 Does this thing work? OK, good. Thank you, everyone, for being here today. I know it's awfully rainy outside, but this is a really important discussion and topic, and we have a very distinguished speaker today. My name is Denise Jung. I'm the Deputy Director and Senior Fellow for the Strategic Technologies Program here at CSIS. I have the pleasure of introducing our speaker today, Ambassador Daniel Sopovita. He's the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State and US Coordinator for International Communications and Information Policy for the Bureau of Economic and Business Affairs at the State Department. In this role, he leads the department's work on communications and information policy issues. Prior to the State Department, Danny held various senior positions on Capitol Hill, including Senior Advisor to Senator John Kerry for Trade Communications Technology and Internet Issues. He's also served as an Assistant Trade Representative, leading the team that managed USTR relations with Congress. From 2004 to 2008, Ambassador Sopovita worked for then-Senator Barack Obama, advising on a range of issues, including interstate commerce, labor, and immigration. He's also worked for Senator Barbara Boxer and served in the Department of Labor and the Clinton Administration, very distinguished career. I'm delighted to have everyone here today, despite the rain, for a discussion on the role for governments in internet governance. It's a very timely topic, leading up to the ITU Plenty Potentiary Conference, which we'll be starting in Pusan next week. So we will begin the discussion with remarks from our keynote speaker, followed by a Q&A session with the audience. So please join me in welcoming Ambassador Danny Sopovita. Thank you all very much. Very honored to be here. It's great to see friends and colleagues, and I know that there are some of you out there on the web watching as well. I want to acknowledge, in particular, the Deputy Secretary of State for Management, who also happens to be my wife, Heather Higginbottom, who is here on modified maternity leave. We had a baby boy a month ago, and she will be taking care of our child while I am in Korea for three weeks negotiating a treaty. So I do appreciate the opportunity to speak with you before our delegation heads to Korea for the International Telecommunication Union's Plenty Potentiary Conference. The ITU, as some of you know, allocates global radio spectrum. It develops technical standards for telecommunications networks, and it works to improve access to telecommunications and ICTs through its capacity-building work throughout the world. The United States has been a member in good standing of the union since 1908. We value the organization immensely. We look forward to working in continued collaborative work with our colleagues abroad next week at the Plenty Potentiary and in the years to come. The Quadrennial Plenty Potentiary Conference is the top policy-making body of the ITU. More than 2,000 delegates from 167 of the ITU's member states attended the last Plenty Potentiary, and we expect this year's Plenty Potentiary to be attended in even greater numbers. Representatives from multiple sectors, including industry, academia, and civil society, will attend the conference as well. And while only member states will decide the outcome of the conference, we urge all governments to make their decisions with robust multi-stakeholder input. I have the honor of heading the US delegation. We will attend in very strong numbers, with close to 130 Americans scheduled to join us from our sister agencies, the private sector, and civil society. I will depend on their expertise to guide our advocacy, our negotiations, and our work. Much of what will be accomplished in Busan will be uncontroversial and administrative in nature. That doesn't make it unimportant. In fact, the proper administration of the union, its transparency and accountability with regard to decision-making and its management of financial resources are all critically important. But those aspects of the deliberation and the conference itself are not why I was invited to speak here today. I was invited here today to address the issues we expect the union's membership to debate, with whom we side, what we envision as a successful conference, and our plan to accomplish those goals. We expect a fairly vigorous debate on the effort of some ITU member states to expand the authority of the ITU into the realm of international internet regulations and mandates. The plenty of potentially will be the latest, but not the last arena, in which that debate will occur. We will engage it respectfully, but firmly. And we hope it will not detract from the good work on which we can all agree that the union should engage. To the extent that the union decides to address issues related to the internet in Busan, our goal will be to ensure that the final resolutions and decisions support the distributed, inclusive, and multi-stakeholder process of decision-making for global internet governance. We believe that the global benefits the internet already provides and the critical role all stakeholders have played in realizing so much of the internet's potential, are proof of concept for the existing system of internet governance and for the value of building on it rather than replacing it. In Busan, we will leverage the alliances and support of that view that we strengthened and expanded over the last two years at other ITU meetings, at the WSIS Plus 10 high-level event in Geneva, at the Net Mundial Conference in Brazil, in the Freedom Online Coalition, and in the internet governance forum. The United States believes that the ITU plays a valuable role as one of the organizations in the