Global outrage against recent revelations of mass surveillance by the
U.S. government, which sparked discussions for a review of global
surveillance guidelines, has led the Brazilian government to reach out
to the Indian government for support for its proposal to host a one-off
global summit, scheduled for early May 2014.
The move follows President Dilma Rouseff’s angry speech on U.S. surveillance at the U.N. General Assembly in September.
When contacted by The Hindu, Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson
Syed Akbaruddin confirmed the news. The surveillance issue had also come
up during External Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid’s visit to Brazil
in October. Mr. Khurshid and his Brazilian counterpart had “expressed
their concern” on the issue. These meetings were held in the week
following ICANN CEO Fadi Chehadé’s first visit to Brazil and meeting
with Ms. Rouseff, that resulted in the proposal for the Brazilian
“summit,” which caught all countries and Internet communities unawares.
Even ICANN’s closest constituencies — ISOC and IETF — have no clarity on
the timing, purpose, process and outcome of such a one-off summit.
Apart from India, Brazil is also reportedly in touch with other
countries such as South Korea, Australia and now more likely, Germany,
after it recently came to light that the U.S. may have monitored
Chancellor Angela Merkel’s phone for over a decade.
ICANN held multiple meetings along with the heads of ISOC and IETF last
week at the Internet Governance Forum in Bali, Indonesia to answer the
questions of various stakeholders. Business and civil society remained
sceptical about the meeting, given Brazil’s support for the ITU Treaty
and inter-governmental model for Internet governance, with fears that
this meet was being engineered to strengthen multilateral control of the
Internet without a clear process for multi-stakeholder participation in
decision-making.
Widespread scepticism
Scepticism at the Brazilian summit became acute as multiple tweets and
webcasts from the IGF in Bali showed that the Brazilian delegation
remained unclear about their stance on the multilateral versus
multi-stakeholder model of Internet governance, often using the words
interchangeably.
India’s concerns are graver. This is because, if surveillance, rather
than evaluation of a multistakeholder model for transitioning Internet
governance, remains the main issue of the Brazilian conference — in line
with President Rouseff’s U.N. speech and based on the Brazilian
delegation’s statements in Bali — this would bring India’s Central
Monitoring System (CMS) into focus.
An investigative report by The Hindu, ‘India’s surveillance project may
be as lethal as PRISM’, published on June 21, revealed that the CMS was
second only to PRISM in terms of size, lethal capability and an
extraordinary ability for intrusion into citizens’ privacy, without much
detail or guidelines in the public domain. Even at the IGF last week,
the CMS attracted criticism for its opaque surveillance procedures.
Indian stakeholders favour removing the U.S. government’s control over
ICANN, even though that may not be directly linked to the predominant
issue of surveillance, which has sparked the present anger sweeping
global capitals. However, apart from a stronger role for the Government
Advisory Committee (GAC), there is no clear roadmap for realigning
ICANN. It is unclear whether the Brazil summit will deal with both
surveillance and ICANN’s internationalisation, or predominantly review
global surveillance procedures.
India’s dilemma
The External Affairs Ministry did not confirm if India has decided to
support the Brazilian effort. However, if it does, it will be at the
risk of defending criticism against CMS-related surveillance, while
agreeing to attack the Americans on PRISM. The Indian government has
been either defensive of, or silent on, the PRISM program since it has
benefitted from the program.
Global businesses and the civil society seem comfortable discussing
surveillance openly, but if governments — nearly all of whom engage in
widespread surveillance — will support such discussion remains a
mystery. Since the meeting in Brazil is proposed for May 2014, right in
the middle of India’s general election, the likelihood of any senior
political or bureaucratic heads leading India’s delegation also looks
dim.
X art by WB7
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