[AusNOG] Rudd Dumps AusCERT to create Government run CERT

[Mark Smith]

On Thu, 10 Jun 2010 17:40:08 +0700
Grahame Lynch <grahamelynch at commsdaymail.com> wrote:

> *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?
> 

I'm reminded of this RFC,

"The Internet is for Everyone"
http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3271.txt

and this paragraph -

   Internet is for everyone - but it won't be if Governments restrict
   access to it, so we must dedicate ourselves to keeping the network
   unrestricted, unfettered and unregulated.  We must have the freedom
   to speak and the freedom to hear.


> 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.