constellation of multi-stakeholder and multilateral forums that deal either directly or indirectly with the global internet and the networks on which it runs. We respect the views of our colleagues at the ITU, those with whom we agree and disagree alike, and of course, we respect their right to express their views and be heard. We appreciate and acknowledge that the ITU does valuable work in a number of areas that contribute to the health and continued deployment of the global internet. It assigns uses in the airways for mobile telephony and satellites. It promotes and examines public policies that contribute to the deployment of wireless and wired broadband networks. And it does valuable work as one of the standard development organizations that enable interoperability between telecommunications networks and technologies worldwide. And lastly, and very importantly, through its development bureau, the ITU engages in critical capacity building and sharing of best practices in parts of the world that are resource constrained. We support that work. And as I said, we consider it a critical component of the larger universe of activities that support the internet and are helping bridge the digital divide. That's a goal that the host nation of Korea has made a top priority for the union for this planning potential with our support. There are, however, some member states in the union who want to expand the mandate of the ITU in ways intended to give governments the soul or supreme authority over the internet's continent, critical resources, technologies, or services. We will strongly oppose those proposals. We will argue that the ITU is a time honored technical organization that should focus on where it can add value by enabling and encouraging telecommunications connectivity around the world. It does so through best practices, voluntary standards, and the promotion of competition and investment in networks. That is both honorable mission and critical work. The ITU's members should leave the governance of the internet itself, including how people use the internet to express themselves or as a platform for the development and delivery of services to others. The ITU's moral authority and work should not be used as a tool for enabling or endorsing the censorship of free expression on the internet, nor should it be complicit in the creation of new regulatory barriers to innovation or internet services. Some of my colleagues and diplomats with whom I have engaged on this question have argued that the roles and responsibilities of governments relative to internet governance are synonymous with a role and responsibility of the ITU as it relates to internet governance. We believe that position is fundamentally mistaken. The role of the ITU relative to the internet is simply a subset of the broader role of governments on the internet. Specifically, the ITU's role is primarily one of dealing with technical standards and technical capacity building as appropriate to that organization. To the extent that the ITU does facilitate discussion of internet issues, we will insist that it does so in full collaboration with all of the internet stakeholders. It has proven itself capable of such openness during the preparatory process for the 2013 World Telecommunications Policy Forum and as an organizer for the WISIS Plus 10 high level event. But the ITU cannot speak for all its members when consensus does not exist and its specialized input cannot supplant, direct or override the input of governments or other stakeholders on internet related issues in other institutions. We cannot forget that other intergovernmental and multi-stakeholder organizations have the existing mandates and expertise to address how the internet intersects with human rights, law enforcement and national security issues among others. In the UN context, for example, deliberations on privacy in the digital age are happening at the UN Human Rights Council. Concerns about cyber crime are being raised at the UN Office of Drugs and Crime. In the ongoing UN First Committee's group of governmental experts on cybersecurity has been tasked to address the use of ICTs by states during conflict situations. Beyond those areas and moving to the critical technical functions of the internet, governments participate in and contribute to the naming and numbering functions of the internet within the Global Advisory Committee of ICANN, which provides that organization, that organization's board with advice on public policy aspects of domain name matters pending before it. In the construction of internet protocols, governments are welcome to and do participate in the deliberations and work of the IETF. And the Internet Governance Forum creates and enables a space for policy deliberation and the sharing of best practices amongst all stakeholders, including governments, on some of the most complex and challenging issues facing all of us across cultures and regions on the borderless internet. The ITU was not designed, and it does not have the expertise to exercise singular authority over the areas of internet policy that others are managing as part of their core mission. And neither it nor any other single organization or entity is equipped to wield that kind of comprehensive power. And given that the ITU, like every organization, has limited resources, any expansion of its work into tasks better managed elsewhere would reduce its ability to perform its essential work, for which, in some cases, the ITU is uniquely responsible. That is our view and our position. And it is shared and often better articulated by our colleagues abroad. At the WISIS Plus 10 high-level event earlier this year in Geneva, Alejandra Lagones, the coordinator for the National