Internet DRAFT - draft-bollow-ectf
draft-bollow-ectf
enhanced-cooperation.org N. Bollow
Internet-Draft August 30, 2013
Intended status: Informational
Expires: March 3, 2014
Request For Action to Establish an Enhanced Cooperation Task Force and a
Preparatory Working-Group
draft-bollow-ectf-07
Abstract
This memo calls for the creation of a new governance forum named
"Enhanced Cooperation Task Force" (ECTF). The main purpose of the
ECTF is to facilitate consensus-seeking discussions regarding
information society governance actions that will be taken by national
governments and international organizations.
Status of this Memo
This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the
provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.
Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering
Task Force (IETF). Note that other groups may also distribute
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Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months
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material or to cite them other than as "work in progress."
This Internet-Draft will expire on March 3, 2014.
Copyright Notice
Copyright (c) 2013 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
document authors. All rights reserved.
This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
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Table of Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1.1. Avoidance of Requirements Language . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
2. Preparatory Working-Group . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
3. Draft Scope Statement for ECTF . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
4. Draft Working Directives for ECTF . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
4.1. Fundamental Values . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
4.2. Logic trees for discourse facilitation . . . . . . . . . . 6
4.3. WG Working Procedures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
4.4. Accessibility and compatibility requirements . . . . . . . 8
4.5. Request For Action (RFA) Publication Procedures . . . . . 8
4.6. Overall Rough Consensus Endorsement . . . . . . . . . . . 8
4.7. WG Creation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
4.7.1. Initial Informal Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
4.7.2. Terms of Reference Endorsement . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
4.7.3. Secretariat Actions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
4.8. WG Termination . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
4.8.1. WG Dissolution by Rough Consensus . . . . . . . . . . 10
4.8.2. WG Dissolution due to Disendorsement . . . . . . . . . 10
4.8.3. WG Dissolution due to Dysfunction . . . . . . . . . . 11
4.9. Secretariat . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
4.9.1. Sustaining Membership . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
4.9.2. Committee of Sustaining Members . . . . . . . . . . . 11
4.9.3. Secretariat Funding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
4.9.4. Changes to the ECTF Working Directives . . . . . . . . 13
4.9.5. Further Responsibilities of the Secretariat . . . . . 13
5. Draft Terms of Reference for Some Initial Working-Groups . . . 14
5.1. WG on implementation of WSIS principles . . . . . . . . . 14
5.2. WG on ICANN and Root Zone Oversight . . . . . . . . . . . 14
5.3. WG on Law Enforcement and the Internet . . . . . . . . . . 14
5.4. Directives WG . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
6. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
6.1. Inappropriate Usage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
6.2. Denial of Service . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
6.3. Human Rights . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
7. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
8. Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
9. Endorsements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
10. Request For Comments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
11. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
Author's Address . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
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1. Introduction
In view of today's huge significance of information and communication
technologies in general and the Internet in particular, governments
nowadays need to strongly take this highly technical realm in
consideration in regard to various governmental responsibilities.
Consequently, the Tunis Agenda for the Information Society, an
international soft law instrument adopted at the UN World Summit on
Information Society in Tunis in 2005, appropriately asks the UN
Secretary General to convene "a new forum for multi-stakeholder
policy dialogue-called the Internet Governance Forum (IGF)" with a
mandate that includes making recommendations where appropriate (see
[Tunis], para 72g).
In this context of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) which is
explicitly mentioned in paras 67 and 72-78 of the Tunis Agenda
[Tunis], para 68 says that "We recognize that all governments should
have an equal role and responsibility for international Internet
governance and for ensuring the stability, security and continuity of
the Internet. We also recognize the need for development of public
policy by governments in consultation with all stakeholders." Paras
69-71 call for a process of "Enhanced Cooperation" with this
objective: "to enable governments, on an equal footing, to carry out
their roles and responsibilities, in international public policy
issues pertaining to the Internet, but not in the day-to-day
technical and operational matters, that do not impact on
international public policy issues."
Unlike the IGF, which was successfully established in 2006, the need
for enhanced cooperation which enables governments as described is
still unmet.
