Free Republic

Shanghai. (Interfax-China) - China will install a special surveillance system for all Internet cafes nationwide by the end of 2004, according to an official statement from China's Ministry of Culture (MOC). Once installed, this new surveillance system will require all Internet cafes customers to enter personal information, such as name, age, and their national citizen identification number, before they are allowed to log onto the Internet. New supervisory centers will also be set up around the country to monitor the online activities of Internet cafe customers. To date, Sichuan, Guangxi, Hubei, Zhejiang, and Jiangxi provinces have already completed installing this...

According to the UN, the management of the internet should be multilateral, transparent, and democratic, and "ensure an equitable distribution of resources." The phantom of government-controlled Internet has raised its menacing head again; this time on the global level. “Even the definition of what we mean by Internet governance is a subject of debate. But the world has a common interest in ensuring the security and dependability of this new medium,” said Secretary-General Kofi Annan at the opening of a March 25-26 United Nations Global Forum on Internet Governance. “The medium must be made accessible and responsive to the needs...

The Internet has empowered individuals everywhere to assume control of their destinies, understand the freedoms and rights available to Westerners, and join together en masse to fight for greater liberties. In a sense, the Internet has served the unifying and justice-seeking role that the U.N. claims for itself, but never fulfills, being too busy coddling diplomats and manufacturing red tape. It would be a huge mistake to surrender such a beneficial democratizing tool to a body that includes the likes of thought-policing countries like China and North Korea......

<p>Typically, only heads of state and titans of industry get an audience on the 38th floor of the marble-and-glass tower housing the United Nations.</p> <p>So when the president of a California nonprofit corporation with an unwieldy name -- the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers -- met Friday with Secretary-General Kofi Annan, it signaled the group's importance in a computer-driven world.</p>

UNITED NATIONS - Typically, only heads of state and titans of industry get an audience on the 38th floor of the marble-and-glass tower housing the United Nations (news - web sites). So when the president of a California nonprofit corporation with an unwieldy name — the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers — met Friday with Secretary-General Kofi Annan (news - web sites), it signaled the group's importance in a computer-driven world. ICANN (news - web sites) oversees the Domain Name System — such as ".com," ".net" and ".org" — that allows computers to find each other in cyberspace....

UNITED NATIONS--The United Nations wants a big piece of the Internet. At a summit here this week, delegates from around the world gathered to take a preliminary step toward U.N. involvement in some of the areas that are bedeviling Internet users and governments alike, including spam, network security, privacy and the regulation of the technical underpinnings that control the sprawling global network. U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan set the tone in a speech Thursday, criticizing the current system through which Internet standards are set and domain names are handled, a process currently dominated by the United States, Canada, Europe and...