Digital Strategy for Mexico, said, quote, on internet governance. Mexico strongly believes that what works today has to be strengthened and improved. The internet has been governed by a multi-stakeholder model that includes all of us, governments, academy, civil society, technical organizations who have from the bottom up in a collaborative way defined the principles of internet governance. We cannot reduce the healthy debate that happens in a multi-stakeholder environment to an intergovernmental debate. The internet is owned by all the people, close quote. Speaking at Brisbane in September, the Australian Minister of Communications, Malcolm Turnbull, said, quote, the Australian government is committed to freedom both on and of the internet. Australia considers this objective best served by having a strong multi-stakeholder framework such that governance of the internet is not in the hands of any one group, including any one government or organization of governments. Of course, there is a need for an appropriate role for governments. However, this shouldn't be one of control, close quote. And in Brazil earlier this year, the Net Mundial Conference endorsed a multi-stakeholder statement which included the following, quote, the development of international internet-related public policies and internet governance arrangements should enable the full and balanced participation of all stakeholders from around the globe and made by consensus to the extent possible. Anyone affected by an internet governance process should be able to participate in that process. Internet governance should be carried out through a distributed, decentralized and multi-stakeholder ecosystem. So when I am asked who stands with us in placing our faith in the multi-stakeholder process of decision-making and the people who operate, innovate, work on, study and love the internet, I tell them that we stand with Mexico, we stand with Australia, we stand with the Net Mundial community and we stand with the billions of people who use the internet today. And we do so in the hopes of ensuring that the remaining billions will join them on an open, global, inclusive platform in the near future. It is with the alliances and ideas that underpin our goals that we will succeed in Busan. We will join with Korea and others in working to connect the remaining billions of people on the other side of the digital divide. We will encourage and contribute to collaborative efforts, encouraging voluntary standards, contributing to connectivity. And we will attend and engage all of the gatherings that the ITU convenes over the next four years in good faith. We appreciate your interest. We welcome your support. And we encourage you to engage the conversation. Thank you very much. I look forward to your questions. So now we're going to transition into the Q&A session, but I'm going to take the liberty of asking the first question and then we'll open it up to the audience. So we hear from some critics that the US supports the multi-stakeholder approach to governance because it's largely governed by private entities that already side with the United States. How do you respond to that criticism? It's a criticism that I hear often that largely it's one that comes from non-Western countries who argue that the internet has disproportionately benefited the West and that its internet governance infrastructure is largely populated by Western entities. To which I respond that to some degree it is true because the internet was developed in the West and organically created in the West and the vast majority of its participants from a production perspective are from the West that internet governance organizations do have a voice that is reflective of that population, but it is not structural. That is to say internet governance processes are open and inclusive as a function of structure and that we are committed and the internet community is committed to doing whatever is necessary to ensure that those who feel like they have not been sufficiently included are able to participate in the process on equal footing with everyone else who's there. What our point is is that we need to make this process more inclusive and more democratic rather than concentrated in the hands of government officials in Geneva. We wanted to take some questions from the audience. Before you ask your question, just make sure that you introduce yourself with your first and last name and your affiliation also to wait for the microphone to arrive first. So any volunteers up here in the front? Thank you, Kelly Meinman with McLarty Associates. Thanks for your presentation. You mentioned some of the work that the third committee of the UN has been doing over the years on internet governance and things of that nature. I was wondering if you could comment on some of their more recent declarations that seem to be rather than opining on free speech and those sorts of issues or even opining on the appropriateness of commercial speech, of commercialism, et cetera, on the internet given that it is such a tool of obviously expression but also of commerce. I was wondering if you might have some thoughts on that. Thank you. Sure. There are 2.7 billion people on the global internet today. That's a dramatic expansion from in 1998 when ICANN was created and there were 400,000 people around the world. The degree to which more nations have more people on the internet, you'll see more and greater interests in participating in the internet's governance. And among those questions are how do the collectors and distributors of people's information relate to the people on whom they're collecting that information and to what degree is that a free and proper, I mean a fair and proper exchange. And there