US international telecommunications goals

Reports the development of media and information policies between the federal government in Bonn and FR Germany’s states (Lander). He alluded to the deviations by the State of Hesse from the recent joint compromise of the heads of states to demand improvements for a joint direction in media policy. If the State of Hesse

US international telecommunications

would continue to insist on such deviations, the State of Bavaria would see itself forced to carry out alone its perceptions of media policy.

Rolf T. Wigand Arizona State University Tempe, AZ, USA

goals

This article considers US international telecommunications policy, as enunciated in the report prepared by the NTIA for the US Senate, Long Range Goals in international Telecommunications and Information: an Outline for United States Policy.

The real significance of the changing role of telecommunications and information has yet to be satisfactorily explained. However, there are widely held perceptions that technological advances in telecommunications and information have begun to initiate significant changes in economics ranging from employment, working conditions and productivity to shifts in comparative trading advantages. These economic issues are closely associated with other concerns of a social and political nature, such as cultural integrity, privacy, the dependence and vulnerability of societies, and sovereignty. On the other hand, it has been argued that these issues, and concerns over them, are by no means novel, for information has always been a major ingredient of economic. social and political activity. Furthermore, it may be said that there is no fundamental difference in the way that information, and the means of transferring it, is presently conceived from those corresponding conceptions of two or three decades ago. If this is so, why then the present consternation? The reply would be that governments, witnessing an ever increasing proportion of their national outputs coming from activities associated with the production and dissemination of information and considering such a feature to be one that will be continued, have begun to take steps to deal with the perceived new and atten-

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dant economic, social and political problems. Such actions have ramifications for many states and, hence, irrespective of the present validity of the assumptions of causality, these new attitudes towards telecommunications and information policy merit close examination. Over the past few years several states have produced reports and studies that aim to formulate new national policies on the assumption that present structures and policies no longer appear relevant for current needs and problems. For example there have been reports from France (Nora and Mint, 1979; Madec, 1980), from Canada (Clyne Commission, 1979), from Japan (MITI, 1970 and 1979). The US Senate has recently produced a report of a similar genre: Long Range Goals in International Telecommunications and Information: an Outline for United States Policy (USGPO, 1983). Prepared by the NTIA, the objective of this Report is to ‘provide a comprehensive delineation of goals, policies, strategies and principal issues in the international telecommunications and information field in order to improve the formulation and execution of United States policy’. This may be compared with the French studies: Nora and Mint were concerned with the impact of ‘telematics’ on society and the need to develop an indigenous telecommunications and computer industry to meet ‘the IBM challenge’; Madec was concerned with informa-

tion as a commodity and means for a government to obtain revenue from transborder data flows. For Canada, the major concerns were those of cultural integrity, national sovereignty and the export of jobs. For Japan, the need has been to identify ‘knowledge intensive’ industries and targeting these for economic development. The concerns of the USA, as expressed in the Report, are different and reflect the role of the USA in international communications. The USA is involved in the majority of all international traffic and, in addition, has by far the largest share of the international market for telecommunications and information products. The concern of the Report is with these two characteristics and how best to promote US trading interests. Reports on US telecommunications policy are not new. There have been several since the second world war dealing with issues such as the regulation of international telecommunications services, trade and technology transfers. and so on. This Report has its origins in the Communications Ammendment Act of 1982 which provided the mandate for a study of what are perceived to be new and damaging issues to the economic and political security of the USA and is the culmination of several years of intense Congressional debates on the reform of the 1934 Communications Act.

