[NA-Discuss] Unrest continues to be met with Internet lockdown

Wed Feb 16 18:16:10 UTC 2011

It's not me that needs convincing. Evan and Gareth (and you) would need to argue that case, and they have made their opinions on the matter known. And I am in agreement that if producing a statement that says not much more than "freedom good, lockdown bad" would do more harm than good, then we shouldn't.

But if we could take to them something that resonates, such as an information source as Eric proposes, or, call me crazy, is there something we could do/create/publish, given our technical and political expertise, that might somehow help users find their way around an Internet block? Information always seems to find a way...is there an alternative conduit? Or some sort of technical/legal intersection that would give us a lever on which to craft a statement?

In addition, it would be good to hear from as many ALSs as possible on this issue.

-----Original Message-----
>From: Marc Rotenberg <rotenberg at epic.org>
>Sent: Feb 16, 2011 12:41 PM
>To: Beau Brendler <beaubrendler at earthlink.net>
>Cc: Garth Bruen at KnujOn <gbruen at knujon.com>, Eric Brunner-Williams <ebw at abenaki.wabanaki.net>, na-discuss at atlarge-lists.icann.org
>Subject: Re: [NA-Discuss] Unrest continues to be met with Internet lockdown
>
>Relevant article in todays NY Times:
>
>  "Egypt Leaders Found ‘Off’ Switch for Internet," Feb. 15, 2011
>  http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/16/technology/16internet.html?hp
>
>This issue is not going away. ALAC should
>develop a position.
>
>Marc.
>
>
>
>On Feb 16, 2011, at 12:36 PM, Beau Brendler wrote:
>
>> Eric wrote:
>> 
>>> I see no point in revisiting the recent limited statements of ICANN or 
>>> ALAC, or their offered rationals, but I do see a point in attempting 
>>> to know what access models actually exist, and having data sufficient 
>>> to support predictive modeling of disruptive local policy on the 
>>> regional and global internet.
>> 
>> How can we put something like this together? This kind of information-gathering would be helpful to the user community and could also probably be used to get the attention of the press.
>> 
>> 
>> -----Original Message-----
>>> From: Garth Bruen at KnujOn <gbruen at knujon.com>
>>> Sent: Feb 16, 2011 11:50 AM
>>> To: Eric Brunner-Williams <ebw at abenaki.wabanaki.net>
>>> Cc: na-discuss at atlarge-lists.icann.org
>>> Subject: Re: [NA-Discuss] Unrest continues to be met with Internet lockdown
>>> 
>>> Not proposing a re-write, just staying abreast
>>> 
>>>> -------- Original Message --------
>>>> Subject: Re: [NA-Discuss] Unrest continues to be met with Internet
>>>> lockdown
>>>> From: Eric Brunner-Williams <ebw at abenaki.wabanaki.net>
>>>> Date: Wed, February 16, 2011 11:44 am
>>>> To: na-discuss at atlarge-lists.icann.org
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> Garth,
>>>> 
>>>> Again, I never hope to be more than a minority of one, and while I 
>>>> read MENA IT news on NANOG, MENOG, Aljazeera (commercially censored in 
>>>> most North American broadcast/cable media markets) and through S/N 
>>>> feeds from or about contacts in West Asia and North Africa, I find it 
>>>> useful to distinguish what technical means are being deployed to 
>>>> effect some explicit or implicit state policy goal.
>>>> 
>>>> I* know that targeted communications degradation was attempted first, 
>>>> affecting S/N data flows, and when either that failed, due to the 
>>>> scale of the S/N participating nodes (thousands of SMS and IPv4 
>>>> capable devices sourcing audio and video capture data) or the policy 
>>>> goal required degradation of more instances of communications than 
>>>> just S/N, prefix withdrawals were announced by all access and transit 
>>>> providers with the exception of the Noor Group, who's prefixes were 
>>>> withdrawn later.
>>>> 
>>>> The mechanism pursued by the Syrian state until last week, and the 
>>>> mechanism utilized by the Iranian state, during the last election, and 
>>>> recently, S/N blocking and rate throttling, and the mechanisms 
>>>> utilized by the Algerian state, the Bahrain state, the Lybian state, 
>>>> are distinct.
>>>> 
>>>> The utility of "keeping score by technical means" is that it allows an 
>>>> analysis of whether other technical mechanisms such as deep packet 
>>>> inspection and content analysis, routine in North America and present 
>>>> also in Europe, but requiring high capitalization of the intercept 
>>>> platform, are keeping pace with the repressive state's policy 
>>>> requirements and the liberation social movements and the political 
>>>> organizations means of maintaining internal and external communications.
>>>> 
>>>> I see no point in revisiting the recent limited statements of ICANN or 
>>>> ALAC, or their offered rationals, but I do see a point in attempting 
>>>> to know what access models actually exist, and having data sufficient 
>>>> to support predictive modeling of disruptive local policy on the 
>>>> regional and global internet.
>>>> 
>>>> Eric
>>>> 
>>>> * Some subscribers have attributed other mechanisms, or a lack of data 
>>>> sufficient to make any attribution.
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>>>> 
>>>> Visit the NARALO online at http://www.naralo.org
>>>> ------
>>> 
>>> 
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>>> 
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>> 
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