Internet DRAFT - draft-bollow-ectf

draft-bollow-ectf






enhanced-cooperation.org                                       N. Bollow
Internet-Draft                                           August 30, 2013
Intended status: Informational
Expires: March 3, 2014


Request For Action to Establish an Enhanced Cooperation Task Force and a
                       Preparatory Working-Group
                          draft-bollow-ectf-07

Abstract

   This memo calls for the creation of a new governance forum named
   "Enhanced Cooperation Task Force" (ECTF).  The main purpose of the
   ECTF is to facilitate consensus-seeking discussions regarding
   information society governance actions that will be taken by national
   governments and international organizations.

Status of this Memo

   This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the
   provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.

   Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering
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   This Internet-Draft will expire on March 3, 2014.

Copyright Notice

   Copyright (c) 2013 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
   document authors.  All rights reserved.

   This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
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Table of Contents

   1.  Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  3
     1.1.  Avoidance of Requirements Language . . . . . . . . . . . .  4
   2.  Preparatory Working-Group  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  5
   3.  Draft Scope Statement for ECTF . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  5
   4.  Draft Working Directives for ECTF  . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  5
     4.1.  Fundamental Values . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  6
     4.2.  Logic trees for discourse facilitation . . . . . . . . . .  6
     4.3.  WG Working Procedures  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  7
     4.4.  Accessibility and compatibility requirements . . . . . . .  8
     4.5.  Request For Action (RFA) Publication Procedures  . . . . .  8
     4.6.  Overall Rough Consensus Endorsement  . . . . . . . . . . .  8
     4.7.  WG Creation  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  9
       4.7.1.  Initial Informal Discussion  . . . . . . . . . . . . .  9
       4.7.2.  Terms of Reference Endorsement . . . . . . . . . . . .  9
       4.7.3.  Secretariat Actions  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
     4.8.  WG Termination . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
       4.8.1.  WG Dissolution by Rough Consensus  . . . . . . . . . . 10
       4.8.2.  WG Dissolution due to Disendorsement . . . . . . . . . 10
       4.8.3.  WG Dissolution due to Dysfunction  . . . . . . . . . . 11
     4.9.  Secretariat  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
       4.9.1.  Sustaining Membership  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
       4.9.2.  Committee of Sustaining Members  . . . . . . . . . . . 11
       4.9.3.  Secretariat Funding  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
       4.9.4.  Changes to the ECTF Working Directives . . . . . . . . 13
       4.9.5.  Further Responsibilities of the Secretariat  . . . . . 13
   5.  Draft Terms of Reference for Some Initial Working-Groups . . . 14
     5.1.  WG on implementation of WSIS principles  . . . . . . . . . 14
     5.2.  WG on ICANN and Root Zone Oversight  . . . . . . . . . . . 14
     5.3.  WG on Law Enforcement and the Internet . . . . . . . . . . 14
     5.4.  Directives WG  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
   6.  Security Considerations  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
     6.1.  Inappropriate Usage  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
     6.2.  Denial of Service  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
     6.3.  Human Rights . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
   7.  IANA Considerations  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
   8.  Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
   9.  Endorsements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
   10. Request For Comments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
   11. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
   Author's Address . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17









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1.  Introduction

   In view of today's huge significance of information and communication
   technologies in general and the Internet in particular, governments
   nowadays need to strongly take this highly technical realm in
   consideration in regard to various governmental responsibilities.

   Consequently, the Tunis Agenda for the Information Society, an
   international soft law instrument adopted at the UN World Summit on
   Information Society in Tunis in 2005, appropriately asks the UN
   Secretary General to convene "a new forum for multi-stakeholder
   policy dialogue-called the Internet Governance Forum (IGF)" with a
   mandate that includes making recommendations where appropriate (see
   [Tunis], para 72g).

