free?

There is a group of people who don't cherish those values, and those are the leaders of national governments that are known to be oppressive, censorious, or both. Would China really be a better steward of "Internet values" than the U.S.? I don't think so.

The core Internet institutions abandon the US Government

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