Delegates and other assorted hangers-on are gathering in Tunis this week for tomorrow’s start of the UN’s “World Summit on the Information Society.” Given the topic, one would expect a fairly free flow of information surrounding the event–for appearance sake, if nothing else. Not so. Reports are that Tunisian authorities broke up a meeting on press freedom, beat up a French journalist, and blocked access inside the country to a website of a side event called the “Citizen Summit on the Information Society.”
Certainly an odd way to begin a summit on the information society. If this is what happens when a government is on its best behavior, what happens when nobody is watching? No wonder there’s so much opposition to plans–to be debated at the summit–to “globalize” governance of the Internet.
The Tunis summit, by the way, will be the subject of a Heritage policy forum on Thursday, November 17 at 10 am. Speakers include Sen. Norm Coleman, Rep. John Doolittle, Heritage China expert John Tkacik and fellow TLF blogger Adam Thiere. If you are in DC, stop by. If not, you can catch it on the web. Details here.
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.
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