Khaled: First, thanks for your comments. My original email was to assess, if ICANN/At-Large staff had undertaken any efforts or is planning any such efforts to involve and engage internet users from the middle east and/or north african region for the upcoming fall public meeting in Egypt. I am well aware of the geopolitical issues of the region - indeed they are complex. However, it is a region with a growing and vibrant online community of bloggers and internet governance specialists. Through my involvement and engagement with Diplo Foundation, Global Voices, and many other organizations that I advise - I have a great deal of contact with people in the region who are active on the internet . They are experts in internet governance, journalists, bloggers and yes, even user groups. In essence, they are active internet users that happy to know the fall ICANN meeting will be in their part of the world and seem to be keen to learn more, be active in the meeting and share their perspective on key issues that affect the region such as IDN, Multi-lingual internet, DNS security, etc. As you may know, one of the big issues discussed among bloggers and other users from the region is - of course - internet censorship and other restrictions imposed by governments such as Tunisia, Egypt, Syria and others. Reports from the Open Net Initiative, Global Voices Online and others speak in dire terms about how internet users are censored, blocked, arrested or worse. http://del.icio.us/internetfreedom/egypt http://del.icio.us/internetfreedom/syria http://opennet.net/ http://www.globalvoicesonline.org/ As such - a question to ICANN staff and upper management - who do seem to be cc'd on the message... Can the organization guarantee that the meeting will have open and unfiltered access to the internet, and be open to all internet users from the region who wish to attend. regards Robert Guerra On 13-May-08, at 3:37 AM, Khaled KOUBAA wrote:
Jeff, I am sorry to say that your point of view of the region is a little bit wrong. We do have many Internet governance experts in the MENA region. Unfortunately ( and many experiences I had in the past ) that the only image you have about our region is about terrorism or human rights problems. We in the Arab World Internet Institute ( www.aw2i.org ) will be happy to provide you soon reports coming from experts of our region. Other thing : the number of phishers, spammers and hackers are not so big in our region as you said. Many reports mention that. The number of Internet users is already under the number of hackers and phishers in other regions in the world. Khaled
Jeffrey A. Williams wrote:
Robert and all,
Thank you Robert for you kind offer. There are to our knowledge no REAL internet governance experts that are natives to the region to which you refer. There are however a significant number of phishers, spammers, and hackers associated with several terrorist organizations that may claim to be internet governance experts that are indiginious to the region of which you speak. I don't believe these folks would be very helpful, but would be of interest to the relevant LEA's seeking at this time to bring these individuals into a, shall we say a "More controled enviroment".
-----Original Message-----
From: Robert Guerra <lists@privaterra.info> Sent: May 12, 2008 9:31 AM To: At-Large Worldwide <alac@atlarge-lists.icann.org> Subject: [At-Large] Middle East & North Africa Outreach
Looking ahead towards the fall ICANN meeting in Egypt - I would like to know if any outreach is being planned or envisioned to internet users in the middle-east and north africa.
If not, suffice it to say that I am in touch with a rather extensive network of internet governance experts, internet users - bloggers and internet saavy organizations in the region that could be interested in attending the meeting and engaging us.