The following are the outputs of the captioning taken during an IGF intervention. Although it is largely accurate, in some cases it may be incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. It is posted as an aid, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.
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>> MODERATOR: It seems to be switched on, is it? Cool. We at least one working microphone. And we have a working transcribe as well. That is awesome. Whoever is doing that. Thank you. We are trying to organize one or two more things for participants to start. So give us a moment or two. Thank you. Hello, Mallory. Hello, Karen. Can the two of you hear me?
>> Yes, we can hear you.
>> MODERATOR: We tried to organize one or two more things. Then we are ready to go. You are displayed on the screen so everyone can see you. And the three of us are basically sitting left and right of you, so straight in the middle as if you would be here in person. Thanks for joining. Good an. Thanks for joining with open standards.
If you don't have the headset on. Now would be the point to do. So and I guess we are ready to start. So welcome to open standards.
My name is Christian Kauffman. And it is my pleasure today to moderate this session. Before we start and talk about it we have basically three seconds, four sections. Three questions from my side which the four panelists will comment and answer from their experience and their background. And then we have -- if timing allows time for some questions from the remote participants or from here in the room, and then we wrap up. So that's the plan for today. And with that it is my pleasure to introduce our four panelists, the first one on my left side is Roman Danyliw. He is from the university Software Engineering Institute and currently serving as the task force chair and as a director on the board of the IETF administration LOC.
Next to him we have Sarah Jennings. Sarah is internet standard leader at the department for Science, Innovation and Technology with the U.K. Government. In her role she is responsible for engagements at the IETF and W3C, advising on the internet and web standards on government initiatives and she has previously been an advisor to the U.K. parliaments electorate committee and the chief scientific advisor and the politics of emerging technologies.
We note we have two participants -- number one is Karen McCabe the director for the IEEE. And the global standards for the IEEE. The world's largest technical organization. In this capacity she leads efforts in engaging global initiatives aiming to foster collaboration between various stakeholders including government, industry and GEOs and governmental bodies.
And last but not least we have Mallory Knodell, the director of the SWF and a technology and human rights expert specializing in Internet Governance and policy. Mallory is from the standards IETF and the UN. And her background brings a unique perspective to the policy and technology and human rights. With that introduction let's start part 1. The concept of open standards can be interpreted differently by various stakeholders due to the context in which it is used. It could mean accessibility of standards or participation, voluntary adoption among other interpretations, and it can lead to a diverse understanding.
I will start with Roman. The IETF is the standards for many technical standards and protocols that are the foundation of the internet. What is your perspective on open standards?
>> ROMAN DANYLIW: Hi, folks hear? Yes. Louder? Okay. Is that a little bit -- first, thank you very much for having me on this panel. This is a really great question. Because open standards can mean a lot of thing to a number of different parties and I'm curious to hear how my fellow panelists will also answer them I'm being signaled that I can't be heard.
>> MODERATOR: I can hear you.
>> KAREN MCCABE: I can hear you.
>> ROMAN DANYLIW: To first of all open statistics is first about having an open process that is transparent and inclusive and makes decisions to the consensus. The second key principal is that it relies on a broad global community to develop the standards and make decision on how they occur based on their technical merit. And that they are readily available to a broad community and recognizing that no standard organization can cover all the standards that need to be developed and standards organizations need to work with each other to create a large and inoperable systems and the last principals around those standards are now done and those standards are now being implemented. How does one judge success and success is judged by their voluntary adoption. Now as given an introduction I chair the engineering internet task force which is the standard for the internet. And we implement those five principals in a specific way. And I want to talk quickly about. That first this idea that everyone participates as an individual and this means that everyone can come to the standards process and make contributions. We find that we have multi-stakeholder participating a little more than half comes from the commercial sector.
But the other half comes from government civil society and academia. The other thing we are kind of really keen on is recognizing that we need remote meetings and hybrid meets. We don't want to make the ability to show up on site somewhere around the wore as a barrier to participation in that standards process. So through that hybrid mechanism anyone can participate from around the world.
