There were so many questions, we weren’t able to address all of them during the event.
The panelists followed up with their answers. Please note: Some questions have been edited for clarity.
Q: Regarding the expansion of Internet access for all, can we consider launching a vast program of satellite coverage for isolated regions in the near future within the Internet Society?
A: As a practical matter, the Internet Society is very unlikely to enter the satellite business. It’s both very expensive and very risky, and to do well requires enormous amounts of capital (billions of dollars) to which we do not have access. We are watching the emergence of Low Earth Orbit (LEO) systems and talking to experts form some of those companies about partnership opportunities for our Community Network project, however, with a great deal of interest and are hopeful that they can be part of the mix of technologies for connecting those who are not connected yet.
Q: The poor are the unconnected. Besides connectivity, they also need digital devices to fully benefit from the Internet. Will the Internet Society consider supporting digital devices too?
A: There is no question that connectivity is only one of the challenges facing many people. There are many fine organizations in the world working to address the many other challenges people face, and we partner with some of them in the effort to make a better world for all. The Internet Society knows about the Internet, but we are not experts in these other challenging areas, and we think it is best to focus on the challenges where we can make a difference and let those whose mission is related to other topics work on those ones.
Q: Are there any plans by the Internet Society to expand their work in Tanzania rural areas?
A: We actually held our fourth Summit on Community Networks in Africa in Dodoma in 2019. Our ISOC Tanzania Chapter partnered with us for that event along with experts from across Africa and around the globe. A team in Tanzania have built a community network outside of Dodoma. There are many people we can introduce you to who have built Community Networks in Africa. They can give you more information and bring you into the local and global community. Please reach out to Michuki Mwangi ([email protected]) or Max Stucchi ([email protected]) and we can start the conversation with you!
For more information about the fourth African Community Network Summit, and more data about CNs, please see these links:
– 2019 4th African CN Summit
– Our main landing page for Community Networks
– Report on African Community Networks
Q: There is a great hype about 5G from governments and companies. It’s certain that we won’t be seeing 5G connectivity in remote areas. On the contrary, it will set in motion a dynamic that will leave remote areas even further behind. Every $ spent in 5G is diverted from “more connectivity” that Jane Coffin mentioned earlier. How can we press governments to prioritize universal connectivity vs “corporate 5G infrastructure”?
A: This is a critical question and one we have been watching. Through collective action with governments, our Chapters, and great partners like Community Networks, the Association for Progressive Communications (APC), the Association for an Affordable Internet (A4AI), and regional and global organizations (e.g., CITEL, APT, ATU, ITU, G-20) we can address this issue in a scalable and effective manner by dividing up the work. We are targeting key global and regional organizations and meetings to focus on policy and regulatory changes. Reach out to Juan Peirano ([email protected]) on the 5G and collective action issue and we work on scaling the work even more.
Q: Bonsoir. Comment faire pour que l’IXP de mon pays Niger soit supporter.
In English: Hello, How to get support for the IXP of my country Niger?
A: You have come to the right place. We have a full team of experts that are working on IXP issues. We can introduce you to the African IXP Association (Af-IX) and we can send you information about upcoming online African IXP events. Please reach out to Michuki Mwangi ([email protected]) and he will introduce you to the African IXP community and help you with some information about starting an IXP.
Also and specific to Niger, in 2020 we were in contact with the DG of ANSI and also with the Niger Research and Education Network (NigerREN) executive secretary Mr. Ousman Moussa Tessa. We would encourage you to engage with them to know more about the local effort and also how you can support it.
We have some great IXP resources on our website:
– Basic information about IXPs: English and French
– Our June 2020 Report on IXPs in Nigeria and Kenya: English and French
Q: Does it make more sense to leverage global infrastructure to improve management capability, e.g., Starlink?
A: Reading the question multiple times I wonder if this refers to Starlink (a satellite network providing low-latency Internet services operated by SpaceX) or StarLink (a technology vendor offering cloud and data management solutions). Also, the question need a little more definition on what it means by “management.” I would request him to clarify these aspects (email us at [email protected]) before we can provide the right answer.
