Policy Matters: Pakistan Web ban: YouTube mostly an education tool, LHC told

By Rana Tanveer

YouTube has been banned in Pakistan since September 2012. PHOTO: EXPRESS/FILE

LAHORE: The number of people who accessed the Innocence of Muslims clip on YouTube is a tiny fraction of the number who used it to access educational and Islamic content, the Lahore High Court was told last week as it heard a petition challenging the ban on the video-sharing website.

The website was blocked almost a year ago after the film sparked widespread outrage in Pakistan and other Muslim countries. The petitioner in the case at the LHC has argued that the ban is counter-productive as it limits access to a vital educational and research tool.

Last week, the court heard from amicus curiae (‘friend of the court’) Farieha Aziz, a director at NGO Bolo Bhi, about the educational content on YouTube and its use. She stated that many students and those who used the site for religious purposes were suffering due to the ban.

According to her research, there were 1,199,368,564 total worldwide views of content on selected Islamic and educational channels on YouTube. Innocence of Muslims drew 1,965,186 hits, or 0.164 per cent of the Islamic and educational channels.

Aziz said that several Pakistani universities maintained their own YouTube channels on which they posted videos for their students. It was not just their students that benefited, as anyone with an internet connection could access them on YouTube.

Channels hosting content from six institutions – Virtual University (VU), Institute of Chartered Accountants of Pakistan (ICAP), Khan Academy, Lahore University of Management Sciences (Lums), Quaid-i-Azam University, National University of Sciences and Technology – had 13,049,489 views.

The Institute of Business Management has posted videos of conferences and seminars they host on campus. Lums has posted documentaries, events and activities that take place on campus, and lectures by guest speakers. The VU channels includes videos on a range of subjects from accounting to sociology. The ICAP has posted seminars on corporate governance and the budget and workshops on audit practice.

Aziz said that YouTube was a vital teaching tool in modern times. Teachers referred students to videos on the site that covered aspects of topics not covered in class. Students use the site for video tutorials, crash courses, documentaries and lectures to help them with difficulties they encounter in a particular subject in class. “The availability of such content on YouTube helps students gain knowledge, learn, understand and revise subjects and topics,” she said.

The site allows students to see things they wouldn’t be able to otherwise, like chemical reactions that would be too dangerous or expensive to demonstrate in class. It hosts all videos on just about every subject and can be accessed by anyone at any time, regardless of financial constraints. There are videos explaining how various programmes like Photoshop and InDesign work, and how-to videos and documentaries like TedTalks, National Geographic and The Green Brothers.

Education vs entertainment

Bolo Bhi also did a survey from July 26 to July 31 of Internet usage in Pakistan, receiving 250 responses. The highest number of respondents were students (41.60%), followed by professionals, employed persons, businesspersons and self-employed persons (total 43.20%). Academics and media users were 12%. Government employees and law enforcement made up 3.2% of the sample size.

Some 82.8% of respondents said they used the internet for educational purposes, compared to 76.8% who used it for entertainment. Some 26.4% of the respondents used the web to access religious content. Ninety-four per cent of the participants said they used YouTube, Dailymotion and other video-sharing sites.

Aziz said more than one billion unique users visit YouTube each month and watch six billion hours of video. Seventy per cent of the viewership is from outside of the United States.

Aziz also submitted four letters to the court to show how the ban was affecting professionals as well as ordinary people. The first three – by a team of young entrepreneurs who run ToffeeTv.com, a site containing Urdu songs and stories for children; an IT consultant; and a marketing consultant – talk about how the ban is affecting their business. The fourth, by an illiterate driver who catches up on the news through YouTube, shows how the site was being used by a diverse group of people.

Bolo Bhi describes itself as a non-profit organisation geared towards advocacy, policy and research in gender rights, government transparency, internet access, digital security and privacy.

Technical meeting

The court had at an earlier hearing set up a meeting between Bytes for All, the petitioner, and the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA), to explore technical solutions for the blocking and unblocking of URLs. Experts from the Ministry of Information Technology, the PTA, Pakistan Telecommunications Limited (PTCL), Trans-world Associates (which operates a cable landing station in Pakistan), the Centre for Advanced Research in Engineering, and the Internet Service Providers Association of Pakistan also attended the meeting.

