NSA Programs Causing ‘Perception Issue’ for U.S. on Multistakeholder Internet Governance

The controversial National Security Agency surveillance programs have created a “serious perception issue” for the U.S. as it tries to defend multistakeholder Internet governance on the international stage, State Department officials said during a news conference Wednesday. The NSA surveillance controversy was “the elephant in the room” last month at the International Governance Forum in Bali, Indonesia (CD Oct 28 p9). IGF participants raised “lots of questions” about the surveillance programs, said Scott Busby, deputy assistant secretary of state-democracy, human rights and labor. Part of the U.S. mission at the conference was to listen to international input as the White House reviews those programs, he said.

The U.S. has “a responsibility to address those concerns,” said U.S. Coordinator for International Communications and Information Policy Daniel Sepulveda. The NSA programs have “created some difficulties” for officials defending the U.S.’s pro-multistakeholder position, but “it’s a conversation we want to engage in,” he said. “What we can do and are doing is making explicit that the U.S. does not use its foreign intelligence collection capabilities for the purpose of persecuting or repressing the citizens of any country for any reason.”

The NSA programs have “emboldened those people who always were against the multistakeholder system, who do target their citizens,” said Chris Painter, State’s coordinator for cyber issues. “But that means we need to redouble our efforts on what’s at stake here.” Opponents of multistakeholder governance made the issue a central focus of International Telecommunication Union forums over the past year, including the controversial treaty-level World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT) last December and the World Telecommunication/ICT Policy Forum in May (CD May 22 p2). Internet freedom and governance had long been slated to also be a primary issue at IGF, where a “frank and open discussion” of the issues would not carry the gravity of decisionmaking events like WCIT, Sepulveda said.

The U.S.’s future success in defending multistakeholder Internet governance will depend on how well it is able to articulate its position and the degree to which its allies want to participate, Sepulveda said. The U.S. will continue to oppose attempts to replace multistakeholder governance with a “top-down” intergovernmental approach that could lead to “unprecedented” government control over citizens’ online activity, he said. France and other countries concerned about the NSA programs also don’t want to endorse a governance system that “puts a stamp of approval on the actions of authoritarian regimes in this space,” Sepulveda said. “We have to engage those we're aligned with” and “ensure we address what are legitimate concerns."

The “consequences of not fighting that fight” would be dramatic economically and socially, Painter said. A “balkanized” Internet where every country creates its own non-interoperable Internet would be particularly bad for developing countries that are just beginning to connect on a major scale, he said. “We have to persist in arguing with others.” The debate will continue through bilateral meetings with China, Russia and others, as well as at multiple international forums next year, Sepulveda said. Those events will culminate with the ITU Plenipotentiary Conference, which is to be Oct. 20-Nov. 7, 2014, in Busan, South Korea.