Q: Is there anyway we can have some sort of Internet backups in countries going into elections?
A: One of the great things about the Internet is that it can be made into a reliable system even though it is made out of unreliable parts. When the engineering is done well, it is a system that is extremely reliable in the face of many kinds of calamity, both natural and human made. To get that kind of reliability, we rely on a great deal of redundancy in the system, and a wide variety of diverse interconnections. These interconnections make accidental breakages hard to achieve, but they also tend to make intentional shutdowns much harder. It would appear that there are people who are opposed to building more reliable infrastructure because it would make intentional shutdowns harder to achieve. We believe that is a mistake, and that building truly resilient connections benefits everyone.
We also believe that building more networks across borders will help us create more network redundancy and resiliency. Please be on the look out for a new report on African Internet Resiliency that will be released before 15 March.
Q: What can we expect in 2021 for Internet governance?
A: 2021 will be an important year in terms of Internet governance. Several issues must be monitored such as the reform of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) and the appointment of the UN Tech Envoy. The UN Security discussions (UN GGE and OEWG) are also important to monitor.
We are also watching several international negotiations such as the International Telecommunication Union’s (ITU) World Telecommunication Development Conference (WTDC) and World Telecommunication Standardization Assembly (WTSA) (though the later has been postponed to next year).
Q: Contrary to the prevailing belief, Europe, including my country Bulgaria, have areas in mountains and less inhabited regions that remain disconnected either the prices of Telecoms become more unaffordable. With citizens leaving the big cities because of the pandemic, rural areas become crucial for work-life balance for young generation. Does Internet Society partner the EU in respect of rural infrastructure?
We do work with partners in the EU. We have several excellent examples of community networks in your region and in neighboring countries. We work with a Community Network in Greece called Sarantaporo.gr and another Community Network in the Republic of Georgia (see this article). We can connect you with experts from those networks so that you can hear directly from them as they have built, maintained, and sustained those networks. Please reach out to Max Stucchi ([email protected]) or Juan Peirano ([email protected]) and they can connect you with experts in the community. Please note that we are working on Community Network case studies with our partners that will be on our Community Network landing page.
Q: The metaphor of not being able to just turn on Internet after turning it off is really suggestive. Can I find this argument elaborated in some written article, blog post or similar? How does this argument apply to regulation of Internet in countries that are not into turning off Internet, but only weakening encryption, initiating central control on the infrastructure, breaching the privacy of Internet users, etc?
A: I don’t think we’ve elaborated this specific metaphor too much yet (but watch for it!), but you make a really important point. This is all related to the ongoing work on the Internet Way of Networking. It is not just the issue of “turning off” the Internet, but all the efforts to make the real Internet harder to use or to try to make it tightly controlled. It is not only governments that attempt this: various large corporations have also found themselves in trouble with their user base because of changed rules of engagement or privacy considerations or the like. Users have choices, and the Internet makes those choices easier. As long as we have a healthy, open Internet using open protocols and not controlled by and for a few large interests, ordinary people will retain the ability to choose a different platform, a different tool, or a different service to achieve what they want. That is what we must keep striving to maintain, because if we lose this precious system it will not disappear in a moment. It will instead fade away through careless neglect of all the essential properties that make the Internet such a marvel.
Q: How do you think it could be possible to avoid the Content Networks distribution being an oligopoly and dominating the Internet definitively?
A: It’s true that it is difficult to offer a web service of any meaningful size without using a content distribution network (CDN). I’m not sure Internet Society has a perfect answer to this, as being able to serve billions of eyeballs necessarily means you will need more infrastructure than a single computer or web server can offer. We would point you to decentralized communications efforts like Matrix, which offer some interesting caching and distribution properties that can help with parts of this problem.
Q: Je pense qu’il faut déjà réfléchir autrement sur la question de la coupure d’internet. Par exemple envisager une liste noir pour ces pays avec possibilité de sanction autrement.
