Russia export controls and sanctions

Last week’s Asia-Pacific Telecommunity meeting did not end with a formal set of proposals for the upcoming World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT), potentially damaging the region’s influence in the lead-up to the conference, said David Gross, former State Department international communications and information coordinator. But the general consensus coming out of the meeting bodes well for the U.S. position on whether the conference, led by the ITU, should adopt controversial proposals to change how the Internet is regulated, he said. Gross said he attended the Asia-Pacific meeting in Bangkok as chair of the Ad Hoc World Conference on International Telecommunications Working Group, which represents 15 major multinational telecom and Internet companies.

The U.S. formally opposed attempts to wrest control of the Internet away from its current governing organizations in favor of the United Nations’ ITU, the U.S. delegation to the World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT) said in documents filed Friday. The Dec. 3-4 meeting in Dubai will focus on revising the ITU’s treaty-level International Telecommunication Regulations (ITRs), last revised in 1988. The U.S. State Department released the documents to the public after the filing (http://xrl.us/bnjbef).

Intelsat 20 was successfully launched from French Guiana on an Ariane 5 V208 launch vehicle, Intelsat said. The satellite “will provide C-band and Ku-band for DTH [direct-to-home] television, cellular backhaul and VSAT [very small aperture terminal] services.” With Intelsat 20, video, voice and broadband services will be distributed in Asia, Africa, Europe, Middle East and Russia, Intelsat said. The company said the satellite is expected to have a service life of more than 18 years.

The House voted 414-0 Thursday for H.Con. Res. 127, supporting attempts to preserve “the multistakeholder governance model under which the Internet has thrived.” The resolution urges the NTIA director and the State Department coordinator for international communications and information policy to continue to advance “the consistent and unequivocal policy of the United States to promote a global Internet free from government control and preserve and advance the successful multi stakeholder model that governs the Internet today” as the nation prepares for the World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT). The resolution (http://xrl.us/bni6f8) is sponsored by Reps. Mary Bono Mack, R-Calif., Fred Upton, R-Mich., Henry Waxman, D-Calif., Greg Walden, R-Ore., and Anna Eshoo, D-Calif. It’s expected that nations like Russia and China will introduce International Telecommunications Regulations proposals regarding the Internet at WCIT. In a statement on the House floor Wednesday, Eshoo urged lawmakers to vote in favor of the resolution to protect the current model of open Internet. Several “nations including Russia are set on asserting intergovernmental control over the Internet -- leading to a balkanized Internet where censorship could become the new norm,” she said. “While there is no question that nations must work together to address challenges to the Internet’s growth and stability ... these issues can best be addressed under the existing model.” The U.S. must “defend the current model of Internet governance” at the WCIT conference, she said. “The very fabric of the free and open Internet is at stake.” Eshoo reminded her colleagues that the bipartisan resolution “reflects a viewpoint already shared by the Obama administration, the FCC and the U.S. delegation to the WCIT.” Earlier this week, Terry Kramer, head of the U.S. delegation to WCIT, said the delegation plans to block any proposals to interfere with multi-stakeholder structure and openness of the Internet (CD Aug 2 p1). Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., introduced the Senate counterpart to the House resolution in June (http://xrl.us/bni6jb). “An international regulatory regime goes against the very nature of the Internet and its purpose of sharing ideas and connecting people,” Rubio said in a statement when the resolution was introduced (http://xrl.us/bni6jq). “The United States must lead an international effort to prevent authoritarian governments and regimes from diminishing Internet freedom.” The resolution was referred to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Earlier this week, Rubio unsuccessfully offered the resolution as an amendment to the Cybersecurity Act (S-3414). Americans’ privacy rights online and off precede the Constitution, Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., said Thursday morning before the House vote at a TechFreedom event held at the Heritage Foundation. A person’s right to privacy “pre-exists” the Constitution, he said: “If you believe in God, a creator, it comes in a natural way, it’s yours. These are unenumerated rights.” Giving legal immunity to telecom companies is “bad for privacy” and it was a “mistake” for the government to do so in the PATRIOT Act, Paul said. “I'm not for suing companies, but I'm not for telling companies they can do whatever they want to their consumers and they can run over their consumers by abdicating their contracts,” he said. “That’s what happens with immunity. If you give companies immunity, then they are not going to pay any attention to their contracts.” Lawmakers need to reverse the trend “that says the Fourth Amendment does not apply to your third-party records,” he said. “Should you have Fourth Amendment protections for your own protection? And I think you should. ... The bottom line is I don’t want people trolling though my records.” Paul said the Internet should be regulated by the market, not the government and particularly not the U.N. Paul’s concerned that countries like Russia and China are proposing ideas at the WCIT, scheduled to meet in Dubai in December, that could permit them to “shut down” online content and dissent, he said. “I really don’t want Russia and China having much of a say in what happens with regulating the Internet.”

