How the WCIT Should Have Been Worked So That the US Could Have Won

L-R)
Mr Mohamed Al Ghanim, Director General, Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (TRA), UAE, Mr. Richard Hill, Mrs Doreen Bogdan-Martin, Chief of the Strategic Planning and Membership Department. Photo: ITU.

After threatening to walk out and simply not participate in a highly flawed Internernational Telecommunications Union (ITU) Internet agreement produced by tyrants, the US ended up losing the manipulated vote at the recent World Conference on International Telecommunications.

Here's an insider's blow-by-blow account at Ars Techncia.

When I read it, it reminds me exactly of the World Conference Against Racism at Durban -- the same Cuban machinations with the false flag of human rights; the same active measures by Russia, pretending to remove more draconian drafts and "softening" so that the press lowers their guard, then participating in a bad-faith process.

Everything about it is awful, but the lessons are that the US just hasn't figured out -- like Google -- how to participate in these international processes better. They work it out in some arenas where they have had more skilled negotiators -- like the UN Human Rights Council with Resolution 16/18 on hate speech or the UN General Assembly Third Committee with the Iran resolution.

So they could have done it here, but this would have required many months of work in capitals first; much, much more heavy lifting and calling in of chits to dilute the Cuban poisoned chalice and all the usual UN things. Yes, I realize that they did some of this, but it wasn't enough.

NGOs should make up their minds -- they hate it when Sen. Kyl prevents the Senate from signing the treaty on Disability Rights. They love it when the ITU is foiled and the US is outvoted and a bad treaty is signed. Well, which is it, guys?

Either you are for making all these multilateral processes much, much better, or you are for opting out and invoking sovereignty.

The fact is, China and Russia and Iran already invoke sovereignty and already hobble the Internet on their territories without having even to resort to the ITU as a stalking horse.

As they did with the Duban Final Declaration, which they didn't sign (and there was indeed objectionable language in that declaration that unfairly singled out Israel, and there were other problems), the US simply announced at a certain point that it was walking out.

But I submit that even in Durban, they could have done more to fix what was ultimately a placement problem more than a language problem, and even with this very flawed ITU document, they could have gotten in much, much earlier with the attitude that they would participate and fix, instead of disrupt, grandstand, and then not fix at the last minute because the Europeans would wimp out on them. This happens over and over again, but it's fixable when the US decides to do the following:

o send the A-team to all these UN meetings and permanent positions. They don't do that. Sometimes they do (Susan Rice) but other times they don't.

o get involved a year before the meeting or more and show up at all the little subcommittees in Geneva or other venues and keep hammering at all the little phrases

o insist on process, process, process -- this is how the Cubans and Russians get defeated -- they play the process game and you simply have to get up much earlier in the morning

o show up relentlessly -- no interns in the chair -- competent diplomats who know how to hold up their card in a heartbeat when things start going wrong in the room

o break up the blocs -- the UN is always run by blocs -- the G77, the OIC, and so on. Well, the West has its blocs too -WEOG, JUSCANZ and so on. This work involves both strategy in one's own bloc and bolstering the weak (old Europe and socialist Latin Americans) but it also means reaching out to existing blocs and trying to break them up -- trying to pry out the Botswanas and the South Koreas and the Slovenias that find themselves sometimes voting with bad blocks just because maybe there's a Soviet-era hold-over ambassador still in place, or because they don't have instructions or because nobody has made the arguments to them.

o press -- constantly talk about the bad-faith process -- when the Cubans pull their crap, out it; when the Russians do the fakeroo with the press which they ALWAYS do, be one media cycle ahead of them

o leak to NGOs, they are your best friends

o but hold your cards close sometimes because NGOs have stupid utopian ideas about how to do things and can be unhelpful.

o see anybody -- talk to anybody, talk about anything, you never know

All of this hard work has to be resourced properly, and that's the last thing that is being done now with UN things, but all that happens is that we fall behind, get isolated, and can't influence outcomes.