is a difference of opinion around the world on how to construct regulatory parameters around that discussion. My colleague and my former colleague and mentor, Cam Carey, is here and he did an immense amount of work for the administration in the first term on these questions. Mr. Podesta, who's a counselor to the president, has just produced a big data privacy report which talks about all of these questions. And we think that there are gonna be multiple venues in which you can engage this question but that there isn't a single regulatory standard that should be applied to all markets and all exchanges and that through conversation and best practices and deliberation, people will construct mechanisms for the protection of their people's privacy that is appropriate for them, their market and their culture. We have a very strong system in our country relative to the FTC's authority on unfair practices and deceptive practices. The EU has a different model which is more process oriented. And you're seeing the OAS do work in this space, APEC has some work in this space as well. And they're all different. The goal is to make them interoperable so that you don't create friction where none exists in the transfer of information in a way that is useful to everyone involved by that same took and acknowledging that there are risks in the transfer of people's private information or personally identifiable information. And that conversation will take place in multiple places including at the UN Human Rights Commission and we've engaged it on a number of occasions. They have a special repertoire doing very serious work in that space, some of which we agree with, some of which we disagree with. But that's fine, that's okay. Our concern would be if a technical organization like the ITU decided to take it upon itself, an organization whose purpose is to increase global connectivity, not to govern what people do with that connectivity. To say, look, this is the one way that either the private sector or public institutions can relate to people on the internet and this is the one way it's going to work everywhere in the world. It would, that would be destructive of innovation. It's also simply not reflective of reality of how people value their information and what they're willing to exchange for it around the world. In the front here. Hi, my name is Nabha Barkhikari, I'm from GAO. We were, you know, there was some concern, I guess, in Congress about the Move NTIS plan to remove the support for ICANN and go to this multi-stakeholder approach. Any, I mean, can you share some thoughts on that? How does it help or not? And why someone should be worried or not worried? I mean, from Congress, for instance. Sure, and I appreciate you being here. I served for four different senators in the United States Congress and the value of the GAO's work is extensive. Now, relative to the question of NTIA's decision to ask the multi-stakeholder community to come up with a proposal for the transfer of the IANA functions contract from NTIA to the multi-stakeholder community subject to very specific prerequisites, the expertise on that lies at NTIA and the Department of Commerce. Nonetheless, that move helped create an environment in which other countries who were looking for solutions or looking to transfer authority over critical internet resources, including ICANN to the United Nations, recognize that we're putting our money where our mouth is on this and really committing ourselves to the multi-stakeholder process as the proper mechanism by which to make these sort of global decisions about critical internet resources. I'm Frank Druna with Oracle. I wanted to ask you, Danny, what your expectations and plans are for the World Internet Conference that the Chinese government is organizing next month? I only know a little bit about this and I understand that the Chinese are calling for a World Internet Conference. It's about 10 days after the ITU event is over and it's just a conference of an exchange of ideas. We're trying to get more information about who will participate. I believe that ITI is going to participate as well as some of the member companies and we're trying to get a sense of what other governments are going to participate. But we continually engage our colleagues in China and elsewhere on all of these questions and we're taking it very seriously. Over there on the left side. Thank you. My name is H.P. Scheidemacher. I'm with the Netherlands Embassy here in Washington. I think we're all too much in agreement maybe to have much of a discussion with you today. I can at least mention that if the World Conference in China is not going to be a success, there will be a global conference on cybersecurity in the Netherlands in April next year. We might resolve some of these issues. But could you maybe comment because we've been nancing around this topic for a long time now. What your expectations are if this will be resolved at some point and where and how? What is the disc that you're asking? Sorry, the disc is the internet governance and choice between a multi-stakeholder model and other models. Right. And I think this is the fundamental question, right? And if you look at the most recent work on these subjects, Professor Joseph Nye out of Harvard as well as the Ilvis Commission out of ICANN and the effort that Carl Bill is leading out of CG with Lord and Artists and others, you'll see that the way that these things are diagrammed is that internet governance, depending on how you define it, how expansively you define it, will include multiple organizations. Some of which will be multilateral organizations. Some of which will be multi-stakeholder organizations. But the critical functions, the critical