   In this context of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) which is
   explicitly mentioned in paras 67 and 72-78 of the Tunis Agenda
   [Tunis], para 68 says that "We recognize that all governments should
   have an equal role and responsibility for international Internet
   governance and for ensuring the stability, security and continuity of
   the Internet.  We also recognize the need for development of public
   policy by governments in consultation with all stakeholders."  Paras
   69-71 call for a process of "Enhanced Cooperation" with this
   objective: "to enable governments, on an equal footing, to carry out
   their roles and responsibilities, in international public policy
   issues pertaining to the Internet, but not in the day-to-day
   technical and operational matters, that do not impact on
   international public policy issues."

   Unlike the IGF, which was successfully established in 2006, the need
   for enhanced cooperation which enables governments as described is
   still unmet.

   In December 2012, the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution [67/
   195] which "invites the Chair of the Commission on Science and
   Technology for Development to establish a working group on enhanced
   cooperation to examine the mandate of the World Summit on the
   Information Society regarding enhanced cooperation as contained in
   the Tunis Agenda, through seeking, compiling and reviewing inputs
   from all Member States and all other stakeholders, and to make
   recommendations on how to fully implement this mandate."

   Drawing inspiration from how the Internet Engineering Task Force
   (IETF) works, the present memo proposes a way for implementing this
   mandate.

   Here are some significant properties of this proposal:




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   o  The ECTF proposal provides a way to implement Enhanced Cooperation
      as foreseen by the Tunis Agenda without further delay.  Every
      government will be able to participate in the process of enhanced
      cooperation to the extent that it desires to do so.  Governments
      that choose not to participate, or to participate only to a
      limited extent, will not be negatively impacted.

   o  ECTF is designed to complement the IGF and benefit from synergies
      with the IGF.  For example, ECTF Working-Group annual meetings
      will by default be organized as IGF pre-events.  Also, the
      recommendations published by ECTF will contribute to filling the
      gap that the IGF itself is not making any recommendations, and in
      fact even lacks a mechanism to decide where making recommendations
      is appropriate, even though the mandate for the IGF includes
      making recommendations where appropriate (see [Tunis], para 72g).

   o  The IETF principles of great inclusiveness of participation and
      decision-making by rough consensus are built upon to minimize the
      risks of powerful stakeholders gaining undue influence.

   o  In the realm of intergovernmental Internet governance cooperation
      it is not immediately obvious whether a good analogue for the IETF
      principle of "running code" exists.  The ECTF proposal is inspired
      by the idea that an operationalized emphasis on human rights
      together with the principle of evidence based decision making
      might provide similarly valuable guidance to how IETF technical
      standardization work is guided by the "running code" principle.

   o  ECTF is not designed to supplant the role of national governments
      in deciding about which balance to choose between conflicting
      legitimate interests, a task which is a key part of just about
      every policy making process.  Rather ECTF will improve the
      information input of such policy decision making process.  This is
      important because if the information input is one-sided or rubbish
      in some other way, the resulting policy decisions will probably be
      badly unbalanced no matter how good and democratic the decision
      making process may be.

   Note: There a complementary proposal [Wisdom] for also establishing a
   "Wisdom Task Force" for international multistakeholder enhancement of
   the work of parliaments.

1.1.  Avoidance of Requirements Language

   This memo requests and recommends actions, but it does not define
   requirements.  The use of the keywords of [RFC2119] describing
   requirement levels is therefore deliberately avoided.




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   The Preparatory Working-Group described in Section 2 should not
   consider itself bound by any of the text in this memo, but rather it
   should feel free to reconsider and revise all of these
   recommendations.


2.  Preparatory Working-Group

   A Preparatory Working-Group with reasonably well-balanced
   multistakeholder participation shall be convened to review and revise
   the contents of this memo.

   The work of this Preparatory Working-Group could begin with an in-
   person kick-off meeting which might be a one-day pre-event for the
   2015 Internet Governance Forum, after the Working Group on Enhanced
   Cooperation has completed its work.


3.  Draft Scope Statement for ECTF

   As per the need for enhanced cooperation recognized in paras 68-70 of
   the Tunis Agenda [Tunis], ECTF's scope of work shall be to facilitate
   enhanced cooperation of governments with each other and with other
   organizations, enabling them to carry out their roles and
   responsibilities in regard to international public policy issues
   pertaining to the Internet.

