Re: United Nations report on Internet standards

[Fred Baker <[e-mail]>]

Reading through this thread, the disconnect that the UN is talking about becomes very obvious. Vittorio posted his note, and got back quite a variety of commentary such as "governments want special access and veto power", which may be true of some governments but is certainly not universally true. However, nobody seems to have actually read page 57 of the document or thought about what is requested. Shame on us.

> On Mar 16, 2020, at 8:29 AM, Vittorio Bertola <vittorio.bertola=[e-mail]> wrote:
> 
> https://www.intgovforum.org/multilingual/index.php?q=filedepot_download/9615/2023
> 
> It formulates (section 8.1) six recommendations, of which the sixth is specifically aimed at the IETF and other Internet standards organizations:
> 
> "Standardisation processes are advised to include a consultation phase with government and industry policy makers, and civil society experts."
> 
> There is also a page (section 7.13) discussing "Communication from/to the IETF", and how to make it better.

Translation in single syllable words potentially understandable by mere mortals: they would like us to talk with them - not in marketing language, but in policy language. Is that so very hard?

Speaking for myself, I have been to Brussels a number of times, and to the UN in New York at least once. It has always been wearing a specific corporation's name badge, which would no longer be the case. In my experience, governments have not asked for special access to the standards process, nor sought to veto things the IETF is doing. They have made requests - in IETF 39, in Munich, a representative of the European Commission was given an opportunity to speak in the plenary, and told us that if we didn't do something about spam, governments would (which governments have, as ineffectively as we have), and in a meeting with the UN Al-Quada Task Force, I found myself explaining that interpreting encrypted messages, especially such as pngs etc, in real time is pretty challenging.

Speaking very much for myself: if my costs in doing so were covered and issues with travel shutdowns were set aside, I would be willing to help out with that kind of conversation. That said, I'll bet that there are people for whom travel is less of an issue that could step up, or common A/V technologies could be brought to bear.

Good grief.