Citing non-negotiable issues including Internet governance, content regulation and network security, the United States has refused to support a set of revised regulations at the U.N. backed International Telecommunications Union (ITU) World Conference on International Communications (WCIT) in Dubai.

This means that the telecom-turned-Internet debate will not receive the U.S. "seal of approval," and serves as a sharp reminder of how differently the U.S. sees the future of the Web compared to more autocratic regimes around the world. 

"The United States today announced it cannot sign the revised international telecommunication regulation in their current form," said Ambassador Terry Kramer, the head of the U.S. delegation, in a conference call with ReadWrite. "The decision to do a no-sign, there wasn't a lot of consternation on it. There were too many issues here that were problematic for us."

Kramer named five major reasons the U.S. refused to sign the treaty:

Why The U.S. Said No

1. Terminology, specifically "recognized operating agencies" versus "operating agencies." Recognized operating agencies are traditional providers of telecommunication services while operating agencies include private and government Inernet networks. The problem here is that reorganizing this phrase would give governments the ability to monitor and regulate their nation's Internet activity. It seems mundane and minor, but it's not. It gives international approval to legitimized government censorship, taxed international Internet traffic and the end of the free and open Internet era. Countries like Russia, China and Saudi Arabia are among a collective that wants to use this change to seize more regulatory power (see this conference proposal from those countries). 

"The United States consistently sought to clarify that the treaty would not apply to Internet service providers, or governments, or private network operators," Kramer said. However, group consensus did not sway in the U.S.' direction. Below is a video of the Ambassador on the critical differences between the terms in question: 

2. Spam. While everyone despises junk mail and pop-ups, threatening to take control of spam could lead to a host of problems. That's because the U.S. views spam as a form content, and thereby a free speech issue. Wider ranging abilities to control spam could lead to wider level control of other forms of content.

"Spam is a form of content and regulating it inevitably opens the door to regulating other forms of content, including political and cultural speech," Kramer explained. 

3. Network Security. Cyber and network security is a hot button issue. So hot that members of the Anonymous collective claimed responsibility for a Denial of Service attack against the conference last week. But this served only to strengthen the resolve of members states, who called for more power to combat this issue. However, granting that authority is like writing a blank check that could lead to an abuse of power claiming to fight cyber criminals. Plus, the language detailing how the security measures would be implemented was very broad, making the U.S. lose further confidence in its practice. 

"The United States continues to believe that the ITRs [International Telecommunication Regulations] are not a useful venue for addressing security issues and cannot [agree] to a vague commitment that would have significant implications but few practical improvements on security," Kramer said. "You open the door for an organization to say, in the quest of dealing with cyber security issues, 'I'm going to have to look at content, and I'm going to make it OK to review that content.' "

4. Internet Governance. "No single organization or government can or should control the Internet or dictate its future development," said  Kramer. The U.S. has been vocal about keeping Internet control out of the hands of the United Nations or of any individual nations hands. On Tuesday, officials from the White House stated that they would not support any U.N. sanctioned Web control or mandates. Instead, the U.S. prefers using a multi-prong approach, incorporating non-governmental organizations like ICANN, IFTF and WC3, to monitor the Net. While the ITU conference initially was set up to discuss traditional telecom issues, it quickly turned into a debate about the future of the Internet. And some of that talk centered on governments changing URLs, which could have major, negative ramifications for the infrastructure of the Web as well as those wishing to silence activists and dissidents. 

"In several proposals, it was clear that some administrations were seeking to insert government control over Internet governance," Kramer explained. "Specifically Internet naming and addressing functions. We continue to believe these issues can only be legitimately handled through multi-stakeholder organizations."

5. The Internet Resolution. "Despite earlier assertions by Secretary General Hamadoun Toure that the WCIT [World Conference on International Telecommunications] would not address Internet issues," that's exactly where talks ended up, said Kramer. Still, the U.S. engaged in good faith discussion regarding these issues, he said. But, that good faith wasn't met. "Other administartions have continually filed out of scope proposals that unacceptably altered the nature of the discussions and ultimately of the ITRs," Kramer added.

WWW.WhereToNow?