   In particular, ECTF shall provide a framework that allows governments
   and governmental organizations to conduct policy consultations
   regarding information society topics of international scope in such a
   way that inputs from the broadest possible variety of stakeholders
   are distilled, by means of rough consensus processes, into concrete,
   internationally applicable recommendations.

   Day-to-day technical and operational matters, that do not impact on
   international public policy issues, are not included in ECTF's remit.


4.  Draft Working Directives for ECTF

   This section provides a draft set of rules that should be carefully
   considered and revised by the ECTF Preparatory Working-Group, with
   the goal of creating a good initial Working Directives document for
   ECTF.  The Preparatory Working-Group should at all times conduct its
   activities in accordance with what the current draft Working
   Directives say about how an ECTF Working-Group conducts its work.  In
   this way, the Preparatory Working-Group will be conducting an initial
   test of how the draft directives work in practice, and any



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   unreasonably burdensome rules can be recognized and fixed quickly.

4.1.  Fundamental Values

   The fundamental values of the ECTF are that the human rights, as
   defined in the various international human rights treaties, shall be
   upheld and implemented in every way possible.

   Evidence-based arguments on how these objectives can be best achieved
   shall be given precedence over more speculative arguments.

   ECTF Working-Groups shall seek to provide, by means of the Request
   For Action documents that they publish, the best possible information
   input to the processes of national governments and other governance
   institutions that make policy decisions.  The Working-Groups shall
   seek to collect, by means of a balanced multistakeholder process,
   information about needs, concerns, cause-effect relationships, and
   available evidence, and to process all this to the extent possible
   into recommendations.  The Working-Groups shall particularly pay
   attention to any relevant proceedings at the IGF.  At the very least,
   every Working-Group should be able to reach rough consensus on
   recommendations of the form "Public policy regarding topic X should
   take into consideration the following needs and concerns... ."
   Ideally (but with greater difficulty of reaching rough consensus)
   specific proposals for laws and others kinds of public policy
   decisions should be developed in a form that explicitly suggests a
   choice of options for possible choices of the balance between
   conflicting legitimate interests, together with information on what
   is known about the advantages and disadvantages (from the public
   interest perspective) of the different options.

4.2.  Logic trees for discourse facilitation

   Like in the Internet Engineering Task Force and in the Free Software
   and Open Source movements, the key success factor for work in the
   Enhanced Cooperation Task Force is to work by means of genuine
   deliberative processes rather than by means of some kind of power
   politics.

   Such deliberative processes can make use of techniques for strategy
   development and reasoning in complex systemic contexts by means of
   logic trees, as described e.g. in [Dettmer].

   An important strength of these logic tree techniques is that they
   allow to deal with emotions such as fear and hope in a logical
   manner: They allow fears to be acknowledged and treated as a signal
   that there is a need to do careful systemic analysis and that there
   is a need for hope-inspiring solution proposals.  Although explicitly



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   addressing fear and hope is not part of classical logics, an
   effective technique for doing that is probably necessary for creating
   constructive discourse processes in which all stakeholders are
   welcome to participate and where the needs, views and concerns
   expressed by every participant will be taken appropriately seriously.
   See also the UN Secretary-General's recent remarks on "the way to
   build societies founded on hope instead of fueled by fear", [Ban
   2013-08-28].

4.3.  WG Working Procedures

   ECTF Working-Groups are generally free to define their own working
   procedures subject to the constraints that everyone without
   restriction must be welcome to participate as long as they
   participate constructively, and that decisions are made by the
   principle of rough consensus.

   Unless foreseen differently in the Terms of Reference of a Working
   Group, or the Working-Group decides otherwise, the ECTF Secretariat
   (see Section 4.9) shall use its discretion in setting up electronic
   communication infrastructure (such as an email mailing list) for the
   Working-Group, and in organizing in-person meetings, and in reminding
   participants, when this may be necessary, of the principles of
   professionally respectful conduct, or of international human rights
   law, or of the Terms of Reference of the particular Working-Group.

