GUARDIAN: "NSA Furor Has Roots in US Internet Imperialism"

Last edited Sun Nov 3, 2013, 03:41 PM - Edit history (1)

With Brazil leading the charge to create an alternative internet infrastructure, the ground appears to have shifted for the US Dubai, where the World Conference on International Telecommunications in 2012 was held. The aggressive US strategy around internet governance raised eyebrows at the time.


Photograph: Ahmed Jadallah/Reuters

In November 2012, more than 2,000 civil servants and IT specialists from across the world gathered in Dubai for the World Conference on International Telecommunications.

A largely procedural event, the conference aim was to update a global telecoms treaty last negotiated in 1988. But from the outset, the event was marked by intensive political and commercial lobbying, particularly on behalf of the US. Ambassador David Gross, a lawyer and government co-ordinator for communications policy, led a well-funded and powerful campaign in the months leading up to the conference. Google, Microsoft, Cisco, Comcast and AT&T were all on board, and the US press ran on-message examinations exploiting anti-UN feeling, concerns about Chinese or Russian control of the internet and warnings that certain proposed revisions were for the benefit of dinosaur telecoms firms.

After two weeks of complex negotiations, the treaty failed. The US saw the failure as a victory, claiming that the internet has never needed UN regulation and that the treaty was not consistent, in the words of US delegation head Terry Kramer, "with the multistakeholder model of internet governance". The US was joined by the UK and others, including most of Europe, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, India and Kenya.

The US claimed that the treaty attempted to extend its telecoms remit to "grab control of the internet", which one critic said would see the internet develop conflicting standards and competing jurisdictions on a par with the European train system. Countries which unsuccessfully supported the revised International Telecommunications Regulations claimed the opposite; that the treaty enables standardisation, as it has done historically with dialling codes and consistent phone keyboards. They argued that the lobbying was more about protecting a western-dominated, US-centric internet administration.

In the wake of the revelations over the extent of international surveillance conducted by America's National Security Agency, the aggressive US strategy around internet governance seems to have had a different agenda. Richard Hill was one of the key players at the UN's International Telecommunication Union and co-ordinated the ITR conference, but has since retired. He told the Guardian that at the time, he had thought US pressure was based on defending its commercial interests.

"Many countries are not comfortable with what they perceive as the dominant role of the US," he said. "In Dubai, many people were wondering why the US was making so much fuss about such treaty provisions that were in fact inoffensive from a legal point of view. Why were they expending so much political capital for so little? At the time, many thought it was a question of principle. After the revelations concerning the NSA surveillance, it seems reasonable to infer that the US did not wish to agree to anything that might limit its surveillance programmes – and having to co-operate with other countries might have such an effect."

MORE of GOOD READ AT:

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/nov/01/nsa-furore-roots-us-internet-imperialism