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We should know more about the International Telecommunications Union

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Posted: Wednesday, December 5, 2012 12:00 am | Updated: 7:04 am, Wed Dec 5, 2012.

We should know more about the International Telecommunications Union 2 comments

What is the ITU? It's the International Telecommunications Union, a United Nations agency where right now 193 countries are meeting behind closed doors in Dubai to plan the fate of Internet users worldwide.

And guess what? We don't get to vote on it. Vladimir Putin decided that we have too many freedoms on the Internet, so he proposed that the U.N. should have control over it. And his choice for the man to run it is a communist named Hamadoun Toure.

Why isn't the media all over this? Why do they place a cloak of invisibly over this? The free Internet is under greater threat now than it has ever been. But I haven't heard a word about it on the news.

Thank goodness the U.N. doesn't have control yet, or I would never have stumbled across it on the Internet! Prepare yourselves, citizens!

Joy Smart

Lodi

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Posted in Letters on Wednesday, December 5, 2012 12:00 am. Updated: 7:04 am.

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2 comments:

Walter Chang posted at 5:06 pm on Wed, Dec 5, 2012.

Posts: 728
[sleeping][yawn][sleeping]
ZZZZZZzzzzzz......
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Darrell Baumbach posted at 9:22 am on Wed, Dec 5, 2012.

Posts: 9403
Evidently, this is controversial...
. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-20575844...
Vint Cerf - the computer scientist who co-designed some of the internet's core underlying protocols and who now acts as Google's chief internet evangelist - has been very vocal, penning a series of op-ed columns.
"A state-controlled system of regulation is not only unnecessary, it would almost invariably raise costs and prices and interfere with the rapid and organic growth of the internet we have seen since its commercial emergence in the 1990s," he wrote for CNN.
Google has warned the event threatened the "open internet", while the EU said the current system worked, adding: "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."
But the agency said action was needed to ensure investment in infrastructure to help more people access the net.
"The brutal truth is that the internet remains largely [the] rich world's privilege, " said Dr Hamadoun Toure, secretary-general of the UN's International Telecommunications Union, ahead of the meeting.
"ITU wants to change that."
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