   If and only if such reminders prove ineffective, the Secretariat
   shall request the Committee (see Section 4.9.2) to decide an
   appropriate sanction which may take the form of barring specific
   persons from participation in ECTF for a specific amount of time.
   The Committee can decide to impose such sanctions only by consensus
   or rough consensus but not by majority voting.

   Unless foreseen differently in the Terms of Reference of a Working-
   Group, or the Working-Group decides otherwise, the ECTF Secretariat
   shall organize, for each Working-Group, an annual in-person meeting
   as an IGF pre-event.

   All ECTF Working-Groups shall seek to interact with the broader
   Internet Governance community by active participation in the IGF.

   All WG documents and draft documents shall be licensed under a
   Creative Commons Attribution license with a note that a link to
   http://enhanced-cooperation.org/ suffices as attribution.







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4.4.  Accessibility and compatibility requirements

   All electronic communication infrastructure shall fulfill all of the
   following requirements:

   o  It shall be fully accessible using a variety of computer operating
      systems.

   o  It shall be fully accessible using Free and Open Source Software
      (FOSS).

   o  It shall be fully accessible using assistive technologies for
      persons with disabilities.

4.5.  Request For Action (RFA) Publication Procedures

   The Secretariat shall process requests for publication of draft
   documents as Request For Action documents as follows:

   o  Unless the Working-Group made the decision to publish the draft as
      a Request For Action documents in the presence of a representative
      of the Secretariat, the Secretariat shall make reasonable
      inquiries to ensure that this decision has indeed been made by
      rough consensus and in accordance with the Terms of Reference of
      the Working-Group.

   o  The Secretariat shall verify that the Working-Group which made the
      request has Active status.  (All Working-Groups have Active status
      initially, this status can change to Inactive in case of
      Sustaining Member disendorsements, see Section 4.8.2.)

4.6.  Overall Rough Consensus Endorsement

   The Working-Group which has made the decision to publish a Request
   For Action document may instruct the Secretariat to issue a Consensus
   Call for Overall Rough Consensus Endorsement by ECTF.

   In this case the Secretariat shall communicate to all ECTF
   participants a request to review that Request For Action document and
   communicate any objections within 90 days.

   If any objections are received, the Working-Group shall review the
   objections and decide whether it wants to revise the Request For
   Action document.

   If no objections are received, or if the Working-Group otherwise
   decides not to revise the Request For Action document, it may ask for
   a determination whether there is Overall Rough Consensus of ECTF.



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   Overall Rough Consensus means that there must be rough consensus
   among each of the major stakeholder categories: Governments, civil
   society and industry.  The determination of Overall Rough Consensus
   is made by the Committee of Sustaining Members, see Section 4.9.2
   below.

   If it is determined that there is overall Overall Rough Consensus,
   the Secretariat shall add information to this effect to the concerned
   Request For Action document.  Furthermore, the Secretariat shall in
   this case issue a press release.

4.7.  WG Creation

   This section outlines the process for the formation of new ECTF
   Working-Groups.  The objective of these rules is to make it as easy
   as reasonably possible to create such Working-Groups as soon as there
   is sufficient interest, while avoiding the creation of Working-Groups
   that would violate ECTF's fundamental values (see Section 4.1) or
   that would not attract a sufficient number and variety of
   participants that output documents of high quality can be achieved.

4.7.1.  Initial Informal Discussion

   The ECTF Secretariat (see Section 4.9) shall make electronic
   communication infrastructure (such as an email mailing list)
   available for the purpose of informal discussion of ideas for new
   ECTF Working-Groups.

   The Secretariat shall use its discretion in reminding participants,
   when this may be necessary, of the values of ECTF including the
   principles of professionally respectful conduct and international
   human rights law.

