The future of internet governance? I wouldn't start from here

14 Dec 2012 | Digital Freedom, News and features, Uncategorized

If there was ever any doubt that the UN’s International Telecommunications Union (ITU) was the wrong body to run the internet, you only needed to look at its handling of its own World Conference on International Telecommunication (WCIT), which ended today in Dubai in a little resolution but a lot of dispute.

With the conference centre doors closing and the delegates sent packing Friday evening, it’s still not clear where all the 174 countries represented at Dubai actually stand on the WCIT review of the ITU’s  International Telecommunication Regulations (ITRs), a de facto treaty facilitating telecommunications between the states. (There’s an updating chart here — http://www.ipv.sx/wcit/).

The core dispute is over the ITU’s current and future role in the governance of the internet. The United States, United Kingdom and Sweden were among the 55 states who have so far either refused to sign the new accord or have “reservations” — meaning that they will opt out of the bits they don’t like. Eighty-nine countries signed. Index on Censorship remains concerned by this incomplete resolution. The threat of extended government influence over the internet remains.

When the existing accord was signed 24 years ago the internet was a technical concept, not the global change maker it is today. The ITU wanted to bring the ITRs into the 21st Century by bringing the internet into its ambit. This became the UN “plot” to take over the internet of popular outrage.

But going on their performance up to today in Dubai, the ITU makes for a pretty forlorn bunch of conspirators. It is by nature a very technically minded body — facilitating “global interconnection and interoperability of information and communication services”.

Criticised by civil society for the lack of transparency, openness, and public consultations that marked its work, the ITU came up with a public access policy on the hoof. Documents (already widely leaked) were formally released and public submissions solicited at short notice (then filed and ignored).

The free expression organisations that attended, including Index on Censorship, got more access than expected to the key drafting plenaries. Some NGO delegates were signed up by states as members of their national delegation, giving them even more access to the back and forth behind the scenes.

What they saw behind the curtain was not pretty. Unused to discussing such issues in a public forum, its national delegates battered by often contradictory instructions from their capitals, struggling with the sheer pace of text revisions, the entire process reduced to low comedy on the penultimate day.

The ITU leadership attempted to find a compromise by filleting some text from a document agreed in Tunis in 2005, passing it off as a non-binding resolution to “foster the development and growth of the internet” and approving it by a weird call for a non-vote, a call to test the “temperature” of opinion about it. Nobody knew what it was if not a vote — it certainly looked like one — but the Tunis fillet went into the final papers regardless. Cue global outrage and statements of disappointment.

The main problem in all this has its roots in the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) in Tunis in 2005 and the “Tunis Agenda”. That proposed the creation of an Internet Governance Forum (IGF) for a multi-stakeholder policy dialogue on Internet issues.

Thereafter the ITU should have been a “mere” stakeholder in the process along with all the other stakeholders — not the focal point for government-led internet governance that many of its more authoritarian nation members wanted it to be. But the Tunis Agenda promised much more of a role for all the myriad stakeholders — private, public and individual — that the IGF has delivered. With the WSIS process up for review itself this shortcoming will not go away.

Civil society groups working across the Dubai conference, once in, used the internet itself to coordinate information from the different plenaries. With some delegations so confused by the process that they were sometimes working from superseded drafts, sometimes the independent observers clearly had a better understanding of the unfolding arguments.

This grasp of the business gave them even greater credibility among the official delegations. But it didn’t and doesn’t pass for actual engagement. Recognition of the multi-stakeholder approach is urgently needed.

The treaty is scheduled to go into force in January 2015, with the WSIS review, another IGF gathering and the World Telecommunication/Information and Communication Technology Policy Forum (WTPF) to run before it. Plenty more damage could be done there and then.

Rohan Jayasekera is Associate Editor and Deputy Chief Executive of Index on Censorship

What can you do?

Index and many other civil society organisations that fight for free speech and internet freedom oppose moves to give the ITU authority over the internet. Join more than 33,000 other citizens from 166 nations and sign here to ask your nation’s leaders to protect global internet freedom

If you are an academic or work for a civil society organisation — join us by signing on here and send the letter to government officials who are participating in the ITU process

More on this story:
WCIT | Dominique Lazanski on The obscure threat to the internet you need to know about
WCIT | Milton Mueller on the internet revolution in crisis

 

Pipe bomb planted outside home of Northern Ireland photographer

14 Dec 2012 | Europe and Central Asia, Index Index, minipost

A pipe bomb was defused early this morning after it was planted outside of the home of Northern Ireland press photographer Mark Pearce. While no one has taken responsibility for the attack, Pearce believes he was targeted for his work, but does not remember a recent photograph that could have angered of one of the country’s banned paramilitary groups.

