notícia do clipping do CGI: "tech giants in human rights deal"

Admirável mundo novo: enquanto a cooperação entre governos em matéria de governança da Internet não avança, as grandes multinacionais do ramo tecnológico tomam a iniciativa de estabelecer diretrizes sobre que tipo de informação pode ser liberada para os Governos. São as empresas que vão avaliar o grau de observância dos direitos humanos nos países, antes de decidirem sobre negócios em cada país.
Se por um lado essa iniciativa pode representar segurança adicional para os usuários da Internet, nos países onde há censura e perseguição por motivos políticos ou religiosos, por outro lado representa o avanço do setor privado multinacional na área de "legislar" sobre direitos humanos no plano internacional. Estarão essas empresas revisitando a lógica do mercado, que privilegia o lucro, em favor de auto-limitação para salvaguardar a identidade de possíveis perseguidos políticos? Até que ponto esses compromissos serão honrados, quando o mercado oferecer um "negócio da China"?
As relações da Ford e da IBM com a Alemanha nazista não podem ser esquecidas...

Tech giants in human rights deal

BBC News - 28/10/2008
Autora: Maggie Shiels
Assunto: Neutralidade na Internet

Microsoft, Google and Yahoo have signed a global code of conduct promising to offer better protection for online free speech and against official intrusion.

The Global Network Initiative follows criticism that companies were assisting governments in countries like China to censor the Internet.

The guidelines seek to limit what data should be shared with authorities, in cases where free speech is an issue.

"This is an important first step," said Mike Posner of Human Rights First.

He told the BBC "What this is is a recognition by all these tech companies, the human rights groups and social investors that there has to be a collective response to this growing problem.

"Companies need to step up to the plate and be more aggressive in challenging unwarranted government interference," he said.

The initiative states that privacy is "a human right and guarantor of human dignity," and the agreement commits the companies to try to resist overly broad demands for restrictions on freedom of speech and the privacy of users.

They will also assess the human rights climate in a country before concluding business deals and make sure their employees and partners follow suit.

"These principles are not going to be a silver bullet, but the most important point for me is to provide transparency," said Danny O'Brien of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

"We have joined this initiative because we know that a wide range of groups working together can achieve much more than the company acting alone," said Andrew McLaughlin, Google's director of global public policy.

'Valuable roadmap'
The impetus for such an agreement follows years of criticism that a number of businesses, including Google, Yahoo and Microsoft have complicity built what has been dubbed the "Great Firewall of China".

Google has been accused of complying with Chinese government demands to filter internet searches to eliminate query results regarding topics such as democracy or Tiananmen Square.

Microsoft has come under attack for blocking the blog of a prominent Chinese Media researcher who posted articles critical of a management purge at the Beijing News Daily.

Canadian researchers uncovered that a Skype joint venture in China monitored users' communications.

And a Chinese reporter Shi Tao was jailed for 10 years after Yahoo China provided his personal information to the Chinese government.

Today Yahoo co-founder and CEO Jerry Yang welcomed the new code of conduct.

"These principles provide a valuable roadmap for companies like Yahoo operating in markets where freedom of expression and privacy are unfairly restricted.

"Yahoo was founded on the belief that promoting access to information can enrich people's lives and the principles we unveiled today reflect our determination that our actions match our values around the world," said Mr Yang.

While China has been painted as the worst abuser, Colin Maclay of the Berkman Centre for Internet and Society at Harvard University said there are other countries and governments all over the world at fault.

"The number of states actively seeking to censor online content and access personal information is growing.

"And the means employed - technical, social, legal, political - are increasingly sophisticated, often placing internet and telecommunications companies in difficult positions."

'Business case'
The Global Network Initiative was drawn up by the internet companies along with human rights groups, academics and investors.

Adam Kanzer who is the managing director and general counsel at Domini Social Investments said as well as being the right thing to do, it also makes good business sense.

He told BBC News "When you see the industry being caught up in the tactics of various regimes around the world, the business case is very clear. Freedom of expression and privacy is core to their business.

"They depend on a wide open, freely accessible and secure internet. That's what they are about. If people don't trust the internet and believe they are secure, then that is counterproductive to their business."

The effort is already being seen by some as not going far enough.

"After two years of effort, they have ended up with so little," said Morton Sklar executive director for the World Organisation for Human Rights USA.

"It is very little more than a broad statement of support for a general principle without any concrete backup mechanism to ensure that the guidelines will be followed."

Mr Posner of Human Rights First disputes that and said this agreement has not been set up as a "gotcha system" but as a way "to work with companies to get them to improve what they are doing, credit them when they do it and call them out if they fail."

While it is hoped many more companies will sign up, two European telecommunications firms, France Telecom and Vodafone, are already said to be considering adding their names.

from heise online: International Telecommunication Union criticised for its role in internet snooping

At EuroDIG, the first European Dialogue on Internet Governance, the scientists and experts of the Council of Europe have sharply criticised the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) for acting behind closed doors in its initiatives towards cybersecurity standardization. Bertrand de la Chapelle, godfather of the first EuroDIG on behalf of the French government, said EuroDIG should tell the ITU to allow all interest groups to participate in discussing new technology standards. The recent meeting in Strasbourg emphasized the idea of cooperation between governments, the industry and users as one of the central points to be presented at the UN Internet Governance Forum in Hyderabad.