In December 2012, the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution [67/
195] which "invites the Chair of the Commission on Science and
Technology for Development to establish a working group on enhanced
cooperation to examine the mandate of the World Summit on the
Information Society regarding enhanced cooperation as contained in
the Tunis Agenda, through seeking, compiling and reviewing inputs
from all Member States and all other stakeholders, and to make
recommendations on how to fully implement this mandate."
Drawing inspiration from how the Internet Engineering Task Force
(IETF) works, the present memo proposes a way for implementing this
mandate.
Here are some significant properties of this proposal:
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o The ECTF proposal provides a way to implement Enhanced Cooperation
as foreseen by the Tunis Agenda without further delay. Every
government will be able to participate in the process of enhanced
cooperation to the extent that it desires to do so. Governments
that choose not to participate, or to participate only to a
limited extent, will not be negatively impacted.
o ECTF is designed to complement the IGF and benefit from synergies
with the IGF. For example, ECTF Working-Group annual meetings
will by default be organized as IGF pre-events. Also, the
recommendations published by ECTF will contribute to filling the
gap that the IGF itself is not making any recommendations, and in
fact even lacks a mechanism to decide where making recommendations
is appropriate, even though the mandate for the IGF includes
making recommendations where appropriate (see [Tunis], para 72g).
o The IETF principles of great inclusiveness of participation and
decision-making by rough consensus are built upon to minimize the
risks of powerful stakeholders gaining undue influence.
o In the realm of intergovernmental Internet governance cooperation
it is not immediately obvious whether a good analogue for the IETF
principle of "running code" exists. The ECTF proposal is inspired
by the idea that an operationalized emphasis on human rights
together with the principle of evidence based decision making
might provide similarly valuable guidance to how IETF technical
standardization work is guided by the "running code" principle.
o ECTF is not designed to supplant the role of national governments
in deciding about which balance to choose between conflicting
legitimate interests, a task which is a key part of just about
every policy making process. Rather ECTF will improve the
information input of such policy decision making process. This is
important because if the information input is one-sided or rubbish
in some other way, the resulting policy decisions will probably be
badly unbalanced no matter how good and democratic the decision
making process may be.
Note: There a complementary proposal [Wisdom] for also establishing a
"Wisdom Task Force" for international multistakeholder enhancement of
the work of parliaments.
1.1. Avoidance of Requirements Language
This memo requests and recommends actions, but it does not define
requirements. The use of the keywords of [RFC2119] describing
requirement levels is therefore deliberately avoided.
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The Preparatory Working-Group described in Section 2 should not
consider itself bound by any of the text in this memo, but rather it
should feel free to reconsider and revise all of these
recommendations.
2. Preparatory Working-Group
A Preparatory Working-Group with reasonably well-balanced
multistakeholder participation shall be convened to review and revise
the contents of this memo.
The work of this Preparatory Working-Group could begin with an in-
person kick-off meeting which might be a one-day pre-event for the
2015 Internet Governance Forum, after the Working Group on Enhanced
Cooperation has completed its work.
3. Draft Scope Statement for ECTF
As per the need for enhanced cooperation recognized in paras 68-70 of
the Tunis Agenda [Tunis], ECTF's scope of work shall be to facilitate
enhanced cooperation of governments with each other and with other
organizations, enabling them to carry out their roles and
responsibilities in regard to international public policy issues
pertaining to the Internet.
In particular, ECTF shall provide a framework that allows governments
and governmental organizations to conduct policy consultations
regarding information society topics of international scope in such a
way that inputs from the broadest possible variety of stakeholders
are distilled, by means of rough consensus processes, into concrete,
internationally applicable recommendations.
Day-to-day technical and operational matters, that do not impact on
international public policy issues, are not included in ECTF's remit.
4. Draft Working Directives for ECTF
This section provides a draft set of rules that should be carefully
considered and revised by the ECTF Preparatory Working-Group, with
the goal of creating a good initial Working Directives document for
ECTF. The Preparatory Working-Group should at all times conduct its
activities in accordance with what the current draft Working
Directives say about how an ECTF Working-Group conducts its work. In
this way, the Preparatory Working-Group will be conducting an initial
test of how the draft directives work in practice, and any
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unreasonably burdensome rules can be recognized and fixed quickly.
4.1. Fundamental Values
The fundamental values of the ECTF are that the human rights, as
defined in the various international human rights treaties, shall be
upheld and implemented in every way possible.
