There have been a number of occasions when the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) has made a principled decision upholding users' expectations of privacy in their use of IETF-standardised technologies. (Either that, or they were applying their own somewhat liberal collective bias and to the technologies they were working on!) The first major such incident that I can recall is the IETF's response to the US CALEA measures. more
There were highs and lows in city hall's rollout of the .nyc TLD last month. Early on we were cheered when we received notification that our application for the JacksonHeights.nyc domain name had been approved. And with the de Blasio Administration committed to putting the city's 350+ neighborhood domain names under the control of local residents, we began to imagine that our decade-old vision of an "intuitive" city Internet might materialize... more
The IETF met in November 2022 in London. Among the many sessions that were held in that meeting was a session of the Decentralised Internet Infrastructure Research Group, (DINRG). The research group's ambitions are lofty: DINRG will investigate open research issues in decentralizing infrastructure services such as trust management, identity management, name resolution, resource/asset ownership management, and resource discovery. more
The European Union has struck a deal "in principle" with the United States on a new data-sharing agreement to allow digital information to flow between borders. more
In April, I published an article, The Multistakeholder Moment of Truth: Will Stakeholders Hold ICANN Accountable?, alerting stakeholders that ICANN is violating its legal agreements with the U.S. Government -- namely the InterNIC licensing agreement and merged Memorandum of Understanding. At that time, I warned that it is essential for stakeholders not to remain silent in the face of this transgression, "hoping that such behavior left unchecked will end of its own accord." more
Despite previous attempts1 I think it is safe to say that the discussion about Human Rights in ICANN was, until recently, fairly dead, even taboo. Nowadays, there seems to be a renewed demand for ICANN to have a future, and it needs to take Human Rights considerations seriously. During the ICANN Cancun meeting, representatives from several stakeholder groups mentioned HR and how they might support ICANN by informing its policy-making processes. more
Technical standards typically are not something we think about: they simply make things work. Credit for this goes to the innovators who ensure that the technical standards needed to make many of our devices work together are robust and effective. Given how central telecommunications and information and communications technologies (ICTs) are to our economies and to how we live, it is crucial that they function as expected. Standards enable interoperability, as well as functionality, reliability, and safety. more
United States and China are in negotiation to establish a cyberattack agreement, according to reports. If successful, it "could become the first arms control accord for cyberspace, embracing a commitment by each country that it will not be the first to use cyberweapons to cripple the other's critical infrastructure during peacetime," reports David Sanger in the New York Times. more
U.S. bank regulators on Wednesday outlined cyber security standards meant to protect financial markets and consumers from online attacks against the nation's leading financial firms," Patrick Rucker reporting in Reuters. more
The digital domain encompasses the different spaces and spheres we use to relate and interact with the people and things that surround us using digital technologies. The digital domain is not limited to the technologies itself, but it has an important ethical dimension that encompasses the values, principles and instruments that inform and govern it. Created by humans for humans, our beliefs, cultural backgrounds, and biases are reflected in the codes we write and the algorithms we create. more
Reports suggest China is reviewing a controversial cybersecurity law to allow authorities to shut down the internet and block all communications online during a so-called "emerging social security events" occur. more
In a post last week, I advised Cuban President Díaz-Canel that investment in fixed broadband Internet would benefit both the Cuban people and his regime. This week, I've got advice for US President Biden -- don't try to out-pander the Republicans and call President Díaz-Canel's bluff by offering support for fixed broadband. What won't work... more
Facebook lobbyists are working behind the scenes for a major cyber bill set for a final Senate vote Tuesday despite growing opposition to the bill among tech companies, according to a digital rights advocacy group fighting against the measure. more
Are Human Rights, both traditional and digital, at risk of becoming an empty promise? (a) The political environment for Human Rights has notably deteriorated since the United Nation's (UN) Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) in 1948. How have things changed? more
One of the biggest opportunities for Internet companies of all sizes can be to get a U.S. government contracts. This kind of business partnership is highly desirable as the U.S. government spends about $500 billion for contracts annually. The government contracting in an extremely competitive field, as the huge number of businesses bid for the same contracts. After all, there is a lot of money involved here and those are all big jobs that can prove vital for any company. more
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