Issue 10: May 2004
Previous
editions
In this edition:
IP-related activities
1. ITU Workshop on Internet Governance
2. ITU WSIS Thematic Meeting on
Countering Spam
3. APT-ITU
Joint Workshop on ENUM and IDN
4. ITU Consultancy Project
5. New ITU-D
e-flash
1. ITU Workshop on Internet Governance
A Workshop
on Internet Governance, organized by the ITU and held on 26-27 February
2004, was a follow-up
to the first phase of the World
Summit on the Information Society (Geneva, 10-12 December), where
Internet governance had been one of the most complex and contentious
issues.
At the Summit, governments asked United Nations Secretary-General
Kofi Annan to set up a multi-stakeholder working group on Internet
governance to investigate and make proposals for action by the Summit’s
second phase (Tunis, 16-18 November 2005). The task of the working group
is to develop a working definition of Internet governance; identify
public policy issues that are relevant to Internet governance; and
develop a common understanding of the roles and responsibilities of the
different stakeholders. The working group is to include governments,
intergovernmental and international organizations, as well as the
private sector and civil society, from both developed and developing
countries.
In order to contribute to a process by which the ITU and its members
may prepare their inputs to the working group, ITU organized the Geneva
Workshop, which was attended by some 140 participants from
government, industry, international organizations and civil society
including root server operators, Regional Internet Registries (RIRs),
and ICANN staff and former board members and those responsible for
country code top-level domain names (ccTLD).
Participants expressed a broad range of opinions, but also a
willingness to find common ground and to stress the complementarities of
efforts. Several speakers stressed the problem of articulating the
character and scope of governance activities in a neutral,
non-ideological and systematic way. In formulating a common
understanding of what constitutes governance, some made the case for
differentiating between "hard" forms of governance, which
involve laws, regulations or standards, and "soft" forms,
which include cooperation and coordination. These definitions would map
across big-picture issues such as development of technology for
equitable and sustainable global development, to narrow-focus issues
such as the use of common resources and the exchange of specific
services and products between nations.
There was significant support for the architectural maxim that
"form should follow function". In other words, the governance
tools chosen to address a particular issue, and the decision-making
structures designed to apply these tools to specific problems, should
reflect and fully represent the balance of interests, capabilities and
needs that exist in the "real world" — there should be sufficient
flexibility to adapt as this balance changes. The history of global ICT
governance has demonstrated that some things are best left to the
private sector, some are best left to governments, and that satisfactory
arrangements have yet to be devised for including developing countries
and civil society in either the public or private domains of governance.
This experience has also shown that it is difficult, if not impossible,
to become truly inclusive without fundamental recognition of the
separate and complementary functions of public and private governance
structures, the legitimate roles of different actors, and the need to
create dynamic linkages between them.
The Workshop website
provides links to an annotated
final agenda,
all presentations
and written contributions,
and the participants
list (PDF). The website also includes a background paper
entitled Herding
Schrödinger’s Cats: Some Conceptual Tools For Thinking About Internet
Governance prepared by Don
Maclean, Independent Consultant, and the Chairman's
Report (PDF).
Related Links
ITU
Workshop
on Internet Governance
Information
note for the press
ITU
Internet Governance Resources
ITU
and its Activities Related to Internet-Protocol (IP) Networks
ITU
Activities on Countering Spam
ITU
Newslog on Internet Governance
2.
ITU
WSIS Thematic Meeting on Countering Spam*
Spam:
a threat to the Information Society
Since
2002, the perception of spam has grown from a mere nuisance to a
phenomenon that now threatens the entire viability of electronic mail
(e-mail) as a mode of human communication. With
the growing dependence of users on the Internet and e-mail for their
personal and professional communications, spam can seriously hamper the
development of the digital economy and society by undermining user
confidence in online activities. Recognizing
this potential threat, the Geneva Phase of the World Summit on the
Information Society (WSIS) called for action in these words: “Spam is
a significant and growing problem for users, networks and the Internet
as a whole. Spam and cyber-security should be dealt with at appropriate
national and international levels.”
