Subject: Re: WCIT outcome?

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 01 Jan 2013 08:31:28 +0000

I'v been hesitating to join in here because this seems distinctly OT
to me, but there are some basics that need to be understood:

On 31/12/2012 21:08, John Day wrote:
> At 1:05 PM -0500 12/31/12, Phillip Hallam-Baker wrote:
>> On Mon, Dec 31, 2012 at 9:51 AM, John Day
>> <<mailto:[email-masked]>[email-masked]> wrote:

...
>> MPs and Congressmen are elected decision makers. ITU participants can
>> make decisions but they are not binding on anyone and only have effect
>> if people like me choose to implement them.
> 
> This was my point. The standards part of ITU is just like any other
> standards organization. But there are other things it does which are not
> like this, e.g. spectrum allocation.  There are other aspects with
> respect to tariffs that are binding on signatories.

Not only tariffs. Historically, it was national enforcement of international
regulations set by CCITT (now known as ITU-T) that prevented interconnection
of leased lines**. This is an arcane point today, but if CERN hadn't been
able to use its status as an international organization to bypass that
restriction in the 1980s, it's unlikely that TBL and Robert Cailliau would
ever have been able to propagate the web. It's even unlikely that Phill
would have been able to access Usenet newsgroups while on shift as a grad
student on a CERN experiment.

Also, it is exactly because ITU was in charge of resource allocations
such as radio spectrum and top-level POTS dialling codes that it was
a very plausible potential home for IANA in 1997-8, before ICANN was
created. Some of the ITU people who were active in that debate were just
as active in the preparation for WCIT in 2012.

** CCITT document D.1. The 1988 version includes the restrictions on
use of leased lines:
http://www.itu.int/rec/dologin_pub.asp?lang=e&id=T-REC-D.1-198811-S!!PDF-E&type=items

The 1991 version is much less restrictive, but it remains the case that
interconnections are all "subject to national laws" and that is the basis
for all national limitations on the Internet today. Nevertheless, the 1991
revision of D.1 was absolutely essential for the Internet to grow
internationally.

It would be foolish to imagine that the Internet is in some way immune
to ITU-T regulations, which is why the effort to defeat the more radical
WCIT proposals was so important.

   Brian

---

From: John Day <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 1 Jan 2013 13:32:50 -0500

Thanks Brian, That helps clear up a few things.  See below for a 
couple of questions:

At 8:31 AM +0000 1/1/13, Brian E Carpenter wrote:
>of leased lines**.

But creating a VPN with in an international carrier that crossed 
national boundaries would not fall under that rule?  Actually neither 
would a VPN operating over a couple of carriers that crossed national 
boundaries, would it?

>This is an arcane point today, but if CERN hadn't been

;-) Actually what they don't know won't hurt them.  ;-) We were 
moving files from CERN to Argonne in the 70s through the 360/95 at 
Rutherford over the ARPANET.   Not exactly the way you want to do it 
but 15 years later I am sure it was upgraded a bit.

>as active in the preparation for WCIT in 2012.

Yea, this one is more dicey.  Although I think there is an argument 
that says that you need ccoperation among providers about assignment, 
but I don't see why governments need to be involved.  When phone 
companies were owned by governments, then it made sense.  But phone 
companies are owned by governments any more.

That doesn't leave much does it?  (Not a facetious question, I am asking!)

Take care,
John

---

From: Alessandro Vesely <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 01 Jan 2013 19:36:26 +0100

> revision of D.1 was absolutely essential for the Internet to grow

Was D.1 to ease wire tapping?  By example, I, as a mail server operator
who is not a telecom, am not required by my country's laws to provide an
instrumentation whereby authorized investigators can obtain a list of a
user's correspondents on the fly.  Yet that kind of data is said to be
essential for police operations.  OTOH, SMTP doesn't consider that kind
of facilities, and fashionable implementations don't provide them.  What
am I missing?

Perhaps, as the old telephone system is fading away, the institutions
that founded it --local governments' branches-- should change their
mindset or just fade away as well...  Should the IETF or other SDOs help
such transition?

On Sat 29/Dec/2012 07:26:56 +0100 Phillip Hallam-Baker wrote:
> The old telephone system is fading away. It is becoming an Internet
> application just as the pocket calculator has become a desktop
> application. And as it passes, the institutions it founded are
> looking for new roles. There is no particular reason that this must
> happen.

---

From: Dave Crocker <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 01 Jan 2013 10:46:44 -0800

> as active in the preparation for WCIT in 2012.

Just to avoid any misconstruction here:

      While there might have been a plausible case to be made, for 
having the ITU house the IANA functions, I believe there was no 
(serious) pursuit of that alternative at the time.

Around that time, the ITU did have a representative who participated in 
the ill-fated pre-ICANN IAHC effort (of which I was a part, including 
editor of its proposal).

But the IAHC only had the very narrow scope of suggesting a few gTLDs to 
add.  It had no formal part in the much larger question of finding a 
home for IANA.

d/
-- 
  Dave Crocker
  Brandenburg InternetWorking
  bbiw.net

---

From: John Day <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 1 Jan 2013 13:52:20 -0500

Dave,

I was thinking about that after I sent my email.  I actually don't 
think there is an argument for ITU holding the IANA function.  The 
assignment of addresses should be done in such a way as to facilitate 
routing.  This requires agreements among providers, but not 
governments.  Going back to governments no longer own the networks, 
then there is no reason for it be in the purview.

Domain names I guess would follow since there are merely macro 
strings for network addresses.

So I see no argument for ITU to be involved.

Take care,
John

At 10:46 AM -0800 1/1/13, Dave Crocker wrote:
>Around that time, the ITU did have a representative who participated 
>in the ill-fated pre-ICANN IAHC effort (of which I was a part, 
>including editor of its proposal).
>
>But the IAHC only had the very narrow scope of suggesting a few 
>gTLDs to add.  It had no formal part in the much larger question of 
>finding a home for IANA.
>
>d/
>--
>  Dave Crocker

---

From: Dave Crocker <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 01 Jan 2013 11:08:19 -0800

On 1/1/2013 10:52 AM, John Day wrote:
> I was thinking about that after I sent my email.  I actually don't think
> there is an argument for ITU holding the IANA function.

And just to make sure my own message was clear:  I wasn't commenting on 
the merits of the view, but merely trying to report the facts of what I 
recall taking place at the time.

> Domain names I guess would follow since there are merely macro strings
> for network addresses.

While this is a topic serving more as a discussion black hole than 
likely to engender intellectual opportunity, I'll point out that domain 
names are -- and I think always have been -- quite a bit more than 
merely being macros for network addresses.

The mapping to network addresses has (always?) been the primary use, but 
they are a discrete name space with social as well as operational uses. 
  That is, the social aspects serve as distinct from the mapping aspects.

For that matter, the operational uses have extended considerably beyond 
mapping to addresses.  Given my own activities with DKIM, the obvious 
exemplar is mapping to security parameters.

d/

---

From: Jaap Akkerhuis <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 01 Jan 2013 23:13:42 +0100

It is of course all history, but allow me some remarks (in line).

    

In the early eigthies, after consulting with the telecom authorithy
in the Netherlands we got the green light to move data for third
parties, and thus the (then uucp based) EUnet was born. The green
light was given in the anticipation of the libiralization of the
EU telcom market. And yes, first this was indeed first using (nearly
only) dial-up connections but soon some leased lines and of course
TCP/IP etc. game into play.

    

[The RIPE was born out of necessity for coordination of the IP number space].

    Take care,
    John
    
    >WCIT proposals was so important.

It seems that this document was already unaware about what was really happening
in practice.

	jaap

---

From: Phillip Hallam-Baker <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 1 Jan 2013 19:29:11 -0500

> student on a CERN experiment.

I was never a grad student at CERN, I was a CERN Fellow. And I had access
to USENET from DESY but we were routing it through CERN at first.

Now it is an interesting question as to what might have happened if the Web
had not expanded as it did when it did. But one of the reasons that it
expanded was that there were a lot of parties involved who were actively
wanting to blow up the CITT tariffs and establish a free market. That was
HMG policy at any rate.

> as active in the preparation for WCIT in 2012.

When the big question facing DNS admin was legal liability in the various
domain name disputes that were proliferating, having a treaty organization
with diplomatic immunity actually had some advantages.

But that was a very different time diplomatically. That was before Putin
was ordering assassinations on the streets of London with Polonium laced
teapots and before the colour revolutions rolled back the Russian sphere of
influence. And our side was hardly blameless, it was the US invasion of
Iraq that poisoned the well in the first place.

