UN Internet Confab Going South

Kofi Annan says the UN Internet summit in Tunisia is all about opening up communications and expanding transparency in the third world:

"Far from plotting its capture, the UN wants only to ensure the Internet's global reach. That effort is at the heart of this summit."

That would be a wonderful thing. Information is liberating; information kills corruption; information spreads wealth; information is the thing despots fear second most. (US Army Special Forces and the USMC hold the #1 spot.)

But if the convention's all about the spread of information, how do explain this interchange at today's UN press briefing?

Question: Is the Secretary-General concerned that this conference in Tunisia is going to end up being really harmful to the image of the United Nations, as we have a sector of this conference working more towards narrowing the rights of the newspaper version and the Internet than it is to expanding freedom of the press?

Deputy Spokesman: I would like to refer you to the quote from his statement, which I intentionally flagged today because I think it answers your questions from yesterday, as well as today. So I would like to refer you to that.

Question: The conference itself, it seems to, there’s another e-mail today that says they want to stop cartoons in Danish newspapers and stuff like that. Is that the object of the UN? To narrow the freedoms of the press?

Deputy Spokesman: [blah, blah, blah]

Question: But when we get to the nuts and bolts, there’s things like how much, beyond the big words of freedom and so on and so forth, how much access do people have to the Internet. In Tunisia, they don’t have any. And how much control do States and bodies like this conference will exert over the press?

Deputy Spokesman: Those are precisely the questions that need to be addressed by the Member States who are there. And the Secretary-General, yes, he uses big words, but that’s what he has; he has words. And that’s what he uses to move the process forward.

Can big words halt the word-controllers? No way. That's why the Internet must remain under the control of the world's bastion of free speech and free enterprise.