The experts agreed that the two cable landing station operators in Pakistan – the PTCL and the TWA – would both have to carry out blocking efforts together. The operators and all major internet service providers are capable of managing and blocking HTTP URIs manually, but the process is cumbersome. The PTA representative stated that there was no system deployed within Pakistan capable of blocking viewership of the offending movie without disrupting other HTTPs’ traffic.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 12^th, 2013.

Policy Matter: Pakistan - Students, others suffering from YouTube ban: Court told

By Rana Tanveer

PHOTO: FILE

LAHORE: Farieha Aziz, amicus curiae on a case challenging the ban on video sharing website YouTube, told the Lahore High Court that a number of students and other internet users were suffering in Pakistan ever since the website was blocked in the country after the release of a blasphemous video. 

Farieha Aziz, director of Bolo Bhi, was speaking before the Lahore High Court in a petition challenging the ban on YouTube.

Stressing upon the need to reopen access to YouTube, Aziz said that there were 13,049,489 views on YouTube for videos from just six educational institutions in Pakistan that used the website to place their video lectures. The institutions included the Virtual University of Pakistan, The Institute of Chartered Accountants Pakistan, Lahore University of Management Sciences, Quaid-i-Azam University Islamabad, National University of Sciences and Technology, she said.

She said that various Pakistani universities maintained their own YouTube channels on which they posted videos related to academics and school activities. The videos benefit not just students enrolled at specific institutes, but anyone with access to YouTube, she said.

Aziz said that the total number of views for Islamic and educational content on YouTube were 1,199,368,564, while the total worldwide views of the objectionable film, The Innocence of Muslims, on YouTube were 1,965,186, just 0.164 percent of the former.

Additionally, she said that more than one billion unique users visit YouTube each month to watch six billion hours of videos that belong to different categories, most of which contribute to knowledge acquisition.

She said that 70% of that traffic and viewership was from outside of the United States.

Aziz submitted the information under title of ‘Internet Usage Study’ carried out by Bolo Bhi within a period of six days.

Aziz added that YouTube was used by students in Pakistan as a tool to supplement their academics.

She said that YouTube hosted a diverse range of available content from lectures to seminars, and “how to” videos to documentaries posted by professionals such as TEDTalks and National Geographic. The leading universities in the world also had their own YouTube channels where they post subject-related content, she said.

Giving details of the study, Farieha said that Bolo Bhi conducted the study from July 26 to July 31 on the use of internet in Pakistan, in particular the use of video-sharing platforms. The survey received 250 responses of which 41.60% were students, the highest in number. These were followed by professionals, those employed, entrepreneurs and self-employed, that represented 43.20% of the respondents. Twelve percent were from the media and the academia, while the remaining 3.2% included government and law enforcement officials.

She said that the educational use of YouTube (82.8%) was higher than that of its use for entertainment, which was 76.8%.

Aziz also submitted four letters from different people to the court. The first letter was from the owner of ToffeeTv.com, an entrepreneurial online venture by a team of young women based out of Karachi who develop songs, stories and activities for children between the ages of 0-12 in Urdu.

The second letter was by an IT consultant who had previously been involved in drafting policies on IT and Telecom for the government. In his letter, he indicates the danger in relying on proxies to access YouTube and other banned websites, as they left one’s machine open to viruses and malware.

The fourth letter was by a driver by profession, who had access to a computer that his employer owned, stating that he used YouTube to catch up on the news of the day. The letter stated that even though he could not read or write English, he had no difficulty in operating a computer or accessing YouTube, before it was blocked. Each of the four were suffering like many others after YouTube was blocked, she said.

A meeting was held between Bytes for All, the petitioner, and Pakistan Telecommunication Authority on the instructions of the LHC to explore possible technical solutions for blocking and unblocking of the URLs of objectionable content.

Experts of the Ministry of Information Technology, PTA, PTCL, Trans-world Associates, Center for Advanced Research in Engineering, and Internet Service Providers Association of Pakistan attended the meeting.

It was concluded that there were two cable landing station operators in Pakistan, PTCL and TWA, whose traffic did not converge at one single point. Therefore, any blocking efforts would have to be carried out by both operators respectively. The two landing station operators and all major internet service providers were capable of managing and blocking ‘blasphemous’ URLs, once identified, manually.

PTA’s representative stated in the meeting that there was no system within Pakistan that was capable of blocking the trailer to The Innocence of Muslims video without disrupting other internet traffic.

