The Internet Society and Global Scribes Work Together to Amplify Young Voices

On International Youth Day, the Internet Society and Global Scribes partnered to connect youth around the world to let their voices be heard, allowing them to become empowered and engaged global citizens, striving toward a more united and sustainable digital future.

As local and international actors innovate to solve the most pressing issues that we face in the world today, young people are often left out of the equation with little or no participation in important discussions and decision-making processes.

Youth across the world are often overlooked as a potential resource to solving global challenges, such as climate change, migration, health, and unemployment, despite being directly impacted by these issues and having opinions on how to solve them.

This also happens in the Internet ecosystem, where young people often do not have a place at the table when it comes to decisions that shape the Internet’s future.

While youth are recognized as “the future generation” and perceived as key to a more sustainable tomorrow, they are seldom given adequate platforms to let their voices be heard or allow them to contribute to their societies in a meaningful way, in their own right as youth.

Young people are often deprived of the opportunity to serve as catalysts for a more united and sustainable world Continue reading

AfPIF 2018 Day Three: Cloud Infrastructure, Local Content, and More

The growth of cloud infrastructure in Africa has been credited with the growth of local content in many regions, and it holds the key for Africa’s ability to attract content carriers and distribution networks.

The first panel of day three at the Africa Peering and Interconnection Forum (AfPIF) was dedicated to discussing the current scenario of cloud infrastructure and what it will take to grow the sector further, get the market interested, and eventually grow the level of content hosted locally.

South Africa has the most extensive cloud market, compared to other African countries, and it took concerted efforts from the different players, under the ISP Association, for the market to be deregulated and the laws to be put in place. The laws can take time, but industry players agree the laws are vital to investments in the market.

Although the industry may be small in Africa, cybersecurity is key, as businesses are susceptible to cybercrime, just like other global operators. That means the enactment of cyber security laws in the different countries, and continued training and awareness by industry players.

Power and cooling is another vital part, with many countries enjoying monopoly of power distribution. Liquid Telecom said Continue reading

Announcing the Online Trust Audit & Honor Roll Methodology for 2018

The Online Trust Alliance (OTA) is an Internet Society initiative that aims to enhance online trust, user empowerment, and innovation through convening multistakeholder initiatives and developing and promoting best practices, ethical privacy practices, and data stewardship. One of OTA’s major activities is the Online Trust Audit & Honor Roll, which promotes responsible online privacy and data security practices and recognizes leaders in the public and private sectors who have embraced them. This morning, we released the methodology we’ll use for this year’s audit.

The report will analyze more than 1,000 websites on consumer protection, site security, and responsible privacy practices. Based on a composite weighted analysis, sites that score 80 percent or better overall, without failing in any one category, will be recognized in the Honor Roll.

Building largely on past criteria, this year’s updates include GDPR compliance and other security and privacy standards and practices, as well as adding a healthcare sector. From the press release:

Key changes to this year’s Audit include:

• Consumer Protection (email authentication, domain security and anti-phishing technologies) – more granular assessment of Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting and Conformance (DMARC) support, and increased weight for use of opportunistic Transport Layer Security (TLS), which Continue reading

AfPIF 2018 Day Two: Connecting Cape Town to Cairo

Africa’s dream of Cape Town to Cairo fiber connectivity has moved closer, with Liquid Telecom announcing that it has made considerable progress is signing agreements with regulatory authorities and partners within the route.

Liquid Telecom has an ambitious plan of reducing latencies in connectivity between Cape Town and Cairo. Currently, traffic is routed through Europe, with latencies of 209ms, and it will be reduced to 97ms.

In his keynote speech at the Africa Peering and Interconnection Forum (AfPIF), Ben Roberts, Liquid CTO, said that the project will be implemented through existing Liquid infrastructure within different countries, partnership with existing infrastructure providers, and regulators. The project is expected to be done by 2020 and to eventually connect East and West Africa.

Liquid is expecting the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) agreement, signed and ratified recently, to drive city-to-city interconnectivity, as more countries look for ways to trade with each other and eventually exchange Internet traffic. The goal to increase intra-Africa broadband traffic.

Roberts projects the infrastructure currently being set up will be highly used by the youth, who have grown up online – through education, social media, and gaming applications. The Internet of Things is expected to grow; currently most Continue reading

There’s a Techlash. The G20 Should Listen.

