Leaked Draft of New ITU Rules Said to Have ‘Fuzzy’ Telecom-Internet Border
The draft version of the future International Telecommunication Regulations includes “this fuzzy boundary between ’telecom’ and ‘Internet,'” said Syracuse University Professor Milton Mueller, a day after he urged the U.S. government to provide access to the draft. The draft of the document, called TD64, was sent to him in a “mysterious email,” Mueller wrote, and it was posted on the website of the Internet Governance Project (http://xrl.us/bnava8). The ITU secretariat said it did not see a problem with the publication/leak.
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The document includes proposals from the various regions or individual countries. The devil is in how telecommunication and telecommunication aspects would be defined, Mueller said. How much control the new ITR rules would give the ITU over the Internet was the subject of a recent congressional hearing.
Some of the proposals in the draft ITR, for example, would say nations “shall prevent the propagation of Spam,” or, in another proposal, they would be “encouraged to adopt national legislation to act against Spam, cooperate to take actions to counter spam, (and) to exchange information on national findings/actions to counter spam."
A whole new paragraph was proposed on Internet security issues. One of the security proposals would urge nations to cooperate to harmonize their national laws with regard to “the investigation and prosecution of cybercrime (including eavesdropping and breach of privacy of telecommunications); data preservation, retention, protection (including personal data protection), and privacy; and approaches for network defense and response to cyberattacks."
The new security paragraph has not been dealt with in the preparatory meetings, but it is on the agenda for the expected final round of meetings June 20-22 before a final draft can be passed on to the ITU Council and finally the World International Telecommunication Conference (WCIT) that is expected to make the final decision in December.
How difficult it will be for the 193 ITU member governments to agree is illustrated by the dozen alternative versions of a small paragraph about the “misuse and misappropriation of numbering resources” or the fight about a potential for governments to intervene in traffic routing “for purposes of security and countering fraud.” While the fraud proposal is opposed by many countries, observers said the final outcome is difficult to predict.
A big chunk of the remaining work relates to charging and accounting, with the different regions and country groups wanting to have differing issues addressed: developing countries seek changes in Internet interconnection charges; Europe wants phone and data roaming price transparency obligations; the U.S. favors market solutions to such issues. The key issue is “governing the flow of funds among operators,” said Mueller. Mueller believes publication of the ITR draft will allow for a broader public discussion.
ITU spokesperson Sarah Parkes said the issue of wider availability of WCIT documents is expected to be raised at the Council session on July 4. Asked how the ITU Secretariat would react to Mueller’s leak, Parkes said there was no issue with the distribution of the document. In fact, any member nation, sector members -- companies or organizations -- or academic member could distribute the documents as it felt fit, she said: “We have always recommended to those asking for documents to go to the parties they have access to,” Parkes said.