Early reports from WSIS, via Jamie Love, are that plans for an "Internet Governance Forum," a body that would have some relationship to the UN but would not itself make binding rules, are moving ahead.  ICANN's role remains the same, for the time being.  We'll need more detail about all this, so I'm reluctant to make any pronouncements about what this means.

I'm moving offices tonight, and my packing up revealed yet another copy of the August 2004 CALEA NPRM.  Back when it came out I marked it up -- and on the front page there's a note reading, "is there anything CALEA doesn't cover?"

The Mercury News had a fine editorial yesterday about this very subject.  The headline reads:  "Lawsuit reflects profound flaws in FCC rules for online eavesdropping."  Here's an excerpt:

The new rules would extend the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act, or CALEA, to a wide swath of the Internet. The 1994 law currently requires telephone companies to design their networks so they can quickly intercept conversations at the request of law enforcement.

Under the new rules, ISPs or anyone else operating a network connected to the Internet -- a university, a city or coffeehouse offering wireless Internet access, a private company -- would be forced to install specialized equipment throughout their communications infrastructure. Internet phone firms and other innovators would have to engineer complex changes to their products to facilitate eavesdropping. . ...

[B]y forcing as yet unspecified design mandates on new communications products, the government would be killing the innovation goose. Products that could not accommodate the eavesdropping technology would never reach the market. And those that could, would be pricier. Free Internet telephones, for instance, may never be available if the government imposes high costs on service providers.

....When Congress passed CALEA, it specifically exempted the Internet from it. Any changes to the law to accommodate the needs of law enforcement should be carefully debated by lawmakers -- not imposed by the FCC in the form of dangerous and costly new mandates on the Internet.

That's right.  If Americans hope to lead the world in guiding the regulatory structure for the internet, we need to get our own house in order.  We need to talk this through -- slowly -- and think hard about what "social policies" (if any) should be lifted from the world of telephones and imposed on online life.  Right now, we're hurtling towards a controlled online future without evaluating the economic costs these regulations may impose on society as a whole.