News and Research articles on Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF)

What kind of cyber security? Theorising cyber security and mapping approaches

Laura Fichtner, University of Hamburg
PUBLISHED ON: 15 May 2018 DOI: 10.14763/2018.2.788

This paper explores how four approaches to cyber security are constructed, motivated and justified by different values such as privacy, economic order and national security and what this means for the actors involved.

Accountability challenges confronting cyberspace governance

Jacqueline Eggenschwiler, University of Oxford
PUBLISHED ON: 20 Sep 2017 DOI: 10.14763/2017.3.712

Cyberspace governance struggles with three accountability challenges, the problem of many hands, the profusion of issue areas, as well as the hybridity and malleability of institutional arrangements. In order to address and mitigate these challenges, accountability relationships need to be consciously reframed and discursively constructed.

Instability and internet design

Sandra Braman, Texas A&M University
PUBLISHED ON: 30 Sep 2016 DOI: 10.14763/2016.3.429

​The history of the internet design process as depicted in the internet RFCs provides evidence of the value of social capital, interpersonal relationships, and community in the face of instability. Drawing conceptual distinctions is a necessary first step for many of the other coping techniques.

Doing internet governance: practices, controversies, infrastructures, and institutions

Dmitry Epstein, University of Illinois at Chicago
Christian Katzenbach, Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society (HIIG)
Francesca Musiani, Université Paris-Sorbonne
PUBLISHED ON: 30 Sep 2016 DOI: 10.14763/2016.3.435

This special issue calls to rethink how we conceptualise both internet and governance.

Trials and tribulations of changing oversight of core internet infrastructure

Monika Ermert, Heise, Intellectual Property Watch, VDI-Nachrichten

PUBLISHED ON: 5 Nov 2014

The whole family of internet self-governing bodies are busy preparing their takes on how to reign the future Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA). As a coordinator of core infrastructure services for naming (ICANN), numbering (Regional Internet Registries) and standardisation (IETF), IANA has been in the middle of quite some fights. This one might well be the biggest one.

Since the Peace of Westphalia in 1648 our international system is based upon the principle of territorial sovereignty. Today, however, cross-border online spaces made possible by the internet span across a system of fragmented national jurisdictions. Tension rises since we do not have the legal equivalent to the technical interoperability that enables the global internet. A choice has to be made.

Central internet resources could be privatised

Monika Ermert, Heise, Intellectual Property Watch, VDI-Nachrichten

PUBLISHED ON: 5 Mar 2014

The debate around internet governance is at full steam in advance of the Brazil's NetMundial conference in April. Especially so since academics have suggested privatising the management of critical internet resources and removing US oversight.

Fragmentation of the net ahead?

Monika Ermert, Heise, Intellectual Property Watch, VDI-Nachrichten

PUBLISHED ON: 9 Oct 2013

Routing security sounds like a nice idea, yet in "post Snowden" times the trust in centralised core resources has vanished even more. Internet adminstrators warn against fragmentation, while at the same time making use of one tool that could go in that direction: the RPKI system.

Actionable technical outcomes for privacy online

Fred Baker, Internet Engineering Task Force; Cisco Systems

PUBLISHED ON: 29 Jul 2013

This week the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) meets in Berlin. In this guest commentary Fred Baker, longtime IETF chair, calls upon the technical community, legislators and researchers to make a stronger effort in advancing privacy online.

Joint forces for a cloud computing privacy manual

Monika Ermert, Heise, Intellectual Property Watch, VDI-Nachrichten

PUBLISHED ON: 26 Jul 2013

Privacy gets another push from recent surveillance revelations, but who shall provide it? A workshop on data protection in cloud computing prior to the upcoming meeting of the Internet Engineering Task Force tries to get an answer from politicians and techies.