WSIS yields Internet governance deal: "Negotiators working late into the night Tuesday shook hands on a deal that creates a new U.N.-sponsored global forum to explore problems like spam and cybercrime, while leaving the United States firmly in control of the internet's domain name system."

Report: Journalists, others at WSIS attacked by authorities: "Civil Society's Media Caucus at WSIS expresses its indignation over a series of incidents in which Tunisian authorities have hampered the freedom of expression of journalists and their freedom of association as well as that of others attending the Tunis phase of the World Summit on the Information Society."

Expression Under Repression at WSIS: "Just now we just received word from someone on the ground at the event of the appearance of "a phalanx of secret police. before the break, a phalanx of secret police (ie scary guys in dark suits) showed up. they filled the hall outside the room, forcing cancellation of the break for fear that we'd not be allowed to re-start. as rsf started to hand out books at the non-break, the authorities stated that documents could only be distributed outside the event, not in the room. this is in direct contrast to the WSIS rules... "

Open Net Initiative reports on filtering in Tunisia: "The Open Net Initiative (ONI) has released its report on filtering by the Tunisian government. The report finds that the Tunisian government uses American software to filter political speech it disagrees with, and to limit access to proxies and anonymizers which might allow Tunisian citizens to access political speech or other blocked information. This approach directly conflicts with the supposed goals of the Tunisian government, and with the supposed goals of the World Summit on the Information Society... " (This is the session that led to the above situation, apparently... )

News from WSIS: Web Censorship in Tunisia: "Berkman Center representatives at the World Summit on the Information Society are seeing a common thread- censorship by a government that claims to protect freedom of thought and expression. In response to this censorship, many NGOs have canceled their events at WSIS. At 3pm Tunis time there will be a short press conference discussing the NGO boycott. More details can be found at the the WSIS group blog. The issue is being picked up by the Associated Press and Reporters Without Borders, as well as many Berkman bloggers."

Yesterday, John sent notes, slides, and photos from Tunis. I have collected some of the passages from his emails and, with his permission, edited them to be presented here, I suspect this will be shifted to the BROG Blog at some point soon.

An unofficial civil society side-event, the CSIS, was apparently blocked from taking place on Monday, and that was causing some of the civil society orgs in WSIS to pull their booths in protest, leading to an intervention by EU countries at the summit, harshly scolding Tunis and its use of police. Some Tunisians are nervous, and can't wait for the whole thing to be over. They've been living with security-related disruptions for almost a year now. The road from the hotels to the summit grounds literally had a policeman every 500 feet, and several at the intersections, which were blocaded.

The Summit has been all-consuming, and so I really haven't seen Tunis, but it doesn't look like anyone else has either. Those who came to the summit later don't look too prepared for the result. It's humungously overwhelming. I ran into Mike Gasser today; the first time since the airport and the badge center. He had only come to the summit today, to see the opening session (with Annan, and all the bigwigs), and he looked kind of glazed. He said it was overwhelming.

I can't remember this much smoke since the Berkeley Hills fires. Unfortunately this stuff contains nicotine, so my lungs are in shock. Literally every place indoors is smoky, except for my room. I can't wait to breathe clean air. And in the line of the smoking business, I mentioned to Susan that I was surprised that the place hadn't burned down. Everywhere there are tents, artificial walls, floors and ceilings made out of what looks like felt. My first thought seeing it was about fire. Hasn't happened yet, that I've heard.

My talk went well... I got strong applause, and when I sat down, one of the other presenters sitting next to me (Genevieve) thanked me for "the most interesting presentation I have heard in a long time". In the questions a certain delegate from Mexico questioned me for being so negative about ICANN (one slide -- geeze!). It was a hard question to address, because there were so many assumptions in it about the utopian process that birthed the Internet. Afterward, I got very complimentary comments from a senior member of the Swedish official delegation for challenging the cybertopian hype with some hard data...

Developing...

Playing with Debian installs, playing with a nifty RDF project that I am extremely excited about... took all night to BitTorrent my Debian ISOs and I'm now watching it install while also trying not to think about reasons to actually, literally REMOVE ME HEAD, because it's really, really hurts. I need to get to the health center, but they'll say, "you have a cold, stay away from undergrads" and send me packing with some Hall's and tylenol.

Anyway, this mug of coffee understands me, don't you mug? Of course you do.

Speaking of, check the hillarious LJ user image, which I noticed first on the iu_slis lj group. Can't recall which user has it, though... apologies to them! Leave a comment!