This past Saturday, a self-professed neo-Nazi massacred eleven worshipers at synagogue services in Pittsburgh. The killer was reported to have lived on and was incented by an “Over the Top (OTT)” service purposely established to facilitate extremist activities known as Gab. Within hours, the cloud service providers hosting their services announced they would no longer provide hosting services. Presumably, the threat of both potential civil litigation liability among other penalties, as well as adverse publicity, provided the motivation.

Meanwhile, a third of a world way in Dubai, representatives of the world’s nations began assembling for the ITU 2018 Plenipotentiary Conference and considering a proposed treaty instrument resolution on OTT services from four country blocs (Africa, Arab, Europe, and Russian) plus Brazil and the U.S. The proposals contain a spectrum of views on OTT services—ranging from unbounded exuberance to cautious concern about economic effects. None raised any explicit treatment of the potential adverse societal consequences such as those that manifested themselves in Pittsburgh, in addition to patent adverse national security impacts. None gave any recognition to long-established international treaty instruments proscribing the promotion of religious hatred, racism and xenophobia and inciting related violence over internets.

Somehow over the past two decades, nations, transnational service providers, and international institutions have lost sight in pursuing new network and OTT virtualizations as part of political-economic agendas, that these are not necessarily wonderful “transformative opportunities” for everyone. Indeed, the collateral harms can be grievous and benefit not even “good” or sustainable in any kind of meaningful societal or economic sense. OTTs are inherently subject to profound misuse and exploitations—amplified by transnational use. Indeed, they were used by foreign intelligence services to attack the U.S. electoral process.

None of this is new. More than twenty years ago, the UNHCR held a seminal workshop in Geneva to which the ITU and country missions were invited, and where concern was voiced over the growing use of the DARPA internet platforms by neo-Nazis and other extremists.

What an OTT treaty instrument resolution should contain

PP-2018 participants should minimally consider including in their OTT resolution two significant provisions. One is a specific recognition of the multiple human rights treaty provisions that proscribe the promotion of religious hatred, racism and xenophobia and inciting related violence via internets and requesting Member States take appropriate action. A second is to better balance the OTT benefits with the potential detriments and harmful exploitations of OTT use, and explicitly taking steps to mitigate them such as transnational notice and takedown capabilities, and controls on the use of ephemeral encryption platforms. In general, the concept of “Red Teaming” the introduction of new technologies and services is long overdue in the ITU.