IGF 2022 DC-CIV DC-CIV: Geopolitical neutrality of the Global Internet

MAIN REPORT

The Internet is a Network of Networks, global, not only in a geographical context, but by several shades of the term 'global' in terms of being free of cultural, ideological, political bias, and global in terms of the technologies that converge into it. On many occasions, the decision taken was to separate geopolitics from the Internet which would make the Internet into two or more 'Splinternets' in place of the unfathomably valued One Internet.

Yet, recently, some leading members of the Internet Community signed a common statement "Towards the Multistakeholder Imposition of Internet Sanctions" - opening the door to the Internet Community having some means to decide on whether sanctions such as disconnection from the Internet would be appropriate. This Statement and background can be found on: https://techpolicy.press/towards-the-multistakeholder-imposition-of-internet-sanctions/

This brings forward the question of whether the Internet should be part of a sanctions regime.

In the session, panellists were asked the following questions:

• Is the Internet technical architecture and infrastructure as currently defined able to impose sanctions?
• Is the Internet management/administration as currently defined able/willing to impose sanctions
• Indeed, should it impose sanctions, knowing these would break Core Internet Values?
• What path could the Internet’s Governance take in the future:
  • Is the future that of assuming a technical mission, simply maintaining the geopolitical neutrality of the Internet or will it expand to reflect ways of the Internet bridging real world geo political and cultural divisions to make One World, or Two, Three or more?

Panellists answered as follows (some comments submitted in writing by the authors themselves, some paraphrased from their interventions):

(Vint Cerf, Google)

• Maintaining a generally neutral , connected and resilient core Internet infrastructure is of vital importance. Combating bad behaviors sometimes can be locally implemented (dropping DOS traffic, seizing abusive domain names, filtering “bad” content, detecting and filtering malware, spam and phishing). 
• The major problems today are at the application layer whether this is misinformation, disinformation, CSAM, phishing, surveillance, etc. Finding ways to create incentives for good practices and to discourage bad ones is a challenge. When incentives don’t work, we need ways to hold badly acting parties accountable. This will require international cooperation in cases where harns are inflicted across jurisdictional boundaries. 
• It is important that attempts to apply sanctions proportionately and to follow the principle of subsidiarity. It is a mistake to apply sanctions at the wrong layer in the architecture. For example, shutting down the Internet to deal with bad behavior by some parties is an overreach that creates a lot of harm for those innocently relying on the operation of the network. 

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(Bill Woodcock, Packet Clearing House)

• The implementation of sanctions via Internet means currently faces two principal challenges: On the network side, network operators typically under-comply or over-comply, due to difficulties in appropriately scoping enforcement actions. On the governmental side, sanctions regimes are not typically published in a uniform, consistent, or machine-readable format, they’re not published in a single predictable location, and they’re not harmonized with other regimes. 
• Many very specific implementation issues exist as well, starting with governments’ predilection for transliterating foreign-language or foreign-character-set names of sanctioned entities in diverse and inconsistent ways, rather than using the most-canonical form of each name, in its native language and character set. Network operator implementation has been occurring within the Sanctions.Net community since March of 2022, and governmental harmonization efforts have been occurring principally within the Digital directorate of the OECD.
• Most conversation about Internet sanctions implementation has been positive and collaborative, since governments wish to see their sanctions regimes respected, and network operators wish to comply with the law and protect their customers. Dissenting voices have questioned the legitimacy of sanctions regimes from both the right and the left, principally fearing governmental overreach.

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(Veronika Datzer, Advisor at German Parliament)

• It is impossible for politics to refrain from the internet because it already is. This process cannot be reversed. We therefore need political solutions because the technical infrastructure of the internet must remain neutral.
• Solutions to making the internet a peaceful place must not include internet sanctions as these impact all people and can have dramatic adverse consequences. They must be based on a multistakeholder model and co-create what it means to establish a peaceful internet, as such an understanding should not be imposed.
• We need to be in close cooperation between the technical community and the political community. 

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(Iria Puyosa, Toda Institute)

• The global multistakeholder governance ecosystem should center the protection of human rights to safeguard internet core values. Sanctions against States that violate international law may be necessary in cases of widespread human rights violations or credible allegations of crimes against humanity enabled by  State agencies' internet usage.  
• The global internet may need to create a multistakeholder policy advisory body that provides guidelines on targeted sanctions that may be enforced if necessary. Nonetheless, sanctions must be targeted, specific, and proportional. Also, a robust and reliable due process must be established for making these decisions 
• The establishment of rules and processes to define and enforce sanctions should not be decided by a small number of governments (such as those belonging to the OECD). The policy formulation process should involve countries from different regions of the world. Otherwise, the sanctions regime may be considered unilateral and provide an excuse for the "sovereign internet" model leading to the splinternet.
• All of the countries are working their model of sovereignty and Internet some are taking an approach that is completely different than that model we're used to, the open, free, Internet.