> revision of D.1 was absolutely essential for the Internet to grow

The idea of fixing the contract terms in an international treaty is utterly
bizarre.

> WCIT proposals was so important.

While technically true, I think your wording is misleading.

ITU-T has absolutely no control over the Internet unless member governments
decide to give it that power. The importance of the protests was that they
prevented the US and EU governments from agreeing to cede that power.

Within the US government there are different factions. What was important
was to ensure that the pro-control faction did not get the chance to agree
to give the store away.

-- 
Website: http://hallambaker.com/

---

From: John Day <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 1 Jan 2013 20:11:53 -0500

At 7:29 PM -0500 1/1/13, Phillip Hallam-Baker wrote:
>On Tue, Jan 1, 2013 at 3:31 AM, Brian E Carpenter 
><<mailto:[email-masked]>[email-masked]> 
>wrote:
>
><<mailto:<mailto:[email-masked]>[email-masked]><mailto:[email-masked]>[email-masked]> 
>wrote:
>
>...
>
>I was never a grad student at CERN, I was a CERN Fellow. And I had 
>access to USENET from DESY but we were routing it through CERN at 
>first.
>
>Now it is an interesting question as to what might have happened if 
>the Web had not expanded as it did when it did. But one of the 
>reasons that it expanded was that there were a lot of parties 
>involved who were actively wanting to blow up the CITT tariffs and 
>establish a free market. That was HMG policy at any rate.
>
>

I have heard tell (dropping into the vernacular) that to many, the 
web was just another application like Gopher until NCSA put a browser 
on it.  The question is what would have happened had they put the 
browser on top of something else?

>When the big question facing DNS admin was legal liability in the 
>various domain name disputes that were proliferating, having a 
>treaty organization with diplomatic immunity actually had some 
>advantages.

Agreed but the treaty organization was the WTO and another one I 
can't remember right now! ;-)  As long as the problem was punted to 
them one was okay.  I just don't see how ITU has purview over *uses* 
of the network. (Nor am I willing to easily cede that.)

This is why it is not a good idea to go along with the ITU 
beads-on-a-string model.  By doing so, it already clouds the picture 
and gives up ground.

>
>But that was a very different time diplomatically. That was before 
>Putin was ordering assassinations on the streets of London with 
>Polonium laced teapots and before the colour revolutions rolled back 
>the Russian sphere of influence. And our side was hardly blameless, 
>it was the US invasion of Iraq that poisoned the well in the first 
>place.
>
>

True, but what effect does this have?  The US did burn up a lot of 
good will for no good reason and then botched the job on top of it.

><http://www.itu.int/rec/dologin_pub.asp?lang=e&id=T-REC-D.1-198811-S!!PDF-E&type=items>http://www.itu.int/rec/dologin_pub.asp?lang=e&id=T-REC-D.1-198811-S!!PDF-E&type=items
>
>The idea of fixing the contract terms in an international treaty is 
>utterly bizarre.
>
>
>

Why is this technically true?  Honest question.

>
>ITU-T has absolutely no control over the Internet unless member 
>governments decide to give it that power. The importance of the 
>protests was that they prevented the US and EU governments from 
>agreeing to cede that power.

Agreed.

>Within the US government there are different factions. What was 
>important was to ensure that the pro-control faction did not get the 
>chance to agree to give the store away.
>

My model here (for better or worse) is the origin of the US 
Constitution.  The Constitution does not create a hierarchical 
structure.  The States cede parts of their sovereignty to the Federal 
government. Those things better done across States, rather than 
individually:  Common currency, regulating interstate commerce, 
defense, etc.  The Federal government is alongside the State 
governments.  The EU is a confederation that is doing some of these 
as well.  The UN is a very weak confederation, so the question to 
consider is what aspects of *telecommunication*  (not defense or 
commerce or anything else) does it make sense that there should be 
international regulation (or binding agreements)?

So far, my list is pretty short.  In fact, there is wireless spectrum 
and that is it.  And even there, I would suggest only above certain 
transmitter power levels.

Actually, I would have to apply the same criteria to the FCC.  ;-)

---

From: "Fred Baker (fred)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 2 Jan 2013 05:11:30 +0000

> of facilities, and fashionable implementations don't provide them.  What

In most countries, wiretap laws apply to public facilities. An enterprise mail server isn't a public facility.

> mindset or just fade away as well...  Should the IETF or other SDOs help

If you want something to fade away, making a fuss about it isn't a useful approach. The IETF's practice in the past has been to improve the Internet; I tend to think that's as it should be.

That said, I'm also of the opinion that preventing a police force from conducting a proper criminal investigation is not a path to success. We like to say that the Internet routes around brokenness; so do police forces and legislative bodies. They define "brokenness" as anything that prevents them from doing their job, the same way we do. What I would far rather see is a set of technical mechanisms and supporting law that facilitate legitimate criminal investigations and expose the other kind.

---

From: Randy Bush <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 02 Jan 2013 16:02:40 +0900

> In most countries, wiretap laws apply to public facilities.

laws do not seem to have much relation to government spying.

randy

---

From: Victor Ndonnang <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 02 Jan 2013 09:23:25 +0100

Dear all,

I have been following this discussing since and I'm learning a lot. Many 
thanks to all contributors and special Thanks to
Phillip Hallam-Baker who initiated it.
Happy and Prosperous New Year 2013 to the IETF Family!
Best Regards,
Victor Ndonnang.

On 02/01/2013 02:11, John Day wrote:
> Re: WCIT outcome?
>> <[email-masked] <mailto:[email-masked]>> wrote:
>>
>>     >> <<mailto:[email-masked]
>>     <mailto:[email-masked]>>[email-masked]
>>     <mailto:[email-masked]>> wrote:
>>
>>     ...
>>
>> access to USENET from DESY but we were routing it through CERN at first.
>>
> I have heard tell (dropping into the vernacular) that to many, the web 
> was just another application like Gopher until NCSA put a browser on 
> it.  The question is what would have happened had they put the browser 
> on top of something else?
>
>>
>> various domain name disputes that were proliferating, having a treaty 
>> organization with diplomatic immunity actually had some advantages.
>
> Agreed but the treaty organization was the WTO and another one I can't 
> remember right now! ;-)  As long as the problem was punted to them one 
> was okay.  I just don't see how ITU has purview over *uses* of the 
> network. (Nor am I willing to easily cede that.)
>
>> it was the US invasion of Iraq that poisoned the well in the first place.
>>
>
>>     <http://www.itu.int/rec/dologin_pub.asp?lang=e&id=T-REC-D.1-198811-S%21%21PDF-E&type=items>
>>
>>
> defense, etc.  The Federal government is/alongside/ the State 
> governments.  The EU is a confederation that is doing some of these as 
> well.  The UN is a very weak confederation, so the question to

---

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 02 Jan 2013 09:03:42 +0000

On 01/01/2013 18:32, John Day wrote:
...

> would a VPN operating over a couple of carriers that crossed national

That depended on how the various national monopolists chose to
interpret the rules. In Switzerland we were particularly affected
by the fact that the PTT monopoly was a specific line item in the
federal Constitution. In the US, you had the benefit of Judge Greene.

> ;-) Actually what they don't know won't hurt them.  ;-) We were moving
> files from CERN to Argonne in the 70s through the 360/95 at Rutherford
> over the ARPANET.   Not exactly the way you want to do it but 15 years
> later I am sure it was upgraded a bit.

This would probably have counted as a store-and-forward network,
which was exempted in many countries.

> Yea, this one is more dicey.  Although I think there is an argument that
> says that you need ccoperation among providers about assignment, but I
> don't see why governments need to be involved.  When phone companies
> were owned by governments, then it made sense.  But phone companies are
> owned by governments any more.
> 

Indeed. But I think you'll find that in general, the countries that signed
the WCIT treaty are those that still have some semblance of a government-
controlled PTT monopoly.

On 01/01/2013 18:36, Alessandro Vesely wrote:

> Was D.1 to ease wire tapping?

No. It was all about preserving the lucrative PTT monopolies.

On 01/01/2013 22:13, Jaap Akkerhuis wrote:

> parties, and thus the (then uucp based) EUnet was born.

Exactly, and EARN (European BITNET) was just the same.

> The green
> EU telcom market. 

Exactly, and the 1988 revision of regulation D.1 was closely related
to the general move toward telecom liberalization.

As I said - this stuff *matters* for the Internet (both historically
and for the future).

