Session

Time

Tuesday, 10th November, 2020 (12:30 UTC) - Tuesday, 10th November, 2020 (14:00 UTC)

Room

Room 1

About this Session

Internet Fragmentation - Is Digital Sovereignty the Problem or the Solution? This main session focuses on the debate surrounding Internet Fragmentation. The Internet Governance community has advocated for and strives to maintain the integrity of a unified and open Internet, but political and technological changes still push the debate on how feasible that is. Multistakeholder perspectives will be discussed in this session and advanced in the backdrop of current shared global priorities.

Internet Fragmentation - Is Digital Sovereignty the Problem or the Solution?

This main session on Trust focuses on the debate surrounding Internet Fragmentation. The discussion will consider the historical, geographical, and evolving political, technological and economic factors that shape the network of networks. Digital Sovereignty is not an established concept and different actors interpret it in various ways that advance their goals. This concept can be understood as being part of national sovereignty, or as a broader concept and strategy to address fragmentation tendencies, and some advocate the concept not only as a State-focused endeavor, but rather a way to further a user-centric approach. The IGF 2019 Berlin Messages noted the need for informed dialogue on the feasibility of the various digital sovereignty models being considered and their implications for Internet governance.

Technological evolutions have presented challenges to established protocols. The Internet Governance community has advocated for and strives to maintain the integrity of a unified and open Internet, but political and technological changes still push the debate on how feasible that is. In times when security, safety, stability and resilience have come under pressure and infrastructures and systems as well as users are in need of protective measures to ensure a healthy and empowering digital environment, it is a necessity and a challenge to leave the well-trodden paths and think ahead. Multistakeholder and multidisciplinary perspectives will be discussed in this session and advanced in the backdrop of current shared global priorities (COVID-19, Elections, Disinformation).

Policy questions

This session will examine the following three policy clusters:

1. Digital Sovereignty: Trust in your digital life

What is digital sovereignty? In a reality where states, companies and people are increasingly digitally interdependent on each other, digital cooperation is seen to be the way forward to address many things: is digital sovereignty the barrier or the solution towards greater digital cooperation? How do policy-makers, legislators and regulators view the concept of 'digital sovereignty'? Are there dimensions for the concept that go beyond territoriality/jurisdiction? How does digital sovereignty challenge the current model of Internet Governance?

2. Disinformation and Fragmentation: Trust in information

Unprecedented situations such as the COVID-19 global pandemic exacerbates the need for trustworthy information and other events such as elections have global ramifications: what should be the role of governments, international organisations and stakeholders in responding to these developments? How can trust be enhanced by using already available resources and what more needs to be done? How correlated are the challenges brought by disinformation to a potential acceleration of fragmentation? What is the role of multilateral organisations in building trust, and how important is it to have multistakeholder participation in these multilateral organisations? What are the multistakeholder and multisectoral roles and responsibilities to ensure that the Internet remains interoperable and connects all users?

3. Internet Fragmentation: Trust in the network of networks

What are the potential risks of Internet Fragmentation? How does national and international law apply in this context? What would the technical (protocols, standards, compatibility) landscape look like in a fragmented scenario? How should the technical standards and protocols evolve to answer the current and future needs of the Internet? What is the role of the technical community and the private sector within this context?

Session Agenda

The session will be organized into three segments corresponding to the three policy clusters: Digital Soverignty, Disinformation and Fragmentation, Internet Fragmentation. The session moderator will set the scene with opening speakers for each segment, a roundtable of responses from speakers and discussants will follow. Input from the audience via the Q&A pod as well as poll questions will bring in additional perspectives.

Panelists

Moderator: Bertrand de La Chappelle, Internet & Jurisdiction Policy Network

Discussant: Aleksey Goreslavskiy, Journalist, Head of NGO "Dialogue"

Speakers:

Stefan Schorr - Head of Digital & Innovation Policy, Federal Ministry of Economic Affairs and Energy (BMWi), Germany

Alissa Cooper - IETF Chair, Internet Engineering Task Force

Paul Mitchell - Senior Director, Technology Policy, Microsoft

Atsuko Okuda - Regional Director, ITU Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific

Jun Murai - Founder and Board member, WIDE Project

Alison Gillwald - Executive Director, Research ICT Africa

Theme

Trust, Security, Stability

Report

1. Key Policy Questions and related issues

How do you understand the concept of digital/data sovereignty and why it is important for different actors?

What should be the respective roles of governments, international organizations, the private sector, a technical community in responding to abusive content online in light of the disparity of national legislations (disinformation, but also harassment, terrorism, election interference)?

The Internet and the web are built on technical interoperability and the separation of layers. How much of an interface should there be between the technical and policy layers regarding the Internet?

3. Key Takeaways

Instead of solely focusing on the idea of sovereignty itself, the discussion can be moved to enabling social development and enabling economic development because data can be a shared resource in a way that physical assets cannot be.
Data localization is being used by governments that are concerned about controlling data, very often for political ends, however there is also a legitimate rational for data localization or at least data control in order to develop economies.
In Asia and the Pacific, people are starting to realize the importance of the data that they generate. There is an increasing awareness but no broad-based discussion,, because in Asia-Pacific, not all countries are fully equipped (infrastructure/regulatory schemes) to engage in the International discussion.
In terms of controlling content and diversity of views, global cooperation is needed to manage these processes; particularly because the manifestation might be in the content but a lot of the manipulation might be happening at the data level and the data governance level.
The way that the Internet was designed was explicitly to encourage global interconnectivity and to be oblivious to International borders. One of the core goals was to get as many people, devices and networks as possible on a global scale. This continues to be the objective when we are designing and evolving the technologies at the core of the Internet.
Digital policies should respect the technical architecture of the Internet, 76% of audience poll respondents answered to the affirmative (Strongly agree, or Agree). There is a small set of core infrastructure that maintains the global unity of the Internet – IP protocol, IP address spaces and DNS, harmonization on the IP layer is needed to allow data and connectivity to be seamless around the world.

6. Final Speakers