Here's the thing about the NGOs. They are going to have to give up EFF, NAF, etc. etc. Silicon Valley-driven business models based on piracy and aversion to governance, and face the facts that the Internets are going to be governed on these issues:

o piracy -- and yes, you don't have to put a chill on speech to stop theft and ensure livelihoods online, the rule of law and the courts will ensure this; it's absence of law that enables ICE abuses;

o child pornography -- this is pretty obvious content to spot and it can be eradicated without everyone having a cow about their privacy or their free expression

o guns and illegal drugs -- hey, these should not be sold over the Internet, just like they can't be sold in many localities at all, or at least without regulation.

Well, back to the drawing board. In one sense, sure, it matters not one wit. The US will defy any effort to control its own Internet. But it has aspirations for using the Internet to promote democracy abroad, and this really messes things up.

And let me tack on here in order to recall the role of Awful McLaughlin in this meeting, which consisted of swaggering around and telling everyone he was going to "kneecap" the ITU (!) -- and wound up with the US on its knees in confusion.

In the comments under this piece by Crovitz I discussed in past blogs there's this by "Brett Glass"

McLaughlin is a hypocrite. As Google's chief lobbyist, and then as an Obama appointee within the White House (Obama broke his pledge not to hire lobbyists and hired McLaughlin as a favor to big campaign contributor Google), McLaughlin lobbed for government regulation of the Internet. The difference: the regulation was to be by the FCC, and was to be written by, and favor, his employer.

Those regulations, which the FCC approved two years ago on the winter solstice with Congress in recess, were written by Google in secret meetings with the FCC's staff. They imposed so-called "network neutrality" rules which, in fact, were not neutral at all; among other things, they prohibited Internet service providers from charging Google for valuable services which, in all fairness, Google should be paying for.

Google (and McLaughlin, who no longer works directly for Google but owns lots of Google stock and has jobs which are funded indirectly by Google) opposes the ITU because it advocates that ISPs specifically be allowed to charge large content providers, such as Google, for the resources they use. Despite the PR, Google's stance -- and McLaughlin's -- have nothing to do with individual rights or freedoms. They have to do with maximizing Google's bottom line.

I could note that Sen. Wyden is busy slipping in more winter-solstice "net neutrality" stuff again right now.

The informal deployment of the ex-Googler and ex-White House official still in the Google/WH ambit in other hats, was not a good idea for this meeting. Google leaves itself vulnerable to attack not only because it didn't join the ITU like other companies; McLaughlin and his cronies have just been too nasty and arrogant in this meeting which is not how you can be at the UN if you want to "make friends and influence people".

 

 

Comments

[Andrew]

You'd do well to ignore much of what Mr. Glass has to say -- over the years I've interacted with him, at any given time, for one reason or another he directs the discussion towards some sort of malicious intent on the part of Google with the purpose of screwing him personally (he runs a wireless Internet Service Provider in Wyoming and doesn't believe in "network neutrality" or whatever you'd call it because it would hurt his bottom line (his words)). While your arguments are typically rooted in some sort of your own logic, however flawed it may be at times (my opinion at least), Mr. Glass' attacks and comments often lack any sort of logical reasoning and typically arrive at conclusions he has reached by studying the result and then assigning blame in a post hoc ergo propter hoc fashion.

You can find far better people to quote.

[Catherine Fitzpatrick]

Oh, nonsense, Andrew. The reason I'm quoting Brett Glass is because he points out the perfectly helpful information that many readers didn't know, and I didn't know the full story of, is how he was a) formerly of Google b) formerly of the Obama Administration c) and now on the board of Access, which is busy lobbying against all these UN agreements under cover of the human rights flag -- when really what they are doing is serving Google's bottom line.