Source: http://tribune.com.pk/story/588300/court-told-students-others-suffering-from-youtube-ban/

Policy Matters: THE NEED FOR A HIGH-LEVEL STRATEGIC VISION FOR INTERNET GOVERNANCE, 2015–2020 (Part 1)

THE NEED FOR A HIGH-LEVEL STRATEGIC VISION FOR INTERNET GOVERNANCE, 2015–2020 (Part 1)
The Internet has never been an ungoverned space. Even in its earliest days, it had “rules of the road.” In fact, if not for such rules, the Internet would not — could not — exist. Peering agreements, the naming and numbering system, and packet handling protocols are only some of the critical rules that make the Internet possible and regulate its operation. Equally important, however, is the observation that current standards are not the only possible set of such arrangements. As Laura DeNardis (2009) explained in Protocol Politics, technical protocols are inextricably political.
The novel nature of the technology, combined with an initial lack of obvious mass social purposes, provided the researchers, engineers and other technologists that comprised the bulk of the original Internet community with a great deal of autonomy in creating and operating its first governance structure.1 Early Internet governance arrangements were thus primarily the product of a decentralized social network in which authority emerged on the basis of specialized expertise, and problems were typically understood as exclusively technical in nature.2
As a result of the social endowments provided by these “parental” influences, current Internet governance arrangements reflect a particular set of values: resilience, openness and interoperability, high potential for anonymity, content neutrality and disregard for national borders in the routing of information between users. These values are at odds, at least in some significant respects, not only with domestic expectations in some states about freedom of expression and the handling of information, but also with central rules and norms of the international system, including classical understandings of state sovereignty.3

These tensions were emerging by the time of the initial World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), which met in Geneva in 2003 for its first phase, with the second phase held in Tunis in 2005. In the intervening years, a number of trends have combined to exacerbate these issues. First, Internet technology penetration rates have increased significantly in all but the most authoritarian and impoverished states.4 This trend is almost certain to continue; however, even today the changing cultural composition of global Internet users means that new voices (and in some cases different values) are being heard in Internet governance debates and processes. This can be expected to result in a differently governed Internet — although the nature and extent of the change has not yet been determined. Second, the last seven to 10 years have seen considerable maturation of Internet services aimed at mass publics — e-commerce, social networking and cloud computing are obvious examples. Third, multiple critical infrastructure systems are now dependent on the Internet in significant, albeit varying, ways: financial markets and banks, oil and gas production and distribution networks, as well as power grids are vulnerable, as are major transportation and logistics systems. Fourth, there has been significant expansion of what might be termed the Internet’s “dark side.”This label includes an array of activities performed by a variety of actors for a number of purposes; the common thread is that they are socially undesirable. Cybercrime — including fraud, identity theft, and the creation and operation of illegal botnets — is becoming increasingly widespread and more sophisticated (Glenny, 2011). Multiple reports have shed light on cyber-espionage practices conducted either by states or state agents. There are recent indications that these activities have moved beyond information gathering to include probing for vulnerabilities in both government and private sector networks (Information Warfare Monitor, 2009; Mandiant, 2013). Further, although the evidence is fragmentary, there is reason to suspect that several states have conducted or authorized actual cyber

attacks.5 More governments are working to establish and enhance their capabilities to conduct such operations.
As a result of these pressures and tensions, as well as the desire to monetize the Internet to their advantage (or at least the advantage of their corporations), states have increasingly become determined to exert influence and authority over Internet governance. The contractual arrangement between the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (part of the United States Department of Commerce) and the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the California-based non-profit that oversees naming and numbering, has also served to complicate the legitimacy of the current system for Internet governance and to generate demand for a more global alternative.

The desire to extend state control over Internet governance is widely shared, even by advanced industrial economies. The Internet is now simply too important to leave entirely to the technologists.There are, however, significant differences among states with respect to their preferences over the substantive content of such change. The December 2012 World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT) held in Dubai, confirmed the existence of complex fault lines in the international community.
A broad coalition led by Russia and China engineered the adoption of updated International Telecommunications Regulations (ITRs) as well as International Telecommunications Union (ITU) resolutions affirming an expanded state role in Internet governance, and empowering the ITU to further debate and discuss Internet issues. This coalition attracted broad participation from the developing world, including key support from Arab states; however, it also included key emerging economies such as South Korea, Indonesia, Turkey, Brazil, Argentina and Mexico. A smaller group of states (including key advanced industrial democracies such as the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Sweden and New Zealand, joined by a number of other states including India and Kenya) refused to accept either the new ITRs or the accompanying non-binding resolutions (Pfanner, 2012).

