[WSIS CS-Plenary] WSIS news

[Robert Guerra]

Subject: RFID Bug devices track officials at world summit
From: rguerra at privaterra.org
Date: Mon, 15 Dec 2003 02:39:46 -0500
X-Message-Number: 1

Sigh!

FYI - Stephanie Perrin and I  attended the UN World Summit on the
Information Society
(WSIS) last week in Geneva.

As per the story below , i'll just say .. The most important point
missed is that it being a UN summit, the data protection directives that
would apply are those in place are UN ones...which, i'm not sure exist.
or
do they?

regards

Robert

>
> Subject: RFID Bug devices track officials at world summit
> From: Jim Kelly <jimkelly at shaw.ca>
> Date: Sun, 14 Dec 2003 11:28:11 -0800
> X-Message-Number: 1
>
> http://washingtontimes.com/national/20031214-011754-1280r.htm
> December 14, 2003
>
>
>                      Bug devices track officials at summit
>
>
>                        By Audrey Hudson
>                        THE WASHINGTON TIMES
>
>
>
>                            Officials who attended a world Internet and
>                        technology summit in Switzerland last week
>                        were unknowingly bugged, said researchers
>                        who attended the forum.
>

----------------------------------------------------------------------




In today's San Francisco Chronicle.=20

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=3D/chronicle/archive/2003
/=
12/15/EDGGA3G8H41.DTL


Bumps on the Road to a Global Internet
Call for a wired world unplugged

Simon Davies      Monday, December 15, 2003
=20
------------------------------------------------------------------------


It was promoted as the great event for the Internet. Fifty heads of =
state and 12,000 delegates from 175 countries had gathered in Geneva to =
hammer out a blueprint for the future of the global information society.
=
Two years in preparation at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars =
and last week it spectacularly failed.

The U.N. World Summit on the Information Society was set up to reach =
global agreement on complex problems such as bridging the digital divide
=
between rich and poor, broadening access to information and enshrining =
the right of free expression. This would be measured by setting as the =
central goal to get the Internet, telephones and other communications to
=
at least half the world's inhabitants by 2015.

Such a worldwide effort was long overdue: Nearly half the world's people
=
have never made a phone call; crucial and often life-saving information =
about health and education is seldom available outside Western =
countries; and the majority of the world's governments still maintain an
=
iron grip over their citizens' communications.

Adopting the celebratory tone common to all such occasions, the leaders
of the rich and powerful governments and corporations agreed at the
summit's conclusion that a Neil Armstrong-like step had been taken in
the evolution of the information age.

Rubbish.

The event was an expensive boondoggle. It was such a waste that last
week I turned down a rare invitation to speak at its grand plenary.

"We are going through a historic transformation in the way we live,
learn, work, communicate and do business," said U.N. Secretary-General
Kofi Anan in his opening remarks. "We must do so not passively, but as
makers of our own destiny. Technology has produced the information age.
Now it is up to all of us to build an information society."

He went on to remind the thousands of delegates of the crucial
challenges ahead in opening up communications and information for the
poor of the world. Strong words indeed -- such a pity they went into
thin air.

Even as Anan was speaking, the Chinese delegates were busy gutting civil
rights from the summit's declaration of principles. Meanwhile, the U.S.
delegation and its corporate allies were stitching up a deal to
eliminate the establishment of a fund to finance telecommunications
infrastructure for poor African countries just as the Egyptians were
finalizing the death blow for a proposed guarantee of free expression.

Then came the nauseating hypocrisy, as country after country declared
principles that were diametrically opposed to their hidden agendas.
China's minister for the information industry proclaimed: "Freedom of
speech should be guaranteed and human dignity and rights safeguarded by
law" (subject, he added, to respect for cultural norms).

Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak ignored his own country's appalling
record of censorship and discrimination to declare his commitment to
"freedom, democracy and respect of human rights" (subject to the caveat
of respect for national identity).

Nor is the United States immune to a charge of serial hypocrisy. While
it was proclaiming support for openness and freedom for the world, the
delegation was silently destroying a proposal to endorse the use of
"open source" software that might have been affordable to poor nations,
rather than the expensive "proprietary" software such as Microsoft
Windows. The U.S. efforts paid dividends: The draft declaration of
principles of the summit quickly changed from "support" for such
software to merely "promoting awareness."

The whole affair was a deplorable sham and a corporate gravy train in
which the poorest countries on Earth had yet again been exploited.

Of course, I might have been wrong. Maybe the free market can solve the
problems of the world's poor. Then I reflected on the news that all
delegates to the summit, rich and poor alike, were being forced to pay
$170 for access to the Internet for the week. Welcome to the future.