The UN Risks Normalizing Internet Censorship
The United Nations' top internet governance body will allegedly host its next two annual meetings in countries known for repressive internet policies and human rights abuses.
JUSTIN LING
SECURITY
OCT 11, 2023 7:00 AM
The UN Risks Normalizing Internet Censorship
The United Nations' top internet governance body will allegedly host its next two annual meetings in countries known for repressive internet policies and human rights abuses.
Riyadh, the capital city of Saudi Arabia.PHOTOGRAPH: JEREMY SUYKER/GETTY IMAGES
THE UNITED NATIONS’ main internet governance body will host its next international forum in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. In 2025, the UN may take its discussions on the future of an open internet to Russia. Holding the Internet Governance Forum (IGF), back to back, in authoritarian countries notorious for their surveillance and censorship of the internet risks making “a joke of the whole system,” one advocate says.
While the UN has yet to formally announce the host countries for either meeting, Saudi Arabia's minister of communications and information technology, Abdullah Alswaha, seemed to let the news slip at this year’s forum in Tokyo, which began on Sunday, October 8, and ends tomorrow.
In a short speech before the plenary, Alswaha ran through some key issues facing the IGF, including generative artificial intelligence and the digital divide. He proposed to the attendees that “we continue this dialog at Riyadh IGF ’24.” He repeated that idea again at the end of his speech, leaving attendees buzzing.
“It's extremely problematic,” Barbora Bukovská, senior director for law and policy at human rights organization Article 19, tells WIRED. She learned the news on yesterday from colleagues in Tokyo. “Their human rights record and their record on digital freedoms should disqualify them from having it.”
A representative of the IGF confirmed in a statement to WIRED that the 2024 conference will be held in Riyadh.
In recent years, Riyadh has engaged in digital surveillance of dissidents, administering the death penalty against citizens who called out its human rights record online. The Saudi regime also ordered the 2018 extrajudicial killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Freedom House, a pro-democracy nonprofit, assesses that Saudi Arabia maintains one of the world’s most restrictive and censored internet systems, only marginally better than Russia.
“The IGF is a community, it's a multi-stakeholder event,” Bukovská says. “You are supposed to have not just governments and companies, but also civil society, activists, and so on.” She says it will be difficult to invite democracy and open internet advocates to Riyadh. “How are they supposed to participate in Saudi Arabia, when you can be targeted by spyware, and with all kinds of restrictions? So I think it's extremely problematic.”
The IGF is a relatively new organization, having been set up in 2006. Its purpose is more advisory than regulatory, serving as a chance for countries, corporations, civil society organizations, and activists to discuss and debate various aspects of how the internet itself is run. “It's quite interesting and important for shaping the responses on certain issues,” Bukovská says.
While it may not be responsible for standards and regulations like the International Telecommunications Union—which has also been the subject of an international tug-of-war between censorship-minded countries and those who support an open internet—it is the main UN body devoted to internet governance. Where it is hosted matters, Bukovská says. Countries like Saudi Arabia can use the Forum “as a decoy to present themselves as a part of the international community, which respects human rights.”
Oppressive governments have worked hard to dismantle the shared system of governance model of the internet, argues Léa Fiddler, pushing instead for “sovereign digital ecosystems over which they can exert even more control, leading to what is often called the ‘splinternet.’”
Fiddler is a resident fellow for democracy and human rights at the Atlantic Council’s DFRLab. She wrote in advance of the 2023 Forum that the IGF will have an “outsized impact on how the internet looks and operates over the next several decades.” The IGF is also due to renew and rewrite its mandate in the coming years, she notes. “The conclusions that stakeholders come to at IGF will inform their stance on efforts at risk of being exploited for authoritarian purposes.”
There have been proposals put forth at the UN to substantially alter the balance of power in global internet governance. Fiddler points to the Global Digital Compact, which could substantially increase the UN’s role in regulating the internet. In a similar vein, Bukovská points to a cybersecurity treaty currently being proposed by Russia which, critics fear, is so vague that it could permit prosecution and targeting of journalists and democracy advocates.
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Saudi Arabia will not be the first illiberal regime to host the IGF. Last year’s forum was held in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, amid an internet shutdown in the country’s Tigray region. Critics like digital rights group AccessNow decried the choice of venue at the time. “We cannot have a truly resilient internet or shared, sustainable, common future if we systematically silence or ignore those most at risk of rights violations,” the organization wrote in a statement.
It’s unclear whether Saudi Arabia was the only country to actually submit a bid to host the 2024 Forum.
In 2021, Canadian cybersecurity firm eQualitie launched a petition to have the 2024 forum in Montreal. Dozens of tech companies and civil society organizations from Canada and around the world signed on to the petition, but the Canadian government appears to have ignored the request. A spokesperson for Canadian foreign affairs minister Mélanie Joly did not return a request for comment.
In a press release, eQualitie called Riyadh’s selection a "missed opportunity" and that Saudi Arabia's successful bid "raises concerns about the Forum's ability to maintain its principles of open dialogue and collaboration with civil society."
In a LinkedIn post, Bukovská sarcastically wrote of the trend being set by the UN body hosting an internet governance conference in Riyadh. “I guess I will also be looking forward to visiting Pyongyang, Teheran, or Moscow in the years to come.” But there are good odds that the IGF’s next meeting will, in fact, be held in Russia.
In 2020, the Russian Internet Governance Forum issued a press release indicating that Russia had been chosen as the 2025 host, citing official confirmation sent by the UN. It was repeated again in December 2021 by Russia’s deputy prime minister, Dmitry Chernyshenko. “Choosing Russia as the venue to host the 20th forum is a great honor for us and evidence that our country’s strong positions in the field of the development of the information society and digital technologies are recognized,” he said in a speech.
WIRED has previously reported on how a concerted American campaign for the presidency of the International Telecommunications Union thwarted Russian efforts to take over the body.
“This actually makes a joke of the whole system,” Bukovská says. She points to similar efforts at the UN Human Rights Council. “If you want to protect the integrity of these UN systems, as something where states should be held accountable for their human rights violations, it should not go to these countries.”
This spring, the Norwegian government announced its bid for the 2025 forum. In a statement, the Norwegian government wrote that “there has yet to be a decision made” about the 2025 Forum. A government official added that Oslo's representative at this year's IGF, local government and regional development minister Sigbjørn Gjelsvik, was focused on “efforts to strengthen freedom of expression in cyberspace,” among other things. The IGF has not officially indicated where the forum will be held.
It is increasingly clear that the world’s most repressive countries are vying, either in conjunction or independently, to gain more control of how the very mechanics of the internet operate.
Updated at 9:40 am ET, October 11, 2023, with a statement from the IGF confirming the 2024 Forum will be held in Riyadh.
Updated at 12 pm ET, October 12, 2023, with a statement from Norway's government.