Now more then ever, the Internet Society believes in the need to preserve the values of openness, inclusiveness and transparency that have always been at the heart of the Internet. A coherent global governance model for the global Internet that includes everyone is key to achieving this vision. But how can we get more governments to embrace the kind of collaborative governance that has shaped the Internet we know and use today? How can we improve and expand the model so that it becomes more widely adopted around the world? How can YOU help that to happen?
Today we are pleased to announce the launch of our Collaborative Governance Project. This brand new initiative aims to help stakeholders of all communities to understand the ways in which they can turn collaborative thinking into tangible and implementable policies and practices.
Under the leadership of Larry Strickling, the project will initially concentrate on building support for collaborative governance approaches globally. We will actively engage stakeholders in the development and evolution of the project.
As a first step in that process, we are holding two open calls for the community on March 1, 2018, to tell you about the project, get your input Continue reading
At Bilkent University in Ankara, students sit at desks littered with bookbags and bottles of water. It looks like a typical classroom, except for the makeup of the students – school-age girls – and when the instructor asks a question, the room comes alive. “Who wants to code again after today?”
The hands shoot up.
The students are participating in Coding Sisters, a program that teaches coding to girls. Soon they are grinning as they raise their certificates of completion into the air. They yell in unison, “Hello world!”
The project was funded by the Internet Society’s “Digital schools!” Chapterthon 2017, in partnership with Wikimedia Foundation. From October to November 2017, 30 projects from around the world came together to bring educational opportunities to children, especially girls. Chapterthon has been nominated for a series of prizes to be given out at the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), an annual United Nations-sponsored summit focused on the role information and communication plays in our world. TheWSIS Prizes recognize individuals and organizations that advance the Sustainable Development Goals: 17 global goals dedicated to building a better world by 2030.
Four other innovative, Internet Society-funded projects Continue reading
Ash Ball, a young person in Australia, is working to end cyberbullying as part of the Project Rockit team. Ball, one of the Internet Society’s 25 Under 25 awardees, says he believes that it’s important to empower the younger generation to step in when they see someone being harassed online.
That message is especially important today, which is Safer Internet Day, a call to action to make the Internet safer for everyone.
Linda Patiño is another 25 Under 25 awardee leading the charge. “I was a victim of online harassment, receiving kidnapping and rape threats,” she says. Patiño’s work with the Colombia-based organization Colnodo uses ICTs to promote Internet safety and gender equality. “A tool can be so harmful. I enter this world [of activism] so other girls know they are not alone, that we are creating things to help them get through this. Even though these tools have serious impacts, we are doing good change” in the world.
We all have the power to help make the Internet a more welcoming and accessible place, but Ash Ball and Linda Patiño show that it’s a Continue reading
The Internet Society Nominations Committee has announced the candidate slates for Chapter and Organization Member elections for the Board of Trustees. Find out who the candidates are.
The post Slates of candidates announced for 2018 Internet Society Board of Trustees elections appeared first on Internet Society.
2017 was one of the most active hurricane seasons in the Caribbean on record. Five months after the major storms Irma and Marie devastated parts of the Caribbean, there are still far too many people without access to the Internet and everything it offers. In our view, this is unacceptable. Today we published a snapshot of the current situation from the region in a new document, Report from the Field: Post-Hurricane Connectivity in the Caribbean.
The international response to this natural disaster has been mixed at best, and while several entities reached out to the region, a number of challenges impeded smooth and rapid assistance, such as lack of coordination. In some instances, the response from authorities has been either slow or insufficient, or both. The current reality that parts of the Caribbean are still without Internet connectivity this long after the hurricanes wrought their damage is a clear indication that the world’s response to this disaster has fallen short. The robustness of the telecommunications’ infrastructures in certain countries, which form the basis for Internet services, can also be questioned.
The world has the resources to do more.
We ask governments, businesses, educational institutions, NGOs and others, both in the Continue reading
The G20 member states account for 85 percent of the global economy and are home to half of the world’s Internet users. From artificial intelligence to personal data protections, our physical world is being shaped by our digital world. As current president of the G20, Argentina has put a range of digital challenges on the table. But to tackle these, we need credible commitments and a long-term roadmap.
