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The U.N. thinks about tomorrow's cyberspace
By Declan McCullagh
Story last modified Tue Mar 29 04:00:00 PST 2005
The International Telecommunication Union is one of the most venerable of bureaucracies. Created in 1865 to facilitate telegraph transmissions, its mandate has expanded to include radio and telephone communications.
But the ITU enjoys virtually no influence over the Internet. That remains the province of specialized organizations such as the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN; the Internet Engineering Task Force; the World Wide Web Consortium; and regional address registries.
The ITU, a United Nations agency, would like to change that. "The whole world is looking for a better solution for Internet governance, unwilling to maintain the current situation," Houlin Zhao, director of the ITU's Telecommunication Standardization Bureau, said last year. Zhao, a former government official in China's Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications, has been in his current job since 1999.
Though Zhao is far too diplomatic to state it directly, the ITU's increasing interest in the Internet could presage a power struggle between ITU, ICANN, and perhaps even the U.S. government, which retains some oversight authority over ICANN and appears content with the current structure.
In a series of speeches over the last year, Zhao has suggested that the ITU could become involved in everything from security and spam to managing how Internet Protocol addresses are assigned. The ITU also is looking into some aspects of voice over Internet Protocol--VoIP--communications, another potential area for expansion.
"Countering spam is just one of many elements of protecting the Internet that include availability during emergencies and supporting public safety and law enforcement officials," Zhao wrote in December. Also, he wrote, the ITU "would take care of other work, such as work on Internet exchange points, Internet interconnection charging regimes, and methods to provide authenticated directories that meet national privacy regimes."
CNET News.com recently spoke with Zhao about the ITU's increased interest in the Internet and its involvement in a series of meetings that will conclude in November with a U.N. World Summit on the Information Society in Tunisia.
Q: How do you see the ITU becoming involved in Internet governance over the next few years?
Zhao: As you know, Internet governance was one of two hot topics left from the first phase of the U.N. world summit. Unfortunately we did not have a clear definition of Internet governance. Therefore the group established by Mr. Kofi Annan still has to work on these definitions.
Anything which concerns the future development of the Internet will be part of the question of Internet governance. It covers a very wide range of topics not just related to technology development, service development, but also policy matters, sovereignty, security, privacy, almost anything.
I do not consider ICANN an enemy. According to ITU's definition of "telecommunications," telecommunications covers almost anything. Therefore according to our own lawyers, the Internet is one of these telecommunications mediums. Others argue that "telecommunications" is too wide and it does not include the Internet.
What do you think? Should the ITU be involved in Internet governance?
Zhao: Yes, for sure. ITU should be part of Internet governance. But ITU cannot cover everything...
NATO AIR said:i wanted to post this, but decided i should cut back on the anti-UN articles... they're just too easy a target, its like beating a dead horse
great post though kathianne, scares the shit out of me personally, god knows they'll probably try to turn it into china's internet system
Kathianne said:Hey NATO, why not ride that dead horse?
NATO AIR said:The stench is appalling!
March 29, 2005: SECOND Interim Report
The Second Interim report of the Independent Inquiry Committee into the United Nations Oil-for-Food Programme is now available on line here. I'm getting more coffee and starting to read.
UPDATE: I have been reading the report. So far I can say this much -- anyone who thinks Kofi Annan is the man to reform the United Nations has the intelligence of a gnat or the morals of Saddam Hussein.
MORE: Reading the report, you come to the conclusion that in a normal (non-UN) situation many of the people involved would quite simply go to jail, but here there is no apparent jurisdiction. An example is the former UN Chef de Cabinet S. Iqbal Riza who directed his assistant to shred many documents concerning Oil-for-Food. His assistant wondered if she should be doing this with so many documents but Mr. Riza told her to go ahead and scrawled his gratitude on the memorandum: "Fine. Thanks. (A heavy task!)" Besides being hugely corrupt, Mr. Riza is evidently something of a nitwit for leaving a paper trail. Riza destroyed three years' worth of documents!
MORE: Those who will still defend Kofi will have explain why the Sec'y General lied or "misspoke" to the committee when he said he had never met Elie Massey, the head of Cotecna, before that rather ethically-challenged company got the Oil-for-Food contract. According to the interim report,(p. 45 and thereabouts) Kofi's own personal computer recorded two such meetings. The Sec'y General is evidently a forgetful man. He forgot he had lunch with his own son and Mouselli in Durban (also documented). Is this a case of like son like father or the other way around. Or is just the son really corrupt? Perhaps we will never know. But does it matter? What matters is change at the UN. Immediate change. I don't care if Kofi Annan is depressed. He doesn't get my sympathy. The innocent people of Darfur get my sympathy. Those Iraqi children who didn't get the Oil-for-Food money that was skimmed get my sympathy.
BTW: The report indicates that Kojo Annan is no longer cooperating with the committee. According to my sources... and you know who they are if you have been following the posts below... this has been true since November.
UPDATE: Special praise must go to the London Daily Telegraph whose reporting seems to have driven many inspects of this investigation.
OBVIOUSLY: The report will doubtless be spun in a number of ways. But there is sufficient meat here for any enterprising investigative reporter to go much further. It will be interesting to see what our major publications do. Many of them seem to think that to write too much about this would tarnish the image of the UN, but in actuality the reverse is true. The UN is already tarnished. Only reform will save it. And reform will only come from a full airing. I can already see a few things that were left out from my small knowledge. You can be sure they will appear in the days to come.
