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The ISOC Board of Trustees is pleased to publish an initial report on the issue of Trust and Identity. The topic has been selected as one of ISOC’s core Initiatives and significant efforts are planned in several key areas. This document, Trust and the Future of the Internet (PDF: 208KB), focusses on the subject of Trust within the context of network enabled relationships, a topic initiated at a Retreat in October 2007. The following areas are explored in more detail:

• Advancing Internet architecture by supporting the implementation of open trust mechanisms throughout the full cycle of research, standardization, development and deployment.
• Strengthening the current Internet model by focusing on the mitigation of social, policy, and economic drivers that may hinder development and deployment of trust enabling technologies.
• Facilitating an end-user’s ability to manage personal data and ensure personal security by elevating “Identity” to a core issue in network research and standards development.

Contributed by Bill Graham

On 9 August 2008, I made a presentation to the American Bar Association Annual Meeting in New York. I was invited to join a VIP Panel talking about “The Internet: how it is governed today and how it may be governed tomorrow.” Also on the panel were Markus Kummer, Executive Director of the Internet Governance Forum Secretariat, Paul Twomey, President and CEO of ICANN, and Dick Beaird (Coordinator, Communications and Information Policy, US Department of State). The audience, made up largely of US lawyers, was clearly interested in the topic, and engaged the panel with good questions and discussion after the presentations. Markus, Paul and myself, all devoted particular attention to the importance of the multistakeholder, open, collaborative “Internet model.”

Markus stressed the need for governments to realize they need to work with others, and characterized the IGF and the Internet technical community participation as being good examples of participatory governance, or networked governance.

I spoke second and focussed on the importance of continuing to engage all stakeholders, consistent with the Internet model (my presentation is posted to the ISOC website).

Paul Twomey opened with a graphic presentation of three different ways of viewing governance mechanisms. The first was demonstrated by showing a standard Mercator projection map of the world, pointing out that it represents governments’ view of the world (borders, countries, regions). His second slide showed a map of the world’s continents showing telephony cables and networks, which he described as the traditional telco view of the world - of fixed and well defined connections in a controlled network. The third slide was the 2001 map of the Internet shown as a vast series of interconnecting dots, which he said showed the Internet view of the world - of fluid interconnection of users on the co-operative, best efforts model.

Given that basis, Twomey talked about ICANN’s multi-stakeholder model, and the importance of the various communities in making decisions. He introduced the recent President’s Strategy Committee consultation on improving institutional confidence, and the importance for ICANN of ensuring the stability of the organization as its Joint Project Agreement with the US government comes to an end next year. He ended his presentation talking to the audience of lawyers about the decision to expand the gTLD space, consistent with the recent decisions taken at the Paris ICANN meeting. He highlighted that clients may be interested in the process both in terms of securing new gTLDs for themselves, or guarding their interest through the various dispute resolution processes that will be established.

Dick Beaird opened by mentioning that the US government position on Internet governance was set out in the July 2005 Dept of Commerce statement, and recently reinforced by Meredith Baker’s letter to ICANN as part of the PSC consultation. He said this shows that the US government remains committed to a strong ICANN, consistent with the original principles that led to its establishment, but he did not expand beyond that. The rest of his speech was a review of the outputs of the June 2008 Seoul OECD Ministerial meeting on the Future of the Internet economy. He reported that the Ministers’ commitments focused on developing reliable indicators for the Internet economy, including broadband penetration, on the benefits and challenges posed by convergence, and on the need to ensure a balance can be struck between the Internet’s capacity to promote creativity and innovation and the need to maintain security and confidence for users.

Questions from the audience focused on issues of security, protection of identity, and the possibility of finding solutions (including technical solutions) for Internet fraud. There was interest in what kinds of forums may evolve to deal with transjurisdictional problems and there was also quite a bit of interest in the recent stories about DNS vulnerability and cache poisoning.