    Brian

---

From: SM <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 02 Jan 2013 04:33:26 -0800

At 13:08 31-12-2012, John Day wrote:
>jumped all over.  Generally, ITU meetings require unanimity to have 
>a consensus.  This

There seems to be different definitions of consensus; each body has 
its own meaning for that word.

>;-)  Why is that daunting?  ;-)  I hear that excuse often.  If we 
>had had that attitude when we started this effort 40 years ago.  We 
>would still be patching the PSTN.  There would be no Internet. Do 
>you think the Internet was a success because we convinced IBM and 
>AT&T it was a good idea?!!  I am sorry to see that the younger 
>generation is so faint of heart.  Can't take a little challenge!

Nowadays it is called being pragmatic.  The little challenge might be 
taking on the legacy.  I wonder how many fairy tales are part of the 
legacy. :-)

>agreeing to cede that power.

That might explain the the press releases about the WCIT discussions.

At 17:11 01-01-2013, John Day wrote:
>doing some of these as well.  The UN is a very weak confederation, 
>so the question to consider is what aspects of 
>*telecommunication*  (not defense or commerce or anything else) does 
>it make sense that there should be international regulation (or 
>binding agreements)?

Y.2001 covers topics which affect commerce (I am ignoring other 
angles).  There is leeway for expanding the scope beyond a narrow 
definition of telecommunication.  Everybody will lobby for their pet 
project as there is an opportunity to do so.

Regards,
-sm

---

From: John Day <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 2 Jan 2013 07:36:18 -0500

>federal Constitution. In the US, you had the benefit of Judge Greene.

I could see it being viewed as commerce and subject to tariffs.  (Not 
that I think tariffs are a good idea.)

>which was exempted in many countries.

;-)  I of course was joking. But I remember being told that it was 
illegal, or maybe it was that no one was sure (we were all pretty new 
to this stuff back then) and figured asking was not a good idea!  ;-)

(In several reports at the time, our node was the highest user of the 
Rutherford, probably of nodes on the net at the time.)

>the WCIT treaty are those that still have some semblance of a government-

I was wondering about that and guessing that it might be the case. 
Thanks for the data.

Also, I would agree with Fred's comment on helping the police. 
Although as we all know that can be hard call and one has to hope 
that the proper controls are on them as well.  The problem as I see 
it is that it is not a good idea to try to constrain a new technology 
to behave like the old technology.  It is the capability they want it 
shouldn't imply how.

Of course, the other problem which really wasn't present before (just 
because of cost and/or availability) is that if the user chooses to 
encrypt everything they send, the network provider can provide the 
data but that  is it.

---

From: John Day <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 2 Jan 2013 08:11:35 -0500

>its own meaning for that word.

No, it isn't that.  I have been in too many meetings like this.  The 
reason it is done is because of what the chair wants.  I remember one 
standard where the stack of comments on the document was two feet 
high.  Normally a tenth that many comments would have had the 
document going for a second ballot rather than progressing.  Since 
most wanted it to progress even if it was probably severely flawed 
after all those changes, it was done.

No, this is not a case of different groups having different rules. 
It is a case of chair getting what he wanted.

>Nowadays it is called being pragmatic.  The little challenge might 
>be taking on the legacy.  I wonder how many fairy tales are part of 
>the legacy. :-)

Nice rationalization for your inaction.  It has been used a lot 
throughout history.  That doesn't change the facts. (BTW, a close 
inspection reveals that the legacy is all fairy tale.)

>>so the question to consider is what aspects of *telecommunication* 
>>(not defense or commerce or anything else) does it make sense that 
>>there should be international regulation (or binding agreements)?
>

Could you expand on this?

---

From: "Carlos M. Martinez" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 02 Jan 2013 11:44:37 -0200

Hi!

On 12/29/12 4:19 PM, Phillip Hallam-Baker wrote:
> 
> 
> On Sat, Dec 29, 2012 at 5:43 AM, Jorge Amodio <[email-masked]
> <mailto:[email-masked]>> wrote:
> 
> 
>     ITU was founded previously as the International Telegraph Union
>     before AG Bell's phone was patented, no doubt the evolution of
>     telecommunications and the Internet puts ITU with its current
>     behavior in the path of becoming obsolete and extinct, but you can't
>     discount many positive contributions particularly from the standards
>     section.
> 
> 
> The original purpose was to stop consumers from reducing their telegraph
> bills by adopting codes. 

Radio spectrum allocation was a critical task at the time (it still is,
although the world doesn't depend that much on it anymore), and one of
the task the ITU actually has performed very well, being a positive and
constructive player.

I don't know if it's true, but I've read in the past that one of the
first events that brought up the need for spectrum regulation, and thus
ushered in the role of the ITU in it was the Titanic disaster.

> 
>  
> 
>     As the multistakeholder model and its associated processes, which is
>     far from perfect, continues to evolve, ITU must be part of the
>     evolution. The issue is that as an organization they must
>     accommodate and realize that now they are "part of it" and not "it"
>     anymore.
> 
> 
> ITU must change if it is to survive. But it was merely a means to an
> end. There is no reason that the ITU 'must' be kept in existence for its
> own sake. 
> 

+1. I do believe the ITU still has a lot of potential for good, but
sadly, the debate within the ITU has been hijacked by those who claim to
defend human rights and fairness while their actual actions say otherwise.

> 
> 
> Many parts of the world do not understand the difference between a
> standard and a regulation or law. Which is why they see control points
> that don't worry us. I do not see a problem with the US control of the
> IPv6 address supply because I know that it is very very easy to defeat
> that control. ICANN is a US corporation and the US government can
> obviously pass laws that prevent ICANN/IANA from releasing address
> blocks that would reach certain countries no matter what Crocker et. al.
> say to the contrary. But absent a deployed BGP security infrastructure,
> that has no effect since the rest of the planet is not going to observe
> a US embargo.

+1.

> 
> I can see that and most IETF-ers can see that. But the diplomats
> representing Russia and China cannot apparently. Which is probably not
> surprising given the type of education their upper classes (sorry
> children of party bosses) receive.

Here I don't agree. I believe they play dumb but actually according to
their interests.

Warm regards,

~Carlos

---

From: Phillip Hallam-Baker <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 2 Jan 2013 09:14:39 -0500

On Wed, Jan 2, 2013 at 7:33 AM, SM <[email-masked]> wrote:

>> jumped all over.  Generally, ITU meetings require unanimity to have a
>> consensus.  This
>>
>
> There seems to be different definitions of consensus; each body has its
> own meaning for that word.
>
>
>  ;-)  Why is that daunting?  ;-)  I hear that excuse often.  If we had had
>> that attitude when we started this effort 40 years ago.  We would still be
>> patching the PSTN.  There would be no Internet. Do you think the Internet
>> was a success because we convinced IBM and AT&T it was a good idea?!!  I am
>> sorry to see that the younger generation is so faint of heart.  Can't take
>> a little challenge!
>>
>

I think the reason is rather different. Back in 1970 the only way to get
things done was to ignore the regulations that prohibited what you want to
do. I remember when a modem came with an 'acoustic coupler' because
connecting it directly to the phone line was illegal. Many of those
regulations came from the authorities attempting to maintain wiretap
capabilities and passive eavesdropping capabilities. Plessey System X used
in the UK was designed to allow any telephone handset to be used to bug the
room it was in which is why the UK authorities made it illegal to buy a
non-Plessey phone and plug it in.

Today the Internet has quite a few supporters that have a place at the top
table of government. Tim Berners-Lee can pick up the phone and talk right
to the top of the UK government, that is what being a Companion of Honor is
actually about.

That does not mean that regulations have to be considered binding. It does
however mean that ignoring them is not necessarily the only or the best
option.

>> governments decide to give it that power. The importance of the protests
>> was that they prevented the US and EU governments from agreeing to cede
>> that power.
>>
>

That and Microsoft being on the warpath after the NSA hacked their internal
PKI with a cryptanalytic attack to deploy the Flame malware.

>> doing some of these as well.  The UN is a very weak confederation, so the
>> question to consider is what aspects of *telecommunication*  (not defense
>> or commerce or anything else) does it make sense that there should be
> Y.2001 covers topics which affect commerce (I am ignoring other angles).
>  There is leeway for expanding the scope beyond a narrow definition of
> telecommunication.  Everybody will lobby for their pet project as there is
> an opportunity to do so.
>

There are government interests in telecommunications, not all of them are
illegitimate.

