Internet Governance and National Security
Abstract
The organizing ethos of the Internet founders was that of a boundless space enabling everyone to connect with everything, everywhere. This governing principle did not reflect laws or national borders. Indeed, everyone was equal. A brave new world emerged where the meek are powerful enough to challenge the strong. Perhaps the best articulation of these sentiments is found in A Declaration of Independence of Cyberspace. Addressing world governments and corporations online, John Perry Barlow proclaimed, Your legal concepts of property, expression, identity, movement, and context do not apply to us. They are all based on matter, and there is no matter here. 1 Romanticized anarchic visions of the Internet came to be synonymized with cyberspace writ large. The dynamics of stakeholders involved with the inputs and processes that govern this global telecommunications experiment were not taken into account by the utopian vision that came to frame the policy questions of the early twenty-first century. Juxtapose this view with that of some Internet stakeholders who view the project as a rational regime of access and flow of information, acknowledging that the network is not some renewable natural resource but a man-made structure that exists only owing to decades of infrastructure building at great cost to great companies, entities that believe they ultimately are entitled to a say. 2
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Jan 01, 2012
- Accession Number
- ADA619096
Entities
People
- Panayotis A. Yannakogeorgos
Organizations
- Air University