[WSIS CS-Plenary] Ralf & Rik's list of "the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly" in Tunis

[Elizabeth Carll, PhD]

Very funny and informative as well.  With a little tweaking, some of this
could be a piece on the Daily Show.  For those not familiar with US TV,  Jon
Stewarts "Daily Show" is a very funny parody on the news.

Elizabeth

Dr. Elizabeth Carll
International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies
UN NGO Committee on Mental Health
Communications Coordination Committee for the UN
Tel: 1631-754-2424
Fax: 1631-754-5032
ecarll at optonline.net

-----Original Message-----
From: plenary-admin at wsis-cs.org [mailto:plenary-admin at wsis-cs.org]On Behalf
Of Rik Panganiban
Sent: Monday, November 28, 2005 11:46 AM
To: plenary at wsis-cs.org
Subject: [WSIS CS-Plenary] Ralf & Rik's list of "the Good, the Bad, and the
Ugly" in Tunis


Dear Friends,


Ralf and I wrote up a piece in December 2003 about the best and worst parts
of the Geneva WSIS.  We decided to do the same for the Tunis WSIS. You can
find the text of our article below, and also at


  http://www.worldsummit2003.de/en/web/840.htm
and  http://rikomatic.com/blogomatic


(Note that all views and opinions are those of the authors and do no purport
to represent the views or opinions of any organizations that they are
associated with. If there are any errors of fact it's probably Rik's fault
since he was too tired to fact-check. And errors of grammar are probably
Ralf's fault since English is not his native language.)


Enjoy!


Ralf and Rik
===================================================


The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, Part II:
Rik and Ralf’s Take on the WSIS
November 2005

By Ralf Bendrath and Rik Panganiban


In December 2003, we put together a listing of the high and low points from
the Geneva World Summit on the Information Society, which we called “How Was
the Summit?”  In that same spirit, we submit to you our very personal take
on the best and worst of the Tunis WSIS.

The Good
• Speaker Selection: This time around, civil society through their own
self-organizing mechanisms selected  nearly all of the 35 individuals who
spoke at the official WSIS plenaries, roundtables and high level panels.


• Ms. Shirin Ebadi: In a very last minute effort, the Human Rights Caucus
managed to put together an impressive campaign to get Ms. Shirin Ebadi, 2003
Nobel Peace Prize recipient and Iranian human rights activist, selected to
speak as the civil society speaker at the opening ceremony of the WSIS.  As
anticipated, she pulled no punches and delivered a very strong statement in
support of basic human rights and social justice.


• Internet Access: Unlike Geneva, the ITU managed to get fairly stable,
robust, and free (as in beer) wireless internet throughout the Kram
convention centre. For those laptop owners in need of very fast connections,
there were also lots of LAN cable plugs in the civil society offices. A
not-so-secret SMTP server even allowed folks to send out mail.  And no web
filtering was reported on the summit premises.


• Overpasses:  In Geneva, we had a heck of a time allocating and
distributing these “overpasses” so people could attend the opening ceremony
and plenaries of the WSIS.  This time around, we had our act together with
an online reservation system, pretty fair allocations of passes to various
caucuses, and possibilities for even newcomers to get into the conference
hall.  In the end, as expected, barely anyone attended the official
proceedings after the opening ceremony.


• “The Third Paradise”: This most beautiful side-event took place in an old
townhouse in the medina, where the Brazilian government had joined forces
with an Italian cultural foundation. They brought together Mediterranean
artists, free software and knowledge workers, video documentarists and
cultural activists for an amazing program during the whole week. The
highlight clearly was Free Software guru Richard Stallmann singing protest
songs and Brazilian cultural minister Gilberto Gild playing along on the
guitar. Cozy atmosphere, loungy interior and extremely friendly people made
this the best evening chill-out place after the political frenzy at the
official summit.

The Bad
• Web Censorship:  Various witnesses reported that outside of the summit
area in the Kram Convention Centre, the Tunisian authorities continued to
censor online content deemed dangerous to the regime, such as the websites
of the Tunisian League for Human Rights.  Even the Swiss news site
swissinfo.ch was blocked because they covered the Swiss President’s opening
speech at the WSIS that was clearly critical of the Tunisian human rights
record. The web was not only filtered in the official summit hotels, but
even at the ICT4ALL exhibition right next to the summit.


• Swiss-level Prices in Africa: Everything about the WSIS was clearly priced
at corporate expense account rates, from the overpriced hotels to the
horrible two euro sandwiches in the cafes. We understand that several
African and Latin American NGOs were not able to attend due to the high
travel, accommodation and cost-of-living expenses.
Noise: The meeting rooms and offices at the summit only had paper or cloth
walls and no ceiling. This again – like in Geneva – created a constant noise
level which made it extremely hard to concentrate on your work or calmly
discuss with others during the many interesting side-events.


• Toilet Paper:  Or lack thereof.  No further comment necessary.

The Ugly
• Harassment of the Citizen’s Summit: Like at many other UN world
conferences, civil society groups had organized several meetings outside of
the official summit. The biggest event was supposed to be the “Citizens’
Summit on the Information Society”, organized together with independent
Tunisian NGOs, others were also planned by e.g. the German Heinrich Böll
Foundation. The Tunisian authorities repeatedly cancelled room bookings and
blocked access to the buildings. Therefore, the Citizens’ Summit could not
take place, and the German UN Ambassador could not even get into the Goethe
Institute – an official subsidiary of the German Foreign Office. The
Tunisian secret police mostly showed up in badly-fitting dark suits, refused
to give their names or any written documentation, and used as their standard
answer “This meeting is illegal. If you want to meet, you can meet at the
summit”.


• Paranoid Security Measures: With the recent Jordanian terrorist attack, it
is perhaps understandable that the Tunisian hosts might be worried about a
security incident.  But the seemingly thousands of security personnel
throughout the Kram Centre as well as encircling the area with their
automatic weapons and shotguns seemed extremely excessive. Participants
reported random bag searches by gruff and non-communicative security
personnel. Some participants were even blocked from entering the Kram center
in the evenings, though the summit negotiations were still going on at the
same time, and could only enter after extended discussions. In the hotels,
secret police in plain-clothes were everywhere in the lobbies and hallways,
creating an atmosphere of constant surveillance.


• Privacy invasions: During the Geneva summit, civil society had protested
the use of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tags in the name badges.
The entrance control system again use these badges, time-stamped the entry
of all participants, and stored the data. Theoretically, this technology
could have been used for surveillance of the movements of all summit
participants and for registering who walks (and talks) with whom. Though the
ITU had promised it at PrepCom3 in September, there was no official privacy
policy available. It again is unclear what happened to the data afterwards,
and if the host country authorities got access to it.