Maintaining the ability to crack other governments confidential
communications now seems to me to have far more downsides than up. Using
the technology developed to break the Enigma codes to compromise
communications of other governments might have been a good thing if it had
only been used against the Warsaw pact (East Germany used actual Enigma
machines right up to the point the story was made public). But they didn't
limit themselves to that and the main business of the NSA from 1952 through
1976 or so was breaching the communications systems of US allies so that
they could engineer a coup when it suited them. It is probably not an
accident that the coups stopped happening in the mid 70s right around the
time electronic cipher systems replaced the mechanical ones.

But beyond the illegitimate concerns, there are some important legitimate
ones. In particular a country like France has to be concerned that if it
gets into a trade dispute with the US that the US administration can't
force it into submission by threatening to cut off its connection to the
Internet or any other essential communication technology.

This is not a theoretical consideration. The reason that there is no
central repository for RFID product identifiers is that the French
government decided that the proposals on the table would give the US the
ability to control the sale of French products by ordering the maintainer
of the registry not to publish them. That would effectively make it
impossible to sell them through the electronic supply chain. So they made
sure that the registry did not happen.

Ensuring that no country establishes a technological control point like
that is a legitimate government interest and an essential one. That is the
real reason that there is so much politics surrounding ICANN.

So one option would be for ITU-T to refocus its energies on protecting the
legitimate government interest of preventing domination. But it is not
necessarily the best one. A better option would be to design the technology
to factor out the control points so that the technology is neutral on that
point.

---

From: Stewart Bryant <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 02 Jan 2013 14:28:54 +0000

> ushered in the role of the ITU in it was the Titanic disaster.

Yes, there was chaos until the CCIR (ITU-R) process of international
radio regulation came into being.

However it remains to be seen what will happen as the various
computerized "dynamic" forms of frequency co-ordination
(in all their forms) replace the essentially static frequency co-
ordination method that has prevailed over the past 100 years,
and as SDR deployment allows radios to use more dynamic/
agile waveforms than were the possible up until quite recently.

Just as the Internet has challenged the ITU-T model of operation,
the computerization of radio (with the help of the Internet) will
to some degree or other challenge the ITU-R model of operation.

- Stewart

---

From: John Day <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 2 Jan 2013 09:46:07 -0500

Interesting as always.

At 9:14 AM -0500 1/2/13, Phillip Hallam-Baker wrote:
>On Wed, Jan 2, 2013 at 7:33 AM, SM 
><<mailto:[email-masked]>[email-masked]> wrote:
>
>I think the reason is rather different. Back in 1970 the only way to 
>get things done was to ignore the regulations that prohibited what 
>you want to do.

Huh?  The ARPANET was not ignoring any regulations.  Nor was the work 
at NPL or IRIA.

>I remember when a modem came with an 'acoustic coupler' because 
>connecting it directly to the phone line was illegal.

No, there was nothing illegal about it. The reason for acoustic 
couplers was that the RJ-11 had been invented yet and it was a pain 
to unscrew the box on the wall and re-wire every time you wanted to 
connect.

Ever see the French equivalent of RJ-11?  Good grief.  The French 
phone system must have carried a 100 amps!

It may have been illegal in some countries but certainly not in the US.

>Many of those regulations came from the authorities attempting to 
>maintain wiretap capabilities and passive eavesdropping 
>capabilities. Plessey System X used in the UK was designed to allow 
>any telephone handset to be used to bug the room it was in which is 
>why the UK authorities made it illegal to buy a non-Plessey phone 
>and plug it in.
>
>Today the Internet has quite a few supporters that have a place at 
>the top table of government. Tim Berners-Lee can pick up the phone 
>and talk right to the top of the UK government, that is what being a 
>Companion of Honor is actually about.
>
>That does not mean that regulations have to be considered binding. 
>It does however mean that ignoring them is not necessarily the only 
>or the best option.

While interesting, I am still not sure what this response has to do 
with the topic.

>That and Microsoft being on the warpath after the NSA hacked their 
>internal PKI with a cryptanalytic attack to deploy the Flame malware.
>
>
>
>There are government interests in telecommunications, not all of 
>them are illegitimate.
>
>communications now seems to me to have far more downsides than up. 
>Using the technology developed to break the Enigma codes to 
>compromise communications of other governments might have been a 
>good thing if it had only been used against the Warsaw pact (East 
>Germany used actual Enigma machines right up to the point the story 
>was made public). But they didn't limit themselves to that and the 
>main business of the NSA from 1952 through 1976 or so was breaching 
>the communications systems of US allies so that they could engineer 
>a coup when it suited them. It is probably not an accident that the 
>coups stopped happening in the mid 70s right around the time 
>electronic cipher systems replaced the mechanical ones.

Errr, there were several coups last year.  Do you mean US initiated 
coups?  Are you sure there haven't been any? ;-)  I really doubt that 
that was the reason that they seem to fall off.  The success rate of 
the ones they did do was not exactly great and the fallout was often 
not worth the trouble.

Treaties on these sorts of things are pointless.  Agencies like NSA 
or NKVD aren't going to be bound by them anyway.

>
>But beyond the illegitimate concerns, there are some important 
>legitimate ones. In particular a country like France has to be 
>concerned that if it gets into a trade dispute with the US that the 
>US administration can't force it into submission by threatening to 
>cut off its connection to the Internet or any other essential 
>communication technology.
>
>government decided that the proposals on the table would give the US 
>the ability to control the sale of French products by ordering the 
>maintainer of the registry not to publish them. That would 
>effectively make it impossible to sell them through the electronic 
>supply chain. So they made sure that the registry did not happen.
>

Then the RFID folks had written a lousy standard.  It is pretty easy 
to design a decentralized name space methodology, such that no one 
can control the whole thing.  Regulating to protect stupidity 
interferes with Darwin.  ;-)

>Ensuring that no country establishes a technological control point 
>like that is a legitimate government interest and an essential one. 
>That is the real reason that there is so much politics surrounding 
>ICANN.
>
>So one option would be for ITU-T to refocus its energies on 
>protecting the legitimate government interest of preventing 
>domination. But it is not necessarily the best one. A better option 
>would be to design the technology to factor out the control points 
>so that the technology is neutral on that point.

Very much agreed.  Which I believe we know how to do.  (But that too 
has its downside.)

>
>--
>Website: <http://hallambaker.com/>http://hallambaker.com/

---

From: Phillip Hallam-Baker <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 2 Jan 2013 11:30:06 -0500

On Wed, Jan 2, 2013 at 9:46 AM, John Day <[email-masked]> wrote:

> **
> Then the RFID folks had written a lousy standard.  It is pretty easy to
> design a decentralized name space methodology, such that no one can control
> the whole thing.  Regulating to protect stupidity interferes with Darwin.
> ;-)
>

Which was my on-topic conclusion.

If IETF wants to avoid government level politics then we have to design the
technology in such a way that we eliminate or mitigate any control points.

The WebPKI has been successfully deployed precisely because it has
sufficient hierarchy to  be scalable without establishing a single control
point like the PEM proposal.

I don't think we will see DNSSEC or BGPSEC being allowed to propagate
unless attention is paid to the legitimate interest of states to avoid
technology capture.

DNSSEC does not replace the WebPKI, nor does BGPSEC. But we need all three
security layers if we are going to achieve a comprehensive security
solution for the Internet. Each technology has a very specific purpose:

BGPSEC: Prevent/mitigate Denial of Service attacks through bogus route
advertisement

DNSSEC: Distribute security policy information tied to the Internet naming
system

WebPKI: Establish accountability of the parties at the Internet end points.

At the moment we have a broken system because DNSSEC is being sold as a
'free' replacement for WebPKI which is a losing proposition as (1) the cost
of deploying DNSSEC is many times the cost of buying a domain validated SSL
certificate (2) the real purpose of the WebPKI is to establish
accountability which requires a stronger credential than merely having
bought a DNS name.

---

From: Dmitry Burkov <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 29 Dec 2012 22:51:20 +0400

On Dec 29, 2012, at 10:19 PM, Phillip Hallam-Baker wrote:

to be honest I prefer don't comment your emails - but this time I changed mu rules...

> 
> 
> On Sat, Dec 29, 2012 at 5:43 AM, Jorge Amodio <[email-masked]> wrote:
> 
>  
> As the multistakeholder model and its associated processes, which is far from perfect, continues to evolve, ITU must be part of the evolution. The issue is that as an organization they must accommodate and realize that now they are "part of it" and not "it" anymore.
> 
> ITU must change if it is to survive. But it was merely a means to an end. There is no reason that the ITU 'must' be kept in existence for its own sake. 
> 
> Tim Berners-Lee has on numerous W3C AC meetings reminded people about the X-Windows consortium that did its job and then shut down.