   If such reminders prove insufficient for achieving a reasonably
   pleasant working atmosphere, the Secretariat shall request the
   Committee (see Section 4.9.2) to decide an appropriate sanction which
   may take the form of barring specific persons from participation in
   ECTF for a specific amount of time.  The Committee can decide to
   impose such sanctions only by consensus or rough consensus but not by
   majority voting.

4.7.2.  Terms of Reference Endorsement

   After at least one month has elapsed since an idea has been initially
   proposed for information discussion, an ECTF Working-Group can be
   formed by two or more Sustaining Members endorsing Terms of Reference
   for the new Working-Group.  The Terms of Reference shall specify
   objectives and guiding principles for the Working-Group.



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4.7.3.  Secretariat Actions

   The Secretariat shall verify that the Terms of Reference for the new
   Working-Group do not violate ECTF's fundamental values (see
   Section 4.1), and that the Terms of Reference uphold these values at
   least as well as any other Working-Group addressing a very similar
   topic area for which the required Endorsement has been received
   earlier or up to two days later.  For any Terms of Reference document
   which fails this test, the corresponding Working-Group shall not be
   created.  The purpose of this rule is to ensure that if different
   groups of Sustaining Members propose different frameworks to address
   the same problem, so that one of them is clearly better from a human
   rights perspective, then precedence is appropriately given to the
   better framework.

   When it has been decided that establishment of the Working-Group is
   appropriate, the Secretariat shall set up appropriate communications
   infrastructure and add the new Working-Group to the list of ECTF
   Working-Groups, with Active status.  Furthermore, the Secretariat
   shall inform about the new Working-Group all registered participants
   including the Sustaining Members, as well as the general public, and
   all known civil society organizations with relevant expertise.

4.8.  WG Termination

   This section outlines the procedures for closing down a Working-
   Group.  These procedures are intended to be used not only when the
   tasks of a Working-Group have been completed, but also if it becomes
   clear that progress is only possible by creating a new Working-Group
   on essentially the same topic but with Terms of Reference that
   provide more specific guidance which makes it easier to reach rough
   consensus.

4.8.1.  WG Dissolution by Rough Consensus

   A Working-Group has the power of making the decision to dissolve
   itself.

4.8.2.  WG Dissolution due to Disendorsement

   Sustaining Members which have endorsed a Working-Group can at any
   time withdraw their endorsement.  If this causes the number of
   Sustaining Members which endorse a particular Working-Group to drop
   below two, the status of the Working-Group changes to Inactive; as
   long as a Working-Group has Inactive status, it cannot decide to
   publish Request For Action documents.  The status changes to Active
   again if the number of endorsing Sustaining Members again increases
   to three or more.



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   A Working-Group which has Inactive status for a continuous period of
   six months or more is dissolved.

4.8.3.  WG Dissolution due to Dysfunction

   As outlined in Section 4.9.5, the Secretariat will if necessary take
   corrective action if a Working-Groups fails to function.  In such a
   situation, a Working-Group may be dissolved if no-one is willing to
   serve as chairperson.

4.9.  Secretariat

   A Secretariat for the ECTF shall be established with seat in Geneva,
   Switzerland.  A host country agreement shall be established with the
   country of Switzerland which ensures that if the Secretariat should
   not act fairly and diligently according to its various
   responsibilities, injunctions to correct the behavior of the
   Secretariat can be obtained from Swiss courts of law.  Any natural or
   legal person, internationally, without restriction, shall have
   standing to sue for an injunction for correction of the behavior of
   the Secretariat.

   The ECTF Secretariat shall be funded, and decisions of budget and
   staffing of the ECTF Secretariat shall be made by a Committee of
   Sustaining Members, as described in Section 4.9.2 below.  In
   addition, Sustaining Members have a special role in regard to
   Working-Group formation (see Section 4.7.2) and dissolution (see
   Section 4.8.2).

4.9.1.  Sustaining Membership

   Any country which is recognized by the UN as a country may become a
   Sustaining Member of the ECTF.

   Any membership organization of which at least three members are
   recognized by the UN as countries may become a Sustaining Member of
   the ECTF.