And then crucially we believe in radical transparency of our artifacts. All the proposals and all the final specifications and all the meeting minutes agendas and arrest copies going back decades are publicly available on the internet. No log-in for free on the download and principally on the standards you will notice there's a focus not on solutions but technology building blocks so others can build on top of that and really enable the global permission in this environment, that is the internet has made it successful over the last several decades. Thanks.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you, a lot. Talking about hybrid. Let's go to Karen. The IEEE has celebrate its 140th anniversary. It develops standards in various fields couple share with us your standards?
>> KAREN MCCABE: Sure. First can everyone hear me?
>> MODERATOR: We do. Thank you for inn vying me. The IEEE is known in many organizations. We have 140 countries and we are to advance ten nothing for the benefit of humanity and part of that assist also being a global statistics body or SDO and we have close to 3,000 standards right now. Many of you may be familiar with the IEEE802 in wireless internet and standards that make significant contributions to the internet for transmitting data over wired and wireless networks.
Roman really hit upon some of the key pieces here when we talk about open standards. I do think -- as Roman noted, there are different perspectives in different meanings of open standards. I think one critical piece of that is the process, if you will, of how those standards are developed and the consensus building that is very central to that process.
IEEE we have a process that is open, that is transparent. There are no third party intermediaries in a sense. The idea for a standard can come from anyone, from anywhere and go through our process and the rigour that sits behind that. This process, again is central to that, is that consensus building which really lies at the heart of IEEE's work in general but consensus doesn't necessarily mean unanimity, it doesn't mean everyone agrees.
One of the critical things about open standards when it intersects with that concept of openness is really all voices being heard and the various people sitting around the table, now at IEEE we have an individual process but also a triple E process. It enables that discussion but it's really reaching a level of agreement through consensus on a solution or an approach that I think Roman really nicely put as con-- can serve as building blocks. So that when that standard is published, it's available, it's put out into the world, various organizations, different types of bodies can use that as a foundation in which to be innovative to address different types of challenges that we might be facing.
You know Roman also noted the principals. At IEEE we really abide by those as well. Standards in a sense are a foundational right to innovation, collaboration and global interoperability. And that's another piece that we play as an interoperability place.
And they can have various means and concepts and I'm leaning a little bit more on the process which is really encompassing accessibility and inclusivity and fairness in the technology across the industry and across borders. Looking at a standard and an open standard through its technical merit and a set of principals that sit around on how that standard is developed. You know they can touch upon due process.
You know where decisions are made with equity and fairness from all participants around that table developing it.
And all viewpoints are addressed with decisions made by either a majority or a super majority of participants.
Where really this means no individual organization has undue power in the creation of that standard. And balance where great steps are made to provide an opportunity for a multitude of stakeholders to participate, ensuring that the process is not dominated by any particular individual or organization or interest group.
The principal of transparency, where the process and procedures under wit standards are very much ready broadly available so that the participants understand the rules and guiding principals of decisions. That broad openness, where from the beginning of the process appropriate notification is given to the global audience and stakeholders from around the word world can participate in that standard.
And then the last principal we adhere to is also coherence, where at IEEE our process coordinators with industry government organizations and all sorts of organizations and bodies that develop the standard. So when I'm looking in summary of open standards it's really open in the sense open to anyone in the world who has an idea for a standard comes into platform like IEEE offers and can develop that standard to reach a challenge to meet a challenge, to provide a solution that can serve as building blocks for the future. So I will end here. Thank you so much for the question.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you, Karen. And next one, Mallory. Given your involvement in various standard organization as well as your work on human rights, particularly at the standards and technology.
What the open standards through lens of civil society.
>> MALLORY KNODEL: Hi, thanks for the question. And thank you so much for inviting me to the pan he. It's rally lovely to see you all. I can see familiar faces even though you are small on my screen, and I wish I could be but not this time. This month marks for me the meeting for all research group after it had just been started which is a wonderful group, by the way, of folks don't know it's led by Jane Calfkauffin and Curtis, and engaged.
So I have been engaged in community standards because Roman and Karen spoke eloquently about their standards bodies, I'm maybe the first panelist to talk about all of the ones that are very global and that look at the internet. Technology in particular and that's by design. So there are a handful of them of as Roman said there's not one standards organization that can really do it all or should do it all. From my perspective across the world wide web consortium, the international telecommunications.
