Internetdagarna Day 1, Lynn St Amour

The keynote by Bruce Schneier was followed by a keynote by Lynn St. Amour (@lynnstamour) from the Internet Society (ISOC),

I had no prior knowledge of ISOC and it’s work and it was quite interesting to get an overview of an organization, which primary focus areas of focus are also important in my opinion.

Lynn gave en overview of the work done in ISOC. ISOC emphasizes a model based on distribution and collaboration. Some of the key issues have been emerging countries and economics.

The ISOC regards the Internet as an enabler for everyone. IPv6 is a high priority if we want to continue evolution of the Internet and we want to enable more countries and people.

Lynn focused very much on the multi stakeholder principle and the capabilities exposed when using such a principle. The philosophies dominating the ISOC work are based on collaboration, openness and democracy.

Lynn mentioned the importance of keeping the virtues on which the Internet was built alive. The Internet as we know it is based on open standards, it supports a large variety of business models, meaning diversity and innovation can thrive more freely.

The most challenging years are ahead and one of the bigger problems facing the Internet and the principles on, which it has been built is censorship. She mentioned DNS blocking, where we can observe the problem of technology used for censoring for non-technical problems. Lynn mentioned that 44 countries are doing aggressive filtering, a year ago it was 4.

I am not sure about the exact numbers, but the picture is pretty clear and the development is most concerning. Censorship monitoring services should be able to give more exact data on this development.

The continued work in ISOC and related organizations is of outmost important since what we have observed over the recent years is that the internet is a enabler for, development, economic growth and freedom of speech and expression. Lynn explicitly mentioned Article 19 from The Universal Declaration of Human Rights.