Evidence-based arguments on how these objectives can be best achieved
shall be given precedence over more speculative arguments.
ECTF Working-Groups shall seek to provide, by means of the Request
For Action documents that they publish, the best possible information
input to the processes of national governments and other governance
institutions that make policy decisions. The Working-Groups shall
seek to collect, by means of a balanced multistakeholder process,
information about needs, concerns, cause-effect relationships, and
available evidence, and to process all this to the extent possible
into recommendations. The Working-Groups shall particularly pay
attention to any relevant proceedings at the IGF. At the very least,
every Working-Group should be able to reach rough consensus on
recommendations of the form "Public policy regarding topic X should
take into consideration the following needs and concerns... ."
Ideally (but with greater difficulty of reaching rough consensus)
specific proposals for laws and others kinds of public policy
decisions should be developed in a form that explicitly suggests a
choice of options for possible choices of the balance between
conflicting legitimate interests, together with information on what
is known about the advantages and disadvantages (from the public
interest perspective) of the different options.
4.2. Logic trees for discourse facilitation
Like in the Internet Engineering Task Force and in the Free Software
and Open Source movements, the key success factor for work in the
Enhanced Cooperation Task Force is to work by means of genuine
deliberative processes rather than by means of some kind of power
politics.
Such deliberative processes can make use of techniques for strategy
development and reasoning in complex systemic contexts by means of
logic trees, as described e.g. in [Dettmer].
An important strength of these logic tree techniques is that they
allow to deal with emotions such as fear and hope in a logical
manner: They allow fears to be acknowledged and treated as a signal
that there is a need to do careful systemic analysis and that there
is a need for hope-inspiring solution proposals. Although explicitly
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addressing fear and hope is not part of classical logics, an
effective technique for doing that is probably necessary for creating
constructive discourse processes in which all stakeholders are
welcome to participate and where the needs, views and concerns
expressed by every participant will be taken appropriately seriously.
See also the UN Secretary-General's recent remarks on "the way to
build societies founded on hope instead of fueled by fear", [Ban
2013-08-28].
4.3. WG Working Procedures
ECTF Working-Groups are generally free to define their own working
procedures subject to the constraints that everyone without
restriction must be welcome to participate as long as they
participate constructively, and that decisions are made by the
principle of rough consensus.
Unless foreseen differently in the Terms of Reference of a Working
Group, or the Working-Group decides otherwise, the ECTF Secretariat
(see Section 4.9) shall use its discretion in setting up electronic
communication infrastructure (such as an email mailing list) for the
Working-Group, and in organizing in-person meetings, and in reminding
participants, when this may be necessary, of the principles of
professionally respectful conduct, or of international human rights
law, or of the Terms of Reference of the particular Working-Group.
If and only if such reminders prove ineffective, the Secretariat
shall request the Committee (see Section 4.9.2) to decide an
appropriate sanction which may take the form of barring specific
persons from participation in ECTF for a specific amount of time.
The Committee can decide to impose such sanctions only by consensus
or rough consensus but not by majority voting.
Unless foreseen differently in the Terms of Reference of a Working-
Group, or the Working-Group decides otherwise, the ECTF Secretariat
shall organize, for each Working-Group, an annual in-person meeting
as an IGF pre-event.
All ECTF Working-Groups shall seek to interact with the broader
Internet Governance community by active participation in the IGF.
All WG documents and draft documents shall be licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution license with a note that a link to
http://enhanced-cooperation.org/ suffices as attribution.
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4.4. Accessibility and compatibility requirements
All electronic communication infrastructure shall fulfill all of the
following requirements:
o It shall be fully accessible using a variety of computer operating
systems.
o It shall be fully accessible using Free and Open Source Software
(FOSS).
o It shall be fully accessible using assistive technologies for
persons with disabilities.
4.5. Request For Action (RFA) Publication Procedures
The Secretariat shall process requests for publication of draft
documents as Request For Action documents as follows:
o Unless the Working-Group made the decision to publish the draft as
a Request For Action documents in the presence of a representative
of the Secretariat, the Secretariat shall make reasonable
inquiries to ensure that this decision has indeed been made by
rough consensus and in accordance with the Terms of Reference of
the Working-Group.
o The Secretariat shall verify that the Working-Group which made the
request has Active status. (All Working-Groups have Active status
initially, this status can change to Inactive in case of
Sustaining Member disendorsements, see Section 4.8.2.)