There are things worth noting from the process of civil society. First, as Christian mentioned, in the question, human rights is really the most helpful and useful way of approaching issues that folks from civil society in the public interest, social justice organizations, should care about.
And that is on the one hand, of course, maybe for obvious issue based reasons -- right. The universal declaration of human rights gives us a lot to work with in terms of human expression and right to privacy and right to information and human security. Lot of thing there. But actually it's more than that. And I think that may be misunderstood often. It is that the human rights framework -- and this would include international human right law and humanitarian law. That is a whole structure and infrastructure. It's an entire community that is working all around the world. It's very well funded. And that provides a lot of base for folks who might be able to input into these discussions. So think of the human rights -- not just as framework of issues but as an entire framework.
It's also governance with teeth. Not only is there community but there's a lot of process around the framework. The Human Rights Council and the human right review and the Office of Human Rights with special procedures. There's infrastructure there to where if there are human right issues and so on that crop up in standards there's also a whole universe of places where that is happening in the social side, in the government side.
And lastly the human right framework creates very clear obligations for states to reach human rights and achieve human rights and enable it for all citizens and then for companies, which we are mostly talking about when we are talking about standard setting, right, the companies have responsibilities and there's a lot work being done in that am I will just stop there.
I think we that should give you inform enough. And we can get into it later but I think this is why human rights is where we approach participating in standards rather than other kinds of frameworks like thinking about -- you know the rights of all people or jurisdictional legal obligations. Those are sometimes part of the consideration. But any way, that to me has been the most effective approach. Thanks.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you, Mallory. Sarah, governments actively participate and are also involved in relevant standards organization. From a government perspective, how do you view open standards?
>> SARAH JENNINGS: Thanks, Christian. Thanks for taking the time. So you're right. We are engaged and we do that because we think it's absolutely critical for government and all stakeholders to be involved in the standards process to contribute and be engaged and encourage the open standards. I think fundamentalist have touched on it in terms of the process and output and in terms of the scrutiny that kind of happens.
I think if I could sum it up, open standards means no one is de facto excluded from the process and from the output. I wanted to slightly reframe the question and touch on -- but a government cares a lot about open standard not just because of the way they are develop bud what they are able and what they mean for the wider U.K. economy. So two elements of. That one is around competition.
So crucial I will we think open standards helps to encourage new entrants into markets. They serve as building blocks for further innovation. They mean there's a fair competitive market for implementations. They don't lock customers into a particular vendor and they mean that there is unrestricted competition to vendors and unrestricted choice for consumers. That is absolutely critical for innovation and open growth.
And the other element of standards is operable as we touched on. Particularly in the internet, that interoperability is the goal. You can have several implementations with a single standard and that enables stable and resilience in the system. Three crucial elements of the internet that enables the global connectivity that we so rely on today am I think we see open standards as absolutely valuable and we are very happy to be involved and hope to continue being
So.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you, Sarah. With that we move to part 2 where I can play a little bit devil's advocate. Why are open standards better than closed ones? One of the advantages of open standards compared to government or proprietary standards from large companies are vendors. In what situation are they more beneficial? Are closed standup models more pragmatic than open standard ones. It has discussions that can last for years. With that one I would like to give it first to Mallory.
>> MALLORY KNODEL: Yeah, thanks for having me come in first on this one am I think it's important -- especially for civil society that these are open. Open doesn't necessarily mean accessible or affordable. We can put that aside for one moment. Because I wanted to spend my short time describing an example. So a lot of what civil society organizations have to do -- because you know if we think of the three stakeholder groups -- and I apologize to the technical community and academia for a moment. But if we think about governments, the private sector and civil society. Civil society has no power, right. We might have people power but we have no ability to change technology or to enforce laws. So it's just a lot of advocacy, right. And a lot of that when you are then talking to companies is direct corporate advocacy that often just happens behind closed doors. And that's just the nature of it, right. These are products. These are relationships that have been built. So if there are flaws in the technology or ways that civil society really thinks that -- you know technology might need to change we have no choice but to sort of do this -- either under N D.
Or other things.