   Unless the Sustaining Members agree by consensus on a different
   mechanism for funding the costs of the Secretariat, all Sustaining
   Members shall contribute equally to funding the Secretariat.

4.9.2.  Committee of Sustaining Members

   Decisions of budget and staffing of the ECTF Secretariat shall be
   made by a Committee of Sustaining Members, which shall be composed as
   follows: If there are no more than eleven Sustaining Members, each
   Sustaining Member shall delegate one representative to the Committee.



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   If there are twelve or more Sustaining Members, nine Sustaining
   Members shall be selected randomly who shall each delegate a
   representative to the Committee.  Each year, three of the longest-
   serving Committee members (chosen randomly in case of a tie) shall be
   rotated off the Committee and replaced by representatives of three
   other Sustaining Members.

   The Committee shall attempt to make decisions by rough consensus.  If
   this fails, decisions regarding the Secretariat may be taken at a
   meeting at which decision making by majority vote is allowed, which
   may be convened no earlier than 16 hours after the rough consensus
   process has failed.

   The Committee shall review any proposed changes to the ECTF Working
   Directives before publication as a Request For Action document.  It
   shall communicate any concerns to the Working-Group which is
   proposing changes to the Working Directives.

   The Committee is also responsible for the determination of Overall
   Rough Consensus, see Section 4.6.  The decision of determination of
   Overall Rough Consensus needs to be reached by rough consensus of the
   Committee; if the Committee fails to reach rough consensus, the
   Request For Action document in question shall not be considered to
   have attained Overall Rough Consensus.  This applies also to the
   Consensus Call in the context of changes to the ECTF Working
   Directives (see Section 4.9.4 the difference being only that that
   Consensus Call involves only the Sustaining Members.

4.9.3.  Secretariat Funding

   Countries and International Organizations which are interested in
   being Sustaining Members shall make, for a specific number of years,
   a commitment that they are willing to contribute to funding the costs
   of the secretariat up to a specific amount.

   A maximal set of Sustaining Members is chosen so that the yearly
   commitment limit of each Sustaining Member is greater or equal than
   the budget of ECTF divided by the number of Sustaining Members.

   If the operations of the Secretariat have not been adequately funded,
   the Secretariat shall have the authority to suspend some of its
   operations, according to its sole discretion.

   If the Committee intends to increase the budget of the Secretariat,
   the Committee shall, before making the decision to do so, secure
   commitments that sufficient funding will be made available.
   Furthermore, the Committee shall regularly assess the risk of
   available funding potentially dropping below the level of the current



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   budget, and appropriate contingency plans shall be made.

4.9.4.  Changes to the ECTF Working Directives

   If an ECTF Working-Group proposes a new version of the Directives,
   the Secretariat shall organize a Consensus Call among all Sustaining
   Members.  If and only if there is rough consensus among each category
   of Sustaining Members for adoption of the revised Directives (as
   determined by the Committee, see Section 4.9.2), the Secretariat
   shall put them in force by publishing a Request For Action document
   that gives the details about how the new version was adopted, and
   requests the new version of the Directives to be followed from now
   on.

   Country Members or International Organization Members may propose to
   make ECTF part of the UN or another existing or new treaty-based
   international organization.  Such a proposal needs to be approved in
   the same way by rough consensus of all Sustaining Members of ECTF, in
   addition to whatever other steps may be required to create a new
   umbrella organization for ECTF.

4.9.5.  Further Responsibilities of the Secretariat

   The Secretariat shall seek to ensure an official presence at the IGF,
   for example by means of a booth.

   The Secretariat shall provide guidance to ECTF Working-Groups on how
   to self-organize on the basis of the principle of rough consensus
   decision-making.

   If it is brought to the attention of the Secretariat that an ECTF
   Working-Group has, for an continuous period of three or more months,
   failed to self-organize or otherwise failed to make any substantive
   progress towards its objectives, the Secretariat shall take the
   following steps: First the Secretariat shall verify that this is
   indeed the case.  If yes, the Secretariat shall solicit nominations
   and self-nominations from among the Working-Group members of
   potential chairpersons who could organize the work of the Working-
   Group.  If at least one person is nominated, the Secretariat shall
   appoint a chairperson.  If no-one is nominated, the Secretariat shall
   dissolve the Working-Group.