The Internet is at risk. Once thought of as the global equalizer, opening doors for communication, work opportunities, commerce and more – the Internet is now increasingly viewed with skepticism and wariness. We are witnessing a trend where people fare feeling let down by the technology they use. Fueled by unease and uncertainty about the growing scope of threats to security and privacy that come with an always-on, tech-driven world, people are now looking for ways to disconnect and are placing greater emphasis on values and human interaction.

The way we live our lives is now inextricably linked to the Internet – which is estimated to contribute US$6.6 trillion a year, or 7.1 percent of total GDP in the G20 countries by 2020. In developing nations, that digital economy is growing steadily by 15 to 25 percent a year. Yet the Internet essentially is under attack. Large scale data breaches, uncertainties about how our data is being used and monetized, cybercrime, surveillance and other online threats are impacting Internet users’ trust. We are at an important crossroads for the Internet and its healthy development is at stake.

It is our collective duty to find a response to the Continue reading

Until we meet again…

As I wrap up my tenure at the the helm of the Internet Society on September 1,  I want to thank each and all of you for your engagement, support and friendship.  The last five years have been exhilarating—getting to know you, learning so much from you and acting together — to make the Internet better.

You have made a critical difference in strengthening and growing the Internet Society. The organization is now over 100 staff strong, serving on every continent but Antarctica.  We have grown to 126 Chapters in 108 countries, with 8 global Special Interest Groups (SIGs). The Online Trust Alliance (OTA) has joined our organizational membership and we have new and vibrant partnerships with civil society and human rights organizations. The IETF has adopted a new structure to better serve its administration. Our
youth outreach and our engagement with the Internet Hall of Fame honorees and ISOC alumni have allowed us to look to the future as we gain wisdom from those who shaped the Internet and the Internet Society. More policy makers and governmental organizations look to us for our reports, research and expertise allowing for increased dialogue and collaboration at a time when it is Continue reading

AfPIF 2018 Kicks Off

The ninth edition of Africa Peering and Interconnection Forum (AfPIF) kicked off today, with more than 400 tech executive in attendance.

This year, the forum was organized and held jointly with iWeek- South Africa ISP Association’s premier tech event. The event is underway at the Cape Town International Convention Center.

This year’s event is dubbed AfPIF@iWeek has attracted tech executives, chief technology officers, peering coordinators and business development managers, Internet service providers and operators, telecommunications policymakers and regulators, content providers, Internet Exchange Point (IXP) operators, infrastructure providers, data center managers, National Research and Education Networks (NRENs), carriers, and transit providers.

The sessions started with an introduction by Nishal Goburdhan, a veteran of AfPIF, who traced the history of AfPIF, from its conception to the community event it is. The community took over the program three years ago, determining the speakers and the conference content.

How can you take advantage of AfPIF? Nishal suggested that the participants use peering personals sessions; this is like speed dating for networks – members give details of their AS numbers, where they peer, peering policy, contact information, and explain why other participants should peer with them. At the end of every session, participants get a Continue reading

SANOG 32 – Another Success Story for MANRS

The SANOG 32 meeting was held on 2-10 August 2018 in Dhaka, Bangladesh, which marked fifteen amazing years of collaboration between network operators in the South Asia region. The Internet Society is proud to support the SANOG fellowship programme that provides opportunities for network engineers from countries in the region to attend, as well as organising the Network Security workshop during the event.

SANOG 32 also saw another MANRS milestone reached when the ISP Association of Bangladesh (ISPAB) signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Internet Society. ISPAB is a membership-based, not-for-profit organization that provides a forum for Bangladeshi ISPs to discuss technology, policy, regulatory and commercial issues and find collective solutions.

In accordance with the MoU, both ISPAB and ISOC will work together to promote and support MANRS, to encourage network operators in Bangladesh to join the initiative. There are currently only two MANRS participants in the country, so being able to increase engagement with the networking community is a welcome development.

Dr Philip Smith (NSRC and Chair of SANOG Programme Committee) also provided a MANRS update during the conference session.

The Network Security workshop attracted 40 participants and was lead by MANRS founding member Matsuzaki Yoshinobu (IIJ) and Continue reading

DNS privacy in new Android 9

I recently enrolled in the Android developer preview programme and got hold of the Android P (9 beta) OTA image for my Nokia 7 Plus phone, and while discovering what’s new, I found a new advanced option under network settings called ‘Private DNS’ that got my attention. This led to me finding an article from Erik Kline describing this new feature in Android 9, which to my surprise supports DNS-over-TLS (RFC 7858).