There are, undoubtedly, power politics at play in producing these coalitions. Russia and China seek to relocate Internet governance to an institution in which American influence is attenuated, at least in comparison to its current legal and normative dominance of ICANN and its normative influence over the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). The United States clearly understands and opposes this attempt by the Russians and the Chinese. In another indication that the two coalitions are not separated purely by principle, the advanced industrial democracies have greatly expanded their technical and legal ability to monitor both the online activity of their own citizens and of foreigners, often over the objections of domestic civil society groups. Attempts to enforce intellectual property laws have also drawn determined opposition (Wortham, 2012). The existence and success of that opposition, however, is a clear indicator that value-based differences among states on Internet governance issues remain highly consequential. It is not purely a cynical matter of national advantage-seeking.

The contemporary politics of Internet governance are also not as simple as the impression that emerged of mutually exclusive camps from the WCIT, for a number of reasons. Eighty-nine states signed the 2012 ITRs, while 55 states announced publicly that they would not. This leaves roughly 50 (admittedly minor) states officially undecided on the matter. Further, even the signatories need to complete the process of ratifying the treaty. Some may yet be persuaded to reconsider. Most important, while the WCIT matters, it is hardly the final word on Internet governance. Indeed, 2013 has already seen modest success at the World Technology Policy Forum in Geneva, as well as positive developments from the United Nations Group of Governmental Experts. The 2013 Internet Governance Forum, 2014 ITU Plenipotentiary and the ongoing decennial review of the WSIS (culminating in 2015) will also provide opportunities for further progress.
Finally, Internet governance is not only a function of state positions. Elements of the global community of Internet users have shown they are prepared to engage in disruptive behaviour in response

to unwelcome efforts to change the status quo.6 Broader civil society groups are also becoming increasingly engaged. A range of corporate interests are pursuing their own agendas, some of which are in direct conflict. Network operators, Internet service companies, equipment manufacturers, intellectual property holders, insurers and others all have significant stakes in Internet governance outcomes. The divisions among corporate actors are geographic as well as sectoral. Legacy telecommunication firms (many of them state-owned and many of these in the developing world) face daunting competition from the migration of voice communication to Internet networks; network operators in some areas of the developing world (such as the Middle East) also act as key intermediaries for the routing of information between advanced industrial economies, and are eager to monetize this transshipment role. This heterogeneous array of interested actors simultaneously complicates the process of reaching agreement and creates opportunities for the assembly of unorthodox coalitions.
Capitalizing on these various opportunities to update and refine global governance of the Internet will require skillful, coordinated diplomacy in a protracted and contentious process of rule-making that has clear implications for human rights, the future course of the global economy and for international security. This paper aims to contribute to this process. It begins with a brief description of the incumbent Internet governance institutions, and then provides an analysis of prospects for rule-making in Internet governance. It concludes by articulating the need for a high-level strategic vision of Internet governance consistent with democratic values and human rights.

THE LEGACY SYSTEM OF INTERNET GOVERNANCE
Discussion of Internet governance tends to focus disproportionately on ICANN, which plays a central, but limited, role in administering the global system of naming and addressing. There is a range of other key actors that also play indispensable governance roles. Among them are a number of other non-state actors. The IETF develops, approves and promulgates vital technical standards that govern packet handling and exchange, among other issues. The World Wide Web Consortium (known as W3C) plays a similar standard-setting role specifically for the Web. Without uniform standards, the Internet would not be globally interoperable. If standards were not of high quality, the Internet would have diminished functionality.
In addition, private network operators (including commercial Internet service providers [ISPs] and companies that provide“over-the-top”[OTT] online services , such as Google or Instagram) also perform governance roles. For example, interconnection between network operators is privately governed, often on the basis of informal, unwritten agreements that provide for the exchange of traffic on the basis of reciprocity rather than payment. This practice is referred to as“settlement-free peering.”To facilitate stable, low-cost exchange of traffic, industry has also played a key role (alongside the Internet Society,known as ISOC, and the ITU) in encouraging the creation and maintenance of Internet exchange points. OTT service providers perform content filtering by virtue of their roles as information intermediaries. Terms of service adopted by large market players shape what a user will see online, whether in search results (for example, Google, Yahoo or Bing), in streaming video (YouTube) or shared photos (Facebook,

