[AfrICANN-discuss] Internet regulation at national level?

[SM]

At 17:29 30-10-2012, Nii Narku Quaynor wrote:
>Some have asked for regulation at national level but have failed to 
>name what to regulate and how to regulate it.

[snip]

>Secondly, it defies geography by its organization in that an 
>operator in one country may operate a network that spams beyond its 
>region. Thus networks are not exactly national and national 
>regulation would only interfere in their expansion

Yes.

>Content regulation was mentioned and all have pointed to it as 
>difficult. All ways known disrupt the network structure and do not 
>achieve the intended objective as one can always work around. It 
>also begin to create authoritarian society by determining what 
>adults read or access. It breaks the openness which has allowed the 
>developing countries including Africa to catch in capacity

Some types of content inspection can only be done by forcing changes 
to end-point communication.  That leaves the user vulnerable to 
man-in-the-middle attacks [1].  Content regulation generally occurs 
authoritarian regimes to restrict the people in those countries from 
accessing information which will remain accessible to the rest of the 
world.  When all international traffic has to flow through a gateway 
the authority can monitor all communication.  Whether this is good or 
bad depends on a person's view of whether it is acceptable that 
someone reads all your email, monitors all the web sites you go to, 
listen to all your calls, etc.

>  of why do it if it's being done elsewhere remained unanswered. In 
> fact if we are to be sincere Africa has some way to go to develop 
> what it takes to participate in existing global organizations and 
> very unclear the ability to do

It takes more than a "+1" for participation.

Regards,
-sm

1. 
http://googleonlinesecurity.blogspot.com/2011/08/update-on-attempted-man-in-middle.html