As I blogged last week, I am in São Paulo to attend NETmundial, the meeting on the future of Internet governance hosted by the Brazilian government. The opening ceremony is about to begin. A few more observations:
- The Brazilian Senate passed the landmark Marco Civil bill last night, and Dilma Rousseff, the Brazilian president, may use here appearance here today to sign it into law. The bill subjects data stored on Brazilians anywhere in the world to Brazilian jurisdiction and imposes net neutrality domestically. It also provides a safe harbor for ISPs and creates a notice-and-takedown system for offensive content.
- Some participants are framing aspects of the meeting, particularly the condemnation of mass surveillance in the draft outcome document, as civil society v. the US government. There is a lot of concern that the US will somehow water down the surveillance language so that it doesn’t apply to the NSA’s surveillance. WikiLeaks has stoked some of this concern with breathless tweets. I don’t see events playing out this way. I am as opposed to mass US surveillance as anyone, but I haven’t seen much resistance from the US government participants in this regard. Most of the comments by the US on the draft have been benign. For example, WikiLeaks claimed that the US “stripped” language referring to the UN Human Rights Council; in fact, the US hasn’t stripped anything because it is not in charge (it can only make suggestions), and eliminating the reference to the HRC is actually a good idea because the HRC is a multilateral, not a multistakeholder, body. I expect a strong anti-surveillance statement to be included in the final outcome document. If it is not, it will probably be other governments, not the US, that block it.
- In my view, the privacy section of the draft still needs work, however. In particular, it is important to cabin the paragraph to address governmental surveillance, not to interfere with voluntary, private arrangements in which users disclose information to receive free services.
- I expect discussions over net neutrality to be somewhat contentious. Civil society participants are generally for it, with some governments, businesses, parts of the technical community, and yours truly opposed.
- Although surveillance and net neutrality have received a lot of attention, they are not the important issues at NETmundial. Instead, look for the language that will affect “the future of Internet governance,” which is after all what the meeting is about. For example, will the language on stakeholders’ “respective roles and responsibilities” be stricken? This is language held over from the Tunis Agenda and it has a lot of meaning. Do stakeholders participate as equals or do they, especially governments, have separate roles? There is also a paragraph on “enhanced cooperation,” which is a codeword for governments running the show. Look to see in the final draft if it is still there.
- Speaking of the final draft, here is how it will be produced: During the meeting, participants will have opportunities to make 2-minute interventions on specific topics. The drafting group will make note of the comments and then retreat to a drafting room to make final edits to the draft. This is, of course, not really the open governance process that many of us want for the Internet, one where select, unaccountable participants have the final say. Yet two days is not a long enough time to really have an open, free-wheeling drafting conference. I think the structure of the conference, driven by the perceived need to produce an outcome document with certainty, is unfortunate and somewhat detracts from the legitimacy of whatever will be produced, even though I expect the final document to be OK on substance.
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