Vulnerability The underlying dynamic appears to be a perception by the US government of an increasing vulnerability of US economic, defence and political interests in international telecommunications and information services to foreign actions over the past decade. These foreign actions are considered to be of three types: steps, by both developed and developing countries, to restrict the flow of information; subsidized competition and protectionist restrictions by foreign actors; and the increased politicization of international institutions that deal with issues of telecommunications and information, especially the ITU and UNESCO. These foreign malactions are not held to be isolated instances, nor are

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Reports they considered to be short-term in They indicate restrictive nature. trends. Consequently, they must be addressed urgently, but the dispersal of responsibility and the lack of policy at the highest levels, in the USA, have prevented the USA from responding effectively to these challenges. The Report addresses a wide range of issues germane to international telecommunications and information, considers the limitations of present US policies and policy making apparatus and sets out a series of goals, recommendations and strategies for future US policy. The Report is in three parts. Part 1, dealing with ‘International trends’ (Chap 1) and ‘Long range goals, policies and strategies’ (Chap 2), contains a discussion of the current concerns which are seen to be part of a trend deleterious to US interests, as well as a general consideration of policies, goals and strategies to meet these threats. Thus, chapter 2 may be cdnsidered to be the Report’s findings and recommendations. Part 2 describes the complexities of ‘the politicization of the ITU’ (Chap 3), and the organization and structure of US government agencies and departments concerned with international telecommunications and information (Chap 4). Part 3 contains a reasonably detailed discussion of the important areas for which specific policies and strategies need to be urgently developed. These are international telecommunications facilities and networks (Chap 5), international telecommunications services (Chap 6), trade issues in equipment and services (Chap 7), information ‘per se’ (Chap 8), research and development in telecommunications and information (Chap 9), national security (Chap 10). In all, some thirty one items that would form the components of an international regime are discussed in this section of the report. The following goals have been established for United States policy: 0

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To assure the free flow of information world-wide subject only to the most compelling national security and personal privacy limitations. To assure that the necessary

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growth of the national security public service and commercial interests of the USA occurs in a manner commensurate with US leadership role in the world. To assure a free competitive market place for telecommunications and information services, equipment and facilities. To assure efficient non-political international organizations for the development, management, and nonexpansion discriminatory access to international telecommunications facilities and networks.

for all those interested in telecommunications and information policy. It touches on all issues pertinent to international telecommunications, albeit produced from American perceptions and with the aim of how best to further US interests. But since US international communication interests are so pervasive, they cannot be ignored and any pronouncement of US international policy becomes a matter for everyone else’s domestic agenda.

There are two other goals established that contain the now mandatory references to human well-being, and to developing countries.

There would be, I expect, majority agreement with the view that technological, economic and political developments necessitate a reformulation of established views and policies with regards to telecommunications and information. The many issues that have been created now cut across traditional administrative, legal and intellectual categories which were developed to correspond to a level of technological development that is now outdated. As a result, contemporary institutions, structures and policy are now inadequate, often conflicting in output - a result of dispersal of function and responsibility amongst public, and in some cases private, agencies responsible for areas such as telecommunications, media, trade policy and foreign policy. This state of affairs is obviously at variance with a process where there is convergence of technologies and systems with wide ranging applications and effects. New organizations and policy structures are required. How countries react, the speed and extent of change, will obviously depend on the role and importance of telecommunications and information in their societies. For most, including most industrialized countries, this would mean a primary interest in reducing their dependence and vulnerability and maintaining their sovereignty with respect to other states. For the USA, it seemingly involves the promotion of measures that facilitate an open trading system without any barriers to US produced telecommunications and information merchandise. The Report is un-

0

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Locus Ail US policy must then be geared to the twin principles of the free flow of information and a free competitive market place. In this the effective implementation of policy requires an effective government role, but the Report is quick to point out that an effective role does not mean that government must take on an expanded role. Rather, minimum government intervention is called for with the government’s role seen as one of establishing policy and of ensuring the development of an open international setting conducive to private enterprise. For this an organization structure must be established to provide ongoing policy formulation and implementation. What seems to be required is a high level locus of coordination and decision making with the necessary authority for implementing policy in the areas, germane to telecommunications and information, of domestic policy, general foreign policy, national security, labour and employment, international finance and trade. This locus, it is suggested, should ideally be in the White House. While the goals, policies and organizational strategy enunciated in this Report are not unexpected (they appear in every report on telecommunications policy, and arguably all topics, produced by the US government), the Report is essential reading

