[AusNOG] Rudd Dumps AusCERT to create Government run CERT

[Grahame Lynch]

*A column I have written for tomorrow's CommsDay, I only post it as a
conversation starter, if I am violating some nuance of the "media"
restrictions on AusNOG I apologise in advance:*

Boiling the Internet frog slowly

Ever get the feeling that the Internet’s original “management culture”—the
non-profit and well-meaning experts who dedicated their time to a) creating
it and b) making it work on a pervasive, global scale—is slowly seeping away
in the face of creeping government regulation and intervention?

It’s hard not to get that feeling seeing the Australian Attorney-General’s
decision yesterday to effectively nationalise the functions of AusCERT, the
national emergency response team for digital security. For those unfamiliar
with the operation, AusCERT, in its own words, “monitors and evaluates
global computer network threats and vulnerabilities, including after hours
when AusCERT staff remain on-call to respond to new information in a time
critical manner. AusCERT publishes security bulletins, drawing on material
from a variety of sources, with recommended prevention and mitigation
strategies.”

In keeping with the original spirit of the Internet it was operated by “an
independent, not-for-profit team of IT security professionals, based at The
University of Queensland” who covered their “operating costs through a
variety of sources including member subscriptions and the provision of
computer security training and education”.

Well, not any more. In its wisdom, the AG’s department has decided to bring
in the AusCERT functions under its own department. Unsurprisingly, the good
folk at AusCERT are ticked off.

““We are disappointed the Attorney-General’s Department has chosen not to
partner with AusCERT in support of the national CERT role,” Jeremy Crowley,
Director of AusCERT said in a statement yesterday.

In itself, perhaps not a earth shattering epochal change for Australian
internet users but one that needs to be noted and lamented. By all accounts,
AusCERT provided sterling service to its members and yesterday, several
leading network operators were wondering what had demanded the change and
what exactly was wrong with the status quo.

In an Australian context, this is really just the latest chapter in the
re-regulation of the communications sector best epitomised by such policies
as the Internet filter and the NBN.

It is also the latest manifestation of a worldwide trend for the bureaucrats
and ministers to get their paws on Internet governance and operation. The
thought of leaving “essential economic infrastructure” to the legally
consenting adults who actually invented the Internet and then proceeded to
freely associate with each to make it a success is just too much to bear for
some.

Eleven years ago I sat in the office of the International Telecommunications
Union secretary general Yoshio Utsumi in Geneva and questioned him on
American concerns that the ITU and the United Nations had a secret agenda to
“regulate” the Internet. He gave a heavily qualified answer, eventually
lapsed into anger at my questioning and then later demanded that a straight
transcript of the interview be pulled from publication. Of course that
agenda has become clearer in recent years with the various attempts via UN
and ITU sponsored pushes to drastically increase the extent of government
involvement in Internet  management.

It was only just over a decade ago that global Internet governance was
designed and operated by a group of highly motivated and expert
visionaries—the likes of Esther Dyson and Vint Cerf. They conceived the
environment that enabled the Internet to become the pervasive communications
medium it is today. Governments and UN agencies were, rightly, uninvolved.

This could never last.

The latest idea is the United Nations Broadband Commission for Digital
Development. It is ostensibly a worthy, well-intentioned body and has an
Australian face—Stephen Conroy is a commissioner, Paul Budde a major author
of a report it will publish. Its objectives are benign and seemingly
self-evident—the promotion of “broadband networks as basic national
infrastructure” that will aid development. My problem with it? It
effectively marginalises the people who made the digital economy what it is
today. Its 50 commissioners are largely a club of government ministers and
heads of government-related organisations with a token sprinkle of
multinational CEOs. Nobody of any note from the actual Internet governance
or applications sectors is present.

Worse it is co-chaired by Rwandan president Paul Kagame. Now, he does says
beautiful things about how the digital economy unleashes the “creative
potential” of most of us. Nice.

But it’s a shame Mr Kagame wasn’t so concerned about the “creative
potential” of a former Rwanda president and Burundi president, who a French
judge in 2006 ruled had been assassinated in a 1994 missile attack on their
aeroplane, based on an order by Kagame who was then leading a national
liberation front. Kagame as a head of state is immune from French
prosecution, while his defenders say that the judge was misled by partisan
information from his political enemies.

Now, Mr Kagame is undoubtedly a man of many achievements but even his
greatest international supporters agree he is a “flawed hero” - under his
reign, controversial newspaper editors have been exiled, opposition
politicians placed under effective house arrest and he wins elections with,
ahem, 95% of the vote. What on earth possessed the powers that be to place
such a divisive figure in charge of a global broadband commission?

Remarkably, it is the same imperative that leads the Australian AG to
abandon a genuinely successful and independent AusCERT operation and make it
another division of a bureaucracy.

The Internet is now an “essential economic infrastructure” and it needs the
“trust” and “certainty” that only governments can, apparently, supply.
Consequently, it must be guided and run by ministers, bureaucrats and
developing world political personalities, who, of course, will presume to
take the credit for its many wonderful benefits and outcomes.

All aided and abetted, of course, by “useful idiots” in the private and
civil sectors who will take their turn to help boil the frog because they
are too short-sighted to see that it might die as a result.

For more on Mr Kagame: http://bit.ly/9QNLZv. Indeed, a man we can, globally,
trust to lead us into a secure, prosperous and open digital future.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.ausnog.net/pipermail/ausnog/attachments/20100610/3cc5c417/attachment.html>