The U.S. wasn't the only nation to refuse to sign. A slew of countries refused to sign and/or expressed significant reservations after Kramer announced his decision on behalf of the U.S. The list includes the UK, Costa Rica, Denmark, Egypt, Sweden, Netherlands, Kenya, Czech Republic, Canada, New Zealand and Poland. "A lot of other countries see the same issues as we do," Kramer noted.

One potential negative of this outcome, however, is the creation of two Internets: One open and one closed.

"We obviously hope this doesn't happen," Kramer said. Openess will lead to better overall economics, a point he hoped will keep foreign governments from privatizing their Webs. "Our job in all of this is to continue to espouse the benefits of an open Internet... that will create a natural bias and momentum and favor it."

Kramer warned that countries could take another approach and create a second Internet, but called the Balkanization of the Web: "very difficult to pull off." After all, countries have national sovereignty rights, which means they can essentially do what they want to do. The ITR aren't legally binding terms, so what's agreed on at the ITU still has to go back to each country's legislature. Even if these new rules are approved, they may not be implemented, says Kramer. 

Changes don't take effect until January 2015, so there's still plenty of time for changes, including other pending Internet conferences (including the WTPF policy forum in May of 2013 and the IGF forum in fall 2013). Kramer says that interim period could be marked by buyer's remorse from nations that adopt some of these provisions. 

This conference is important because of the precedent and tone it sets. "The divergence of views is significant," he acknowledged. But Kramer insisted the debate was not a failure. "Our end goal is to create an environment where we can say there's going to be success for the Internet and telecom... I do think this was a success and there are going to be more of them... While there was no consensus at WCIT12 the conference served a valuable purpose in clarifying views and building a foundation for dialogue." 

"All of the growth and development of the Internet have resulted not from government action, or of inter-governmental treaty," Kramer said. "We have every expectation that the Internet will continue to grow and provide enormous benefits worldwide."

Photo courtesy of itupictures.

U.S. Ambassador Terry Kramer is the head of the United States' delegation to the World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT). That means he's the man debating and discussing critical Internet issues on behalf of America's more than 300 million citizens. 

After day five of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) conference in Dubai, Kramer, whose background includes 25 years of experience in the telecommunications sector, spoke to ReadWrite about the major issues at stake, the debate process and a potential positive outcome to a meeting many consider the death knell of the Internet.

Kramer worries that some countries are trying to co-opt the conference from advancing telecom issues to regulating Internet communications under that umbrella. If the organization's terminology is changed to allow governments the same designations as traditional telecom providers, many observers fear that could be the end of a free and open Internet.

What's At Stake

ReadWrite: Terminology is a big issue. What might happen if the term "operating agency" was changed to include large telecom operators?

Terry Kramer: The fundamental issue here is whether the Internet is included in the review or not. All this terminology - "recognized operating agencies" versus "operating agencies" - have to do with what type of organizations are subject to these regulations. "Recognized operating agencies" (are) traditional providers of telecommunication services. "Operating agencies" is a much broader term. It includes private networks which would include a variety of Internet players, cloud computing players, ham radio operators. It would also include government networks. Whether the Internet is included or not, is what's being discussed, and it's creating a lot of debate and issue. The conference was set up to just focus on telecom sectors. And what's happened is in proposals such as the one that's come from Russia, a variety of countries in the Arab states, Africa, etc., what they're saying is there's convergence today and the Internet should be part of all this. 

RW: What's the threat there?

Kramer: The problem is that people have ulterior motives when they want to include the Internet. It's a very slippery slope that starts allowing governments, potentially, to be able to see what things people are looking at. All the traffic routing allows them to see what's going on. Now individual countries can do whatever they want for their national sovereignty. We don't want something going into a global treaty that validates practices that we don't agree with. So we put forward a proposal a little over a week ago that said the foundation issue that we see here is dealing with this issue of whether the Internet is included or not. If we can't get comfort on that, then the proceedings, the discussions, are going to be very difficult because every single issue we negotiate is going to have the risk of the Internet being mixed in there. 

RW: What is the downside of having the Internet looped into that "operating agency" term?

Kramer: There's an economic downside and it's also a free speech downside. You're basically opening the door for the government to get into the business of managing the Internet. Once governments do that, you have to say 'what are these governments like, and what will they do,' and the concern from a democracy/free speech standpoint is we don't want to validate a practice of governments being able to look at what people are seeing and doing. People should be free on the Internet, the Internet itself should be free - free flow of information - without risk of any type of censorship.