I don't know Brett Glass, but if he turns out to run an ISP in Wyoming and he opposes "net neutrality" because it would harm his bottom line, GOOD! I agree. Indeed it will harm the bottom lines of ISPs and telecoms that will be forced to shoulder the cost of supplying *Google's customers* the burden of *supplying them their free content*. And why shouldn't they be upset at that?! It's completely normal. Google is lobbying *for* this silly communistic "net neutrality" for the sake of *its* bottom line, but doing so in despicable fashion, pretending it's for the sake of "freedom of expression" and "poor people getting broadband". That's why it's so particularly loathsome.

If Brett Glass says having the government force him to ration and force him to shoulder the burden of supplying and and all users, and that is bad and that harms his bottom line, he's honest. And he's right. And rational people don't understand why the state has to force socialism on businesses.

Meanwhile, Andrew McLaughlin and everyone else he can whipsaw on this is claiming that the government "has" to force people to "balance" a scarce resource in the name of "freedom of expression" -- which is utter bullshit. It's not about freedom of expression. It's about consumption.

It seems to me that far from committing Boys' Latin School offenses in rhetoric class as you claim, he's reasoning normally -- you're the one drinking the Silicon Valley koolaid on this.

There aren't better people to quote because most people in this business are afraid of standing up and exposing Google for what it is, a not-disinterested party that is prepared to lobby for its business interests and dress them up in whatever crowd-pleasing rhetoric they can find.

What's silly, too, is when people try to make it seem as if Brett Glass is "resisting change" because he doesn't want "new business models" or whatever the clap-trap is:

http://www.cringely.com/2009/11/03/brett-versus-bob-taking-net-neutrality-personally/

I'm all for Brett being able to control BitTorrent, which most of the time is about torrenting pirated items anyway. BitTorrent is consumption, regardless of the validity of the torrenters use of the IP it is torrenting, and more consumption should have more cost, just like any utility, like electricity. And yet we're supposed to believe in some brave new world where Google is completely disinterested (snort) and the user will get everything raw himself without intermediaries. Baloney.

What the geeks like Bob Frank want to do is put cable companies out of business because they represent old-style capitalist entities that they loathe they aren't a new-age business like Google which caters to them and is part of an ecoculture where they as consultants get paid in one way or another. But Google is just a big too-powerful corporation, too. It is no different than an AT&T that eventually had to be broken into baby bells.

And don't start up about how the government "subsidizes" telecoms. If they do more than Google (let's check), then so what? They are businesses that supply jobs and services at now fairly reasonable prices that many people can afford. If you can bail out the auto industry for far less reasons, you can leave the telecoms alone.

And that isn't because I have to cling to some "old model" of doing business. It's because Google's new model of "innovation" is merely highway robbery until the lawyers come, and that's despicable.

The worst thing about what you do, Andrew, when you make these little interventions, is you pretend I'm the kook, even if a sincere kook who comes by my reasoning honestly, and everyone else including yourself and the Silicon Valley Big IT industry are the smart people. Nonsense. There are plenty of people protesting the Google-serving socialist "net neutrality" gambit. Here's a reader on that thread that sums it up very well:

http://www.cringely.com/2009/11/03/brett-versus-bob-taking-net-neutrality-personally/

Dan says:
November 4, 2009 at 5:47 am

Net Neutrality is yet another buzz word that allows advocates to obfuscate their politics. Whether it be via licensed spectrum or installed fiber optic lines the company that owns the pipe has to be free to manage what goes through it. That is the essence of property law and it is the economic model that has proven to best align the interests of consumers with suppliers.

Either we have a system where terms of service are negotiated in the open and guided by the demands of the market or we have a system where bureaucrats and lobbyists play favorites behind closed doors. I’ll take the former approach any day of the week and twice on Sunday. Why would anyone want to subject technology development to the whims of bureaucrats?

It is really sad that a technology industry that once was the epitome of free market enterprise is now willing to soil itself by bedding down with Washington insiders. Just one more reason to expect the next technology revolution to come from someplace other than Silicon Valley.

[cement]

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