X-Windows was dead from the beginning - we lost more regarding patents and html is still under- or overdeveloped:)
But the key point was not attack against ITU - but test the idea to replace Yalta agreements (it means - first test to replace UN)
> 
> 
>  
> There is also a big confusion and still lack of a clear consensus on what "Internet governance" means or entitles, and many take it as "governing the Internet," hence governments want a piece of the action, and the constant and many times intended perception that the Internet is controlled by the USG and its development and evolution is US centric, which I believe at IETF we know since long time ago is not true. But many countries, and as you well say those where there was or still is a single telecom operator and controlled by government, see it that way.
> 
> Many parts of the world do not understand the difference between a standard and a regulation or law. Which is why they see control points that don't worry us. I do not see a problem with the US control of the IPv6 address supply because I know that it is very very easy to defeat that control. ICANN is a US corporation and the US government can obviously pass laws that prevent ICANN/IANA from releasing address blocks that would reach certain countries no matter what Crocker et. al. say to the contrary. But absent a deployed BGP security infrastructure, that has no effect since the rest of the planet is not going to observe a US embargo.
> 
> I can see that and most IETF-ers can see that. But the diplomats representing Russia and China cannot apparently. Which is probably not surprising given the type of education their upper classes (sorry children of party bosses) receive.

Don't think so - that these diplomats were so  stupid that they knew nothing about real situation :) Another issue - how clever they were in concrete event?

> 
> 
>  
> The same forces that pushed at WCIT will keep doing the same thing on other international fora to insist with their Internet governance agenda, the ITRs will become effective in Jan 2015, two years, which on Internet time is an eternity, and it will be only valid if those countries that signed ratify the treaty. Meanwhile packets keep flowing, faster, bigger and with more destinations, not bad for a packet switching network that was not supposed to work. (During WCIT I was wondering, could you imagine doing the webcast via X.25? )
> 
> Two years may be longer than some of the unstable regimes have left. I can't see Syria holding out that long and nor it appears can Russia. The next dominoes in line are the ex-Soviet republics round the Caspian sea where having the opposition boiled alive is still considered an acceptable means of control.

You are  absolutely wrong when put Syria in one line...  And I think that nobody can garantee absolute stability - be careful with such predictions. History showed us that the most stable leading countries can be easily dropped down...

> 
>  
> I agree that it is not clear what the outcome of WCIT12 was, but something that is clear is that ITU needs to evolve, or as Vint characterized them, the "dinosaurs" will become extinct.
> 

I think that first of all - Vint also should estimate himself and  Tony ( of course) - who are these dinosaurs? :)

> I think that what we should be doing is to help the ITU become extinct by eliminating the technical control points that would make ITU oversight of Internet governance necessary.
> 
> This does not need to entail a great deal of technical changes but does require that we accept that they do have a valid interest.
>  
> 

dima

---

From: "Dearlove, Christopher (UK)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 2 Jan 2013 17:34:13 +0000

Carlos M. Martinez 
> although the world doesn't depend that much on it anymore),

Given the ever increasing number of mobile devices, one could argue that the world
has never been more dependent on radio spectrum allocation. It's still not that long since
the UK Chancellor of the Exchequer made over £20 billion from selling spectrum, something
possible since international treaties had agreed on its purpose for 3G communications.

-- 
Christopher Dearlove
Senior Principal Engineer, Communications Group
Communications, Networks and Image Analysis Capability
BAE Systems Advanced Technology Centre
West Hanningfield Road, Great Baddow, Chelmsford, CM2 8HN, UK
Tel: +44 1245 242194 |  Fax: +44 1245 242124
[email-masked] | http://www.baesystems.com

BAE Systems (Operations) Limited
Registered Office: Warwick House, PO Box 87, Farnborough Aerospace Centre, Farnborough, Hants, GU14 6YU, UK
Registered in England & Wales No: 1996687

********************************************************************
This email and any attachments are confidential to the intended
recipient and may also be privileged. If you are not the intended
recipient please delete it from your system and notify the sender.
You should not copy it or use it for any purpose nor disclose or
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********************************************************************

---

From: [email-masked] (Dale R. Worley)
Date: Wed, 2 Jan 2013 14:50:35 -0500 (EST)

> From: John Day <[email-masked]>
> 

In the 1970s, in the US, and for inter-state use, you either had to
rent the modem from the phone company, or rent a "data-access
arrangement" device to connect your modem to the network.  The DAA
cost about as much as the modem, so there was little in the way of
independent modems.  Acoustic couplers got around that rule.

Also, in those days, there was a large four-pronged plug that could be
used for phones.  It was sometimes used when people wanted to move
phones around.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:4prongplug.JPG

Dale

---

From: SM <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 02 Jan 2013 15:06:02 -0800

Hi John,
>Could you expand on this?

The question (asked in a previous message) used the word 
"telecommunication".  If one goes by the definition in Y.2001 it may 
not fit everybody's view of what "telecommunication" should 
mean.  The objectives in Y.2001 are broad.  They can be interpreted 
in various ways.  People will argue about what are important 
considerations and which of them should be subject to international 
regulations.  Does security, for example, affect commerce?  Should 
security include lawful interception?  Each question can raise other 
questions.  It's a slippery slope.

Regards,
-sm

---

From: Masataka Ohta <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 03 Jan 2013 17:39:35 +0900

Dearlove, Christopher (UK) wrote:

> has never been more dependent on radio spectrum allocation.

If you don't insist on allocating fixed bandwidths, CSMA/CA takes care 
of most of issues.

						Masataka Ohta

---

From: "Dearlove, Christopher (UK)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 3 Jan 2013 09:55:46 +0000

It's really not that simple. If it were all the world would be doing it for everything.

-----Original Message-----
From: [email-masked] [mailto:[email-masked]] On Behalf Of Masataka Ohta
Sent: 03 January 2013 08:40
To: [email-masked]
Subject: Re: WCIT outcome?

----------------------! WARNING ! ----------------------
This message originates from outside our organisation,
either from an external partner or from the internet.
Keep this in mind if you answer this message.
Follow the 'Report Suspicious Emails' link on IT matters
for instructions on reporting suspicious email messages.
--------------------------------------------------------

						Masataka Ohta

---

From: Masataka Ohta <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 03 Jan 2013 21:11:22 +0900

> It's really not that simple. If it were all the world would be doing it for everything.

You should recognize that all the smart phones are working fine
(or even better than LTE) with Wifi and that Wifi support
prioritized packets.

						Masataka Ohta

---

From: "Carlos M. Martinez" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 03 Jan 2013 10:51:50 -0200

My point was not about the need (or lack thereof) of spectrum
management, but rather the need (or lack thereof) of an international
office for handling spectrum slots.

The kind of allocation management you mention is an easier one to
tackle. Radio allocation for mobile networks is distance-restricted, it
only has to deal with local frequencies unless your are installing
mobile antennas in border towns.

If countries can be good neighbors you don't need an elephantine
international bureaucracy to manage these type of spectrum allocation.
Where I live this has been the case, all cross-border frequency issues
were fixed through peer to peer negotiation between operators.

As for spectrum sales, well, again it's not the ITU who's doing it, the
regulators are.

Large-scale, global, spectrum management remains an issue (i'm thinking
about talk radio, marine/aircraft/satellite communications, navigation
aids and similar applications), but, IMO, is a less demanding/critical
task than it used to be, and thus the workload for the ITU-R should be
less than it used to be.

cheers!

~Carlos

---

From: "Dearlove, Christopher (UK)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 3 Jan 2013 13:16:31 +0000

Yes, all smart phones support Wi-Fi. In some "unregulated" (not actually entirely so) frequency bands, and with regulated powers, over a short range. But the main long range 2G/3G signals are TDMA or CDMA in regulated bands.

-----Original Message-----
From: Masataka Ohta [mailto:[email-masked]] 
Sent: 03 January 2013 12:11
To: Dearlove, Christopher (UK)
Cc: [email-masked]
Subject: Re: WCIT outcome?

						Masataka Ohta

---

From: "Dearlove, Christopher (UK)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 3 Jan 2013 13:21:25 +0000

I'd like my mobile phone to work all round the world, as it does. It takes more than one band, but only a few. And that took international regulation, not just cross-border issues. And I'd like no one to spill interference into the GPS band. And ... It really isn't as simple as you suggest. Yes, of course it's national governments that sell off 3G spectrum, but only after international agreements established that they could do so.