operating functions of the internet, the internet protocols, the mechanisms by which information is transferred, those are a function of the multi-stakeholder process, the naming and numbering functions. And they've worked extremely well. That doesn't mean that there isn't a role, and that was the point of my speech, that there isn't a role for governments. There is, there's a strong role for governments as an equal stakeholder in those organizations and in multiple other organizations by which they can raise the questions and share best practices around ideas. Now, that is unsatisfying to some. They want to be able to go to one place and find all the answers for every question that comes before them relative to the internet and everything associated with the internet. We think one, we think that's a bad idea as a structural matter to concentrate that kind of power in any one organization or any one set of hands. And operationally, it wouldn't work relative to what's worked to date. We believe in the distributed nature of internet governance. And we believe that it is for, it is a more than glass half full story in terms of going from the numbers of people connected to where we are today into the freedom of expression, the freedom of association and the wealth creation that it's enabled. And ultimately, at the end of the day, the internet and connectivity is not an end in itself, it's an enabler of other things. So it spreads wealth and creates wealth across sectors. There are multiple studies that indicate that, that more connected societies grow at a faster rate than lesser connected societies. Which also feeds the underlying goal of making sure that parts of the world that are disproportionately not connected, so Latin America, Africa, Southeast Asia, they're falling behind. And the first goal and the first purpose of the ITU should be to connect those people, to encourage legal regulatory and policy environments that encourage investment in networks and competition. And separately, each and every one of those governments where we want to work with through the Alliance for Affordable Internet and other projects to create universal service funds, to invest in digital skills and literacy so that people can use the networks. And to also encourage the development of the skills necessary to produce on the network. So distributing knowledge around coding and computer science and the development of innovative tech hubs and communities. I've done an immense amount of work around the world looking at these communities. There are very innovative and creative communities that are working in Kenyans, South Africa and Mexico and elsewhere in Brazil that are really unleashing the potential of people throughout the world. And over time, you see the support for the internet where the internet has been deployed, right? I mean, the people who agree with us on the underlying questions of internet governance are like ourselves, blessed in that they're connected. Europe is widely connected, Japan, Australia. But it's also expanding to other areas. So where, for example, two years ago, we didn't see the support from Brazil or Mexico, for example, that we see today for the multi-stakeholder process. That is hard-won support. And that is hard-won support by showing humility, going to understand, to them on their turf, understanding what their needs are and helping to work to meet those needs. Whether those be connectivity needs or technical assistance needs relative to cybersecurity or any number of other issues that are raised, capital acquisition and other questions. But at the end of the day, I think that there's really, certainly dramatically more that unites us and divides us between those of us who support the underlying system and the developing world of developing world democracies. And then there are real challenges. Those challenges are going to have to be met in multiple venues and multiple fora using a wide variety of different types of expertise. There isn't going to be a single house to answer all questions. And that's as it should be and it will work. I think we have a question here in the middle. Thank you, Renat Wieg with Deutsche Telekom. Thanks, Ambassador, for your leadership and all these questions regarding the internet governance. I think this is very respected all over the world. Europe, you just mentioned Europe as well. I think everyone in the Western world could more or less agree to the multi-stakeholder approach. Some raise the question, so my question is really abstract, even more abstract than the former question. Some raise the question is, are all stakeholders equal? Or are some stakeholders more equal? Or does it depend on the nature of the question? If we come to cybersecurity or maybe even more interesting like national security, what would be the relationship of the role of governments? You could not exclude governments in these kind of questions and they may have dominant questions in these kind of issues. So does it depend on the nature or would you say there are any guiding principles to give those a little bit more comfort or say yes, multi-stakeholder, but what exactly does it mean? Right, it's a good question. There again is an immense amount of work done around this. What constitutes a truly multi-stakeholder process? And there are three or four different characteristics of a multi-stakeholder process. In the first instance, it's transparent, it's inclusive, it's open to deliberation. It's egalitarian from a participation perspective. It is not egalitarian from an outcomes perspective and it's not egalitarian from the sense that everyone's opinion is equally valuable. Everyone has an equal right to be heard. There are different levels of expertise and