I took the opportunity to promote ISOC and our Major Strategic Initiatives to the audience, particularly the Trust and Identity Major Strategic Initiative (MSI), given their interests, and this led to some useful discussion. The moderator asked the panel for their views of what will be the key challenges for the Internet that would be of interest to lawyers. I believe that there are two areas: the first is finding a way to deal effectively with the trans-jurisdictional nature of legal problems on the Internet; the second, achieving a reasonable balance in dealing with issues on the Internet. Questions/discussion on the first point were around protection of identity, whether there is any possibility of getting agreement about what should be protected, taking into account different cultures and legal frameworks around the world. The example given was the very different approaches to privacy in the US and in the EU, which have caused some problems. This is also where questions of identity protection and fraud came up. I said that while inter-governmental cooperation is needed, so is user education. That led to a question from a NY-based lawyer about the possibility of developing technical solutions to issues such as fraud, phishing, the Nigerian-letter-type scams, etc. I interpreted what he said as being in part trust-related i.e. how do you know who or what you’re dealing with on the Internet - and partly education related. On that basis, I briefly promoted the possibility of joining ISOC, and made information packages available.

The invitation to participate in meetings like the ABA Annual Meeting is an indication of the ongoing perception of ISOC as a leading organization in the global debate over Internet governance, and offers a good opportunity to present our views and information.

With the successful launch of The Information Society Innovation Fund (ISIF), many developing economies in the Asia Pacific region are expecting to benefit from grants funding later in 2008.

ISIF is a joint initiative between the Internet Society (ISOC), the Canadian International Development Research Centre (IDRC), and the Asia Pacific Network Information Centre (APNIC), aimed at stimulating creative solutions to ICT development needs in the Asia Pacific region.

ISIF provides grants of up to US$30,000 per project to help advance local and regional projects aimed at introducing, improving, and applying Internet and other digital communications technologies for the benefit of Asia-Pacific users and communities.

Project proposals from Asia-Pacific based public or private sector organisations, university or research and development institutions, and non-government organisations will be considered. Applications must be aligned with ISIF program objectives, selection criteria and administrative guidelines. Individuals are not eligible for grants.

The ISIF grant round for 2008 is now open and applications are due 1 September 2008. A total of US$375,000 is available for grants in 2008. Grants are to be made on a competitive basis and successful applicants will be required to make project details, outcomes and findings publicly available.

Complete information on the program and how to apply is available on the ISIF website.

To access the online application click here.

ISIF is proudly sponsored by the DotAsia Organisation, the registry operator for the .ASIA top level domain.

For more information please contact ISIF Secretariat at info@isif.asia

Contributed by Rami Wihaidi

ISOC Palestine Chapter calls for the establishment of a Telecom Regulatory Authority

ISOC’s Palestine Chapter (ISOC-PS), represented by Mr. Omar Sahili (Treasurer), participated in a “Power Breakfast” event organized by the Palestinian IT Association (www.pita.ps) on 26 June 2008. This event was well attended by the ICT community and covered by the local media. The purpose of the workshop was to evaluate previous steps taken by the Ministry of Telecommunication and Information Technology to liberalize the Telecommunications market. Also on the panel were:

• Dr. Mashhour Abu Dakka, Minister of Transportation and member of the Cabinet Economic Committee
• Mr. Suleiman Zuhairi, Deputy Minister of Telecommunication and Information Technology
• Mr. Abel Malek Jaber, CEO of the Palestinian Telecommunication Company, and
• Mr. Said Baranis, representing companies recently licensed to provide broadband value added services.

ISOC-PS participation concentrated on organizing the telecom market, calling for the speedy establishment of the Palestinian Telecom Regulatory Authority. The absence of such a body has had an impact on the type, quality, and price of services offered in Palestine and the consumer is currently paying for this market irregularity.

ISOC PS calls for spreading public awareness as an alternative to Internet filtering

ISOC-PS participated in another “Power Breakfast” on 7 July 2008. Mr. Rami Wihaidi (Vice Chairman) represented ISOC-PS on the panel. Other members of the panel were representatives of PalTel, the Palestinian National Internet Naming Authority, the Mizan Center for Human Rights, and representatives of private sector firms.

The discussion centered on the challenges facing the development of the Internet in Palestine. ISOC PS highlighted the issue of Internet filtering applied in Gaza as an obstacle to Internet development. ISOC PS asserted that Internet filtering cannot be 100 percent effective and that spreading public awareness among the community is much more effective than filtering. In addition, filtering has caused a slow down in the Internet, affecting the ability of users to reach to certain sites that are not filtered and also lowering the quality of services provided by local ISPs.