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(Bastiaan Goslings, RIPE NCC)

• It is not in the mandate of technical organisations like RIPE, not within the policies that determine how these organizations are run, to make decisions on sanctions. Policies  are set by multistakeholder communities across an entire service region, which includes many jurisdictions. If there are sanctions, they need to be decided following due process, democratic fashion demonstrating that the sanctions are proportionate to the goals to be achieved. Economic sanctions are set by the European Union.
• RIPE has no authority to actually enforce what they are doing as it operates as a trusted technical organisation, a neutral authoritative entity in this case, but no enforcement power of any kind. Networks using the RIPE database operate on Trust.
• Anyone can decide they do not trust this system and operate their own registry. From that perspective, it is a vulnerable system.

From the Floor

• The way to protect the Internet is to isolate the Internet from politics completely and emphasize to the parties that are geopolitical that this is not a geopolitical space and politics has to be out of Internet governance in order to protect the Internet. (Sivasubramanian Muthusamy, ISOC Chennai)
• As a national regulator, when it comes to technical issues or technical harm, I guess from a technical point of view, it is easy to spot something going wrong or to spot harm. And stop it in a way or another. But Nationalisation of the Internet is a concern - how can we stop that? Secondly - it is already too late to keep politics out of the Internet as it is used by politicians. (Hadia El Miniawi, Egypt Telecom Regulator)
•  it can't be Germany. It can't be the European Union. And it also can't be Google. We all have to be included in it. That is why the IGF is so important. It is multistakeholder and through a process that is completely inclusive to all states and big companies, at least. (Veronika Datzer)
• There is no such thing as a splintered Internet. Once it is splintered, it is not the Internet. We have to deliver to the Government and leaderships that we can't splinter the Internet. If you start imposing a sovereign law, you will start actually removing functions of the Internet, totally or significantly. The Internet Society and myself, others, have created frameworks, whereas you can see how different policy proposals and Treaties work with the Open-Ended or Governmental experts in the U.N. It shows how the proposals can be commensurate with the Internet or not. With that knowledge, we have to work on a multistakeholder basis first. (Alejandro Pisanty, UNAM)
• From the Global South perspective what we need the international community to do is actually work on the basis of humility, empathy, solidarity rather than punitive approach, which could actually be prone to bias or to political and economic agendas. Because always when we have a political and economic agendas rolling the dice, the reality that we have on the ground is that those that are the most vulnerable and that are least responsible and least involved in great power competitions, they're the ones that suffer. …we now have the Sustainable Development Goals and these need to be the priority of the international community….  So we very much understand that there are some trends related to the use of Internet for political and international security and geopolitical issues. But this trend must stop. And we must use the Internet to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals.(Tulio Andrade from Brazilian Ministry of Foreign Affairs)
• The issue, the important issue of geopolitical neutrality of global Internet should be reflected through Global Digital Compact. The first one is development of internationally legally binding (?) from cybersecurity based on the international law. The suggestion is establishment of framework, rules and norms and accountable behavior of digital platforms and serve providers in data security and content and law. And defining a common region for Internet as a peaceful and development oriented environment for public good. Not as a new battlefield and militarized environment. Through signing a global Declaration by all members. The last one, internationalization of Internet and public core as a trust building measure could help global Internet to be geopolitically neutral. (Amir Mokabberi, Tehran University)
• We have to have an agenda to continuously help the public officials to give them knowledge and help them determine what they think from a public interest perspective they have to do. It is useful to distinguish the core of the Internet, the functionalities, the numbering, naming, routing systems as opposed to everything that happens on top of the Internet. (several participants)
• What we need is a space where politics can take place forever without destroying the structure, the Internet itself. The Internet is not one monolith as Bill emphasized. There are lots of networks. There is a great incentive for the Governments to recover the mantras which we had forever on the Internet side. Connectivity is its own price. You lose more than you gain when you lose connectivity. So let's start pushing more for outcomes at the multilateral level that are compatible with what has been happening under technical and multistakeholder sides for so many years. (Alejandro Pisanty, UNAM)

Summary by Olivier Crépin-Leblond - 28 December 2022