Last year we wrote about the experiments in the Go6lab with DNS-over-TLS where we set up a recursive DNS resolver listening on port 853 and serving DNS answers to queries encrypted with TLS. This setup was useful if your local DNS resolver was Unbound or Stubby, and since then I’ve been using Stubby as my local DNS client on MacOS with the Unbound DNS server at the Go6lab (privacydns.go6lab.si) as a recursive resolver for encrypted DNS queries without any issues.

So armed with the information from Erik, I decided to test out the Android implementation.

First thing was to turn on the setting and test it with the ‘privacydns.go6lab.si’ server which worked fine. Enabling ‘log-queries’ on the Unbound server quickly revealed that DNS queries are Continue reading

The Week in Internet News: Malaysia Repeals Recently Passed Fake News Law

That was quick: The new Malaysian government has repealed a fake news law passed earlier this year, The Hill reports. The past government had used the law to charge several opposition leaders. The maximum penalty for violating the law was six years in prison and a fine of about US$128,000.

They love us: A community-run ISP in Chattanooga, Tennessee, is the highest-rated broadband provider in the United States in a Consumer Reports survey, notes Motherboard. The community-run service gets high ranks for speed, reliability, and value, the story says.

Legislating backdoors: The Australian government is targeting companies like Facebook, Google, and WhatsApp in a proposal that would require tech companies to decrypt customer communications on demand, CNet reports. The details of the draft proposal are unclear, but the government would require tech companies to provide more assistance to law enforcement agencies, The Register says.

AI doesn’t want your job: Workers don’t need to worry about Artificial Intelligence taking their jobs, Forbes says. AI will replace boring tasks, but generally not replace whole positions, according to one group of AI experts.

97 and counting: The Kashmir region of India has seen 97 Internet shutdowns in six years after and 11-hour Continue reading

Welcome to AfPIF and iWeek 2018!

A comprehensive view of Africa’s Internet peering and interconnection ecosystem from the region’s top networks and experts, opportunities to strengthen and build new peering relationships with over 300 attendees using an open to all “bilateral meeting” scheduling tool, insightful presentations, studies and reports delivered by a strong lineup of speakers, and a technical village are some of the interesting activities that participants to iWeek/AfPIF 2018 can expect.

The sessions have been spiced up to include a technical village, with vendors offering masterclasses, a super teachers award honoring Africa’s tech teachers, and a beers for peers session, to allow participants to network more.

“This year’s agenda reflects the growing interests from our rapidly evolving regional industry with an increased focus on regional networks, carrier-neutral data centers, cloud services, and regulation in addition to our traditional line-up of quality technical content,” said Kyle Spencer, Co-Coordinator of the African IXP Association.

This year, the Africa Peering and Interconnection Forum (AfPIF) joined hands with the South Africa ISP Association to hold sessions during iWeek. This provides extensive training sessions and opportunities for participants.

“Participants will have opportunities to meet with industry leaders to discuss one on one or in groups the various issues around Continue reading

Safe Online, Safe On Land: Promoting Safe Internet Use to Children in Kenya

On February 16th this year, MediaNet Works and the Internet Society Kenya Chapter launched “Safe Online, Safe On Land” a 12-month project that seeks to promote safe Internet usage and practices among children in Kenya. With funding from the Internet Society’s Beyond the Net Grants Program the project anticipates to reach 700 children, targeting Koinonia Community, four children’s homes, one secondary school, and three other schools in Ngong, Kajiado County.

In addition, 12 teachers, 15 child protection and social workers, 10 journalists from both the community and mainstream media, including the Bloggers Association of Kenya (BAKE), will benefit from this project.

Justification of the Project

The launch of this project coincided with media coverage of Internet and social media safety issues in the country. Cases of online child abuse and human trafficking have recently featured in local media. Consequently, the National Assembly on 26 April, 2018, passed the Computer Misuse and Cybercrimes Bill which is set to be presented to the president for assent. The Bill’s offenses relevant to this project include publication of fake news, pornography, cyberterrorism, cybersquatting, and child pornography.