Instagram or Flickr, among others). Both ISPs and OTT providers are, increasingly, called on to engage with law enforcement and security services to provide information about the activities of their users. Finally, governments play an often indirect role in governing the Internet, largely through law enforcement activity, competition policy and judicial review of individual lawsuits.
The critical point is that Internet governance is complex and highly decentralized, as illustrated by the examples above. Efforts to cut through this complexity typically begin and end with the assertion that the Internet is governed in a“multi-stakeholder” (rather than a multilateral) fashion. A great deal of care should be taken when using this terminology, for three reasons.
First, it is certainly true that non-state actors, both for-profit and not-for-profit, play critical roles in Internet governance; however, this is not unique to this issue area. Private actors play major governance roles with respect to the global financial system, the International Committee of the Red Cross plays an important role in managing the legal regime governing conduct in armed conflict, and NGOs help individual states and international organizations provide crucial goods and services to large populations in the developing world. Each of these issues (finance, laws of war and development) could thus be described, to varying degrees, as examples of multi-stakeholder governance.

Second, these examples illustrate that the involvement of multiple kinds of stakeholders is not sufficient to ensure good governance. The aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis demonstrated the perils of industry self-regulation or regulatory capture; similarly, the highly uneven record of international development efforts shows that a combination of state and non-state actors is not necessarily able to deliver goods and services efficiently or effectively. 

Notes

1 For an overview of this history, see Barry M. Leiner et al. (2012),“A Brief History of the Internet,”available at: www.internetsociety. org/internet/what-internet/history-internet/brief-history-internet.
2 Such networks or “epistemic communities” have been previously studied by international relations scholars in other issue areas. See, for example, Peter M. Haas (1992),“Introduction: Epistemic Communities and International Policy Coordination,” International Organization 46, no. 1: 1–35.

3 On sovereignty, see Jens Bartelson (1995), A Genealogy of Sovereignty, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; Hedley Bull (1977), The Anarchical Society, New York: Columbia University Press; Andreas Osiander (2001), “Sovereignty, International Relations, and the Westphalian Myth,” International Organization 55, no. 2: 251–287; Daniel Philpott (2001), Revolutions in Sovereignty: How Ideas Shaped Modern International Relations, Princeton: Princeton University Press; and Hendrik Spruyt (1996), The Sovereign State and its Competitors: An Analysis of Systems Change, Princeton: Princeton University Press.
4 For one estimate, see World Bank, “World Development Indicators,” Internet Users (per 100 people), available at http://data. worldbank.org.
5 On Stuxnet, see David Sanger (2012), “Obama Order Sped Up Wave of Cyberattacks Against Iran,” New York Times, June 1, available at: www.nytimes.com/2012/06/01/world/middleeast/obama- ordered-wave-of-cyberattacks-against-iran.html?_r=2&pagewanted =2&seid=auto&smid=tw-nytimespolitics&pagewanted=all. On the Mahdi malware, see Nicole Perlroth (2012),“Cyber Attacks from Iran and Gaza on Israel More Threatening than Anonymous’s Efforts,” Bits Blog, November 20, http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/11/20/cyber-attacks- from-iran-and-gaza-on-israel-more-threatening-than-anonymouss- efforts/. On the Flame malware, see Nicole Perlroth (2012),“Researchers Find Clues in Malware,” New York Times, May 30, available at: www. nytimes.com/2012/05/31/technology/researchers-link-flame-virus-to- stuxnet-and-duqu.html. For information on the Aramco attacks, see Nicole Perlroth (2012), “In Cyberattack on Saudi Firm, U.S. Sees Iran Firing Back,” New York Times, October 23, available at: www.nytimes. com/2012/10/24/business/global/cyberattack-on-saudi-oil-firm- disquiets-us.html?pagewanted=all. Russia is thought to have employed offensive cyber operations against both Estonia and Georgia. See, respectively,“A Cyber-riot”(2007), The Economist, May 10, available at: www.economist.com/node/9163598, and John Markoff (2008), “Before the Gunfire, Cyberattacks,” New York Times, August 12, available at: www.nytimes.com/2008/08/13/technology/13cyber.html.
6 For example, the WCIT spawned Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks against the ITU website. See Associated Press (2012), “Hackers Said to Hit United Nations Telecoms Talks in Dubai,” Huffington Post, December 12, available at: www.huffingtonpost. com/2012/12/06/hackers-united-nations-_n_2250364.html.



ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Mark Raymond
Mark Raymond joined CIGI as a research fellow in August 2012. He has a B.A. in political science and international relations from the University of Western Ontario and an M.A. and Ph.D. in political science from the University of Toronto, and he has taught international relations at the University of Toronto and the University of Waterloo. His research interests include international law and organization, international security and international history, including the history of global governance.
At CIGI, Mark contributes to the Global Security Program. Specifically, he is developing CIGI’s work in the area of Internet security and governance.
Gordon Smith
A political science graduate of McGill University (B.A.) and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Ph.D.), Gordon Smith became interested in international security and global interdependence while attending university in the United States during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. After graduation, Gordon returned to Canada to work on these issues, and began a long and distinguished career as a public servant with the federal government.
Initially, Gordon worked on Canada’s relationship with NATO and the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) within the Ministry of Defence and Department of External Affairs, but he quickly advanced to more demanding positions in the Privy Council Office. In 1979, Gordon became the deputy under-secretary of state at External Affairs, and in 1985, deputy minister. Shortly thereafter, he was dispatched to Brussels as the permanent representative and ambassador to the Canadian delegation to NATO, and subsequently, was named Canada’s ambassador to the European Union.
Returning to Canada in 1994, Gordon was appointed deputy minister of Foreign Affairs, where he fondly remembers establishing a global issues bureau in the ministry to better understand emerging transnational trends affecting Canada. During this time, Gordon began

his personal involvement with the G7/G8, as the Sherpa (personal representative) for the prime minister at the G7/ G8 summits in Halifax, Lyon and Denver. After retiring from the Government of Canada that same year, Gordon joined the University of Victoria as executive director of the Centre for Global Studies (CFGS), and was appointed chair of the board of governors at the International Development Research Centre. During this period, he also lectured as a visiting professor at the Diplomatic Academy of the University of Westminster in London and Paris.
After collaborating with the think tank for many years on various projects, Gordon joined CIGI in 2010 as a distinguished fellow, and has since been a key contributor to its G20 research activities, events and publications. He looks forward to continuing this work at CIGI, and pursuing another long-time interest: the convergence of technology and global affairs (you can follow Gordon on Twitter @GordonSmithG20). 

Source: http://www.cigionline.org/sites/default/files/no1_4.pdf

Policy Matters: The World of Internet Threats Is Constantly Changing

Don Blumenthal

The world of Internet threats has changed continually over the years. From the time that a "worm" first showed up in the wild, or whenever someone penetrated a system without authorization for the first time, various forms of attacks and malware have presented dangers to the system and those who use it.

Different vectors have received varied focus over the years. Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks and botnets have received significant headlines recently. Many parts of the Internet community have been involved in addressing relevant issues and fostering efforts to combat them. Public Interest Registry has made it a priority to be part of those efforts. We have been active generally among the anti-abuse community, attending programs such as at the National Cyber Forensics and Training Alliance in Pittsburgh, PA, and the Organization of American States in Washington, DC. We also sponsored and participated in a DDoS forum, Mitigating DDoS Attacks, A Global Challenge, in New York last December, as well as anti-botnet workshops conducted by the Online Trust Alliance.

Most recently, we have worked to foster conversations through organizing panels at Anti-Phishing Working Group meetings in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and Buenos Aires, Argentina. These panels brought experts together from around the world so that they could share their experience and expertise. The Buenos Aires program, for example, included representatives of the .co and .cl registries, cert.br, a malware researcher from Brazil, a representative of the Argentinian ISP association, and an expert in European anti-malware efforts. A member of the Buenos Aires Metropolitan Police cyber unit also contributed from the floor. In addition, I shared some of what I have learned during my time with Internet law enforcement,the Federal Trade Commission, and subsequent work.