So what is wonderful about open standards is that you can now do this direction corporate advocacy in the light of day, in a way that is documented, in a way that is sort of -- there's a record of it. So it's easier to refer about a, to thing, to watch progress over time. I think everyone benefits from. That one example of this is something -- some ongoing work in the internet engineering task force called detecting unwanted location work. So any kind of device that can contract your things.
But it can also be used to track people and that has been in the press a very long time and trying to get the manufacturers of those technologies to understand the risk of stocking with those tiles for what was done with direct corporate advocacy more or less behind closed doors and just through email and meetings and that sort of thing. One that worked -- so one of the tactics that my organization at the times the Center for Democracy and Technology took was to suggest strongly that the manufacturers come to the IETF with the specifications for how to detect them if you don't want to track any. And they did. So.
And it's been really excellent to see the cooperation and the consensus building and the discussion all happening at the IETF and very wonderfully you can watch the meetings on YouTube, because they are recorded. Can you subscribe to the mailing list to read the discussion and you can read the discussion and each potentially change it. If you have a particular use case or an experience. The other thing I really love about that work is they have appointed as one of the chairs of the working group an actual -- a person from a most affected community. So one of the staff people at the national network to end domestic violence in the United States is co-chairing that working group with someone from the IETF. So it's just a wonderful example and I think we should see more of that, I hope. Thanks.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you, Mallory. Sarah.
>> SARAH JENNINGS: I found a quote from Tim Burnersly. I think people will often fall behind these conversations. But its watt decision to open the web and universal system was necessary for it to be open.
>> MODERATOR: Sorry.
>> SARAH JENNINGS: Sorry. I will start again. The decision was necessary for it universal. You can't propose something be a universal space and try to keep control of it. And universality and globality cannot be open standards. And one area I want that Mallory opened up with, and I want to touch on, who is open in the standards work. Where we are advocates for the model investment for the digital technical standards and we want to make sure they deliver it for all for the development for a whole process. That means a wide range, operators and vendors and community groups and civil society groups engaging on all of the issues considered with the SDOs but that also is valuable for itself. Valuable for the process but valuable to get the best quality outcome.
For the U.K. government that means in practice we looking at the statistics organizations and also supporting efforts to widen and improve the talent base in standards development organizations. Companies we work directly with multi-stakeholders STOs and develop them in our procurement and better at understanding the barriers for people engaged in standards organizations and considering how those should be addressed. Recognize that openness isn't a binary state. It exists on a spec truck and it's something that is kind of constantly need to be worked towards.
Generally support standards in the organization that has the requisite technical compensation and capability to be able to do that whether that's IEEE for internet or the W3 generation in multiple standards and we encourage them to consider openness and within the greatest degree possible in their openness. Meaning there might be constraints in the way they operate.
But ultimately it comes down to open standards are valuable because everyone can get involved and that is not a given for closed standards.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you, Sarah. Roman. Roam.
>> ROMAN DANYLIW: So Sarah and Karen have talked about testimony the only way you have to keep it open because you will ensure you have all the necessary stakeholders participate. When you consider the scale of the internet being first or fastest is the one of the dimensions to trade off with a multi-stakeholder community.
One of the critical advantages back to having the idea of so many stakeholders to this open process you get broad and diverse reviews from all the different communities.
This is what Sarah was talking about. You get global efforts not just from one community.
You get the technical and private sector and governments and civil society. As Mallory was talking you get academia. And my belief is that when you bringing to all of those experts you actually end up with a higher equal of standards that really -- ultimately stands the test of time and implementation and adoption, and drives digital economy and scales to the need and diversity that happens across the internet.
Back to the idea of cutting examples I want to drill a ill-will bit into two examples of where the IETF that is sometimes perceived as the technical community but in fact is quite multi-stakeholder. Took that input into the organization that dramatically changed the standardization activity.
So that first example is around TLS which is one of the most widely verticals for apps and health care data and financial services data. We had a wide partial from academia that came to that specification and they brought a particular enter tease called formal verification using mathematical models to use the properties to the protocols in in case TLS and it turns out their contribution was phenomenal because they found plays in the design and because the academic community was participating as a first class stake holder and able to bring that to the process the protocol was able to revise and by the time it shifted it was more secure from the start.
Because in the absence of that partial from academia, there would have been late invulnerables in the specification which would have been late vulnerabilities in the products that implemented it.