As three leading organisations from the Internet community, we welcome that Argentina continued the G20 digital work begun by Germany in 2017. Last year, Germany and the other G20 members outlined their aspirations for the development of our digital societies. And the Argentine presidency has identified five priority areas — digital inclusion, future job skills, digital government, SMEs and entrepreneurship, and Industry 4.0 — all dependent on a strong digital economy and society. Now is the year to turn these aspirations into actions.
We call on Argentina to build on this consensus with a dedicated G20 digital agenda. This roadmap must include milestones to the next G20 presidency, to be held by Japan. Priority commitments should include:
2017 was a year when the voice of women resonated around the world. Global women’s marches, hashtags such as #MeToo and #TimesUp, record numbers of women entering politics – all together a global call for action that signaled women were tired of not being heard.
It’s been a year that’s left many in the western world asking how we got here and how we can make sure we never go back. A big reason for this is because of what the Internet helps us do. We can reach further, speak louder, and come together like never before.
We know that women use the Internet to build opportunities for business, their communities, and for their families. But for the first time we are seeing how women are using it to collaborate, coordinate, and unite to make change happen.
But now is the time to ask questions.
Just under 50% of the world’s population isn’t online. Break that down further, women are 50% less likely to be connected than men.
The Internet’s future is one where new divides are emerging. It’s not just the binary fact of being on or offline – it’s who, how, and where. And, as the world’s political Continue reading
At the Internet Society, we are worried about the state of the Internet today. This global “network of networks” is now a critical part of our daily lives. We use it to communicate and connect with our families, friends, co-workers and customers. It is the engine that powers the global economy. It is our source of entertainment, of education, and of information. The Internet brings so many opportunities to all.
But… those opportunities are now under attack from several threats:
I consider myself a high-functioning lazy person. I do my laundry regularly, but leave clean clothes in a pile on the floor. I make it to work on time, but have to set my alarm for an hour earlier than I’d like because I hit the snooze button so many times. I will wear a blazer to my business casual office, but only to cover up my terribly wrinkled shirts… which I pick up off my bedroom floor each morning.
At the Internet Society, I work primarily on topics related to security and privacy. Through my work, I have the pleasure of learning about new vulnerabilities or computer viruses, how different apps and devices can or already are spying on me and selling my data, and all other manner of scary online threats. As you can imagine I’ve become increasingly paranoid about my online privacy.
Yet, when it comes to online privacy, lazy and paranoid is a terrible combination.
I know what I should be doing to better protect my online privacy. I know I should update my devices regularly. I know I should be using two factor authentication when its available. But, like the clothes I know I should be folding, I Continue reading
Internet governance, blockchain, algorithms, free speech, net neutrality, IoT, cybersecurity, fragmentation … and so much more! On Monday, January 29, 2018, the State of the Net 2018 conference will be streaming live out of the Newseum in Washington DC. You can watch starting at 9:00am US EST (UTC-5) Monday morning at:
http://www.stateofthenet.org/live/
The SOTN 2018 agenda is packed with many of the leading voices in US Internet policy, including Senators, Representatives, and even an FCC Commissioner. Global organizations and corporations will be represented, too, among the many speakers.
At 11:00am EST, our own Sally Shipman Wentworth, VP of Global Policy Development, will participate in a panel, Internet Governance: Are We In A Post Multi-Stakeholder World?, along with Larry Strickling. Larry is perhaps best known recently for the IANA transition work but has been working with us on efforts to expand the use of the multistakeholder model for Internet governance. Others panelists will be Dr. Jovan Kurbalija from our partner the DiploFoundation; Steve DelBianco of NetChoice; and the Hon. Robert Strayer of the US State Department. The session will be moderated by Shane Tews from the Internet Education Foundation. The abstract is:
It will have been Continue reading
Last year, I was invited to contribute a paper to a special edition of the Health and Technology Journal published by Springer/Nature. The special issue addressed privacy and security, with a particular focus on healthcare and medical data. I’m happy to announce that now, for four weeks only, the publishers have made the whole issue available free.
