Greetings from the Australian National University in Canberra, where an international research project on "Political Ecology in Cyberspace" is being launched. This research uses techniques of complex systems and natural ecology. The researchers are asking for input from the community and will reach out via blogs and other on-line forms.
Professor Paul Cornish from University of Exeter UK, argued that cyberspace should be treated as a strategic space. Professor Roger Bradbury, National Security College at ANU expressed concern about the Internet being balkanized with countries such s China separating their national systems from the global network. One of the audience members commented that the Internet was built by engineers and and that might cause an impediment to security. I found this discussion of balkanization and engineers acting without reference to the public interest troubling. The term "internet" refers to a "Network of Networks", with "The Internet" as the global example of this. Those designing the Internet did not so in isolation from issues of governance, that was key to the system. I suggest researchers need to first look at how the Internet was created and is now governed. Professor Fred Cate , Director of the Center for Applied Cybersecurity Research at Indiana University, pointed out that most of the Internet is run by non-government organizations. He argued that the law and governance was lagging actual use of the Internet. However, this is not my experience. When advocating the use of the Internet in Australia in the 1990s, myself and others considered the governance and legal implications. In my day job I had to devise policies for the use of the Internet and the world Wide web by the Department of Defence. This turned out to be relativity easy, identifying existing polices, laws and guidelines and interpreting these where necessary. The general assumption which many people in government and academia made, that public utilities are administered primarily by government turned out not to be true. In practice, most public services are provided by non-government entities following guidelines and standards written by non-government bodies. This approach-was extended to the Internet and proved resilient. Governments and researchers who want to impose top-down government control of the Internet in order to protect democracy are missing the point. More at: http://blog.highereducationwhisperer.com/2013/11/formulating-national-security-in.html -- Tom Worthington FACS CP, TomW Communications Pty Ltd. t: 0419496150 The Higher Education Whisperer http://blog.highereducationwhisperer.com/ PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617, Australia http://www.tomw.net.au Liability limited by a scheme approved under Professional Standards Legislation Adjunct Senior Lecturer, Research School of Computer Science, Australian National University http://cs.anu.edu.au/courses/COMP7310/ _______________________________________________ Link mailing list Link@mailman.anu.edu.au http://mailman.anu.edu.au/mailman/listinfo/link