-----Original Message-----
From: Carlos M. Martinez [mailto:[email-masked]] 
Sent: 03 January 2013 12:52
To: Dearlove, Christopher (UK)
Cc: Phillip Hallam-Baker; IETF Discussion Mailing List
Subject: Re: WCIT outcome?

cheers!

~Carlos

---

From: Masataka Ohta <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 03 Jan 2013 22:38:59 +0900

Dearlove, Christopher (UK) wrote:

> Yes, all smart phones support Wi-Fi. In some "unregulated" (not
> actually entirely so) frequency bands, and with regulated powers,
> over a short range.

CSMA/CA can also work over a long range too and can, in a sense,
fairly arbitrate packets from different countries at border towns.

> But the main long range 2G/3G signals are
> TDMA or CDMA in regulated bands.

Forget them.

						Masataka Ohta

---

From: "Carlos M. Martinez" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 03 Jan 2013 11:50:30 -0200

My only point is that it is not what is used to be. But we can agree to
disagree.

Happy new year all by the way.

~C.

---

From: Phillip Hallam-Baker <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 3 Jan 2013 09:28:51 -0500

$20 billion for the wireless spectrum in the UK was quite a chunk of
change. And the US government raised $19 billion in a later auction. So it
is hardly surprising that there is intense government interest in
communications technology.

But one of the reasons those auctions were originally proposed was to force
various military interests to stop hogging 95% of the available bandwidth
on the offchance they might have a use for it some day. Putting a price on
the resource forced the Pentagon and GCHQ etc. to explain why they really
needed the resource which in most cases they didn't.

There are certainly a lot of political issues surrounding communications.
It is not an accident that the West German TV system was compatible with
the East German system so that East German sets could receive West German
signals. That is how the cold war was won.

But that does not change the principle that a technology that depends on
government regulation to work properly has a design error and a technology
that depends on inter-government regulation is worse.

Wireless spectrum interference was a consequence of broadcast technology.
Telephone monopolies were the consequence of the limited capabilities of
electromagnetic relay switch gear. We do not need to resort to either

There is a government interest in preventing the accumulation of monopoly
power through technical lock in. Europe has done a much better job of that
than the US. But modern wireless devices are simply a DSP connected to a
bit of wire. Adapting to pretty much any band is merely a matter of
software.

Dean Acheson once said that Britain has lost an empire and is looking for a
role. The ITU has the same problem. The technical limitations that made it
necessary to regulate communications through inter-governmental agreements
have largely disappeared. So now the only constituency the chair can find
is the governments who want to regulate communications because they are
afraid that their political institutions are fundamentally unstable.

On Thu, Jan 3, 2013 at 8:21 AM, Dearlove, Christopher (UK) <
[email-masked]> wrote:

> I'd like my mobile phone to work all round the world, as it does. It takes
> more than one band, but only a few. And that took international regulation,
> not just cross-border issues. And I'd like no one to spill interference
> into the GPS band. And ... It really isn't as simple as you suggest. Yes,
> of course it's national governments that sell off 3G spectrum, but only
> after international agreements established that they could do so.
>
> --
> Christopher Dearlove

---

From: Masataka Ohta <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 03 Jan 2013 23:51:16 +0900

> needed the resource which in most cases they didn't.

If they are winning, they need the resource not inside but outside,
of their border.

If they really need them inside their border, they are loosing a
war, which authorizes them to preempt all the already assigned
bandwidth within their border.

Anyway, there can be no inter-border coordination by ITU-T
between fighting countries.

						Masataka Ohta

---

From: [email-masked] (Dale R. Worley)
Date: Wed, 2 Jan 2013 14:50:18 -0500 (EST)

Dale

---

From: "Dearlove, Christopher (UK)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 3 Jan 2013 18:49:01 +0000

I think at this point we have parted company with the real world, so I will drop out of this discussion.

-----Original Message-----
From: Masataka Ohta [mailto:[email-masked]] 
Sent: 03 January 2013 13:39
To: Dearlove, Christopher (UK)
Cc: [email-masked]
Subject: Re: WCIT outcome?

Forget them.

						Masataka Ohta

---

From: "Tony Hain" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 3 Jan 2013 16:59:45 -0800

> There are some control points in the Internet but they are rather less
critical 
> than many imagine. IPv6 address space allocations, DNS zone management 
> and AIS numbers are arguably control points.
>
> If we can eliminate the control point nature of those resources then the 
> essential government needs in Internet regulation will have been met and
the 
> need for the ITU to be involved will disappear entirely. There are still
concerns 
> that an ITU-like body could usefully address. A treaty baring
cyber-sabotage 
> would be an important and useful effort that demands a diplomatic
approach.

> Fred Baker wrote:
>
> ...
> If you want something to fade away, making a fuss about it isn't a useful
> approach. The IETF's practice in the past has been to improve the
Internet; I
> tend to think that's as it should be.
> 
> That said, I'm also of the opinion that preventing a police force from
> conducting a proper criminal investigation is not a path to success. We
like to
> say that the Internet routes around brokenness; so do police forces and
> legislative bodies. They define "brokenness" as anything that prevents
them
> from doing their job, the same way we do. What I would far rather see is a
> set of technical mechanisms and supporting law that facilitate legitimate
> criminal investigations and expose the other kind.

> Brian E Carpenter wrote:
>
> ...
> That depended on how the various national monopolists chose to interpret
> the rules. In Switzerland we were particularly affected by the fact that
the
> PTT monopoly was a specific line item in the federal Constitution. In the
US,
> you had the benefit of Judge Greene.

> John Day wrote:
> Although as we all know that can be hard call and one has to hope that the
> proper controls are on them as well.  The problem as I see it is that it
is not a
> good idea to try to constrain a new technology to behave like the old
> technology.  It is the capability they want it shouldn't imply how.

Subject thread RE: Acoustic couplers (was: WCIT outcome?)
> John C Klensin wrote:
>
> ...
> That approach and position was contemporaneous with national regulations
> in many countries that one could run all of the TCP/IP services one wanted
as
> long as they were run over the national X.25 profile and sometimes as long
as
> one claimed they were "transitional" until OSI Connection-mode stabilized.
> There might be a useful lesson or two in that bit of history.

This entire thread(s) missed the point that about why the governments
control / restrict telecom. The national PTT's didn't come into existence
because the governments were better at operating those facilities than
private enterprise. Even the acronym hints at the evolutionary consolidation
and control over the flow of information. The fact that we are not already
operating as a collection of PTT(I/W) has more to do with the pace and
direction of global government agreements than it does with any special
characteristics of the inter-web standards process. Paraphrasing Klensin's
point 'use any bit pattern you want as long as it transits the regulated
infrastructure', is a case in point about consolidating and controlling the
flow of content. 

The IETF can't get into the realm of defining "legitimate criminal
investigations", because defining "legitimate" is the role of governments.
The only thing the IETF can / should do is recognize that governments have a
role, so facilitating basic information like identity and connection-point
is required.  Content control is out of scope for any particular government
related discussions, but is required by private enterprise so the IETF does
get involved, and those results will get used in unintended ways by
governments. Attempts to thwart that unintended use will only instigate more
explicit attempts at oversight and control over the standards process. 

Like it or not, governments are fundamentally opposed to the open nature of
'the Internet', and they always will be (even the 'reasonable' ones).
Managing information flow is how they derive and exercise power (even the
'open' ones use managed leaks to the free press to influence opinion).
Assuming that the standards process can be used to mitigate their exercise
of power is naive at best. The ITU will continue to exist, if nothing more
than a unified voice for the governments to state requirements of each
other. How long the IETF gets to stay independent of that will depend on how
responsive it is to meeting the needs of governments. If short-sighted
attempts at political maneuvering are exposed in the IETF, it will lose its
independence and finally bring that process under 'proper control'. 

It would be wise for the IETF participants to look at the countries that did
sign, and why. What is it that they are not getting that they need, and how
can that be resolved? To echo Day's point, it is the capability they
want/need, not the historical implementation. Some things that are business
relationship based and completely incompatible with the evolution of
technology like 'calling party pays', are easily dismissed by the 'resource
rich', but are absolutely critical to those that have relied on that income
to fund the information control organization. Simply acknowledging that this
is an area for research and investigation is a first step, which would
likely have softened the support the resolution did get. The I* has never
been good at, and is not currently equipped to deal with, the business model
part of the problem space. At the end of the day, I see this as the root of
the unhappiness with the IETF as a standards body. I doubt any of the
signatories would argue that the pace of technology evolution under an
independent standards process is a problem, *IF* they were getting their
business needs met. The only reason to slow and control the pace is to make
sure they are able to maintain control over information flow, and evolve /
align financial relationships. The IETF needs to either meet those
requirements, or acquiesce to the inevitable take-over.