4.6. Overall Rough Consensus Endorsement
The Working-Group which has made the decision to publish a Request
For Action document may instruct the Secretariat to issue a Consensus
Call for Overall Rough Consensus Endorsement by ECTF.
In this case the Secretariat shall communicate to all ECTF
participants a request to review that Request For Action document and
communicate any objections within 90 days.
If any objections are received, the Working-Group shall review the
objections and decide whether it wants to revise the Request For
Action document.
If no objections are received, or if the Working-Group otherwise
decides not to revise the Request For Action document, it may ask for
a determination whether there is Overall Rough Consensus of ECTF.
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Overall Rough Consensus means that there must be rough consensus
among each of the major stakeholder categories: Governments, civil
society and industry. The determination of Overall Rough Consensus
is made by the Committee of Sustaining Members, see Section 4.9.2
below.
If it is determined that there is overall Overall Rough Consensus,
the Secretariat shall add information to this effect to the concerned
Request For Action document. Furthermore, the Secretariat shall in
this case issue a press release.
4.7. WG Creation
This section outlines the process for the formation of new ECTF
Working-Groups. The objective of these rules is to make it as easy
as reasonably possible to create such Working-Groups as soon as there
is sufficient interest, while avoiding the creation of Working-Groups
that would violate ECTF's fundamental values (see Section 4.1) or
that would not attract a sufficient number and variety of
participants that output documents of high quality can be achieved.
4.7.1. Initial Informal Discussion
The ECTF Secretariat (see Section 4.9) shall make electronic
communication infrastructure (such as an email mailing list)
available for the purpose of informal discussion of ideas for new
ECTF Working-Groups.
The Secretariat shall use its discretion in reminding participants,
when this may be necessary, of the values of ECTF including the
principles of professionally respectful conduct and international
human rights law.
If such reminders prove insufficient for achieving a reasonably
pleasant working atmosphere, the Secretariat shall request the
Committee (see Section 4.9.2) to decide an appropriate sanction which
may take the form of barring specific persons from participation in
ECTF for a specific amount of time. The Committee can decide to
impose such sanctions only by consensus or rough consensus but not by
majority voting.
4.7.2. Terms of Reference Endorsement
After at least one month has elapsed since an idea has been initially
proposed for information discussion, an ECTF Working-Group can be
formed by two or more Sustaining Members endorsing Terms of Reference
for the new Working-Group. The Terms of Reference shall specify
objectives and guiding principles for the Working-Group.
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4.7.3. Secretariat Actions
The Secretariat shall verify that the Terms of Reference for the new
Working-Group do not violate ECTF's fundamental values (see
Section 4.1), and that the Terms of Reference uphold these values at
least as well as any other Working-Group addressing a very similar
topic area for which the required Endorsement has been received
earlier or up to two days later. For any Terms of Reference document
which fails this test, the corresponding Working-Group shall not be
created. The purpose of this rule is to ensure that if different
groups of Sustaining Members propose different frameworks to address
the same problem, so that one of them is clearly better from a human
rights perspective, then precedence is appropriately given to the
better framework.
When it has been decided that establishment of the Working-Group is
appropriate, the Secretariat shall set up appropriate communications
infrastructure and add the new Working-Group to the list of ECTF
Working-Groups, with Active status. Furthermore, the Secretariat
shall inform about the new Working-Group all registered participants
including the Sustaining Members, as well as the general public, and
all known civil society organizations with relevant expertise.
4.8. WG Termination
This section outlines the procedures for closing down a Working-
Group. These procedures are intended to be used not only when the
tasks of a Working-Group have been completed, but also if it becomes
clear that progress is only possible by creating a new Working-Group
on essentially the same topic but with Terms of Reference that
provide more specific guidance which makes it easier to reach rough
consensus.
4.8.1. WG Dissolution by Rough Consensus
A Working-Group has the power of making the decision to dissolve
itself.
4.8.2. WG Dissolution due to Disendorsement
Sustaining Members which have endorsed a Working-Group can at any
time withdraw their endorsement. If this causes the number of
Sustaining Members which endorse a particular Working-Group to drop
below two, the status of the Working-Group changes to Inactive; as
long as a Working-Group has Inactive status, it cannot decide to
publish Request For Action documents. The status changes to Active
again if the number of endorsing Sustaining Members again increases
to three or more.