From our accompanying blog post last July:
“The paper, “Trust and ethical data handling in the healthcare context” examines the issues associated with healthcare data in terms of ethics, privacy, and trust, and makes recommendations about what we, as individuals, should ask for and expect from the organisations we entrust with our most sensitive personal data.”
Although we can find several comprehensive and mature data protection frameworks around the world, current legal safeguards to not seem to prevent data controllers from indulging in:
In my paper, I argue that a narrow focus on regulatory compliance can lead to a “checklist” mentality, obscure the real reasons why organisations should treat data with care and respect, and lead to poor outcomes for both the organisation and the individual. I Continue reading
In advance of Data Privacy & Protection Day, the Online Trust Alliance, an Internet Society initiative, just released the Cyber Incident & Breach Trends Report (press release here), a look back at the cyber incident trends in 2017 and what can be done to address them. This report marks the tenth year OTA has provided guidance in this area, and while the specifics have certainly changed over time, the core principles have not.
Originally we just looked at the number of reported breaches, but last year we broadened the definition to “cyber incidents,” which includes ransomware infections, business email compromise (BEC), distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks and infiltrations caused by connected devices. This broader definition paints a more realistic picture of the threats and associated impact facing organizations today.
This year we found that the number of cyber incidents nearly doubled to 159,700 globally, and given that most incidents are not reported, this number could easily exceed 350,000. This is more than 30 times the number of breaches alone, so provides a very different perspective on the threat landscape. As in previous years we also assessed the “avoidability” of breaches by analyzing their cause and found that 93% were avoidable, Continue reading
In remembrance of Internet Pioneer, founder and Chair of RIPE for 25 years, Postel Award recipient, and friend, Rob Blokzijl the RIPE NCC set up the “Rob Blokzijl Foundation”. The foundation recognises those who made substantial and sustained technical and operational contributions to the development of the Internet in the RIPE NCC service region, or supported or enabled others with the development of the Internet in the RIPE NCC service region.
The Rob Blokzijl Award will be awarded for the first time during RIPE 76 in May 2018. This is a Good Thing on so many levels.
The call for nominations is now open. The deadline is 16 March 2018 23:59 UTC.
Image credit: Olaf Kolkman
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As we continue to evolve our new website, I will provide more regular updates to all of you visiting our site. Today’s topics are: improved search; much faster speed; and an open issue tracker.
For all of you who contacted us saying “I can’t find anything” on the site through the search box (the magnifying glass in the upper right corner of the screen), we’ve got some great news – it should now work! We tried two different search solutions for all our content before we moved on to a third solution that we find works well. Please do let us know if you are still having challenges finding content.
The site should now be much faster! We recently deployed some caching servers in front of our site and the speed should be dramatically improved for most all of the pages. This was very important to us as we want to provide the best user experience.
If you do find anything wrong with the new site, we have an open issue tracker on Github. You can visit the repository at:
https://github.com/InternetSociety/web-site-feedback
and the actual list of Continue reading
The 2017 Indigenous Connectivity Summit (ICS) was the start of a critical conversation about how Indigenous communities can connect themselves to the Internet on their own terms. But it was just the beginning.
An extraordinary community of people came together: Indigenous-owned Internet service providers, community network manager/operators, researchers and policy makers, and Indigenous leadership. Their conversations outlined the benefits the Internet can bring to Indigenous communities, including self-determination, culture and language preservation, economic development, health, and education. These conversations are captured in the Indigenous Connectivity Summit Community Report, which also describes the unique challenges Indigenous communities face to gain sustainable connectivity and recommendations to address those challenges.
We hope that this report serves as a springboard to further Indigenous connectivity in North America and beyond. You can take part by visiting the Indigenous Connectivity page!
The post Community Report: Indigenous Connectivity appeared first on Internet Society.