In English: I think we already have to think differently on the issue of Internet Shutdowns. For example, consider a “blacklist” for these countries with the possibility for sanctions otherwise.
A: There is increasing interest in “clubs” of countries for purposes like cybersecurity (pooling resources can allow more equitable access to attribution, services, and know-how) and using membership to potentially punish nations that violate the terms of membership (e.g., don’t attack other members). Check out some of the writing by Oona Hathaway and Scott Shapiro of Yale. You could imagine a “shutdowns club” or an aspect of an cybersecurity club or other kind of structure that would dissuade shutdowns. We would need to think about how much punishing a country that is effectively punishing itself by shutting off the Internet will really help or hurt their people.
Q: I’m working on the Solid project in France and in Europe. The interoperability of web applications seems to be the most promising way to retake possession of our web. Does the Internet Society have a focus on this?
A: That’s cool and I’m assuming this is Solid: https://solidproject.org/. I’ve seen a lot of attempts to create digital agents or agent-like structures for allowing or disallowing access to personal data. We have done some work on considerations regulators should keep in mind when mandating access to APIs, which is a big part of modern platform interoperability and the focus of attention in discussions around the EU’s proposed DSA legislation. Please get in touch with any feedback or potential areas to extend this work or learn from what you are doing.
Q: What kind of measures you would suggest to prevent online sexual abuse and exploitation of children in Bangladesh. Because the perpetrators are using online for exploitation.
A: Unfortunately, crime in the real world often finds its way in some form online, a lesson we learn each year with more and more people joining online environments. There is nothing specific that we can recommend here other than increased police work to track down victims, make them safe, and punish perpetrators. To do this, the police will need to learn much more about the underlying technology, what data it stores and does not store, and what firms or entities have information that can help them in their investigations. In short, we’ll have to fight crime online just like we fight crime offline: with dedicated law enforcement keeping one foot in front of the criminal element.
Q: Another big issue is when Big Tech does things to infringe on people’s privacy. As Internet Society what can we do to put this on check?
A: Many of us on staff at the Internet Society and in the community are technical privacy experts, and are well aware of the “digital exhaust” we leave in our wakes as we make our way around digital and online environments. Our Encryption project focuses on end-to-end encryption as a method to ensure that you know exactly who has access to your communications and what tools and devices support strong authentication and confidentiality. We support data protection legislation writ large, but don’t currently have any Action Plan projects working directly on consumer data privacy. We’d be happy to point you to organizations that do this work. (Note that we make decisions to not work in certain areas when there is already an active and healthy set of NGOs doing that work, and there are plenty of civil society orgs doing privacy work.)
Q: What about the own root-DNS in Russia?? That is dangerous too for a trusted internet!
A: Yes, part of our work in the Internet Way of Networking project recognizes that one of the critical properties of the Internet we all know and love is having a common global identifier set from the addressing of packets (IP) to naming of resources (DNS) and having disparate or fractured sets of identifiers can only lead to people seeing different things depending on where they are on the network, directly leading to a lack of trustworthiness in some cases. Check out our Use Case on Interconnection and Routing.
Q: Can we speak of the trust in the Internet when we know that certain platforms put conditional access to their software that obliges users to give certain personal information without knowing what could happen to it?
A: There is more than one answer to this, because there is more than one kind of choice here and more than one party in which we are placing trust.
In some cases, the access to the software is just a trade: a company will give you access to its software if you give it certain kinds of information. In this case, the issue is really one of understanding: do people know what they are giving up? Do they have clear ideas what the company will do with the data? Do they have remedies if the company doesn’t live up to its end of the bargain? And so on. Note, however, that this is not really about the Internet: it has to do with the behavior of certain companies, and companies have been making this sort of conditional trade from long before the Internet came along. The Internet makes some effects of this more obvious, because data combination is somewhat easier. But it isn’t really an issue of the Internet as such, even though it has profound effects for how people use the Internet. This is just like how things work with a street confidence man who does one of those ball-under-a-cup routines, where the ball is hidden under a cup and you have to spot where the ball is. That doesn’t mean you mistrust all cups or balls, but if you see someone with a table, 3 cups, and a little ball you make sure to check where your wallet is! But in each case, it is possible to choose whether to use that service or not (though admittedly, such choices are sometimes very hard because of network effects: if everyone else is using a service that you find invasive, it is hard to say no).
