Hi Carlos,

I think that viewing issues from the perspective US vs rest of the world, or democratic countries vs authoritarian countries or whatever led us to wrong perceptions. the reality is that we have concerning trend with states pushing for more control, e.g. within ICANN with GAC , regulation and have contradictory policies (supporting free internet but implementing surveillance like in USA or talking about access , "democratizing" governance and also implementing surveillance too in caseIndia ) whatever for political control and threats against FoE or just to defend economic interests or maximalist copyright .

as someone who used with filtered internet for many years I know that was the tunisian government doing that and not USG while US companies sold the menas to set censorship.

Things are more complicated :)

Best,

Rafik

2013/7/3 Carlos A. Afonso <[log in to unmask]>

At a minimum. After all, they are contractors with the USG, responsible
for subcontracting the management of root servers which are considered
integral part of national security.

If the USG orders submissive Italy, France, Portugal and Spain not to
let Bolivia's president Morales to land for refuelling -- putting his
live at risk --, why wouldn't they have a few spooks wandering about in
ICANN, either for real or virtually? :)

No one is happier than China with these events! Now we understand better
what Hillary meant by her perorations on the importance of the "free and
open Internet". Free and open for US spooks to peek into, I gather.

--c.a.

On 07/03/2013 02:08 AM, Marc Perkel wrote:
> Considering the NSA and PRISM stuff and that they are into Microsoft,
> Google, Apple, Facebook, etc - shouldn't we assume that ICANN has been
> compromised? Considering everything else they are into how can they not
> be into ICANN?
>
> Having said that - what does that mean to our trip?
>

> Thoughts?
>