To set the ball rolling consultative meetings between representatives of MediaNet Works and Koinonia Community were held Continue reading

We Must Continue to Advocate Passionately and Fearlessly: An Interview with Our CEO, Kathy Brown

Late November, Kathy Brown announced that she would be stepping down as CEO of the Internet Society. While preparing for her next chapter, she reflected on her time at the Internet Society and shared her thoughts on how the Internet itself has evolved during her tenure.

The Internet Society: What are the biggest changes you’ve seen in the Internet since you joined the Internet Society?

Kathy Brown: When I joined the Internet Society nearly five years ago, there were about 3 billion people online. Since then, that number has grown by almost a billion, but, still, not everyone is connected. The Internet Society has helped bring Internet access to the hardest-to-reach places on earth, including remote regions in the Caucasus and indigenous communities in South America, but there remain twice as many people online in the developed world than in the developing world, and the digital gender gap is widening.

There’s also been a trend toward consolidation, with fewer companies controlling more and more, and the Internet getting increasingly centralized. We’ve seen governments using the Internet in good, but also bad ways, such as shutdowns, and we’ve seen criminals finding ways to exploit it.

Learning About Blockchain, Internet Governance, and Cryptocurrency

My first task as the Internet Society’s Regional Community Manager for the Middle East was to organize three events in a span of a week in three different cities around the Middle East about Blockchain with Dr. Walid Al Saqaf, Internet Society Board of Trustees, as the keynote speaker.

Amman, Beirut, and Dubai

July 8th was D-Day for Amman at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in partnership with Int@j Jordan and Tank by Omnia. July 19th was Beirut, Lebanon, at the Movenpick Beirut, co-organized with the Internet Society Lebanon Chapter. July 12th was Dubai, UAE, at DTEC Silicon Oasis Authority, co-organized with the ISOC UAE Chapter. All three cities differed in the type of attendees, but the subjects were the same: Blockchain, Internet Governance, and Cryptocurrency.

Dr. Walid Al Saqaf, along with Waheed Al Barghouti, a cryptocurrency expert, conducted a four-hour morning workshop with a live mining demo, “create your blockchain” exercise, and smart contract creation, rules, and regulations. Moreover, there was an open forum in the afternoon that included high-level government representatives as well as private and public sector attendees.

Blockchain had been ambiguous to me, yet after the first workshop I found myself knowing more and more about Continue reading

Improving Gender Rights Online: Perspectives from the Global South

The Internet has helped to empower communities of across the globe. However, existing gender disparities, discrimination, and inequalities, especially faced by women living in the Global South, including the least developed countries, has had a  considerable impact on the digital gender divide, leading to the digital exclusion of women.

A study “Views & Perspectives on Gender Rights Online, for the Global South”, was undertaken by Amrita Choudhury, CCAOI & Asia Pacific lead for the Internet’s Society SIG Women and Nadira AL Araj, ISOC Palestine and MENA Civil Society activist, to identify the main challenges towards improving the gender access and rights online, especially in the Global South; highlight the best practices which nations or regions have adopted to overcome those challenges; and suggest policy areas which need reforms.

In addition to relying on secondary sources, the opinions of 19 experts from 15 countries and responses of 162 people from 54 countries were sought. The findings were further discussed and validated through a workshop at the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) 2017 “Redefining Rights for a Gender Inclusive Connected Future (WS 102) and then compiled into a report.

The top challenges identified across the Global South hampering the creation Continue reading

The Week in Internet News: US Gov’t Wants More Encryption – For Itself

Encryption for us, not for you: The U.S. Department of Homeland Security is researching ways to improve mobile encryption for federal users, even as the FBI continues to fight against encrypted data on the smartphones of ordinary users. FifthDomain has a story on the DHS effort.

Safety labels for the IoT: The Internet of things needs food safety-style labels detailing the safety and privacy controls on IoT devices, suggests a story at Motherboard.

Consumer Reports and other groups have begun working on a new open source standard intended to help make Internet-connected hardware safer, the story says.

Let’s Encrypt gains support: Let’s Encrypt, the Internet Society-supported secure certificate authority, has picked up endorsements from major root programs like Microsoft, Google, Apple, Mozilla, Oracle, and Blackberry, Packt Hub reports. The zero-cost service allows website operators to pick up SSL certificates for free.

That’s a lot of AI: Intel sold $1 billion worth of Artificial Intelligence chips in 2017, Reuters reports. That’s even a conservative estimate, Intel says. Prepare now for the smart robot takeover!