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A Working-Group which has Inactive status for a continuous period of
six months or more is dissolved.
4.8.3. WG Dissolution due to Dysfunction
As outlined in Section 4.9.5, the Secretariat will if necessary take
corrective action if a Working-Groups fails to function. In such a
situation, a Working-Group may be dissolved if no-one is willing to
serve as chairperson.
4.9. Secretariat
A Secretariat for the ECTF shall be established with seat in Geneva,
Switzerland. A host country agreement shall be established with the
country of Switzerland which ensures that if the Secretariat should
not act fairly and diligently according to its various
responsibilities, injunctions to correct the behavior of the
Secretariat can be obtained from Swiss courts of law. Any natural or
legal person, internationally, without restriction, shall have
standing to sue for an injunction for correction of the behavior of
the Secretariat.
The ECTF Secretariat shall be funded, and decisions of budget and
staffing of the ECTF Secretariat shall be made by a Committee of
Sustaining Members, as described in Section 4.9.2 below. In
addition, Sustaining Members have a special role in regard to
Working-Group formation (see Section 4.7.2) and dissolution (see
Section 4.8.2).
4.9.1. Sustaining Membership
Any country which is recognized by the UN as a country may become a
Sustaining Member of the ECTF.
Any membership organization of which at least three members are
recognized by the UN as countries may become a Sustaining Member of
the ECTF.
Unless the Sustaining Members agree by consensus on a different
mechanism for funding the costs of the Secretariat, all Sustaining
Members shall contribute equally to funding the Secretariat.
4.9.2. Committee of Sustaining Members
Decisions of budget and staffing of the ECTF Secretariat shall be
made by a Committee of Sustaining Members, which shall be composed as
follows: If there are no more than eleven Sustaining Members, each
Sustaining Member shall delegate one representative to the Committee.
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If there are twelve or more Sustaining Members, nine Sustaining
Members shall be selected randomly who shall each delegate a
representative to the Committee. Each year, three of the longest-
serving Committee members (chosen randomly in case of a tie) shall be
rotated off the Committee and replaced by representatives of three
other Sustaining Members.
The Committee shall attempt to make decisions by rough consensus. If
this fails, decisions regarding the Secretariat may be taken at a
meeting at which decision making by majority vote is allowed, which
may be convened no earlier than 16 hours after the rough consensus
process has failed.
The Committee shall review any proposed changes to the ECTF Working
Directives before publication as a Request For Action document. It
shall communicate any concerns to the Working-Group which is
proposing changes to the Working Directives.
The Committee is also responsible for the determination of Overall
Rough Consensus, see Section 4.6. The decision of determination of
Overall Rough Consensus needs to be reached by rough consensus of the
Committee; if the Committee fails to reach rough consensus, the
Request For Action document in question shall not be considered to
have attained Overall Rough Consensus. This applies also to the
Consensus Call in the context of changes to the ECTF Working
Directives (see Section 4.9.4 the difference being only that that
Consensus Call involves only the Sustaining Members.
4.9.3. Secretariat Funding
Countries and International Organizations which are interested in
being Sustaining Members shall make, for a specific number of years,
a commitment that they are willing to contribute to funding the costs
of the secretariat up to a specific amount.
A maximal set of Sustaining Members is chosen so that the yearly
commitment limit of each Sustaining Member is greater or equal than
the budget of ECTF divided by the number of Sustaining Members.
If the operations of the Secretariat have not been adequately funded,
the Secretariat shall have the authority to suspend some of its
operations, according to its sole discretion.
If the Committee intends to increase the budget of the Secretariat,
the Committee shall, before making the decision to do so, secure
commitments that sufficient funding will be made available.
Furthermore, the Committee shall regularly assess the risk of
available funding potentially dropping below the level of the current
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budget, and appropriate contingency plans shall be made.
4.9.4. Changes to the ECTF Working Directives
If an ECTF Working-Group proposes a new version of the Directives,
the Secretariat shall organize a Consensus Call among all Sustaining
Members. If and only if there is rough consensus among each category
of Sustaining Members for adoption of the revised Directives (as
determined by the Committee, see Section 4.9.2), the Secretariat
shall put them in force by publishing a Request For Action document
that gives the details about how the new version was adopted, and
requests the new version of the Directives to be followed from now
on.