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New structures

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ReporrslBook reviews ashamedly blatant in its considerations of matters that are purely economic, and its international concerns are those that relate solely to the ability of the USA to sell more goods. The Report states that the free flow of information and free market competition are the foundations of US policy and that all efforts must be geared towards the furthering of these people. Nowhere in the Report is the merit of this premise challenged or questioned. Alternatives, such as enhanced regulation of US international activities, are not examined nor even entertained. Instead there is the consideration that present events and trends are ‘clearly unacceptable’ and that the stakes are too high to accept delays and patchwork approaches. The stakes are indeed high. And they are highest for those states with telecommunications and information industries that are not as advanced or as dynamic as those in the USA. For these countries, governments wish to assure the development of their own national capacities; it is a question of their sovereignty, economic and political well-being. It is not reasonable to expect these states to accept rules and structures promulgated by the USA that will have dramatic effects on their integrity as sovereign units, particularly when the telecommunications and information industries are likely to be the only ‘high technology’ industries available to them. Orderly international arrangements are necessary and involve a fine balance between cooperation and competition. At one level cooperation in such matters as standards is obviously essential, but of greater importance is the reconciliation of different perceived needs, fears and interests of states with differing capabilities and traditions. But will the attempts to establish such cooperative strategies hinder the aggressive traders, and will aggressive trading prevent cooperation by frightening weaker states into erecting barriers at an early stage. The Report concedes that adopting free flow of information and merchandise as an objective of policy would not apply to cases of national security. Perhaps this is the crux of the problem. For a very long time national

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security has only been conceived of in terms of territorial integrity, in spatial terms. However, when the ‘information revolution’ is perceived as a threat to the structure of societies such that the ideological and social foundations are in jeopardy, then this becomes an issue of national security and states are justified in taking preventative action. The tone of the Report is somewhat uncompromising, and with its simphstic view of competition there is more

than the semblance of insensitivity to other political institutions, traditions and economic systems. The USA has thrown down the gauntlet. How well other countries, particularly the Europeans, can meet this challenge remains to be seen.

Mahindra Naraine Department of Politics University of Lancaster Lancaster, UK

Book reviews Policy threatens freedom TECHNOLOGIES

OF FREEDOM

by lthiel de Sola Pool Belknap Press, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 1983,299 pp, $20.00 Ithiel de Sola Pool has written a classic. His brilliant book has not only exhaustive documentation, it is also the best defence yet of the deregulatory position. All scholars working in the area (and lawyers and students and policy makers) will have to read this book - at least twice. And it will surely take its place as required reading for graduate school and senior undergraduate seminars. It is a dazzling defence because it holds to a well articulated point of view that creates a firm foundation for the massive amount of information in the book. At no time does it collapse into mere description of the latest gimmick. Never does he indulge in vaporous speculation; nor is Pool content to defend his position abstractly. Carefully, he analyses opposing viewpoints and subtly unrolls his deftly woven conclusion - conclusions based on an expert understanding of the details of the new technologies. Principled but undogmatic, sympathetic but not soft. Pool’s starting point is the First Amendment, a typical Americanism that may already deter the hostile reader. However, in its origins the American Constitution embodies

most of the principles of the Enlightenment, in particular of John Locke, the English philosopher. Locke’s doctrine of checks and balances influenced the original seven articles of the Constitution of the USA that define the legislature, executive (Presidency) and the judiciary. Ten Amendments were then ratified and became a Bill of Rights, based also on Locke’s philosophy. Indeed, as Pool emphasizes, laws potentially conflicting with the First Amendment are dealt with rapidly in appeal courts and such cases are given special treatment. Necessarily, then, many of the key points of the book involve an analysis of legal opinion, precedents and milestone cases in the history of communication law. Pool’s central argument, startling in its pragmatic clarity, is that most laws regulating communications conflict with the First Amendment; the new communication technologies will remove most of the justification for these laws and for related legal decisions that control communication: ‘It is not computers but policy that threatens freedom’ (p 226). And, sure to lose the support of more readers, Pool bluntly claims: ‘the public welfare cannot override constitutional privileges’ (p 161). Pool’s opponents, however, will have to be nimblefooted and quick-witted to provide as convincing an argument for regulation (understood as restrictions on communications) as Pool has for deregulation (the market position). In many

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