United Nations International Telecommunications Union Meets in Turkey to Tackle Key Internet Issues

Government officials will meet in Turkey for the next three weeks to discuss the future of the Internet and take action on key issues such as cybercrime and Internet oversight.

The Plenipotentiary Conference of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), an executive arm of the United Nations, will begin Monday in Antalya, Turkey. The conference will bring together government delegates from more than 190 countries to debate policy and vote on resolutions. The event directly follows the U.N.’s Internet Governance Forum in Athens this week, which was an informal meeting with no decisions made.

The conference in Turkey has a jam-packed agenda that will address a wide range of topics such as the role of next-generation broadband networks, radio frequency identification systems, and network platforms and services based on IP technology.

In addition, delegates are expected to make decisions on a number of critical issues, including the ITU’s role in implementing policies agreed on at the two-phase World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), which took place in Geneva in 2003 and in Tunis, Tunisia, last year.

“Two critical areas that require follow-up action are cybercrime and the concept of ‘enhanced cooperation,’ which involves discussion among governments on public policy issues such as Internet oversight,” said Robert Shaw, Internet strategy and policy adviser at the ITU. “The enhanced cooperation process was to be installed by early 2006, but it has never really happened. So action is needed.”

Internet governance was, arguably, the most controversial issue at WSIS, threatening to undermine the second summit. Countries including China, Brazil and Russia had lobbied intensively for changes to the current system. The European Union, which had initially supported the status-quo position of the United States, later agreed on the need for more governmental participation.

At the start of last year’s summit, the U.S. government reiterated that it had absolutely no intention of relinquishing its unique position in managing the Internet, but in the end agreed to a document that calls for changes in the way the Internet is governed today.

The document states that all governments should have “an equal role and responsibility for Internet governance and for ensuring the stability, security and continuity of the Internet” and should have a say in the development of “globally applicable principles on public-policy issues associated with the coordination and management of critical Internet resources.” The document also speaks of “enhanced cooperation.”

As the European Union interprets the accord, the United States—by agreeing to the wording “enhanced cooperation”—essentially consented to consider a new oversight body.

As for cybercrime, Shaw pointed to several initiatives calling on the ITU to play an active role in Internet security.

“There are areas where plenty of debate is still necessary, but there are also areas, such as cybercrime, where policy-makers recognize a need to move fast,” Shaw said.

-John Blau, IDG News Service (Dusseldorf Bureau)

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