   Working-Groups may also by means of a rough consensus decision
   request and empower the Secretariat to execute this process of
   chairperson appointment.  The Secretariat shall honor such requests.






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5.  Draft Terms of Reference for Some Initial Working-Groups

   This section provides draft Terms of Reference statements for some
   possible ECTF Working-Groups (WGs).

   The ECTF Preparatory Working-Group should consider and revise these
   texts in order to ensure that when ECTF is created, it will be easy
   to quickly also establish some worthwhile Working-Groups.

   The Preparatory Working-Group will not itself create these Working-
   Groups; rather it should publish, in addition to a Request For Action
   document with recommended Working Directives, also a Request For
   Action document recommending Terms of Reference for some Working-
   Groups.  It should then be easy to create such Working-Groups by
   means of the procedure for WG Creation in the Working Directives (see
   Section 4.7).

5.1.  WG on implementation of WSIS principles

   This WG shall promote and assess, on an ongoing basis, the embodiment
   of WSIS principles in Internet governance processes.  The WG shall
   publish its findings as Request For Action documents and seek to
   inform the IGF.

   Rationale: According to para 72(i) in the Tunis Agenda this is part
   of the mandate of the IGF.  However as it is currently constituted,
   the IGF is not able to fulfill this aspect of its mandate.

5.2.  WG on ICANN and Root Zone Oversight

   This WG shall develop a solid proposal for transferring to a more
   international body the ICANN oversight functions that are currently
   in the hands of NTIA.  The WG shall publish this proposal as a
   Request For Action document.  This document shall particularly
   emphasize the measures for ensuring the integrity of the DNS root
   zone file by preventing (intentional or unintentional) inappropriate
   modifications, while avoiding undue delays of appropriate
   modifications.

   Rationale: Many people, governments and civil society organizations,
   especially outside the US, consider the current situation
   unsatisfactory or even unacceptable.  ICANN, ISOC, and the RIRs are
   also all on the record favoring a shift.

5.3.  WG on Law Enforcement and the Internet

   This WG shall observe, compare and discuss the legal frameworks and
   procedures of various countries in regard to how law enforcement



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   agencies deal with the challenges and opportunities of the Internet.
   The WG shall regularly publish Request For Action documents with its
   findings, emphasizing in particular any undesired side effects on
   human rights (such as for example when connection data is stored by
   ISPs on the basis of data retention demands for law enforcement
   purposes, but the data is at least sometimes abused for other
   purposes) and the importance of finding an appropriate, evidence-
   based balance between law enforcement needs and other human rights.
   The WG shall furthermore study what kinds of technical changes to the
   Internet infrastructure would be possible in order to better meet the
   needs of law enforcement, and if it turns out that such technical
   changes would be possible without significant negative impacts on
   other human rights, the WG shall publish Request For Action documents
   with corresponding recommendations.

   Rationale: Numerous governments have spoken, e.g. at ICANN and RIR
   meetings, about the need for more regard for the needs of law
   enforcement.  On the other hand, many civil society organizations are
   concerned that some measures that law enforcement agencies would
   propose may have highly negative side effects on fundamental rights
   of privacy and freedom of expression.

5.4.  Directives WG

   This WG shall continually observe the progress of the work of ECTF,
   in particular in view of the need for progress in regard to practical
   realization of human rights, and discuss any suggestions for changes
   to the Working Directives.  Whenever the WG has rough consensus that
   a change to the Working Directives may be desirable, the WG shall
   publish a Request For Action document with revised Working Directives
   and an appendix that explains the rationale for the changes.  This
   document shall not be phrased as definitely containing the new
   Working Directives, but rather as a request to the body of Sustaining
   Members of ECTF to adopt the proposed new Working Directives.
   (Adoption of such a revised Working Directives document is done by
   rough consensus among the Sustaining Members of ECTF.)