The separate issue is a commercial one. If the Internet gets mixed in here, there have been some proposals that have put forth what's called "sending parties pay regimes," which basically say if you're a content developer or an app developer and you have an app or content you want to send internationally, you'd have to pay a fee to have that traffic delivered. Networks abroad, whether they be in Africa, Europe, wherever, they would have the right to charge a fee for receiving that traffic and delivering it to the end user. The big worry is you'll have a lot of players that won't send traffic abroad... From a commercial standpoint, it would have a chilling effect on the whole Internet base.

The Big Issues

RW: What's your take on the deep-packet inspection issue?

Kramer: Deep packet inspection was designed to look at how networks are performing. But what's happened is that there's a clear capability of deep packet inspection to go down to an individual user basis. Instead of aggregating traffic and anonymizing it and saying 'now I know my network's overloaded here or it's not here,' it's actually going down and saying 'I know Adam is using this amount of capacity and by the way, Adam is using YouTube clips, Adam's on Amazon.' And all of a sudden it opens the door to monitor it. It violates peoples' privacy rights. 

RW: Any other major issues on the table: Fraud and misuse, quality of service, charging rates?

Kramer: The big ones are the Internet being included or not, that's the first and most fundamental.

The "sending party pays regime" we talked about is number two. That's an issue of are content players are going to get charged.

The third one is cybersecurity. Countries have said, "Hey, our networks are being attacked," and we agree, that's a legitimate issue. But we fundamentally don't agree that one organization, one government, the ITU, owns exclusive rights to dealing with that issue. Multi-stake holder organizations, the IFTF and WC3, a lot of these independent organizations that are open to other countries, they're the best ones to deal with Internet issues. They've got technical expertise, they're agile, they're open to others, they're not a government-based organization. 

RW: So then the U.S. stance would be to keep the status quo of what we had before, of ICANN and those other organizations being the regulators? 

Kramer: I don't know if I would call it status quo. I would call it supporting multi-stakeholder organizations and continuing to support the growth. 

RW: Those other issues you mentioned, do we have a date when we think those are goig to be resolved?

Kramer: We don't. It could end up that it's a package that gets reviewed all together. And that would be my guess. But again we won't know until later next week.  

Looking Forward

RW: You're the head of the U.S. delegation. Does that mean you're the only person on behalf of the U.S. that's voting on these issues?

Kramer: We have a U.S. delegation of 120 people. Roughly 50 people in the U.S. government, another 40 that are industry, another 10 that are civil society. So at the end of the day I'm responsible for representing the U.S. to other nations in negotiating. Now I obviously work with a lot of different government agencies. The Commerce Department, the State Department, the FCC, they all have interests, so they all submit feedback. 

RW: For every consensus ruling on an issue, even if it's something "bad" that happens, it still has to come back to each country for legislatures to basically vote on, correct? 

Kramer: That's right. Each country has to decide what they're going to implement. This is not the end of the world in terms of the final things that get decided. The most important thing is the values that this sets. The reason we're taking this thing so seriously is even though countries can do what they want, to have something in a document that says governments have the right to review traffic, to monitor (or) charge for traffic being delivered, would set a terrible precedent. 

RW: What fundamental changes to how the Internet works do you see coming out of this conference?

Kramer: I think number one, if we can get to a point and say the Internet's not part of this, which has been the goal all along, the goal that Hamadoun Touré, the secretary general had said. We need to talk about the advancement of international communications, not the Internet communications. If that happened, that's a good outcome, because we have advanced on the communications side. We've also been able to reach agreement in that area and keep the Internet out. I think having an explicit discussion of the criticality of the Internet needing to be free. Not governed, not regulated, not controlled by governments. That would be a fundamental breakthrough. 

RW: And if that doesn't happen?

Kramer: It's going to be an interesting set of discussions going forward because you've got very different camps. Ones that want to control the Internet, and ones that want to say "let it be free." And it'll be an interesting set of discussions afterwards... 

RW: So what do you think is going to happen?

Kramer: I don't know. I really don't know. Everybody's very motivated to try to get to a successful outcome. One of the things I think that should be considered seriously here is: Can there be a higher level agreement here about what we're trying to accomplish, advancing communications and not get into Internet discussions. Because that's all the controversy. Keeping this high-level, the importance of the communications area, that would be a great outcome. 

