Last week, a 3-day conference was held at Harvard University’s Belfer center focused on fortifying election security and digital democracy. IGP contributors Karim Farhat and Karl Grindal competed in an Information Operations hackathon, winning first place in the policy category. The panel of judges was comprised of former Secretary of...
At the International Studies Association convention in San Francisco, at an especially interesting panel on cybersecurity, we were privileged to hear excerpts from a forthcoming book by Michael Warner, Historian for the United States Cyber Command, and John Childress. Warner examined the last 20 years of U.S. Russia relationships in...
What's going on in China? I was invited there for a series of lectures at Beijing’s Communication University of China (CUC) during the week of March 18. Thanks to Professor Xu Peixi, who organized the tour, I got a chance to meet most of the academics, researchers and policy analysts...
Background The international trade in hardware, software, and content complicates many cybersecurity challenges. Domestic regulations and enforcement may fall short of their intended aims when foreign criminals and governments are out of their jurisdiction, and cheap insecure technologies proliferate worldwide. In response, some security experts have looked to restricting trade...
The conflict between ICANN’s contracts and data protection law is dominating discourse and policy making at the ICANN 61 meeting in San Juan Puerto Rico. ICANN requires registries and registrars to provide a public directory service, known as Whois, that gives anyone in the world immediate access to personal data...
There is a constant drumbeat of Russian threat stories these days, but none is more important to Internet governance than the legal battle between Kaspersky Labs and the United States. It highlights the dangers of nation-states inserting themselves into cybersecurity governance, and shows why the alignment of cybersecurity with nation...
SETTING THE COURSE FOR A 21ST CENTURY DIGITAL TRADE POLICY On May 24-25, 2018, the Internet Governance Project (IGP) at Georgia Tech’s School of Public Policy held its 4th Annual Workshop in Atlanta. This year’s workshop explored the scientific and public policy questions raised around digital trade. It aimed to help...
Probably few people involved with the Internet, either as users or suppliers, have ever heard of the Working Group on Enhanced Cooperation (WGEC). In fact, on January 31 this United Nations-based working group with grand ambitions for making “global public policy” for the Internet terminated its activities without accomplishing anything....
My last blog emphasized the importance of defining a purpose for Whois consistent with ICANN’s mission. It is impossible for ICANN to comply with GDPR unless this is done. Why doesn’t ICANN already have a defined purpose for Whois? Therein lies an interesting story - a story with a hero,...
ICANN Corp seems to have finally taken the tension between Whois and privacy rights seriously, thanks to the impending General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in Europe. In preparing for the advent of GDPR, ICANN has solicited legal advice from Hamilton Advokatbyrå, a Swedish law firm, regarding possible conflicts between its...
Declaring Independence in Cyberspace tells the story of the struggle between governments and the global Internet community over control of the Internet registries (IANA). It offers new insights into a pressing question with profound implications: is state sovereignty the immutable foundation of global governance, or can new technological capabilities change the model?
“This is a book that needed to be written, and no one is better placed to write it than Milton Mueller. This full, rigorous account provides researchers and policymakers with a precious resource on global internet governance.”
