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Cybersecurity & Standards

Protect the Internet: Support the IANA Transition

2015-01-07 IANA FB

The Internet is at a crucial stage of its evolution. Last year, the Commerce Department announced its intention to transition out of its oversight role of core Internet technical functions (the IANA functions) and hand that stewardship over to the global multistakeholder community.  This would mark a small but significant change in global Internet governance, and it’s understandable that the idea of such a transition has raised concerns – particularly with the quickly approaching target date of September 2015.  The IANA transition is a key element in the evolution of the global Internet and the current multistakeholder approach to Internet governance. Caution is appropriate, but the project must be pursued.

This is the multistakeholder process in action: proceeding in an open, transparent, and inclusive manner, with participants committed to the continued stability and success of the open Internet.

There are two major tasks at hand: developing a suitable replacement for the US government’s oversight of the IANA functions, and strengthening the overall accountability of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the non-profit organization that has been the institutional home of the IANA functions to date.  Several working groups, composed of technical experts, industry, civil society organizations, and government representatives from around the globe have been working to develop proposals for both of these issues. This is the multistakeholder process in action: proceeding in an open, transparent, and inclusive manner, with participants committed to the continued stability and success of the open Internet.

This commitment is admirable and necessary.  These issues – of accountable corporate governance and oversight mechanisms that are impervious to capture – are challenging.  There is much to discuss and a fairly compressed time to achieve consensus.  But getting the details right is essential to a successful transition, and accomplishing this through a bottom-up, participatory process will reinforce the message articulated by governments, business, and civil society that Internet governance should be led by the global multistakeholder community, and not vulnerable to manipulation by governments or other stakeholders.

Despite the continuing efforts of the working groups, some have been quick to judge the groups’ considerable effort as inadequate.  In its recent editorial “Protect the Internet: Keep the contract with ICANN”, the Washington Post calls for the Commerce Department to extend its contract with ICANN as a way of removing the threat of influence by authoritarian regimes – that is, to kill the proposed transition in its cradle.  This call fails to recognize the work already accomplished by the transition working groups, and undermines the legitimacy and credibility of multistakeholder processes more generally.

It’s too early to dismiss the process; we should all be working towards its constructive conclusion.

The editorial then goes on to make a disturbing assertion, bizarrely suggesting that independent non-governmental voices are suspect because “civil society in many countries  is deeply connected to the state” and those states will “try to manipulate or control as much as they can.”  The implication is that civil society is in bed with governments and that somehow the influence of authoritarian regimes in ICANN is facilitated by civil society participation.  If this is the intent of the editorial it is shamefully dismissive of the great work that civil society is doing to promote an open Internet and free expression around the globe, and of the courageous and often dangerous work civil society is undertaking in repressive regimes.  Participatory governance processes depend on the involvement of a diverse array of actors representing a variety of interests – this is foundational to the multistakeholder model.  Civil society has a central role in Internet governance, whether at ICANN or elsewhere.

There is no doubt that the Commerce Department should only accept a transition proposal that both safeguards against capture or undue influence by a stakeholder group (government or otherwise), and anticipates and forecloses procedural vulnerabilities that could undermine the stability and security of the Internet.  And the IANA transition should not happen until meaningful accountability improvements have been made to ICANN’s own governance.   This is precisely what the working groups are pursuing, and to declare inadequate the current work-in-progress is premature.

It’s too early to dismiss the process; we should all be working towards its constructive conclusion.