Tony

PS: if you want to remove IPv6 allocations as a control point, see:  
        tools.ietf.org/id/draft-hain-ipv6-geo-addr-02.txt
that approach does require a 'peering business model' to be more like X.75
gateways, but itself does not require shutting down the existing peerings,
as they can operate in parallel.

---

From: Ted Hardie <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 4 Jan 2013 09:24:46 -0800

On Thu, Jan 3, 2013 at 4:59 PM, Tony Hain <[email-masked]> wrote:

> Managing information flow is how they derive and exercise power
>

Aside from the whole "consent of the governed" issue, this perspective
seems historically fairly short-sighted.  Fox's "History in Geographic
Perspective: the other France" lays out a fairly well-documented case for
modeling the trade networks of a country in geographic terms.  Some of
those are easily controlled by a nation states, river tolls being a great
example.  Others are not: the trade of ocean-going vessels left national
control then as now.  This set up an international network that had
enormous economic and cultural influences during the period he describes
(port city cultures in different trading nations often looked a lot closer
to each other than to the culture of the towns of the interior, for
example).

Yes, there were treaty-based efforts to set some common understandings.
Some of those were quite useful, but whenever they actually impinged on
workings of the real network you got smuggling.  In some cases, lots and
lots of it, with encouragement from some of the participating nations.   In
other words, some countries tried to control their participants in these
international networks very tightly.  Some were content to let their
merchants get fat off it instead.  There was no universal response.

I suspect someone much brighter than I am could write a similar analysis
for the Internet.  The network has changed what the boundaries are from the
traditional geographic boundaries of river basin, port, and railroad gauge
to a set of topologies instantiated in fiber networks and interconnects.
Where the network is entirely under the control of a nation-state, it will
find it easy to exercise sovereignty (whatever its reasons for doing so).
But it is very clear that this is not the only case.  *Whenever* the value
the network provides is derived from interconnects outside a single
nation's borders, that sovereignty is much harder to assert (or even
assess).  When the topology is relatively changeable, it is also hard to
use bilateral agreements to manage the relationship--when traffic from Den
Haag can move to Paris via the LINX instead of AMS-IX in an instant, a
Dutch-French bilateral agreement just doesn't do the trick.  It is even
trickier when the traffic from Den Haag to Haarlem goes via the LINX.

In this new effort at a multilateral framework, we are seeing a clash
between a desire for sovereign control of the Internet and a desire to reap
the benefits of open participation.  I think our role in that is to make
sure all involved understand:  the benefits of the Internet's network
effect; the risks in allowing nations through which traffic passes to
assert sovereignty over the flows, especially given both the pace and
chance of topological change; and the reality that entities outside of
governments control the paths that packets actual traverse.

That we already have some government who understand that is a good start,
but we have to keep working at it to avoid damage we can't route round.  I
personally want to thank Lynn and the Internet Society staff for all their
advocacy, as well as those IETF participants who were at WCIT with national
delegations.  It is, of necessity, arduous work, but well worth both the
effort and the thanks of our community.

regards,

Ted Hardie

---

From: Patrik Fältström <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 4 Jan 2013 19:55:45 +0100

> 'the Internet', and they always will be (even the 'reasonable' ones).

Because I do not think generalization is really a reasonable thing to do, and even dangerous when discussing governance issues, I disagree with this statement.

Governments want just like businesses success in whatever they do. That can in general be divided in two wishes. Short term, in the form of being re-elected (or not thrown out of their office) and long term, as in growth of the revenue of the country they govern.

They of course have pieces of their operation that belong to law enforcement agencies, but they also have those that are responsible of finding rules so that non-public sector can grow (to later increase for example tax revenue).

Because of this, I encourage people to not generalize per stakeholder group, but instead acknowledge that there are different *forces* that are orthogonal to each other, and calculating "the correct" balance between them is hard. Or rather, different people do for different reasons get different results when calculating what the for them proper balance is.

That is why I personally am against generalization that a stakeholder group have one specific view.

Specifically governments.

If when pushed to be forced to choose between two choices *all* governments wanted to have control, we would have had many more governments signing the proposed treaty that was on the table in Dubai.

Instead, when being forced to choose, they picked openness and multi stakeholder bottom up processes.

Just like what happened earlier during 2012 when in A/HRC/20/L.13 UN(*) concluded (<http://www.regeringen.se/content/1/c6/19/64/51/6999c512.pdf>:

> 1. Affirms that the same rights that people have offline must also be protected online, in particular freedom of expression, which is applicable regardless of frontiers and through any media of one’s choice, in accordance with articles 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights;
> 
> 2. Recognizes the global and open nature of the Internet as a driving force in accelerating progress towards development in its various forms;
> 
> 3. Calls upon all States to promote and facilitate access to the Internet and international cooperation aimed at the development of media and information and communications facilities in all countries;
> 
> 4. Encourages special procedures to take these issues into account within their existing mandates, as applicable;
> 
> 5. Decides to continue its consideration of the promotion, protection and enjoyment of human rights, including the right to freedom of expression, on the Internet and in other technologies, as well as of how the Internet can be an important tool for development and for exercising human rights, in accordance with its programme of work.

   Patrik

(*) Algeria, Argentina, Australia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Belgium, Bolivia (Plurinational State of), Bosnia and Herzegovina, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Chile, Costa Rica, Côte d’Ivoire, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Djibouti, Egypt, Estonia, Finland, France, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Guatemala, Honduras, Hungary, Iceland, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Libya, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Maldives, Malta, Mauritania, Mexico, Monaco, Montenegro, Morocco, Netherlands, Nigeria, Norway, Palestine, Peru, Poland, Portugal, Qatar, Republic of Moldova, Republic of Korea, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Somalia, Spain, Sweden, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Timor-Leste, Tunisia, Turkey, Ukraine, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, United States of America and Uruguay)

---

From: "Tony Hain" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 4 Jan 2013 13:44:58 -0800

> Ted Hardie wrote:
seems
> historically fairly short-sighted. 

And that consent is based on information availability. Manage the
information, and you manage the consent.

> ...
> Yes, there were treaty-based efforts to set some common
> understandings.  Some of those were quite useful, but whenever they
actually
> impinged on workings of the real network you got smuggling.  In some
cases, lots
> and lots of it, with encouragement from some of the participating nations.
In
> international networks very tightly.  Some were content to let their
merchants
> get fat off it instead.  There was no universal response.

Shipping Merchant / Harbor Master == ISP    : As you see with the resolution
signatories, there is still no universal response.

> In this new effort at a multilateral framework, we are seeing a clash
between a
> desire for sovereign control of the Internet and a desire to reap the
benefits of
> open participation.  I think our role in that is to make sure all involved
> understand:  the benefits of the Internet's network effect; the risks in
allowing
> nations through which traffic passes to assert sovereignty over the flows,

As if professional information control practitioners do not understand the
risks of information control at a much deeper level than anyone in the IETF
could ever hope to ...  

> especially given both the pace and chance of topological change; and the
reality
> that entities outside of governments control the paths that packets actual
> traverse.

The entities that operate and control the paths do so at the pleasure of the
governments, just as the merchants and harbor masters did in your example
above. As long as governments are pleased, the operators can live in a
fantasy land where they are outside government control. The Dubai
discussions show what happens when a collection of governments are no longer
pleased ... If that noise level gets high enough the non-signers will have
to respond just to maintain some degree of cooperation on other matters they
care about.

Our role is to recognize that there are much bigger issues than the simple
process of bit delivery. Yes bit delivery is important, and dynamic, but it
is equivalent to laying the tracks. Standards must be maintained for
consistent interworking, but it is not the path that matters; just as with
rail cars, it is the content that provides the value. Being highly dynamic
makes things harder to control, but not impossible. Even in the 'open'
countries, a few changes in something as apparently disconnected as tax laws
would dramatically change the decisions and behaviors of the operators that
are 'outside of government control'. 

> Patrik Fältström wrote:
> > Like it or not, governments are fundamentally opposed to the open
> > nature of 'the Internet', and they always will be (even the 'reasonable'
ones).
> 
> Because I do not think generalization is really a reasonable thing to do,
and even
> dangerous when discussing governance issues, I disagree with this
statement.