   Rationale: Every organization needs to observe its own performance,
   and to take corrective action when necessary.


6.  Security Considerations

   Similarly to security considerations for technical systems (see
   RFC 3552 [RFC3552]), governance fora and processes need to be
   designed for robustness against attempts of "inappropriate usage" and
   "denial of service".  In addition, the integrity of ECTF work with
   regard to human rights needs to be safeguarded.



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6.1.  Inappropriate Usage

   Clearly ECTF needs rules governing the interaction between
   participants.  In the absence of appropriate rules, participation in
   ECTF cannot be expected to be effective, time-efficient and a
   pleasant experience.

   These rules need to be designed so that bona fide well-intentioned
   newcomers with reasonably good communication skills will be able to
   quickly learn how to participate effectively, while on the other hand
   there need to be effective disincentives that discourage and penalize
   disruptive and non-constructive behavior.

6.2.  Denial of Service

   It is particularly important to avoid vulnerability of ECTF and its
   working-groups to the political equivalent of what is called "denial
   of service" attacks in the technical realm: It must not be possible
   for beneficiaries of the status quo (who may fear a potential loss of
   power) to disrupt discussions that could lead to new forms of
   enhanced cooperation.

6.3.  Human Rights

   The rules of ECTF need to ensure that all recommendations published
   by its working-groups are designed to uphold the fundamental
   principles which are internationally recognized as human rights, and
   to improve as much as possible the practical ability of people
   everywhere to enjoy their human rights.


7.  IANA Considerations

   This memo includes no request to IANA.


8.  Acknowledgements

   This memo has been inspired significantly by postings on the mailing
   list of the Civil Society Internet Governance Caucus [IGC] from
   various participants, including Bertrand de La Chapelle, Avri Doria,
   William Drake, Anriette Esterhuysen, Andrea Glorioso, Michael
   Gurstein, Wolfgang Kleinwaechter, Jeremy Malcolm, Lee W McKnight,
   Parminder Jeet Singh, and Roland Perry.  This acknowledgment of
   inspiration is not intended to imply that any of the named persons
   endorse the contents of this memo.





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9.  Endorsements

   Endorsements will be solicited at a later stage.


10.  Request For Comments

   Comments and other feedback of any kind regarding this Internet-Draft
   are requested in the form of postings to the mailing list of the
   Civil Society Internet Governance Caucus [IGC] (preferred) or in the
   form of personal communications to the author.


11.  Informative References

   [67/195]   UN General Assembly, "Information and communications
              technologies for development", Resolution 67/195, 2012,
              <http://unctad.org/meetings/en/SessionalDocuments/
              ares67d195_en.pdf>.

   [Ban 2013-08-28]
              Ban Ki-moon, "Secretary-General's Freedom Lecture at
              Leiden University", 2013,
              <http://www.un.org/sg/statements/index.asp?nid=7046>.

   [Dettmer]  Dettmer, H W., "The Logical Thinking Process", ISBN 978-0-
              87389-723-5, 2008.

   [IGC]      Civil Society Internet Governance Caucus, "Mailing list",
              <http://igcaucus.org/membership>.

   [RFC2119]  Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
              Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997.

   [RFC3552]  Rescorla, E. and B. Korver, "Guidelines for Writing RFC
              Text on Security Considerations", BCP 72, RFC 3552,
              July 2003.

   [Tunis]    UN World Summit on the Information Society, "Tunis Agenda
              for the Information Society", 2005,
              <http://www.itu.int/wsis/docs2/tunis/off/6rev1.html>.

   [Wisdom]   Bollow, N., "Plan to Establish a Wisdom Task Force", Work
              in progress , 2013, <http://wisdomtaskforce.org/RFB/1>.







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Author's Address

   Norbert Bollow
   Weidlistrasse 18
   CH-8624 Gruet,
   Switzerland

   Phone: +41 44 972 20 59
   Email: nb@bollow.ch
   URI:   http://bollow.ch/









































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