In response to this challenge, ITU is organizing an ITU
WSIS Thematic Meeting on Countering Spam from 7 to 9 July 2004, in
Geneva, Switzerland. The
meeting is open to ITU Member States and Sector Members, Member States
of the United Nations, international organizations, WSIS accredited
non-governmental organizations and civil society and accredited business
entities. Discussion during the meeting will be structured around five
main themes: scope of the problem; technical solutions; consumer and
small business education and awareness; legislation and enforcement; and
international cooperation.
What
is spam?
Although there is no
universally agreed definition of spam, the term is generally used to
describe unsolicited electronic communications over personal computers
or mobile handsets, usually with the objective of marketing commercial
products or services. It
is now recognized that spam has grown into one of the major plagues
affecting today's digital world.
Almost two-thirds of e-mail sent around the world in April 2004 can be
considered as spam, up from below half a year earlier.
Spammers send
hundreds of millions of messages per day, with a significant impact in
terms of cost and productivity for service providers, businesses and
end-users. Take mobile handsets for
example. Mail that has not been sought by the receiver, but that is sent
for the purpose of advertising the sender’s services may not in itself
be harmful. This is particularly the case where a service provider sends
advertising mail that matches the preferences and interests of the
consumer, or which informs them of potentially attractive services. The
problem arises when the mail received is unwelcome—for instance in a
receiving party pays (RPP) environment where the receiving user incurs
charges. Added to the factor of annoyance, is the extra cost and burden
on IT systems, typically resulting in slower performance.
While some advertising
mails may be the least harmful form of spam, the content of other
messages can range from untargeted, and therefore largely irrelevant
advertising, to offensive pornographic material. A less prevalent, but
clearly increasing phenomenon is the use of spam to support fraudulent
and criminal activities by masquerading
messages as originating from trusted companies (“brand-spoofing” or
“phishing”).
Phishing attacks use “spoofed” e-mails and
fraudulent websites designed to fool recipients into divulging personal
financial data such as credit card numbers, account usernames and
passwords and social security numbers. By hijacking the trusted brands
of well-known banks, online retailers and credit card companies,
phishers are able to convince up to five per cent of recipients to
respond to them, according to the Anti-Phishing
Working Group, a volunteer organization (see: http://www.antiphishing.org/
).
Another
scam played by spammers is that of manipulating stock markets. With a
barrage of bullish e-mails, spammers can send up highly volatile
share prices in small companies, easily making a quick profit. According
to some researchers, thousands of bogus investment tips are sent daily
worldwide, and although the quantity of stock-related spam is much less
significant than pornographic spam, it has risen considerably since 2003
and continues to increase.
Can spam be
stopped?
Spammers have proven highly creative in
avoiding detection, including falsification of origin of e-mail and
randomization of content to bypass spam filters. The scale of the
problem has grown to such an extent that anti-spam laws are being
rapidly enacted in a number of countries — although different national
approaches and remedies are used. At the same time, there is increasing
recognition that countering spam is an issue requiring international
coordination and cooperation.
Among technical
solutions developed to date, Internet
service providers have deployed solutions to automatically detect and
block spam before it arrives in users’ in-boxes.
In March 2003, the world’s largest Internet service provider,
American Online, announced that it was blocking as many as 1 billion
spam messages daily. One of
the major setbacks of this approach however, is that legitimate e-mail
is sometimes incorrectly identified as spam and automatically deleted
before being seen by the recipient.
There is a wide range of views on how to best fight
spam without introducing undesirable side effects. There is also a
sense, from the numerous initiatives around the world, that there is no
single, perfect solution to the growing problem of spam. Legislative
solutions that have been proposed range from requiring explicit
“opt-ins” by users before they can be sent unsolicited e‑mail,
to mandatory labelling of subject fields, to the establishment of
national “do not spam” lists, which would be analogous to the “do
not call” lists recently established in the United States to deal with
telemarketing.
