By Carlos Afonso, NUPEF
Civil society organisations, social movements and NGOs are active in internet governance processes, many of them involved in these processes since the inception of WSIS nearly ten years ago, several of them collaborated with me in drafting the following statement.
We believe that the access of gatekeepers in the open global communication enabled by the internet is crucial to realise the promise of Article 19 of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
To impose the restrictions, legal or otherwise, to the free flow of information is and has all been contrary to the individual Human Rights to freedom of expression. We therefore oppose efforts to create national internts or to block and filter internet access in ways that deny individuals access to applications, content and services of their choice. All attempts to deem certain forms of communication and information illegal and to restrict or block them must follow established transparent due processes of law and should not involve prior restraint.
We oppose efforts to militarise the internet or any actions that would foster a destructive and wasteful cyber arms race among governments or private actors.
We consider the covert use of exploits and malware for surveillance or attacks to be criminal, regardless of whether they are deployed by Governments, private corporations or organised criminals.
We are sceptical of efforts to subordinate the design and use of information and communication technology to national security agendas.
We believe that internet security will be achieved primarily at the operational level and that the national security and military agendas often work against rather than for users’ security needs.
In the processes of policy formulation, we emphasise the need to prioritise dialogue with policy makers over their subordinated law enforcement agencies.
Global governance institutions should not be restricted to states so we welcome the additional participation and global policy making that multistakeholder processes provides but we caution that multi stakeholder participation is not an end in itself.
Opening up global governance institutions to additional voices from Civil Society and business does not by itself ensure that individual rights are adequately protected or that the best substantive policies are developed and enforced.
In the informal spaces created by pluralist institutions it is possible that that incorporate actors can make deals contrary to the interests of Internet users. Multi stakeholder processes, while involving all interest groups must incorporate and institutionalise concepts of due process, separation of powers and users in a learnable, civil and political rights and governmental decision making or to take into account the of all participants of such pluralist processes.
Let us remind ourselves that participation goes beyond representation and participation in decision making goes beyond just debates and dialogues. Regarding the ITR, the International Telecommunications Regulations review process to be concluded in Dubai and here I use the standard terminology the technical community defines to refer to the different components of the network we agree that the internet layer and the layers above it, transport layer and applications layer, should not be included in any way in the regulations while the free flow of internet packets should be guaranteed in the link layer in line with network neutrality in which internet packets are never touched by the operators providing the physical connectivity infrastructure. Let the internet flourish freely to the benefit of those who live at its edges, which are all of us.