Country Members or International Organization Members may propose to
make ECTF part of the UN or another existing or new treaty-based
international organization. Such a proposal needs to be approved in
the same way by rough consensus of all Sustaining Members of ECTF, in
addition to whatever other steps may be required to create a new
umbrella organization for ECTF.
4.9.5. Further Responsibilities of the Secretariat
The Secretariat shall seek to ensure an official presence at the IGF,
for example by means of a booth.
The Secretariat shall provide guidance to ECTF Working-Groups on how
to self-organize on the basis of the principle of rough consensus
decision-making.
If it is brought to the attention of the Secretariat that an ECTF
Working-Group has, for an continuous period of three or more months,
failed to self-organize or otherwise failed to make any substantive
progress towards its objectives, the Secretariat shall take the
following steps: First the Secretariat shall verify that this is
indeed the case. If yes, the Secretariat shall solicit nominations
and self-nominations from among the Working-Group members of
potential chairpersons who could organize the work of the Working-
Group. If at least one person is nominated, the Secretariat shall
appoint a chairperson. If no-one is nominated, the Secretariat shall
dissolve the Working-Group.
Working-Groups may also by means of a rough consensus decision
request and empower the Secretariat to execute this process of
chairperson appointment. The Secretariat shall honor such requests.
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5. Draft Terms of Reference for Some Initial Working-Groups
This section provides draft Terms of Reference statements for some
possible ECTF Working-Groups (WGs).
The ECTF Preparatory Working-Group should consider and revise these
texts in order to ensure that when ECTF is created, it will be easy
to quickly also establish some worthwhile Working-Groups.
The Preparatory Working-Group will not itself create these Working-
Groups; rather it should publish, in addition to a Request For Action
document with recommended Working Directives, also a Request For
Action document recommending Terms of Reference for some Working-
Groups. It should then be easy to create such Working-Groups by
means of the procedure for WG Creation in the Working Directives (see
Section 4.7).
5.1. WG on implementation of WSIS principles
This WG shall promote and assess, on an ongoing basis, the embodiment
of WSIS principles in Internet governance processes. The WG shall
publish its findings as Request For Action documents and seek to
inform the IGF.
Rationale: According to para 72(i) in the Tunis Agenda this is part
of the mandate of the IGF. However as it is currently constituted,
the IGF is not able to fulfill this aspect of its mandate.
5.2. WG on ICANN and Root Zone Oversight
This WG shall develop a solid proposal for transferring to a more
international body the ICANN oversight functions that are currently
in the hands of NTIA. The WG shall publish this proposal as a
Request For Action document. This document shall particularly
emphasize the measures for ensuring the integrity of the DNS root
zone file by preventing (intentional or unintentional) inappropriate
modifications, while avoiding undue delays of appropriate
modifications.
Rationale: Many people, governments and civil society organizations,
especially outside the US, consider the current situation
unsatisfactory or even unacceptable. ICANN, ISOC, and the RIRs are
also all on the record favoring a shift.
5.3. WG on Law Enforcement and the Internet
This WG shall observe, compare and discuss the legal frameworks and
procedures of various countries in regard to how law enforcement
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agencies deal with the challenges and opportunities of the Internet.
The WG shall regularly publish Request For Action documents with its
findings, emphasizing in particular any undesired side effects on
human rights (such as for example when connection data is stored by
ISPs on the basis of data retention demands for law enforcement
purposes, but the data is at least sometimes abused for other
purposes) and the importance of finding an appropriate, evidence-
based balance between law enforcement needs and other human rights.
The WG shall furthermore study what kinds of technical changes to the
Internet infrastructure would be possible in order to better meet the
needs of law enforcement, and if it turns out that such technical
changes would be possible without significant negative impacts on
other human rights, the WG shall publish Request For Action documents
with corresponding recommendations.
Rationale: Numerous governments have spoken, e.g. at ICANN and RIR
meetings, about the need for more regard for the needs of law
enforcement. On the other hand, many civil society organizations are
concerned that some measures that law enforcement agencies would
propose may have highly negative side effects on fundamental rights
of privacy and freedom of expression.