The other example I want to repeat is also fantastic the one Mallory mentioned. The ongoing work that the IETF was doing around unwanted track as Mallory framed their partner kind of violence because of their ability to use for stocking. Compositionally the technical community and largely the government also did not have the domain expertise in those technologies. It was the gender based violence experts coming to the IETF that really educated the technical community, the commercial sector and governments on the requirements and the models around that and those became requirements that the entire SDO is now an engineer for.
So just to reiterate what I said, kind what have Sarah has said, bringing to all of those experted as equal participants in the process leads to higher equal standards and that's exactly what we want when we feel for something as broad and impactful as the internet. Thanks.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you, Roman. Karen. Why are open standards better than closed ones?
>> KAREN MCCABE: Thank you. That's an interesting question, you know. From being in the standards space for a few decades now, and you know of course working for the organization that I'm with IEEE we do advocate and I would say maybe we prefer open standards but I would have to say, just to add a few dimensions to the discussion we are having on this particular question, I think there are various forms of standardization, and they actually serve -- one way of looking at it is various purposes. And I'm just going to add another dimension here. So one way of looking at it is often -- you know there's a need for stability. And I think that is provided by the arena of formal standards bodies such as IEEE and those open processes that we have. But other thing we haven't touched upon so far in our conversation there is also sometimes a need for addressing or coping with really fast change.
And we didn't really bring into the conversation consortia or alliances which may be more closed or proprietary. So there's a need for that as well. And standards or specifications may be developed in an alliance and there's a broader need to bring that to more of a global market so they don't go to more formal standards bodies like IEEE but there is a role for that.
And not necessarily saying that open source is a form of standards body but you know then there's also that connection to standardization and open source in that level of community involvement. You know it's an interesting question because there are these various types of processes and organizations developing standards.
I would say overall they need to sort of work together in a way. You know we talk about interoperability, these various systems of standards need to be operable as well. We looking at really this emerging standardization need. When we think of mega systems when we think about glow growing digital platforms and components and dimensions from 6G and beyond, when we think about connected persons, E-health, mobility. The future of mobility.
The groups within each of those -- I guess areas or arenas of how they develop standards, formal standards bodies, open standards bodies, consortia, whatever. They need to effectively work together. We will look at how we will achieve the public good character of standards through open systems, right. So one way I would say to accomplish this open standardization could be preferred compared to closed proprietary solutions. But sometimes the road to an open standard may be through a proprietary way as well.
And then it gets into an open standard just to kind of put that into context here. I think open standards really provide the development of the unified digital ecosystem. All of this technology and digital translation doesn't stand alone. And when we any in terms of compatibility and interoperability, openness will be the foundation for the fields that need to interoperate and the future and the needs we are wanting to have. How we sustain these complex systems and these digital domains really requires a consensus and an agreement of how it's going to work.
I think this is where open standards can solve such a significant purpose for the various reasons my colleagues have noted here, from the level of multistakeholderism, various voices, diversity of opinions and insights. That level of enter tease, really coming into the standard development process and developing a standard is so critical because then you get the best output if you will, when you think about that.
So I think that's where open standards might stand above, if you will for proprietary standards. But just to know there are reasons for proprietary standards and driving factors in the market and whatnot. They do have their role. Just to push back a little bit on that. But I will end there but just wanted to add those other dimensions. Thank you.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you, Karen. The IGF sometimes gets criticized a little bit that there's a lot of fluffy talk and not concrete talk this week. I want to counter with my next question. We already hear some examples especially from Roman where open standards worked really well. But I want to dive still a little deeper into that. What are examples where open standards worked well and why did they work well? Can we start with you, Sarah?
>> SARAH JENNINGS:
Absolutely. So I think one element of open standards we touched on a little bit and to tear benefit is because they are generally available at a very low price. They are extremely valuable with wide-spread uptake behaviour implementation of a standard.
And that's particularly the case for SME, small medium enterprises. It can become a barrier.
One should give an example of a piece of work from ETSY -- and this was started by department for Culture and Media and Sport and recognizes that IOT devices could be insecure by design, despite the ambiguity they were exposing people threat and insecurity.