Northern Ireland has recently seen a rise in tensions after Belfast officials last week decided to fly the Union flag on certain days, rather than displaying it year round, sparking protests from  loyalists.

Free Speech Bites: Natalia Kaliada on the arts in Belarus

14 Dec 2012 | Free Speech Bites

Natalia Kaliada is co-founder of the Belarus Free Theatre. The group, formed in 2005, performs provocative political works in a country where it can be lethal to criticise the dictator Alexander Lukashenko. Natalia was forced into exile after the brutal crackdown on Belarus’s opposition after the rigged 2010 presidential elections. Here she speaks to Nigel Warburton about the difficulty of creating art in Europe’s last dictatorship

Read full transcript here | Download the mp3 here

South African public broadcaster embraces censorship to protect President Zuma

14 Dec 2012 | South Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa

The South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) promised to change its ways in an out-of-court settlement over a blacklisting scandal but hope of real change has been engulfed by a wave of censorship at the public broadcaster since the start of November.

Management at South Africa’s public broadcaster have pulled an interview with a cartoonist, cancelled a talk show discussion, arbitrarily dismissed a senior political journalist, centralised control over talk shows, issued directives about words deemed offensive to President Jacob Zuma and banned an advertisement featuring Zuma.

Staff members this week sent out a letter, written anonymously in fear of retribution, bemoaning an atmosphere of paranoia, fear and uncertainty at the public broadcaster.

Cartoonist Zapiro also found out this week that a pre-recorded interview with him would no longer be flighted on SABC 3’s Interface, a political debate show televised on Sundays. Zuma has recently dropped a defamation suit against Zapiro, who has riled him with his critical cartoons.

Senior political reporter for television news, Sophie Mokoena, was last week summarily removed from her post without reason. She was due to coordinate the SABC reporting team at the upcoming conference of the ruling African National Congress (ANC) but has attracted unfavourable attention from Zuma’s faction in the party.

During last week, the plug was also pulled at the last minute on a talk show discussion on Metro FM, South Africa’s largest commercial radio station with 6 million listeners, owned by the SABC. Three political journalists, from privately owned newspapers, were due to discuss the media’s coverage of the ANC conference.

The three journalists were already at the SABC offices in Auckland Park, Johannesburg, when they were informed that “higher powers” had ordered that the discussion be pulled.

SABC acting chief operating officer Hlaudi Motsoeneng afterwards explained that “fairness” required that the ANC be represented at the talk show discussion, as the party would have been discussed.

Motsoeneng is alleged to be close to Zuma and has been called “Zuma’s enforcer” at the SABC and the “de facto SABC CEO”.

He was also involved in banning an advertisement in November showing a cartoon of Zuma eating fish and chips. The SABC gave a variety of explanations for the decision, ranging from that it suggested that the president endorsed the product, to it damaging his dignity, to it being offensive to suggest that he eats fish and chips.

The decision seems to have more to do with the depiction of a showerhead in the ad, derived from Zapiro’s depiction of a showerhead on Zuma’s head in his cartoons after Zuma had suggested that a shower was adequate protection against contracting HIV.

After the Metro FM censorship, SABC management threatened to can a regular workers’ issues slot on SAfm (an SABC-owned English language station with about 550,000 listeners) because the ANC was not represented — despite a representative from the ANC’s alliance partner, the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu), being featured.

Motsoeneng’s subsequent solution to the “problem” is to centralise control over talk shows dealing with politics across the 18 SABC radio stations, a move which will add a bureaucratic layer that could stifle open engagement with issues, said Media Monitoring Africa.

At the beginning of November, the acting head of news Jimi Matthews banned the use of words such as “compound”, “homestead” and “any other such term” with reference to Zuma’s controversial private dwelling at Nkandla that is costing tax payers R260 million (17 million GBP). UNCUT has previously reported on calls by Zuma’s allies for insult laws after reports revealing Nkandla’s costs.

The SABC has also in recent months been accused of censoring reporting on Zuma’s detractors and last year tried to avoid broadcasting a correction for slandering an investigative journalist.

But even before that, in 2006, exposure of its decision to blacklist certain political commentators led to the Freedom of Expression Institute pursuing legal action. The out of court settlement was reached only last month (November) but seems to have left little if any impression on SABC management.

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