5.4. Directives WG
This WG shall continually observe the progress of the work of ECTF,
in particular in view of the need for progress in regard to practical
realization of human rights, and discuss any suggestions for changes
to the Working Directives. Whenever the WG has rough consensus that
a change to the Working Directives may be desirable, the WG shall
publish a Request For Action document with revised Working Directives
and an appendix that explains the rationale for the changes. This
document shall not be phrased as definitely containing the new
Working Directives, but rather as a request to the body of Sustaining
Members of ECTF to adopt the proposed new Working Directives.
(Adoption of such a revised Working Directives document is done by
rough consensus among the Sustaining Members of ECTF.)
Rationale: Every organization needs to observe its own performance,
and to take corrective action when necessary.
6. Security Considerations
Similarly to security considerations for technical systems (see
RFC 3552 [RFC3552]), governance fora and processes need to be
designed for robustness against attempts of "inappropriate usage" and
"denial of service". In addition, the integrity of ECTF work with
regard to human rights needs to be safeguarded.
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6.1. Inappropriate Usage
Clearly ECTF needs rules governing the interaction between
participants. In the absence of appropriate rules, participation in
ECTF cannot be expected to be effective, time-efficient and a
pleasant experience.
These rules need to be designed so that bona fide well-intentioned
newcomers with reasonably good communication skills will be able to
quickly learn how to participate effectively, while on the other hand
there need to be effective disincentives that discourage and penalize
disruptive and non-constructive behavior.
6.2. Denial of Service
It is particularly important to avoid vulnerability of ECTF and its
working-groups to the political equivalent of what is called "denial
of service" attacks in the technical realm: It must not be possible
for beneficiaries of the status quo (who may fear a potential loss of
power) to disrupt discussions that could lead to new forms of
enhanced cooperation.
6.3. Human Rights
The rules of ECTF need to ensure that all recommendations published
by its working-groups are designed to uphold the fundamental
principles which are internationally recognized as human rights, and
to improve as much as possible the practical ability of people
everywhere to enjoy their human rights.
7. IANA Considerations
This memo includes no request to IANA.
8. Acknowledgements
This memo has been inspired significantly by postings on the mailing
list of the Civil Society Internet Governance Caucus [IGC] from
various participants, including Bertrand de La Chapelle, Avri Doria,
William Drake, Anriette Esterhuysen, Andrea Glorioso, Michael
Gurstein, Wolfgang Kleinwaechter, Jeremy Malcolm, Lee W McKnight,
Parminder Jeet Singh, and Roland Perry. This acknowledgment of
inspiration is not intended to imply that any of the named persons
endorse the contents of this memo.
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9. Endorsements
Endorsements will be solicited at a later stage.
10. Request For Comments
Comments and other feedback of any kind regarding this Internet-Draft
are requested in the form of postings to the mailing list of the
Civil Society Internet Governance Caucus [IGC] (preferred) or in the
form of personal communications to the author.
11. Informative References
[67/195] UN General Assembly, "Information and communications
technologies for development", Resolution 67/195, 2012,
<http://unctad.org/meetings/en/SessionalDocuments/
ares67d195_en.pdf>.
[Ban 2013-08-28]
Ban Ki-moon, "Secretary-General's Freedom Lecture at
Leiden University", 2013,
<http://www.un.org/sg/statements/index.asp?nid=7046>.
[Dettmer] Dettmer, H W., "The Logical Thinking Process", ISBN 978-0-
87389-723-5, 2008.
[IGC] Civil Society Internet Governance Caucus, "Mailing list",
<http://igcaucus.org/membership>.
[RFC2119] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997.
[RFC3552] Rescorla, E. and B. Korver, "Guidelines for Writing RFC
Text on Security Considerations", BCP 72, RFC 3552,
July 2003.
[Tunis] UN World Summit on the Information Society, "Tunis Agenda
for the Information Society", 2005,
<http://www.itu.int/wsis/docs2/tunis/off/6rev1.html>.
[Wisdom] Bollow, N., "Plan to Establish a Wisdom Task Force", Work
in progress , 2013, <http://wisdomtaskforce.org/RFB/1>.
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Author's Address
Norbert Bollow
Weidlistrasse 18
CH-8624 Gruet,
Switzerland
Phone: +41 44 972 20 59
Email: nb@bollow.ch
URI: http://bollow.ch/
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