I agree there is danger here, but I believe the greater danger is embodied
in this thread due to the lack of acknowledgement that governments always
have control, even if the control points are not obvious.

> 
> Governments want just like businesses success in whatever they do. That
can in
> general be divided in two wishes. Short term, in the form of being
re-elected (or
> not thrown out of their office) and long term, as in growth of the revenue
of the
> country they govern.

The second point (restated as 'prosperity for their constituency') is really
just a continuation of the first point.

> 
> They of course have pieces of their operation that belong to law
enforcement
> agencies, but they also have those that are responsible of finding rules
so that
> non-public sector can grow (to later increase for example tax revenue).
> 
> Because of this, I encourage people to not generalize per stakeholder
group, but
> instead acknowledge that there are different *forces* that are orthogonal
to
> each other, and calculating "the correct" balance between them is hard. Or
> rather, different people do for different reasons get different results
when
> calculating what the for them proper balance is.
> 
> That is why I personally am against generalization that a stakeholder
group have
> one specific view.

I would agree that they all demonstrate a different calculation for the
importance of various aspects of controlling information flow. My primary
point here is that the IETF has to accept this as a reality. So far the
position has been 'this is the technology, & governments need to adapt'. At
the end of the day though, it is the governments that are really in control,
and if the IETF does not want a 'forced adaptation', it need to evolve and
listen to the needs of a stakeholder group they have tried hard to ignore.

> If when pushed to be forced to choose between two choices *all*
governments
> wanted to have control, we would have had many more governments signing
the
> proposed treaty that was on the table in Dubai.
> 

As noted above, this is due to relative happiness, and limited noise. If the
noise level grows or they become unhappy, the independence of the standards
process is a minor pawn in the game, and will be sacrificed to protect
something more important. 

Tony

---

From: SM <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 04 Jan 2013 14:12:13 -0800

>independence and finally bring that process under 'proper control'.

The IAB has a nominated a representative to the European 
Multi-Stakeholder Platform on ICT Standardisation.  It also commented 
on the (U.S) Federal Participation in the Development and Use of 
Voluntary Consensus Standards and in Conformity Assessment 
Activities.  The government interaction is basically between the IETF 
and the E.U. or the U.S.  I do not recall any cases (in recent times) 
where the E.U. or the U.S. has pressured the IETF to support or 
oppose a decision.

The IETF used to be set up in such a way that putting it under 
"proper control" would be quite an effort.

>want/need, not the historical implementation. Some things that are business

Yes.

At 09:24 04-01-2013, Ted Hardie wrote:
>In this new effort at a multilateral framework, we are seeing a 
>clash between a desire for sovereign control of the Internet and a 
>desire to reap the benefits of open participation.  I think our role 
>in that is to make sure all involved understand:  the benefits of 
>the Internet's network effect; the risks in allowing nations through 
>which traffic passes to assert sovereignty over the flows, 
>especially given both the pace and chance of topological change; and 
>the reality that entities outside of governments control the paths 
>that packets actual traverse.

A few years ago sourceforge.net blocked all users from a specific 
country from downloading files hosted on their site.  There was a 
case where a country had its say on one or more domain names through 
unusual means.  Some of that can be perceived as assertions of sovereignty.

Regards,
-sm

---

From: Ted Hardie <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 4 Jan 2013 16:03:24 -0800

> information, and you manage the consent.
Possibly; the extent to which that management is obvious may, of course,
drive other behavior (cf. самизда́т [Samizdat] and similar efforts).

> signatories, there is still no universal response.
Given this, I am somewhat confused why you said "Governments are
fundamentally opposed to the open nature of 'the Internet', and they always
will be (even the 'reasonable' ones)."  If some governments approve open
harbors for shipping and (and its Internet parallel), how are those
governments opposed to the open nature of the Internet?  Did you mean "Some
governments"?

> risks of information control at a much deeper level than anyone in the IETF
The pace and chance of topological change are pieces that are commonly
misunderstood outside the world of Internet engineering.  The amount of
surprise you get when you explain to someone why a routing announcement can
pull all the traffic for your company through $RANDOM_COUNTRY seems
perennial.

> above.

This is not the point I was making.  The operator of an infrastructure may
do so at the pleasure of the sovereign power in whose borders that
infrastructure sits, but that does not guarantee that packets will flow
over that infrastructure at the pleasure of that sovereign power.  If I do
not wish my packets from Den Haag to Paris to flow through the LINX, for
example, I can ensure that they do not.  That works because there are
multiple paths over which I might send the flow.  Internet routing is not
as open as sea-born trade; there are  paths that provide choke points.
But single points of failure are not an advantage to Internet engineering,
and providing them to engage well with specific governments both harms the
Internet and, at least in some lights, harms the governments' interests as
well.  We can make sure that's understood and build out the infrastructure
to minimize the choke points as best as we can.

> As long as governments are pleased, the operators can live in a
> fantasy land where they are outside government control.

I don't think that this is a realistic characterization of operators'
attitudes.

> The Dubai
> rail cars, it is the content that provides the value.

I certainly believe that the value is in the content; packets with no
payload aren't terribly interesting, but I don't see how your conclusion
changes the aims of the IETF in this regard.

> Being highly dynamic
You've returned, though, to doing what Patrik noted was a problem: treating
all governments as if they were a homogeneous mass.  A government controls
a territory and has a set of interests.  They are not an homogeneous mass.

> listen to the needs of a stakeholder group they have tried hard to ignore.
If I can re-state that as "engage with", I would agree; the IETF needs to
work with the Internet Society and others to engage in this process, or we
are pretty much guaranteed not to like the outcomes.  But this is not a
case where we need to lie back and think of England; we need to be active
parts of this process, rather than passively accepting what governments
want.  First and foremost because of the potential damage to the network
and its users, but also to avoid induced multiple personality disorder from
different governments saying different things.  Sweden is not Syria and
Chile is not China.

> something more important.
I believe we can maintain the IETF as independent.  Under some dire
outcomes, its output might cease to be called "standards" by the lights of
certain countries or treaty organizations, and there are certainly risks
there.  But good specs are good specs, and government mandates have changed
in favor of network effects before.

In the mean time, though, far better to thank those who are engaging in
this process, help them where we can, and keep our eyes on the real end
goal:  making the Internet work for everyone.

regards,

Ted

---

From: Randy Bush <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 05 Jan 2013 09:46:40 +0900

> drive other behavior (cf. самизда́т [Samizdat] and similar efforts).

or, in the states, wikileaks.  

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-cusack/what-is-an-assange_b_2317824.html

randy

---

From: Eliot Lear <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 05 Jan 2013 15:31:53 +0100

Hi,

At its core, the value of the IETF is technical.  We must always make
the best technical standards we can possibly make, adhering to the
values of rough consensus and running code.  Everything else is
secondary or nobody (government or otherwise) will want to implement
what we develop.  It's easy to lose sight of this in this conversation. 
It's an advantage we have over organizations who vote by country, and we
will always have it so long as such votes are allowed and where the
majority of expertise is found in a minority of countries, or where the
voice of expertise is silenced through "representation".  Because of
this approach, what happened at WCIT and at WTSA is likely to harm
developing countries more than anyone else, and that is truly unfortunate.

And so what do we need to do?

 1. Keep developing the best technical standards we can develop, based
    on rough consensus and running code.
 2. Do not get overly consumed by palace intrigue in other
    organizations.  It detracts from (1) above.
 3. While we cannot control others, we can and should occasionally
    remind them when they're going to do something that when implemented
    as specified would harm those who deploy the technology.
 4. Invite and encourage all to participate in our activities so that
    the best ideas flourish and all ideas are tested.

The other thing we need to understand is that the IETF doesn't live
without friends or in a vacuum.  The RIRs, NOGs, other standards bodies,
and ISOC all are working at many different levels, as are vendors.  If
WCIT shows anything, it is that these organizations are being listened
to, at least by many in the developed world.  Why?  Because over 2.5
billion people are connected, thanks to the collaboration of these and
other organizations.  That's moral authority that should not be
underestimated.  Nor should it be taken for granted.  See (1) above. 
And we also shouldn't try to boil the ocean by ourselves or it will
surely impact (1) above.

Can we do a better job on outreach to governments?  Yes.  I'd even
venture to say that the IETF should be held – from time to time – in a
developing country, so that people can more clearly see who we are and
what we do.  But not too often, lest it interfere with (1) above.  If we
keep building the best stuff, they will continue to come, even if there
are bumps along the road.

Eliot