And the department came up with a code of practice for consumer IOT security. A set of best principals that should be implemented at the design stage to ensure IOT was secure. So just to give a very basic example of how that manifested it men either not setting the default password for the user name admin or requesting that users change the password on -- for us to use the device. A really simple change was designed to bolster the security of the devices.
And the identifying that there kind of was no relevant global standard that was addressing that issue, the department in conjunction with the National Cybersecurity Center with National Security worked into ETSI and led to a publish in 2019 and into a European standard in 2020 and that now underpins the secure require Ps for consumes in the U.K. but has had widespread international adoption and underpins the domestic schemes in Finland, Germany, Singapore and Vietnam and the success department is continuing to work on that and continuing with the code of program but from the start that work was framed in the context of open standards.
We saw a need and a gap within the security landscape and brought it to ETSI to be able to get their technical compensation and their wide stakeholder, ETSI is a global open organization and that was crucial for getting widespread advice I object of the standard across different countries and finally freely available. Which means that manufacturers are much for able to ensure their products are by design.
That's one example where open standards can be really helpful in terms of goods practice and goods behaviour.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you. Karen. Do you have an example for us?
>> KAREN MCCABE: Yes, I do.
It's an interesting question. Thank you for it. You know it's I guess how we want to define what worked well. What does that mean, and what didn't work well. From an open standards perspective go through the lens of the other components of open standardization, you know when we think about market driven bottom-up standardization. You know one way of thinking of it, could be if it dip work well, could be that it was maybe before the market wag ready for.
It sort of standard before its time, right. Because the adoption of standards -- you know was really by the market or the end users. You know sometimes standards are very, very niche as well. So defining work well by a limited amount of adoption. It could be a niche industry. But it's very needed and it's very practical. So I just wanted to add that into the mix here as we are discussing when it comes to what worked well or didn't work well. From a worked well kind of perspective, this should come to no surprise I will talk about the I888 or W211 standard.
This was a standard that basically then evolved to a family of standards, just to note -- you know standards are living documents, per se. It's sort of doesn't come out into the world -- you know and sits there. It's innovated upon on to itself. Things in technology, market drivers, what not change. So the standards in the people developing those standards really rules have to pay attention to it and update it and revise it and all of that comes along with this very complex standardization process.
But the 80211 process -- this is a stage -- I'm sure everyone here is probably familiar with.
This that really defines protocols for wireless local area networks and it really came on to the scene in the mid-1990s and has been greatly regularly updated based on revolving needs. Higher speeds and security and support from new devices and how Spectrum is evolving and what not.
But you know the success also what is working well is also aligned with how that standard is being maintained and updated as well just to throw that in here. Back to the 802.11, the wireless standard, I think we all -- as we are sitting here with connected devices and Wi-Fi and being able to do our work remotely and schooling remotely and all the amazing thing, it really has enabled this sense of global interoperability where devices can adhere to this standard. It has allowed tremendous innovation allowing all companies to innovate with devices and applications and services that are reliant on Wi-Fi and that enable a lot what have we are experience -- our experience today.
It really helps ensure scalability for process and updates to keep meeting the growing needed and demands from smart hopes to enterprises and smart cities and beyond. And I think we have touched upon this when we think about the impact of standards as well. It really has help when it's that ambiguous development clause and we talked about that locked in situation as well and helped avoid that as well. Making Wi-Fi accessible and generally affordable for consumers because it's so widely deployed around the world.
You know the success factor there is really it has become the defacto standards for wireless networks. So that process of how that standard was developed early on in the 1990s, meeting the needs of the evolving market and how it uses building blocks if you will for innovation and how it's been maintained -- you know really is a great -- I would call a case study. Sort of what works well in open standards. But thanks for the question.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you, Karen. It's funny, that Wi-Fi wasn't the first one coming to my mind but now as you talk about, it I take it for granted and it's so natural but it's such an awesome example of something every one of us uses. Mallory. Do you have an example for us?
>> MALLORY KNODEL: I do. And it's such a perfect setup because mine is about the 802.11 group. But a really specific change. Let me say bring got involved in standards I was working at the association for progressive communication. And with a background of innovation and science was doing training for journalists and human righters and community most at risk. Teaching them how to use PGP, email and other thing that are hard to do.