These initiatives did not produce epiphanies on solving botnet issues, and it appears that the problem is not going to be solved through panels, meetings or studies. However, the problem can be addressed through what happens at these events in order to help the work progress forward. Some concepts have been clear through our involvement:

1. Any activities must be a continuing effort. Botnet and DDoS attack vectors continue to evolve.
2. Education is essential — whether it be to policy makers, law enforcement, or members of the private sector. Misinformation from speakers, particularly in the policy arena that is so essential to advancing programs and providing resources, is all too frequent at conferences. The problem was apparent at a recent program at which an official overstated the costs of getting a botnet into operation by a factor of 100. It's less difficult than he understood, which could affect resource allocation recommendations that he might make.
3. Neither the private nor public anti-abuse sector alone holds the solution. They have varying areas of expertise, resources, and authority. Conferences, panels, and other efforts have proven the value of consulting and even working together. They provide knowledge also in addition to key contacts, familiarity, and the trust that is essential to fostering cooperation, especially on efforts that may be sensitive.
4. No one government or nation's private community holds the solution. The Internet and threats to it obviously cross borders. It perhaps is easier for the private sector to work cross-border than for law enforcement, but more opportunities must be available that foster the cooperation. This work is important, no onlyfor addressing existing threats where they are long established, but also for information sharing in areas that may be relatively new to organized abuse activities. For example, the United States and Europe are common first thoughts when addressing malware. However, a recent Trend Micro study showed a growing threat level in Latin America.
5. All sectors of the Internet infrastructure, registries, registrars, ISPs, etc., have parts to play, some of which may or may not fit together. Their ability to attack the problems vary because of such considerations as laws, contracts, and levels of direct contact with corporate or individual victims, but there always is a benefit to knowing about both overlapping and parallel efforts.
6. Sometimes groups, constituencies, or entities have anti-botnet or other anti-malware efforts that need to be kept insular for various reasons such as pending private lawsuits. These efforts should not be positioned or carried out in a way that threatens the good work of others. Prior communication is essential in order to ensure that a large-scale initiative does not interfere with or destroy other ongoing efforts.

These points are lessons from our observations, and should not be considered a comprehensive list. No list could be, truly because of the changing nature and increasing sophistication of threats to the Internet. For this reason, Public Interest Registry will continue to work with the Internet community to do our part in combatting botnets, DDoS attacks, and other critical threats to the Internet as they evolve.

By Don Blumenthal, Senior Policy Advisor at PIR

Related topics: Cyberattack, DDoS, Registry Services, Malware, Security, Top-Level Domains

Policy matters: ‘Government must take a stance on YouTube ban’ - Pakistan

Despite the fact that access to YouTube and controversial films has been formally blocked in Pakistan, they can still be viewed. PHOTO: lhc.gov.pk

LAHORE: 

The Lahore High Court appears to be taking a clear view on the matter of banning access to YouTube in Pakistan. Earlier this week, several top officials in charge of regulating internet services in the country were summoned to court on the matter.

The banning of YouTube is a policy issue, Justice Mansoor Ali Shah observed, the government must take a position on the internet policy, keeping in view the constitutional, cultural and social norms of the people of Pakistan.

On August 2, the LHC summoned the information technology minister and the inter-ministerial committee secretary for August 7, to explain their position on the matter of restoring access to YouTube and blocking blasphemous content on it after the minister and the secretary did not appear for the hearing, despite court summons.

Earlier, the LHC had examined Google’s email to the Ministry of Information Technology that stated that content deemed offensive carried the warning: Viewer discretion is advised. The court observed that a possible solution to the matter was to ignore such content and move on.

The onus of taking the decision to unblock the website for internet users lay with the government, the LHC stated, “The policy the government will make should keep in mind that there is no way to effectively block information on the internet.”

Despite the fact that access to YouTube and controversial films has been formally blocked in Pakistan, they can still be viewed.

The court observed that considering this fact, the ban on YouTube did not achieve much.

IT experts Farieha Aziz and Khurram Zafar had informed the court that Virtual University (VU) served more than 13,900 subscribers through 7,000 educational videos that had been viewed over 11.5 million times. The Khan Academy had an online set up in Pakistan and as many as 1.2 million subscribers watched educational content through 3,600 videos that had been viewed at least 285 million times. They also submitted that the amount of offensive content reported from all countries to Google was approximately 9,000 out of 120 million videos.

YouTube was blocked 11 months ago in Pakistan following orders of then prime minister Raja Pervez Ashraf. Various segments of the society have since then demanded the restoration of access to the website.

Bar reaction

Last week, the Lahore High Court Bar Association adopted a resolution demanding action against three Supreme Court judges including the chief justice, for changing the schedule of the presidential elections.

