Re: [hrpc] ***SPAM**** Re: Censorship

[Mallory Knodel <[e-mail]>]

Hi,

On 3/14/22 7:43 PM, Stephen Farrell wrote:
> On 14/03/2022 20:17, Jens Finkhaeuser wrote:
>> Bill's last reply and my reading of the paper suggests that the main
>> point here is to create a defensible position for network operators
>> against too much filtering: they can hardly be accused of doing
>> nothing if they filter something. And if the filters are created
>> carefully by a multi-stakeholder organization in full consideration
>> of their impact on human rights, calls for stricter measures
>> automatically cast a bad light on the party doing the calling - and
>> network operators may use that in the Internet's favour.
> But aside from considering efficacy, do we have any examples
> of blocklists for which the evidence justifying a block, and
> all the process steps leading to a decision to add an entry,
> are public?

I have seen leaked lists but none are public. Some stretching into the 
tens of thousands. Some mandatory, some as guidance.

This speaks to yet another paradox of this exercise. If you publish the 
blocklist and make recommendations on how to do it technically then you 
are facilitating circumvention. As Andrew said before, you can be 
proportionate (and accountable) but then you are ineffective.

This itself is a proportionality test. And I don't believe the authors 
have presented a tradeoff that is proportionate given the political 
risks. I'll answer Bill's previous question to me about political risks. 
In the case of censoring, or boycotting through internet cutoff, the 
Russian military, you are:

  * Provoking Russia on national security and it will have ramifications 
at the UN on the cybercrime treaty and any future hope of a 
cybersecurity treaty,

  * Giving Russia an excuse to continue building its own internet, 
splintering further away,

  * Undermining civil society's prior positioning firmly against all 
internet censorship even to advocate for carve outs in sanctions,

  * Normalising blocking by intermediaries that haven't the in-house 
capacity to take a political position, when instead we should be helping 
build their capacity to resist unjust blocking,

  * Moving out of alignment what is best for the internet and what is 
best for people,

  * Making more incoherent messaging and guidance about is "right" to 
do, not less.

  * Abstracting the nascent capacity to govern the internet with 
political considerations away from where those decisions should instead 
be made.

> It might be that if the proponents here fleshed out the idea
> another level deeper, then it'd be easier to understand just
> what's envisaged. Personally, I can't really see how to setup
> anything resembling what's envisaged, but I may be missing
> something.

This is what I have said, though not to the list: Follow through with 
the blocklist as proposed. Who are you waiting for to start this work?

As Bill said, no one has to ask permission to do things like this on the 
internet. So do the thing. Form your group and give the world a 
blocklist. Of course you'll never get the civil society sector to come 
to consensus about it, so you can't call it that (as you do in your 
letter). The list will represent the views of the people who are in the 
group. If your advice has managed to persuade everyone, is valuable, is 
actionable and makes a difference, then your idea will succeed.

Gentle reminder to everyone in the discussion that we are meant here to 
identify research topics related to human rights and internet protocols.

My view on that is that I do see potential here, but it is as I have 
said already: what's important is for each existing internet governance 
body to identify objectionable behaviour within its mandate and to 
document how objectionable behaviour is actioned. HRPC could could 
survey the existing space for best practice and how that has already 
been done. Then outline how existing guidance might play out in various 
scenarios like war, what we think might be missing, and make 
recommendations for how to do fill those gaps.

-Mallory

-- 
Mallory Knodel
CTO, Center for Democracy and Technology
gpg fingerprint :: E3EB 63E0 65A3 B240 BCD9 B071 0C32 A271 BD3C C780