[bestbits] Time-sensitive: 24 hour sign on period for ITU Plenipot joint recommendations

[Norbert Bollow]

Many thanks, Anne, for your detailed response and explanation.

I would like to hereby request permission review the archive. I'm
willing to promise to not disclose or discuss with any third parties
any information of the kind that you have referred to below as being
sensitive and the reason for not having a fully open archive, unless
and until said information also becomes available to me through some
other channel (such as e.g. WCITleaks.) [Nota bene my willingness to
agree in this particular situation to such a non-disclosure commitment
should not be read as an agreement in principle to some BestBits type
processes being less than fully open. It's just because I don't intend
to start a general public discussion of that issue of openness at the
current point in time.] 

In case an introduction is needed: I'm a German citizen, living in
Switzerland since a long time, and I'm an advocate for human rights and
Free and Open Source Software (FOSS). I've participated in many Internet
governance related discourses since a long time, for example as a
participant in the DRUMS working group at IETF which led to RFCs 2821
and 2822, as a participant of the first two BestBits meetings (but not
the most recent one), as the initiator of the process that led to the
formation of the Civil Society Coordination Group (CSCG), and more
recently as a co-convenor of the Just Net Coalition (JNC). 

Greetings,
Norbert


On Thu, 23 Oct 2014 07:51:11 +0200
Anne Jellema <anne at webfoundation.org> wrote:

> The pre-IGF BB meeting in Istanbul (report on the BB website) agreed
> on the creation of three fluid working groups. Carolina's note on the
> outcomes of this meeting, sent to the Best Bits list on 9 September,
> outlined these groups and who to contact if you wanted to join.
> Snippet below:
> 
> 
> >    - *ITU working group:* A group of volunteers (see the list in
> > the BB report) has been formed. If you'd like to join, please
> > contact Anne Jellema <anne at webfoundation.org> and myself.
> >
> >
>  About 30 people requested to join the ITU working group, were duly
> added and introduced themselves to the group; no one who asked was
> turned down.
> 
> The group decided not to open its email list archive. Many of the
> group members are participating in government delegations, which is a
> valuable source of information and intelligence that CS needs for
> effective advocacy (especially in the ITU context where access to
> documents is highly restricted), but requires that you accept a duty
> to treat that information with great care. Those on delegations felt
> that there was some of this information that they could responsibly
> share with a group of 30 people whose identities, affiliations and
> reasons for participating in the group they knew, but not with an
> open mailing list of 370 people.
> 
> Second, as mentioned above and also stressed in my note to the list
> the other day, this was a group of volunteers who prepared a
> statement and opened it to the wider BB list for endorsement (or
> not). The statement has not been issued in the name of "civil
> society" or "Best Bits" but only in the name of the organisations who
> chose to sign it.
> 
> I hope that answers your questions but feel free to follow up.
> 
> Best,
> Anne
> 
> On Wed, Oct 22, 2014 at 1:38 PM, Norbert Bollow <nb at bollow.ch> wrote:
> 
> > On Mon, 20 Oct 2014 22:38:08 +0200
> > Anne Jellema <anne at webfoundation.org> wrote on the BestBits list:
> >
> > > As you know, a fluid working group was formed after the IGF to
> > > try to come up with joint recommendations for the ITU Plenipot.
> >
> > May I ask some questions about this?:
> >
> > Was this an open process which any interested civil society person
> > would have been accepted to join upon request?
> >
> > Are there publicly accessible mailing list archives somewhere?
> >
> > Greetings,
> > Norbert
> >
> 
> 
>