The U.S. will attempt to block controversial Internet regulatory proposals, which the government believes would threaten the Web’s free flow of information, ahead of the World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT), U.S. delegation head Terry Kramer said Wednesday, in remarks at the Information Technology Industry Council. The U.S. plans to release a key document Friday, when it will submit its initial set of proposals for WCIT to the ITU, which is hosting WCIT in Dubai Dec. 3-4 to revise the treaty-level International Telecommunications Regulations (ITRs).

The Federal Aviation Administration must update its assessment of federal liability risk from commercial space launches, the Government Accountability Office said in a report. The U.S. provides less commercial space launch indemnification for third-party losses than China, France and Russia, the report said (http://xrl.us/bniqmo). Indemnification coverage is limited in the U.S. by the Commercial Space Launch Act Amendments (CSLAA), it said. Estimating probable losses from a rare catastrophic event is difficult, “and insurance industry officials and risk modeling experts said that FAA’s method is outdated,” it said. The agency hasn’t had outside experts or risk modelers review the appropriateness of its method, the report said. The planned increase in manned commercial launches and re-entries raises some issues “that have implications for the federal government’s indemnification policy for third party liability,” according to insurance officials and experts interviewed, GAO said. The amount and price of insurance that could be provided “could change quickly if a large loss were to occur, according to insurance industry representatives.” GAO said launch companies and customers it contacted “believe that ending federal indemnification could lead to higher launch prices for U.S.-based launch companies, making them less price competitive than foreign launch companies.” They said a gap in federal indemnification is the lack of coverage of on-orbit activities -- “that is, activities not related to launch or reentry, such as docking with the ISS [international space station] and relocating a satellite from one orbit to another.” Although the actual effects on competition of eliminating CSLAA indemnification are unknown, “several launch companies and customers with whom we spoke said that in the absence of CSLAA indemnification, increased risk and higher costs would directly affect launch companies and indirectly affect their customers and suppliers,” GAO said.

Russia’s delay in submitting tariff schedules for accession to the World Trade Organization Information Technology Agreement were a “concern” for the U.S., EU and several other countries during an informal meeting of parties to the agreement, a trade official said. The schedules should have been completed by the time of Russia’s formal accession to the WTO, he said. Russia’s terms for joining the trade organization are expected to clear both houses of the Russian Parliament before a July 23 deadline, a WTO official said earlier this month. The EU said the process is running “rather late,” the first trade official said. The U.S. showed “strong concern,” he said. The U.S. said it’s urgent that Russia submit its list of schedules for verification and approval by members, he said. Japan, Australia, Taiwan, South Korea and Malaysia echoed the views expressed by the EU and the U.S., he said. The meeting’s chairman will convey the views to the Russian delegation, which did not attend the meeting, he said.

Public Knowledge said Thursday the ITU needs to take steps to make documents available to the public, especially as ITU is headed into the World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT) in December, which will take up calls to regulate the Internet. “It’s disappointing that, despite calls for transparency by a number of member countries and the Secretariat of the ITU, countries such as Russia, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates apparently want to keep these documents inaccessible,” said Rashmi Rangnath, director of PK’s Global Knowledge Initiative. “The proposals in these documents represent the countries’ plans for the International Telecommunications Regulations -- plans that can affect citizens of all nations, and the future of the Internet as an open, democratic medium. Denying public access to these proposals is no way to conduct such an important process.” PK said so far ITU has released only one document on the proposal, which had already been leaked weeks earlier. PK President Gigi Sohn raised similar concerns at a recent FCBA seminar (CD July 2 p1).

There’s no consensus on the level of transparency there should be for ITU procedures. At an ITU Council meeting in Geneva, member countries only agreed to publish the draft version of the future International Telecommunication Regulations. An initiative heavily pushed by Sweden to grant open access to all contributions to the World Conference on International Telecommunication (WCIT) was not accepted, confirmed Anders Jonsson, head of the Swedish delegation.

There’s no consensus to open up Internet-related public policy discussions to all stakeholders at the ITU. After presentation of a proposal from the Swedish delegation at this week’s ITU Council meeting in Geneva, an ad hoc group had to be established to try to forge consensus before the end of the meeting July 13. Sweden’s proposal recommends the inclusion of all stakeholders as observers to the meetings of the ITU Council Working Group on international Internet-related public policy issues, particularly open and face-to-face consultations with all the stakeholders and open access to all related documents. While the Swedish proposal is supported by the U.S., European countries, Brazil, Japan and other ITU member states, the Arab states, China, Russia and some African countries favor online consultations with stakeholders only. ITU Secretary General Hamadoun Touré had asked member nations during their first half week of deliberations to work against a growing perception that ITU’s membership was becoming somewhat “polarized on a number of key issues.” He was very keen, he said, “to see us avoid entering into some kind of new cold war, which would be absolutely unnecessary.” A proposal by Indonesia (CD June 28 p11) on a potential new convention on cybersecurity was noted at the meeting, with many countries asking for clarification before concrete steps could be taken.