The LHCBA general house had requested the acting president to send a reference to the Supreme Judicial Council against Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, Justice Jawwad Khawaja and Justice Azmat Saeed for ordering the change in election schedule which, according to the bar, did not fall in the apex court’s domain.

Recusal

Last week, an LHC judge refused to hear the bail application of Malik Ishaq, leader of Ahle Sunnat Wal Jamaat (formerly known as Lashkar-i-Jhangvi), after the petitioner’s counsel had objected to the court’s direction to the investigation officer. Bhakkar police had registered two FIRs against Ishaq and had arrested him three months ago.

He is accused of hate speech and trying to create unrest in the area.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 5^th, 2013.

Internet Governance: latest debate over who controls the internet - you or government

Internet governance is a hot topic at the moment. In the run up to the International Telecommunications Union’s World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT) last December, the idea of Internet governance became more widely known among the many who don’t participate in the concept as part of work or research. I’ve just come back from the ITU in Geneva where the World Telecommunication/ICT Policy Forum (WTPF) and the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) went on concurrently. These events were the latest in the debate over who controls the internet.

The WCIT was a watershed moment in Internet governance. It was about the Internet, but wasn’t, but was in the end. Intense discussions went on for two weeks over issues like security, spam, and broadband connections. At the end of the day the International Telecommunication Regulations, a treaty, was not signed by a number of countries that couldn’t live with proscriptive regulations. The WTPF this last week was the first time since the WCIT that the delegations met again to discuss a number of the issues. But the WTPF was not a treaty making conference and it only lasted three days. Quite a different experience than in December.

At the WTPF a discussion of six different opinions took place. The opinions were non-controversial and involved general and topical policy issues like IXP creation and IPv6 transition. The last two opinions, however, sought to define the multistakeholder approach to Internet governance. Multistakeholderism, as defined by the Tunis Agenda in the mid-2000s, is the idea that the all participants in the Internet – from governments, to civil society to the private sector and beyond – have a role to play in how the Internet is governed and managed. This is not a new approach, but the controversy last week was the introduction of a new, formal opinion on the role of government in the multistakeholder approach to Internet governance.

It is no surprise to anyone that governments are increasingly taking a lesser role in control over the Internet, though many countries do manage and maintain rather strict power over their internal Internet connections. However this situation at the WTPF speaks to a wider and ongoing set of issues that are occurring beyond just the conferences and conventions. Among many issues, the fact that ICANN is still a US based organization does not sit well with the Middle East and Latin American countries. The debate could fill more than a few phd dissertations, but there remains much tension over which organizations control domain names.

What does all of this mean at this point in time? As I mentioned, in parallel with the WTPF was the WSIS forum that discussed the review to take place in 2015 of the WSIS goals.  During that event stories about how transparency and Internet governance is evolving in different countries for different cultures and different governments emerged. Though many governments do not support freedom as an underlying priority, it became clear to me how far the world has progressed in terms of connectivity and access. However, public choice theory tells us that governments are driven by the interests of government officials, bureaucrats and special interest parties that seek to gain rewards, often in the form of power. The fight between governments and users of the Internet is far from over.

The current approach to Internet governance remains the multistakeholder model, but there will be many more discussions of the role of government in this model especially from governments who continue to loose control over their citizens. But the situation is more nuanced than that. Some governments are adopting the language of freedom online for their own, very different ends. It will be interesting to see how this continues to play out in international Internet governance fora.

This article gives the views of the author, and not the position of LSE Network Economy Blog nor of the London School of Economics.

This blog will have active in commenting the issues sorrounding internet governance and its discussions post WCIT in Dubai last year. In this piece, Dominique Lazanski reports the latests debates that have just taken place in May around the fight for the control of the internet.
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About the Author

Dominique Lazanski is a London-based digital policy and strategy freelance consultant and works on digital policy for the TaxPayers’ Alliance. She has spent over 13 years in the Internet industry with many of those years working in Silicon Valley for the likes of Yahoo!, eBay and Apple. She has a long held interest in Internet governance and recently attended the ITU’s WCIT as part of the official UK delegation. She has written and spoken on digital issues over the years from a free market and entrepreneurial perspective. She holds degrees from Cornell University and the London School of Economics and currently sits on the Open Data User Group board in the Cabinet Office and the Tax Transparency Board in HMRC. She is currently working on her PhD.

Source: Blog of LSE Network Economy Forum