Conclusions
Countering spam
will be an ongoing challenge. Even as
technological countermeasures are developed and implemented, the
inventiveness and technological prowess of spammers overtakes each one
in turn, requiring a continuous effort. The introduction of measures at
the international level may, according to some views, be the only way to
effectively fight what is inherently a cross-border problem. As
highlighted by the WSIS Declaration of Principles and Plan of Action,
there is a call for international coordination to find solutions that
surpass mere technical “sticking plasters”. It is now certainly
clear that national governments are no longer content to just sit on the
sidelines in what has been, at least until now, the Internet’s losing
battle against spam.
Related Links
ITU
Activities on Countering Spam
ITU
WSIS Thematic Meeting on Countering Spam
ITU
Newslog on Spam
* Organized as a candidate WSIS Thematic meeting for
the Tunis phase of WSIS in 2005. Designation of the thematic event will
be made by the WSIS process.
3.
APT-ITU Joint Workshop on ENUM and IDN
The Asia-Pacific Telecommunity (APT)
and ITU organized a joint
Workshop on ENUM and Internationalized Domain Names (IDN) from 21-22
May, 2004 in Brunei Darussalam. All materials are posted on the APT
workshop web site including the workshop
programme (Word). The
objectives of the Workshop were:
- To create
awareness and wider understanding on ENUM & IDN issues;
- To review the
current status in the Asia Pacific region;
- To review the
global implementation of ENUM;
- To assess the
Asia Pacific needs and readiness for the implementation of ENUM;
- To discuss the
management of Internet domain names - Multilingual or Homogeneous?
- To promote government -
private sector partnership;
- To review technical and interoperability issues;
- To agree upon future direction
Presentations given at the workshop are available on the SPU
Newslog:
Related Links
Asia-Pacific
Telecommunity (APT)
APT-ITU
Joint Workshop on ENUM and IDN
Reports
on ENUM trial activities within Member States
General
information on ENUM, including tutorial paper
SPU
Resource Site on ENUM
ITU
Newslog on Internet Names and Addresses
ITU
Newslog on ENUM
ITU
Newslog on IDN
4.
ITU Consultancy project
From February to May 2004,
an external consultancy firm has been busy at work to help ITU
make the transition to become a more efficient and responsive
organization. The consultants, Dalberg Development, worked on an
ITU membership-defined project, the seeds of which were first sown
in 2002.
In 2002, the ITU
Plenipotentiary Conference created a Group of Specialists to
review the management of the Union (the "GoS").
In
2003 the ITU Council decided (by Resolution
1212) to mandate an
external consultant to develop an implementation plan for
recommendations to improve the management of the Union. Following
a call for bids in November 2003, Dalberg Development, a
Danish company with offices in
Copenhagen and
New York, was selected.
Based on the most pressing of the original
recommendations of the GoS, Dalberg staff worked in-house to produce their
report for subsequent consideration by the ITU Council. Consulting with ITU
staff and management on one hand, and ITU membership on the other (i.e. the GoS
and a specially-appointed Steering Committee), the consultants worked on a tight
schedule of meetings, interviews, workshops and progress reports. One of the key
ingredients in the process was the maintenance of communication between all of
the many players involved. The workshops and meetings were variously aimed at
bringing together elected officials, representatives of the membership, ITU
managers and staff to develop common approaches to the implementation of new
processes.
As well as focusing on financing and
budgetary areas, the report includes various proposals with regard to
information systems and management processes. The common view for most involved
was that, for ITU membership, management and staff to work together with common
objectives for the future, enhanced communication and information flows between
them were necessary. What more suitable goal for an organization so deeply
involved in helping the world to communicate?
5. New
ITU-D e-flash
ITU-D e-flash
is a monthly e-update on some of the activities of the development
sector of ITU, links to upcoming events, workshops and useful background
information. If you wish to receive this publication, please subscribe
by clicking here.
For
further information on Strategy
and Policy
Unit Monthly News Flash, please
contact: ITU Strategy and Policy Unit, International
Telecommunication Union, Place des Nations, CH-1211 Geneva 20
(Switzerland). Fax: +41 22 730 6453. E-mail: spumail@itu.int
. Website: www.itu.int/spu/
|
|