There are other cases where the information-collection is part of accessing the Internet altogether, or building different services (such as registering a domain name); and sometimes such data collection is even mandated by governments. In those cases, the trust question is more complicated. These are cases where it is really important that the policies are made with wide consultation and agreement from many stakeholders.
And there are things one can do to maximize privacy, such as using browsers with anti-tracking features, and rejecting services that are too invasive and selecting ones that are less invasive. One of the important technologies (not the only one!) that is important to this sort of privacy effort is strong, end-to-end encryption, which is why the Internet Society has prioritized that through one of the projects.
We hope to build trustworthiness into the Internet we work towards and advocate for – note that is different from trust which is a relationship between a human and a thing, rather than a property of the thing itself. We definitely support efforts to provide more clarity and transparency as to what is happening with personal data given to services and platforms to gain access or use them. For example, Apple will soon have for iOS apps a “nutrition label” that will be shown to the user before you install a new app. This will tell you quickly what the app developer and their partners do with your data, and should allow comparison across apps before install in their App Store. That’s a great example of innovation in terms of data transparency that will positively effect the trustworthiness of the underlying system.
Q: In the current situation due to pandemic, the education sector (teacher and student) are now major stakeholders as users. At the Internet Society is there any plan to empower teachers and work on student security and privacy and other issues? In other words, how does the Internet Society engage and support schools, students, and teachers in their Action Plan for 2025?
A: Thank you for the question. While we don’t have specific activities directed towards educators or students, we are hoping to offer an increasing suite of e-learning and training opportunities to our community that should be useful in terms of giving teachers and students more facility with Internet issues and topics. There are other NGOs we can point you to that do specific work on educational technology, cybersecurity, and privacy, although many of them have a very Western focus in their regional application (as education is highly regulated around the world).
Q: What was the thinking behind having grants channeled through Chapters rather than have individuals apply directly to the Internet Society Foundation?
A: Grants are not channeled through Chapters as a general rule. One kind of grant, the Beyond the Net series of grants, is reserved for Chapters, but other grants do not necessarily require Chapter involvement. To see what grant opportunities are available through the Foundation (it changes over time), please check the Foundation website. Our Chapters, I should note, are an important part of the Internet Society’s functioning and a critical part of the success we are able to have together, and we regard their involvement in much of our work as important and valuable.
Q: In terms of partnerships? How will Chapter level or initiated partnerships be formalized by the society? Is there a standard MOU or process for collaborations?
A: The Chapters are independent legal entities and can in that capacity set up local partnerships. Those partnerships are not formalized by the Internet Society, they would be partnerships between the Chapter and the partner. The MOU or agreement will need to comply with local legal requirements.
Q: Avec la nomination et la création de poste de nouveau envoyé de TECH de l’ONU , ISOC pourras faire de lobby pour mieux toucher les Gouvernement plus facilement sur la question de censure.
In English: With the appointment and the creation of a new UN Tech Envoy, could ISOC be able to lobby to better reach the Government more easily on the issue of censorship?
A: ISOC ne fait pas de lobbying. Ceci dit, ce sera imporrant pour nous d’établir une relation de confiance avec le nouvel envoyé de l’ONU car il aura un rôle sur le future de l’IGF et aussi sur la manière dont l’ONU va gérer les questions de sécurité. Nous avons de bonnes relations de travail avec l’ONU et cela devrait se poursuivre.
In English: The Internet Society does not lobby. That said, it will be important for us to establish a relationship of trust with the new UN Tech Envoy because he will have a role on the future of IGF and also on how the UN will manage security issues. We have a good working relationship with the UN and this should continue.