(read the entire article at heise online - click here)

ICANN - consultas em Washington - matéria de imprensa

Reproduzo artigo sobre as consultas da ICANN realizadas no dia 1/10, aqui em Washington. O artigo centra-se no argumento de um empresário que alegou o risco de captura da ICANN por outros governos ou pela ONU (IGF). Fiz durante a reunião comentário em resposta ao argumento dele, indicando que esse risco não existe, uma vez que já há consenso internacional, desde a Cúpula Mundial, de que todos os assuntos relacionados à gestão da Internet devem ser tratados de modo "multistakeholder", e que o IGF favorece participação ampla nas discussões, por exemplo como ocorreu no Rio de Janeiro, onde, apesar da resistência inicial, o tema de recursos críticos foi tratado e teve excelente repercussão e visibilidade. Também falei que o verdadeiro desafio para a ICANN é encontrar o equilíbrio adequado entre os diversos setores, inclusive os Governos, para o que seria importante rever o atual relacionamento do GAC com o Board da ICANN, de modo a que a contribuição dos Governos seja mais efetiva. Meu comentário não foi retratado no artigo, mas consta nos registros gravados da reunião.

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ICANN Hears Concerns About Accountability, Control


Grant Gross, IDG News Service

Wednesday, October 01, 2008 10:30 AM PDT

ICANN needs to take steps to ensure it cannot be taken over by governments and other outside entities, and it needs to create more ways to be held accountable to Internet users, constituents of the nonprofit organization said Wednesday.

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers <http://www.pcworld.com/tags/Internet+Corporation+for+Assigned+Names+and+Numbers.html> , the organization overseeing the Web's top-level domain naming system, heard several concerns during a meeting focused on improving confidence in ICANN. But concerns about outside takeover of the organization and critiques of ICANN's transparency came up several times during the Washington, D.C., meeting.

An oversight agreement between the U.S. government and ICANN expires in a year, and ICANN officials say they do not plan to sign a new agreement. But in recent years, representatives of several other countries have called for an international organization to oversee the 10-year-old ICANN.

Many e-commerce companies don't want a new model of international control of ICANN, said Steve DelBianco, executive director of NetChoice, a trade group representing several U.S. companies, including eBay, Yahoo and Oracle. Continued U.S. government oversight may keep other nations from exerting control, he said.

To ensure against an outside entity taking control, ICANN has proposed that it remain located in the U.S., with its relatively strong antitrust and competition laws, and the organization is trying to increase participation in its activities. ICANN officials have also proposed that a consensus or super-majority of participants agree on changes in policy, and they have suggested the organization should limit companies or individuals participation in multiple ICANN committees.

Those suggestions aren't enough, DelBianco said. "It's as if ICANN wants to sort of check that box with a series of bureaucratic measures that are primarily designed to prevent capture from internal parts of the ICANN community," he said. "The real threat of capture, I believe, is from external threats."

ICANN has a US$60 million budget and manages the backbone of the Internet, making it a desirable target for takeover, DelBianco added. "ICANN becomes a magnet for the United Nations and other governments who would covet that role," he added. "I think this demonstrates the adage that money and power don't buy you friends, but they get you a better class of enemies."

Yrjö Länsipuro, a member of the ICANN President's Strategy Committee <http://www.pcworld.com/tags/ICANN+President's+Strategy+Committee.html> , discounted DelBianco's fears. While Russia continues to urge international control of ICANN, other countries haven't recently pressed the issue, said Länsipuro, who works for Finland's Ministry for Foreign Affairs.

"Governments are watching each other," he said. "It's inconceivable that one government would be able to [take over ICANN] when all the others are watching."

But Marilyn Cade, another member of the President's Strategy Committee <http://www.pcworld.com/tags/President's+Strategy+Committee.html> , disagreed, saying outside takeover is an ongoing and pressing concern. Much of the debate over control of ICANN stems from a "lack of understanding" of the role of ICANN, said Cade, an independent consultant and former vice president for Internet governance at AT&T.

Some people seem to mistakenly believe ICANN controls access to information and content on the Web, and that leads to arguments over control, she added.

Other participants in Wednesday's meeting focused on oversight of ICANN by the Internet community. ICANN has proposed to create a new way for the Internet community to petition the ICANN board to revisit a decision and also create a mechanism for removing the entire board, among other things.

Those proposals are flawed and lack ways to measure ICANN accountability, said Jonathan Zuck, president of the Association for Competitive Technology, a tech trade group. The proposal to ask the board to reconsider a decision appears "ineffective," while the removal of the entire board seems "extreme," he said.

The current mechanism for asking ICANN to reconsider a decision hasn't been used in two years, added Becky Burr, a partner with law firm Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr <http://www.pcworld.com/tags/Wilmer+Cutler+Pickering+Hale+%26+Dorr+LLP.html> and former senior Internet policy advisor at the U.S. National Telecommunications and Information Administration.

"Do I think that ... the ability to recall the entire board meaningfully enhances ICANN's accountability?" Burr said. "Not even close. It's a nuclear option of no plausible value" unless the board upsets the entire Internet community.

Peter Dengate Thrush, ICANN's chairman, agreed with Zuck that accountability metrics are needed. "Things that are measured get done," he said.