knowledge given any given issue. So for example, on cybersecurity, I defer almost entirely to my colleague Chris Painter within the State Department or to our colleagues at DHS and the Department of Defense. And they work with a different set of experts around the world to answer those kinds of questions. But those conversations do involve academia and think tanks and there's an immense amount of work at think tanks including this one around the city that do work on those questions and feed and enhance that conversation. Brookings does excellent work on that as well. My primary purpose when we work on these questions is about economic development, distribution, inclusion and ensuring that the individual is capable of accessing the network free from interference and free to engage in a way that they can create and collaborate openly on the internet. Over here on this side of the room. Cynthia E. Ford, American University. I believe that what we see in the media is that governments are not necessarily waiting to be authorized to take control of the internet within their own boundaries. I think China and Russia would be pretty obvious examples of countries that are just assuming governance of the internet within their boundaries. And I wondered to what extent are we putting on the several bilateral agendas fighting back against these attempts to limit the universality of the internet? Sure. Yes, it's clear that China through its great firewall and Russia through multiple efforts among other countries, Iran, Cuba make it difficult for their people to work openly on the internet, to exchange information freely. We do challenge those practices. Nonetheless, none of those countries are capable of dictating the protocols on which the internet operates, nor are they capable of keeping others from connecting outside of their boundaries to the internet. And we would not support or endorse the proliferation of those practices anywhere in the world. And like I said again, we continue to push back on them both through bilateral mechanisms and in deliberations internationally. I had a question about some of the post-Snowden, we see a lot of data localization efforts across many countries. What is this State Department doing on that front to address those challenges and what does it mean for innovation and security if we see a lot of, we see the proliferation of those types of laws being enacted around the world? Sure. And in the wake of the disclosure situation, you've seen people calling for data localization requirements. And you've seen it for a variety of reasons. In some cases, it's simply traditional import substitution strategies of trying to develop a domestic market in data centers and information and communications technologies, which breaks the economies of scale over the internet. If you had to have a cloud for every country, the efficiencies of the cloud would diminish. And at the end of the day, that hurts the consumers and users. So for example, in Brazil, which passed the Marcosville legislation last year, it did not have the data localization provisions at the end of the conversation, not because of the work of advocacy or not all because of the work of advocacy coming from external communities, but because Brazilians themselves saw that this would lead to dramatic increases in prices and an inefficiency for the operation of their networks. You've seen the discussion of some of this abroad as well, but really, we're going to continue pushing back on this. And it doesn't, again, by thinking about the internet as a platform for development, rather than as a sector that is an end in and of itself, you can see that through openness, you can leverage the services themselves and the network itself for development. We've seen this in Colombia, where I've been personally to Colombia, where through, for example, reverse auctions, they've been able to connect the vast majority of the country through their Viva Digital program. They have kiosks around the country and are working to encourage connectivity and have increased both connectivity and the productivity of their people because of that commitment to deployment and the delivery of services. In fact, they have tax policies that make it cheaper to buy a computer or tablet in Colombia than it is in the United States because they don't allow it to be taxed. And in turn, that creates a demand for the network because once you get a device that is more useful to you when connected to the network, you demand access to the network. And that's a really healthy economic environment and ecosystem for innovation that we see. And we're working very closely with our Colombian colleagues on that effort. Great. Any more questions from the audience? I guess finally I wanted to ask, what's your vision for success coming out of the ITU Plenty Potentiary Conference? That's a good question. So our goal here is to ensure, I don't know how many of you followed this, but in 2012, there was a conference to negotiate international telecommunications regulations that broke into a vote that divided the union. We want to restore a consensus-based union focused on the specific tasks before it under its Constitution and Convention on connectivity and increasing connectivity and to base its work on the agreement of all member states to pursue it. So I think what you're going to see at the end of this conference, what I hope we'll see is a joint commitment by all of the member states to eventually bridging the digital divide and ensuring that everyone has the skills to operate on it and focusing on that core task. Great. Well, I really appreciate the discussion. I think this is an incredibly timely topic for us. And welcome and thank you very much. Thank you.