Re: [ALSC-Forum] Re: a proposed action statement

[veni markovski]

>With apologies to the non-US members of this list, I'd like to make some 
>comments that are inevitably US-centric.

Mike, the non-US members of the Internet are not a minority that needs to 
fight for our rights, I believe.

>This legislation brings the Internet and its developers, providers and 
>users directly into the new war on terrorism.  It extends extensive new 
>power to law enforcement to find, capture, and punish those who use the 
>network for terrorism or other criminal activity. It removes the previous 
>barriers between foreign and domestic anti-terrorism investigations and 
>establishes the principle that whoever you are, wherever you are, if you 
>use the net for terrorism, you are in the sights of the FBI, the CIA, the 
>NSA and their foreign counterparts.

I hope that you understand legal procedures, and probably know that no 
matter what law one country accepts, their partners should also have the 
same laws in order for a certain activity to be punished.
I also hope that there are enough NGOs in the US that may go and fight 
control over Internet in the Supreme court. At least in Bulgaria, we've 
done that 2 years ago with success.
One should not punish the knife for it was used in cutting someone.
There is no law in the world, except for crimes against humankind, that may 
"remove the barriers between foreign and domestic investigation". Of 
course, the US may _want_ to have such laws in every country, and may use 
economic sanctions against countries that do not implement such laws.  BUT 
this is only "may". It's one thing to want something, second - to be able 
to do it, third - to make it happen.

>In the New York Times this morning, under the heading "We are All Alone," 
>widely respected

You are not all alone, but you may as weel become lonely, if the attitude 
is that "whoever is not with us, is against us".
You know, this kind of thinking reminds me of...say Stalin's "There is a 
man - there is a problem. THere is no man - there's no problem".
Words should be used as careful as bombs, becuase they may cause the same, 
or even more, damage!

 >columnist Tom Friedman said, "Focus instead on the firemen who rushed
 >into the trade center towers without asking, 'How much?' Focus on the
 >thousands of U.S. reservists who have left their jobs and families to go
 >fight in Afghanistan without asking, 'What's in it for me?' Unlike the
 >free-riders in our coalition, these young Americans know that September
 >11 is our holy day - the first day in a just war to preserve our free,
 >multi-religious, democratic society. And I don't really care if that war 
coincides
 >with Ramadan, Christmas, Hanukkah, or the Buddha's birthday - the most
 >respectful and spiritual thing we can do now is fight it until justice is 
done."
 >After a week of tough fighting in Afghanistan where the battle is rapidly
 >deteriorating to the same "take no prisoners" ethic that prevailed on 
September
 >11, the same week that professionally prepared anthrax kept showing up in new
 >places everyday on the U.S. east coast and killed two postal workers, 
there is
 >a determined and deadly resolve to follow the Friedman advice.


>A resolve that will affect many if not most institutions, among them ICANN.
>
>It's different now for ICANN.  What started out as your typical ritual 
>White House privatization effort; one that parroted the young Clintonites' 
>"Agenda for Action" of 1993; the Al Gore "Information Superhighway" 
>speech; that provided a last hurrah for Clinton advisor Magaziner at the 
>end of the second term.  A sly political move that solved, or maybe 
>solved, the National Science Foundation's honest mistake in giving Network 
>Solutions and SAIC a billion dollar monopoly. That is not the ICANN of 
>post-Sept 11.

Mike, let's try not to mix things. I was most scared on Sept. 12th, and you 
may ask Esther Dyson about what happened in Bulgaria, in a German-owned 
hotel: all covered with security and guards. But for no reason!

>It's different now.  It's not world government because national 
>governments are evil; it's not Internet governance because national laws 
>are unjust; it's not a response to some abstract imagining of the global 
>popular will; it's not solving poverty, famine, infanticide, drug abuse 
>and political oppression in the DNS.
>
>It's serious.  It's first things first.  It's about keeping people from 
>being killed by terrorist plots hatched over the net.

Are there any proofs that the plot is done over the Net? Are there any 
proofs that without the net, they would have not done it? No, thera aren't!

>All of a sudden it matters that you know what you are talking about.  If 
>you are an Internet engineer, what about nailing down the RFC's needed for 
>secure new functionality in the DNS?  If you are a root server host 
>organization CEO, all of a sudden being a volunteer in Jon Postel's army 
>takes on new meaning.  If you're the manager of a top level domain name 
>registry, it's not a pc in a closet time anymore. Important people are 
>watching, people who have the ability to nationalize you overnight if 
>you're not carrying your weight in making the Internet more secure.  The 
>Japanese government and the United States government are sending cabinet 
>level officers to speak at the November ICANN meeting about how serious 
>this really is.

It is serious, but Internet is more than protocols. It's exchanging ideas 
and bringing people together. You can't stop terrorism by listening to 
everyones' speech. Don't turn the US into the real "1984".

Sincerely,
Veni Markovski
Bulgaria