In my last update on WCIT, I noted that due to pressure generated by WCITLeaks, the Secretary-General of the ITU promised to make a recommendation to the ITU’s Council to open up access to WCIT preparatory documents. Here is what has happened since then:
- Secretary-General Touré indeed made his recommendation to the Council.
- The Council responded by releasing a single document, TD-64, which has already been on WCITLeaks for weeks. Indeed, it was the first document we posted.
- The ITU issued a press release declaring this to be a “landmark decision.”
As I told Talking Points Memo, I am not impressed by the ITU’s landmark decision. In fact, I am more convinced than ever that the ITU is too out of touch to be trusted with any role in Internet governance.
Consider these quotes from Secretary-General Touré at May’s WSIS Forum, highlighted by Bill Smith at CircleID:
- “The ITU is as transparent as organizations are.”
- “The transparency of the ITU is not something that you can question.”
- “We don’t really have too much to learn from anybody about multi-stakeholderism because we almost invented it.”
Troubling, no?
If you would like to see first-hand how transparent the ITU is, you can visit its site and download TD-64, the “draft of the future ITRs.” Then go to WCITLeaks.org to read all the other documents it wants to keep from you.
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.