Photo courtesy of itupictures

In the span of 24 hours, two major strikes against the secretive International Telecommunication Union's World Conference on International Telecommunications in Dubai point to the Internet community hitting back in an attempt to bring transparency - and disruption - to the 12-day meeting of world governments about the future of the Internet (see Free And Open? World Governments Discuss The Internet In Secret). Alleged leaked documents and a hack against the conference has the Web buzzing.

The Leak

At the core of the controversy is one of the meeting's major issues: Deep packet inspection (or DPI) technology, a Web surveillance tool.

Australian journalist Asher Wolf claims she got a hold of alleged "secret documents" on DPI (providing a road map for how to regulate sites like BitTorrent) via the ITU's Toby Johnson. She says Johnson emailed her and asked her not to publish the unedited documents. But she did anyway. 

In a comment to ReadWrite, Wolf said she never claimed the documents were leaked. "It was the media who used that word," she explained. 

Wolf says the material was already available online in draft form, and criticized the media for not bothering "to ask for copies of relevant documents before the ITU's DPI recommendations were ratified."

"Regardless whether the document is considered 'leaked' or not, I think the reaction to the publication of the document suggests there's a disconnect when it comes to internet policy, media coverage and public awareness," Wolf said. 

The ITU's Johnson also denied that the documents were leaked, first on Twitter then in a private email exchange.   

@adampopescu no leak. All ITU standards are made publicly available following approval after a short editing period. Approved at #WTSA12

— Toby Johnson (@Toby_Johnson) December 6, 2012

Johnson says the documents are unedited material, and not secret. Here's the ITU's rationale for DPI use, which strangely enough, was written in response to the Center for Democracy and Technology's publication on Wednesday of the ITU adopting a new international DPI technological standard. 

Johnson says the documents in question, which can be found via a search on the ITU site (Y.2770), will be published in the coming weeks with minor editorial changes.

"I sent a pre-published version of the standard in question (Y.2770) to a journalist/activist that had expressed an interest," Johnson said. "Pre-published means that it's available only to members while some final editing is done. It is by no means a secret document. It's just subject to some final tweaks before being published. I'd rather she hadn't published it in that form but it's no big deal."

But despite Johnson's candor, it is a big deal. Why? Because this back and forth hints at a lack of openness between the ITU and the outside world. And if the nonprofit CDT's reporting is correct, that means that the DPI standard was adopted before the conference. 

"DPI technologies are nothing new of course," Johnson wrote in email response. "The proposal to standardize comes from our members (mostly private sector) and is a way of making it easier for manufacturers to take into account these requirements."

At this point, it's still not clear why Johnson would send unedited material, but what is clear is how fast the finger pointing and ownership of the messaging of this conference and this gaffe is coming into play. The overall rhetoric from the ITU is that it's here to better the Internet community. But the Web isn't buying it.

"The whole question of whether the document was leaked or not kind of implies that the process isn't as open as it might be," says Jim Fenton, chief security officer of digital identity service OneID, and formerly of Cisco Systems.

Fenton says while the content of the documents themselves aren't that surprising, the lack of transparency between the public and the ITU is worrisome. 

In other words, PR missteps and poor timing are bringing to the forefront questionable ITU behavior, even if the material it did send was in fact public - or at least soon to become so. 

The Hack

And then there's the hack. On Wednesday, the ITU's site was knocked off-line for two hours, allegedly by members of the Anonymous collective, allegedly in response to the DPI standard's shady introduction.  

And it's down. MT @dotnxtcon: #ITU #WCIT online is down: twitpic.com/bj6zud Ours is still up: bit.ly/UbHIFg #OpWCIT

— AnonyÓðinn (@AnonyOdinn) December 5, 2012

Anonymous released this video aptly titled: "Keep our Internet free!"

The ITU released this statement in response, ironically detailing that while some delegates were frustrated at being unable to access online documents, "a spirit of camaraderie prevailed, with those who had access to up-to-date online versions of the texts willingly sharing with other delegates in order to keep discussions moving forward."

If anything, though, this move could backfire on the hackers responsible, giving the conference additional credence and legitimacy to push for more cybersecurity.  