We don't have to do that so much any more because things have changed. And what was so compelling to me about standards is indeed of going one by one by one to fix the security issues that people are facing you can actually just change the way the technology worked for everyone all over the world. That to she was so refreshing.
And provided -- like, yeah, just such a value proposition for why you should get engaged so folks still need to clean up their digital security, especially if they are most at risk. I don't have to tell folks in the room this, but you know getting involve in standards could potentially change thing for everyone. So example I have in 802.11 I which I don't have to go into explaining what that, is thank you, Karen and Christian. There was a change.
So when I worked with someone named Amelia Anders daughter who was following the 802 groups, and she started working on this draft specification in the Wi-Fi standard so that routers would, by default, randomize Mac addresses of the devices that connected to it. So it was a feature but you had to turn it on. So describe why this was important. If you travel in airports, which all of you do.
If you go to the same coffee shops over and over again the wireless structure in those places could track you every time because every device you have has a unique identifier and when you authenticate to the wireless network you would -- briefs to this changing you would be giving over that unique identifier in order to get on the network.
So specifying the Wi-Fi standard to randomize that, to have that unique identifier by default changes the security for everyone. So this change goes into all of the consumer routers that are on shelves all over the world. It goes into every place over time. So this is one example.
I know it seems like such an incremental tiny change but that had human right indications and kinding digital security implications which is something I Noel from people working on the ground most affected by this seeped really inn yes. A minor example, but to me it's a foundational example.
>> MODERATOR: Perfect. Thanks a lot. Roman, you touched on one or two. But do you have another one?
>> ROMAN DANYLIW: Do I have another one? If everyone remembers back just a couple years when we had the COVID pandemic, I can't think of a more transformational wide-spread adoption of impacting education because of governments with medicine and connecting with our loved ones then almost all the video conversation overnight we started working daily into our workflows.
That underlying protocol to the service streaming right now and bringing thing to billions of users was a web RTC. This wasn't the first time there was video technology. Previously it was linked to expensive appliances in corporate settings or unreliable desk-top. So ensuring it is the diversity of the internet. There was focus of inoperable of a mobile device and laptop and new models and old models and web browsers and being sensitive to the fact that the quality of internet connectivity with latency varies around the world and needs to work within all of those different constraints.
And if you also look at the specifications of all of those drafts. 40 or 50 documents it goes back to what we were talking about before. It takes a huge village of people to do it. You see authors from big tech service providers and equipment manufacturers and open source, academia and civil society, all as primary author on the draft because that's what it takes to cover the diversity of use cases that is ultimately the internet and one we haven't talked so much about, but Karen has mentioned because certainly IETF and IT work together with the world wide web consortium also as well. So I mean plenty of examples to talk about but I will stop there. Thanks.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you. We are behind time. We are behind time as I was already told. Nevertheless, do we have a question? Martin has one. A quick one.
>> For the sake of time. Thank you. This works. Thank you. Well you don't have to convince me for open standards. I'm fully in. If you talk about people who talk about open standards from a policy level, the concerns are that permissionless innovation is often misunderstood. So maybe to be more clear on permissionless innovation doesn't mean everything goes.
And other thing is to capture. And by certain parties governments or big business. Have you been dealing with that over time as well. Can you say a little bit more about how you are going to avoid that this will be a problem and that it's going to be better understood?
>> ROMAN CHUKOV: You're right, it doesn't mean anything goes, permissionless. When it goes for IEEE or the IETF puts out a standard you don't need to ask them to use those building blocks to make new applications and innovate what is ultimately possible. And then I think to answer kind of quickly and then I will turn it over to the rest of the panelist, relative to capture.
This is one of the reasons why the IETF operates on the principal everyone is an individual and everyone from all manners of contribution can come to the organization and that's primarily the mitigation. In addition to that and the rough consensus process that we follow similar to what the IEEE follows.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you. Do other panelists have something to add as well.
>> MALLORY KNODEL: I can jump in. I can't see if Sarah had --
>> MODERATOR: Go ahead.
>> MALLORY KNODEL: Thanks. I think this is important where policy comes.