Hired by AI: Meanwhile, AI is coming to the hiring process, Bloomberg reports, and that may not be such a bad thing. AI may actually be Continue reading

Count My Voice: Demanding an Internet That Benefits Everyone

The Internet Society has a vision that the Internet must be open, global, and secure for the good of all people. But to get there, the world must demand change in how decisions that shape the Internet’s future are made. Decisions being made behind closed doors.

We’re asking young people around the world – smart passionate people who are spearheading online diversity initiatives, using tech for social development, or working to make the Internet more inclusive – to raise their voice and let policy and decision-makers know that when it comes to the policies that shape the Internet their voice counts.

The digital future impacts us all. Open the doors and listen to the diverse voices of people both online and off. Let’s build an Internet that’s for everyone.

Mary Helda Akongo is one of those voices. A recent graduate of Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda, she believes technology has the power to positively influence the social, political, and economic development of women in Africa. Founder of Roaring Doves, an online and offline peer support community for victims and survivors of gender-based violence, she is also the operations and programs manager for Zimba Women, a Ugandan organization that Continue reading

TLS 1.3 – Internet Security Gets a Boost

Today marks the formal publication of an overhaul of the Transport Layer Security (TLS) protocol. TLS is an Internet standard used to prevent eavesdropping, tampering, and message forgery for various Internet applications. It is probably the most widely deployed network security standard in the world. Often indicated by the small green padlock in a web browser’s address bar¹, TLS  is used in financial transactions, by medical institutions, and to ensure secure connections in a wide variety of other applications.

We believe the new version of this protocol, TLS 1.3, published as RFC 8446, is a significant step forward towards an Internet that is safer and more trusted.

Under development for the past four years and approved by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) in March 2018, TLS 1.3 addresses known issues with the previous versions and improves security and performance, in particular it is able to establish a session more quickly than its predecessors. Because it is more efficient, TLS 1.3 promises better performance for the billions of users and organizations that use TLS every day. As with every IETF standard, TLS 1.3 was developed through open processes and participation, and included contributions from scores of individuals.

Continue reading

Community Networks Workshop at CANTO Annual Conference

Globally, significant progress has been made in recent years with respect to Internet access, however, much more needs to be done. Presently, 54% of the global community is not connected to the Internet. In the Caribbean region, big disparities can be noted. As measured by Internet penetration rates, while countries such as Barbados (80%), Trinidad & Tobago (70%) are well connected, this is not the case in others such as Haiti (12%) and Guyana (40%).

The challenge in less-connected countries is mainly in their large rural communities.  This is where the Internet Society’s ongoing work related to Community Networks (CNs) hopes to have some impact.

Smart strategies, utilizing the skills, knowledge, and authority of all stakeholders such as government, policy makers, the business community, operators, academia, and civil society entities need to be explored. While governments can play a key role, especially with respect to policies that foster network deployment in rural and underserved areas, telecoms operators are also very important. These operators have well-developed transport networks that can be used as backhaul for community networks developers, to get Internet access to rural communities. Conversations with members of the Internet ecosystem often do not include the operators that are Continue reading

Tech Companies Endorse MANRS Routing Security Actions

A coalition of more than 40 companies focused on protecting online users has endorsed a global community initiative, coordinated by the Internet Society, to improve the security of the Internet’s routing system.

The Cybersecurity Tech Accord, whose members include Facebook, Microsoft, Oracle, and Hewlett Packard Enterprise, will support the Mutually Agreed Norms for Routing Security (MANRS) initiative.

The goal of MANRS is to ensure a secure and resilient Internet by protecting its routing infrastructure. In 2017 alone, more than 14,000 routing outages or attacks – such as hijacking, leaks, or spoofing – resulted in stolen data, lost revenue, and reputational damage.

“The new endorsement is a good first step,” said Salam Yamout, Internet Society Lead for the MANRS initiative.

“It is not enough to talk about routing security; it is time for action,” Yamout added. “Because the Internet’s routing system was built on the principles of collaboration and shared responsibility, this endorsement from the Cybersecurity Tech Accord and our new partnership is a major step forward. It clearly reflects the will of industry to be proactive in implementing safe routing practices.”

MANRS focuses on four defensive actions that can reduce the most common routing threats:

• Filtering, to Continue reading