Whatever happens long term, the world is watching and waiting as the story develops. We're still at the halfway point of the conference, which concludes Friday, December 14. And no matter what the delegation decides, it will then be up to individual governments to approve or reject any decisions.

Let's just hope they make the right choices...because in the name of security, the wild and wooly Internet we know and love could go the heavily regulated route of radio and television. And it would never be the same again.

 Photo Courtesy Of itupictures

In the desert oasis of Dubai, Internet change is brewing. In a hush-hush closed-door meeting, government representatives from around the world have gathered this week to decide the future of the Internet. The freedom of the Internet.  

The International Telecommunication Union for the World Conference on International Telecommunications is a 12-day conference for nations to potentially expand their control over the Internet. Topics range from the esoteric to the critical: data privacy, cybersecurity, international mobile roaming, equipment specifications and the like.

More than 193 members states are part of the union, established more than 100 years ago, in the telegraph era, It's now  a United Nations specialized agency focusing on telecommunications and information and communication technology. 

Sunday, Google executive and co-founding architect of the Internet, Vint Cerf, warned that the goal of the secret meeting is to "allow governments to justify the censorship of legitimate speech, or even cut off Internet access in their countries." 

Cerf calls for the Internet to stand up for its rights.

What You Can Do

A slew of petition and protest sites have opened on the topic. In fact, as of late Sunday night, nearly 1 million people worldwide had signed an anti-regulation petition on freeandopen. Other petitions include a Google take-action site (no word on signatures gathered) and the Protect Global Internet Freedom site, with about 35,000 signers from 167 countries.

Indeed, a viral movement similar to last year's campaign against new Internet regulation in the United States (see What You Need To Know About SOPA In 2012) is coalescing.

The bottom line is the Internet was made by people, not governments. And governments being governments, they want to control people. This threatens the very infrastructure that so many depend on every day.   

"The Internet works," says security researcher Dan Kaminsky. Kaminsky has advised Fortune 500 companies for more than a decade, and helped find and fix a major flaw in the Web's Domain Name System. He's one of only seven Recovery Key Shareholders with the ability to restore the DNS root keys (he's the American representative). Saying he knows what's best for the Internet is an understatement. 

"There were many attempts at making large scale information systems that most assuredly did not work," he said.  "For example, MiniTel, which should have been one of France's major exports, was just shut down."

Kaminsky says what kills every attempt at change are the gatekeepers of the Internet, not the creators.  

"States are in a hard situation," he said. "They are under a remarkable amount of pressure to do something about this messy thing that runs so much of business and life now. But the temptation is to make it the very thing that we know does not work, does not scale, does not drive business. What's happening at ITU is the discussion of whether this path should be taken anyway. I'm glad Google is pushing back."

All Talk?

Follow the conference (#WCIT12) on Twitter. Here's an opening tweet from the union's Twitter account: 

#WCIT12 @un SG Opening Ceremony message: management of ICT should be transparent, democratic & inclusive of all stakeholders

— ITU (@ITU) December 3, 2012

Toby Johnson, a communication staffer for the ITU tweeted to me that all plenary sessions are open to the press, and that the ITU  are aiming for consensus over voting. 

@adampopescu we hope for no voting rather aiming for consensus. The main decisions are made in Plenary sessions which are open.

— Toby Johnson (@Toby_Johnson) December 3, 2012

Those talks will be available live and via webcast. Check out Storify to follow along.

Here's a full schedule of the two-week event. Closed-door sessions likely will be the scene of handshake deals that will determine our future. 

Watch this video to see exactly what's at stake:

Is This Legal?

Harvard-trained lawyer and Wirelawyer founder Matthew Tollin says it's all legal, and calls the meeting of historic significance.

"From a legal perspective, the governmental representatives meeting at the World Conference on International Telecommunications are answerable to their citizens," Tollin said.

In other words, the same anti-regulatory backlash that whipped U.S. lawmakers, dissuading them from implementing unpopular changes, could swap global bureaucrats. Let's hope so.

Tollin said that U.S. sentiment in the meeting will strongly influence the final outcome. However, China, Iran and Russia will still push for greater controls. 

"It's a great opportunity for us to show leadership on this issue and not side with repressive governments around the world that want to stifle free speech on the Web," Tollin said.   

Let's hope that the people make enough noise to be heard.

Photo Courtesy of Shutterstock