All,

As the documentation on the organizations website points out. This global communications surveillance has been going on for a long time. What has changed is that the technology has gotten better and more pervasive/invasive. A third of a century ago (circa 1980) I was retained to teach a refresher course in statistics at the Menwith Hill Station, outside Harrowgate in England. Inside a deep depression in the rolling hills there was/is a massive installation with giant satellite antennas pointed up and capturing all satellite traffic between North America and Europe. The surveillance operation was then called Echelon, and run by US aerospace companies. British laws seemed not to apply there - the pub was literally almost always open and they social life a bit "wierd". 

There WAS a Google Earth Echelon Locations video on YouTube, but it is not there but when you try to look, YouTube says that the video is unavailable and it opens up your YouTube account, with personal identification (e.g. gmail account). Oddly that doesn't happen when I try to view the UK's Mr Bean YouTube videos).  There is an aerial photo of Menwith Hill Station at: http://whatreallyhappened.com/RANCHO/POLITICS/ECHELON/echelon.html . Canadian participation is reportedly via the Canadian Forces Station in Leitrim, Ontario, just outside Ottawa.

How does this relate to ICANN and the Internet ecosystem? This is chapter one in a story that is about to grow exponentially. With IPv6, the explosion of the Internet of Things, and all the data generating apps that are there for smart phones, and coming for smart cars, smart refrigerators, etc, each and every person (and object) will begin to be surrounded by a datasphere of archived data. That datasphere will be mined by what I call the "The Invasion of the Data Snatchers". This is beyond government surveillance, and the rules and regulations about (a) privacy of one's datasphere, and (b) the terms of access (much given away via the "I accept" button on apps) are not in place. We are not even sure how they should be fashioned, and who (at what level) should administer them. The most problematic area here is service providers who have to assess risk (car, health, house insurance). We are already seeing denial of service to individuals, based on access to one's personal datasphere (e.g. cardio wrist band data resulting in denial of travel insurance). What happens when health insurance engages in health surveillance via one's networked refrigerator, and car insurance via one's vehicle? 

Internet stakeholders outside the "Walled City" of ICANN's  ICANN-centric view of the Internet ecosystem are feeling increasingly uneasy, and looking for ways to address these issues, ways that are stakeholder-centric and beyond ICANN's remit and abilities. From a social systems dynamic perspective this suggests that ICANN's role in Internet Governance is at risk, and its model of multistakeholder engagement, while well intended, has serious shortcomings. The average Internet stakeholder may actually be relatively indifferent to Echelon or NSA surveillance, but is likely to get extremely angry if their own phone, car or refrigerator has been enlisted by private sector interests and they are victimized by an invasion of the data snatchers. Crowd sourced anger is not a good platform for creating policy. There is a major role for the NCSG cohort to engage in awareness raising around these Internet ecosystem issues.

Sam Lanfranco