In we have a problem with really consolidated markets because really huge tech companies, particularly in the U.S. haven't been regulated enough. So that spills into the standards process am I think this has also a sort of feedback loop happening. I will just reflect that I think sometimes the major tech companies don't have interesting enough problems which I think is too bad, right. There are small community networks.
There are small businesses and Sarah brought in earlier that have more interesting problems but their exclusions and their ideas are not really getting heard and I think that's an unfortunate side effect of this.
And I also think it's self-reinforcing because sometimes you get solutions and standard architectures that preference cooperation between big companies. And this essentially boils down to a network neutrality violation which -- you know for all the really interesting principals and architectural principals and the IETF has not codified or address, it's easier to point point to but that is also. And to lean into neutrality can someone lean into in conclusion but not a perfect one because it takes everyone to solve it hugely consolidated market issue.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you. Sarah.
>> SARAH JENNINGS: I guess my comment was going back to my first comment -- that no one is limited from defacto from the process. Open standards can be kind of a laissez-faire approach. But how functions and how the institutions and organizations operates is to have governance mechanisms in place to enable particular individuals to contribute.
And sometimes that means kind of making sure that there is not an overarching dominance of particular voices within a conversation. So for example -- I'm going to speak on Roman's turf but the IETF has limations of the number of individuals who can serve on the IBI. You can't have more than one or two people. And that's that dominance that you describe. So yes there can be loud voices in a room but I think it's incumbent on all SDOs for the processes and cultures that people can contribute where they have things to say.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you. We have to wrap up. We are coming to an end. Nevertheless, I want to give every panelist 1 minute to give us their takeaway around open standards.
What should people here in the room takeaway or a summary of the path you set. Can we start with Karen.
>> KAREN MCCABE: Gee, thanks. Well first of all again a big thank you. For me I just think -- you know especially as we are grappling with unintended consequences of technology and new technology is rapidly advancing. Open standards are going to remain a very, very critical pillar of that ecosystem.
But also noting that there are other aspects if you will of open source and -- you know proprietary standards of what you between define coming out of consortia and how we need to keep an eye on how this will need to interoperate, I guess, so we can meet the challenges that might be in front of us.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you. Mallory.
>> MALLORY KNODEL: Yeah, I think I'm the own one who hasn't weighed in on this question of closed standards versus open standards. I just didn't address it in my comments but I think it's important from the perspective of civil society. Because I also work in the ITU. We haven't really talked about that very much. But it is -- I think maybe people would trouble the idea that it's closed.
I certainly think that it is you can't look at the documents or the mail refractor unless you are a member of the delegation or an observer member. And I think what I want to say is that what you get between the two, the major difference for me and my situation is you don't get civil society.
But you get plenty of industry. So a lot of country delegations are comprised of national industry, and they are part of the delegation. So you kind of get both. And ITU does do a fair amount of standardization. What you don't get, is you don't get a lot of observers. You don't get civil society on delegations. And you don't get a lot of then sort of large groups -- you know like the office of the high commissioner of human right or other kinds of groups that would sensibly be interacting with that process like you could have in something that is truly multi-stakeholder. So I guess that sometimes can be a question with the IGF. There's a lot of participants that are very active and very keen for governments.
That's a message there that we should be pushing these more closed multilateral bodies to become a stakeholder and the best argument we have is the internet works because the multistakeholder standards organizations work.
>> MODERATOR: Perfect. Thank you. Roman.
>> ROMAN DANYLIW: Mallory ended it the way I would have.
The internets a worked for a number of decades and connected billions of people through its multi-standards and multistakeholder approach with so many stakeholders in such high stakes. It is the only way to proceed and continue.
>> MODERATOR: Sarah.
>> SARAH JENNINGS: I guess my comment would be that open seasons not a destination. It's something that needs to continue to be maintained and forged and it's income ban upon all groups to work and incumbent to make it possible.
And openness is not a place to keep -- it's a place to keep advocating here, and I hope people have seen the value of openness.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you, the title of the session was the Future of the Internet is Built on Open Global Standards. Thanks a lot for joining and I hope you have an awesome week.
>> MALLORY KNODEL: Thank you.
>> KAREN MCCABE: Thanks.
>> MODERATOR: Thanks to the panelists again.