[governance] What happened?

[William Drake]

Hello,

The ONI event was to publicize the book, "Access Controlled: The  
Shaping of Power, Rights, and Rule in Cyberspace," edited by Ronald J.  
Deibert, John G. Palfrey, Rafal Rohozinski and Jonathan Zittrain.  The  
book will be published in April 2010 as part of the series I co-edit  
for the MIT Press on The Information Revolution and Global Politics.   
If anyone is interested in knowing more or pre-ordering, please see http://mitpress.mit.edu/IRGP-series 
.

Curious thing just happened.  I had put out a stack of flyers about  
the book, as well as another in the series, on the table in the back  
of the room at the session I'm now speaking in on the IG summer school  
program.  I stepped out of the room for a moment, and coming back saw  
three Chinese people standing outside the room conferring.  Walked  
back into the room and someone had removed all the flyers from the  
table.  I have to presume they are going around the building doing this.

There are also flyers at the IGP booth if anyone here here wants one.   
At least there were, not sure about now.

Best,

Bill


On Nov 16, 2009, at 11:11 AM, Shahzad Ahmad wrote:

> Dear Colleagues,
>
> Just to keep the facts straight... the Network of the Soros  
> Foundation or
> Open Society Institute) has nothing to do with ONI Asia or this  
> event. ONI
> Asia is an independent network of researchers supported by Toronto
> University and Harvard in the US.
>
> best wishes and regards
> Shahzad
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Fouad Bajwa" <fouadbajwa at gmail.com>
> To: <governance at lists.cpsr.org>; "Karl Auerbach" <karl at cavebear.com>
> Sent: Monday, November 16, 2009 2:05 PM
> Subject: Re: [governance] What happened?
>
>
> I am at the IGF and heard about this issue that during the ONI open
> network initiative (of the network of the Soros Foundation/Open
> Society Institute) workshop in the morning. The issue arose when the
> meeting was disrupted by UN officials who demanded removal of a poster
> that mentioned Internet firewalls in China.. Here is the post by the
> Pakistani Civil Society at the IGF:
>
> IGF 2009 event rattled by UN Security Office
> "If we cannot discuss topics about Internet censorship and
> surveillance policy at a forum about Internet governance then what is
> the point of something like the IGF," said Ron Deibert, director of
> the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto's Munk Centre for
> International Studies and one of ONI's principal investigators.
> By Rabia Garib
> 16 Nov 2009
>
> KARACHI, 15 NOVEMBER 2009 - An anti-censorship group holding an event
> Sunday at the United Nations-sponsored Internet Governance Forum (IGF)
> in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt, was disrupted by UN officials who demanded
> removal of a poster that mentioned Internet firewalls in China.
>
> According to a Pakistani delegate, Shahzad Ahmed of Bytesforall.net, a
> reception hosted by Open Net Initiative (ONI) was rattled by IGF
> security, who objected to a poster advertising "Access Controlled", a
> book being introduced at the event. "The poster was thrown on the
> floor and we were told to remove it because of the reference to China
> and Tibet. We refused, and security guards came and removed it. The
> incident was witnessed by many," Ahmed reported.
>
> The poster promoting ONI's forthcoming book, "Access Controlled" was
> removed by the IGF's organizers because a sentence in the poster
> apparently violated UN policy. The sentence in question reads, "The
> first generation of Internet controls consisted largely of building
> firewalls at key Internet gateways; China's famous "Great Firewall of
> China" is one of the first national Internet filtering systems."
>
> "If we cannot discuss topics about Internet censorship and
> surveillance policy at a forum about Internet governance then what is
> the point of something like the IGF," said Ron Deibert, director of
> the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto's Munk Centre for
> International Studies and one of ONI's principal investigators.
>
> Deibert, one of the organizers of the reception, said he will file a
> complaint against the censorship of the event and send it to the
> United Nations Human Rights Commission.
>
> "We condemn this undemocratic act of censoring our event just because
> someone is trying to impress or be in the good graces of the Chinese
> government. It is ironic that while people are allowed to gather here
> to discuss freedom of expression online, censorship and surveillance
> practices on the Internet, we are being restricted in expressing our
> views," said Al Alegre of the Foundation for Media Alternatives, a
> member of the ONI Network.
>
> On Mon, Nov 16, 2009 at 4:11 AM, Karl Auerbach <karl at cavebear.com>  
> wrote:
>>
>> News is just filtering out about the teardown of a book poster at  
>> the IGF
>> because it violated some UN rule about China.
>>
>> We've seen videos of the teardown of the sign but there's not much  
>> news
>> out
>> here about the why except that it was done by UN security because a
>> sentence
>> violated some rule or another.
>>
>> Anyone have more details?
>>
>> --karl--
>>
>> ____________________________________________________________
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>
>
>
> -- 
> Regards.
> --------------------------
> Fouad Bajwa
> Advisor & Researcher
> ICT4D & Internet Governance
> Member Multistakeholder Advisory Group (IGF)
> Member Civil Society Internet Governance Caucus (IGC)
> My Blog: Internet's Governance
> http://internetsgovernance.blogspot.com/
> Follow my Tweets:
> http://twitter.com/fouadbajwa
> MAG Interview:
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ATVDW1tDZzA
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***********************************************************
William J. Drake
Senior Associate
Centre for International Governance
Graduate Institute of International and
  Development Studies
Geneva, Switzerland
william.drake at graduateinstitute.ch
www.graduateinstitute.ch/cig/drake.html
***********************************************************


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