I had a week off, and being a security domain researcher, I started working on automating security rules in network security components. The goal was to read the existing security rules of the IPv4 protocol and deploy parallel security rules for the IPv6 protocol in the same security component for the newly configured protocol in a network. For this purpose, I started to develop an automation service. The service was intended to use the IPv4 address in a DNS query to resolve the corresponding IPv6 address. The next intended step was to add these same rules in the network security component for the newly resolved IPv6 address. This was when I came to know that the existing DNS protocol does not provide IPv4 to IPv6 resolution and vice versa.
While trying to figure out a solution to this problem, the Internet Society Pakistan Islamabad Chapter announced to carry-out a local IETF-Outreach Program managed by Internet Society Asia-Pacific Bureau. As part of the program, a seminar was conducted that introduced the history of IETF and outlined the process of the Internet standards-making process, including how we could get involved in this process. The most appealing part of the programme was the Continue reading
Nepal’s rural population remains largely disconnected from the Internet. The problem is further aggravated by the devastating 7.8 Richter scale earthquake and the subsequent aftershocks that have been shaking Nepal since April 2015 and that left nearly 9,000 people dead.
The Internet Society Nepal Chapter, in partnership with the NPO “Forum for Digital Equality“, led a successful project to reduce the digital divide by facilitating the establishment of three Community Learning Hubs. The project, supported by The Internet Society Beyond the Net Funding Programme, set up the centers in three Nepali districts that were badly affected by the earthquake: Dhading, Sindhupalchowk and Dolakha.
Each Hub is being visited 100/day by community members. More than 1500 people are now accessing the Internet for free. To ensure a sustainable model for the project, services like printing and scanning are charged. The raised revenue is used to pay for operator salaries, repair and maintenance services.
Goma Shrestha, community ITC operator, proudly explains, “We started “eSewa”, an online payment gateway. Villagers used to go to the market to recharge their mobile and cable service, but now we have facilities in our own community”.
The Continue reading
It is with a heavy heart that I report to Internauts everywhere that one of the early pioneers of the ARPANET and Internet has passed away. Pål Spilling was at the Norwegian Defense Research Establishment (NDRE) at a time when an ARPANET node was installed at Kjeller, Norway. The satellite link was shared between the ARPANET and the Norwegian Seismic Array (NORSAR) system that was used to monitor Soviet underground nuclear testing to assure the tests did not exceed the test ban treaty limits. Together with his colleague, Yngvar Lundh, Pål worked to test early Internet implementation and applications including packetized speech. He was ever an enthusiastic participant in the Internet’s evolution and a steadfast research partner at NDRE and the subsequent institutions who were lucky to have him in their midst. He spent time at University College London with Peter Kirstein’s group and also at SRI International testing packet radio and packet speech applications. More about Pål’s work can be found at his Wikipedia site.
I, for one, will miss Pål greatly but remember his workmanlike involvement over many decades. His name can be found on the Stanford Plaque commemorating the early researchers who participated in the earliest development Continue reading
A few weeks ago we informed the community about the fact that Kathy Brown was not going to seek another extension of her contract and, thus, a CEO search process had started at the Internet Society (ISOC). Please read my previous blog post for background.
In particular, we had asked the community to send us preliminary input, which is treated as confidential within the ISOC board, to the following email address:
We want to thank the community for all the useful input we have received so far. Please, continue sending us your thoughts around this important process for ISOC.
The status of the process at this point is the following. The board has set up a search committee, which is a subset of the board. The role of the search committee is to do a preliminary review of the candidates (in coordination with the selected search firm) and eventually present a short list to the full board, which will be responsible for the final selection.
The search committee is currently finishing the selection of a search firm to support us during the whole process. We have developed a draft job description, which will be finalized once a Continue reading
Fox-IT is recommending that IPv6 is disabled when it is not being used, as disabling Proxy Auto Detection. This of course means that Windows-based hosts are unable to switch preference to IPv6 when it is available (which all versions since Windows Vista will do), and that IPv6 would need to be explicitly re-enabled on hosts.
The article makes some important points, but IPv4 and IPv6 are fundamentally incompatible on a wire level and it needs to be understood they can’t communicate with each other except through translation devices. There are a number of known issues (including this one) with the security of automatic configuration mechanisms running on Local Area Networks, both under IPv6 and IPv4, but these require physical access to Continue reading