IGF 2018 WS #193 Submarine cables governance & sustainable development goals

During the presentation of the session, Internet Sans Frontières and Access Now will present their current projects on Internet shutdowns and submarine cables. Peter Micek will present Access Now's numerous campaigns and tools, as #KeepItOn, which is fighting globally against intentional disruptions of Internet access, and a document with Human Rights Principles for Connectivity and Development. Félix Blanc and Florence Poznanski will present their project on the ELLALINK cable (Europe/Brazil), supported by the Getulio Vargas Foundation and the Brazilian Internet Steering Committee (CGI). They will also give a brief account of a CGI workshop on the governance of submarine cables, to be held in Rio on October 30, 2018.

We will then briefly introduce the policy question of the workshop , as well as the three issues that will be discussed:

1° How to promote secured communication, monitor network interferences, and prevent them from happening? Cables remain fragile infrastructure suffering from accidental or intentional physical aggressions (roughly 300 interferences/year), all of which are not sufficiently prevented from happening by international legislation. In Somalia, for instance, the cut of a cable in July 2017 has disconnected the whole region during three weeks and caused financial losses estimated to 10 millions dollars/day. The main international vehicles protect submarine cables and sanction peacetime attacks, before stating that no sanction exist to prevent them from being targeted in war times. Cable’s vulnerability are also due to their potential impacts on human rights and on freedom of expression in particular. They are infrastructure critical for human rights. Unfortunately, governments and private operators does not make transparent the agreements and operating conditions of submarine cables. The revelations initiated by Edward Snowden in 2013 (for example the Tempora program piloted by the Five Eyes alliance) unveiled the scale of unauthorized and hidden surveillance programs to public and revealed how important submarine infrastructures are to tap data traffic in real-time. But this chock wave didn’t not have impact on the governance of submarine cables. Building new cables avoiding the United-States, as planned by Brazil, for instance, is not a sufficient strategy to circumvent surveillance.

Questions: what kind of physical threats endanger global communication in peacetime and in wartime? What rules are necessary to protect these infrastructures? What role play the different stakeholders in network interferences? What cost do shutdowns represent for them? how to monitor and prevent them efficiently?

2° How to connect people globally & foster an inclusive digital economy? For the last two decades, Latin-America, Asia and Africa, and generally all the BRICS, have been passing through a request of huge transformation of their infrastructure, with the construction of new submarine cables, national backbones and inter-exchange points, linking Brazil, for example, to Europe and Africa. In 2005, the Geneva Working Group on Internet Governance urged international agencies to report on interconnection costs and fund “initiatives that advance connectivity, IXPs, and local content for developing countries”.The number and type of submarine cable system owners and operators has also expanded - including non-traditional carries and the GAFAM. The spread of undersea fibre optic cables has tremendous potential in terms of access provision. However, without a favorable context on transparency, jurisdiction and governance, their impacts on affordable access can be reduced. The majority of operators are still reluctant to offer any detailed information about their fibre networks. To have a meaningful conversation on Net neutrality, universal access and affordability, we need better data on current telecommunications network development.

Questions: What kind of actors own and control submarine cables (consortia; private cable; etc...)? What kind of legal provision (open access regime, monopoly)? What role for multilateral organizations (ITU, UN agencies, etc…)? Is it conceivable to create a universal, free, basic-rate Internet for all?

3° How to measure global warming & prevent geohazards? More than a million kilometres of submarine cables form the global telecommunications infrastructure backbone for business, finance, social media, entertainment, political expression, and science. Internationally, these cables are the physical layer of the internet. The dependability of this infrastructure is so important that entire national economies are affected when problems arise. These same submarine cables could also provide a platform for gathering deep-ocean and seabed data for a range of environmental issues. Our oceans and climate are experiencing global changes, including warming, acidification, and sea-level rise, that affect us now and in the future. A standard telecommunication system includes an electro-optical seabed cable with optical repeaters approximately every sixty kilometres. By adding environmental sensors to the repeaters, we could have access to a global network of real-time data for environmental threats and disaster mitigation. An early-warning system for tsunamis could save lives and prove invaluable, particularly for developing countries, where the comprehensive coverage of all subduction zones is not viable. Since tsunami waves often arrive less than thirty minutes after offshore earthquakes, every minute counts. To bring this concept to fruition, the international Joint Task Force of three United Nations agencies – the International Telecommunication Union, the World Meteorological Organization and the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission of UNESCO (ITU/WMO/IOC-UNESCO JTF), established in 2012, is working towards incorporating environmental monitoring sensors into trans-oceanic submarine cable systems.

Questions: what could be done to promote this initiative and include more governmental and private actors? how such initiative could be used to promote other objectives such as transparency, inclusion, privacy? In the discussion, we will find solutions to find common answers to these three different kind of issues and see how the different stakeholders can help at passing international regulation and good practices to achieve sustainable development goals.