Today, more than two billion people are online, about a third of the planet. In Rwanda, according to the Rwanda Utilities Regulatory Agency (RURA), at the end of September there were 760,450 Internet subscribers, but there are much more users (an Internet café or a company are considered as a single subscribers, but there are of course many people using their connection).
The Internet empowers everyone to speak, create, learn, and share; it is controlled by no one — no single organization, individual, or government. However, recently prominent voices from the IT sector and bloggers have voiced concerns that this ‘Internet freedom’ is at risk of being curtailed.
The UN, through its telecom arm, the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), is bringing together regulators from around the world to review International Telecommunications Regulations (ITRs) treaty signed in Melbourne (Australia) in 1988. This is being done during the World Conference on International Telecommunications 2012 (WCIT-12) held in Dubai from 3 to 14 December 2012.
As a number of sources have pointed out, there are a wide range of proposals from dozens of different countries who belong to the UN, and most of them will never see the light of day or become international law. But there are critical proposals that should be of concern to users.
“Some people are worried because they think that these regulations may limit freedom of expression,” says Jean-Baptiste Mutabazi, RURA’s Head of Communication and Media. “However, the Secretary General of ITU has clearly stipulated in his opening speech that: ‘Nothing can stop freedom of expression, and certainly not this conference.'”
One of the reasons to be worried of what the ITU might do is that some UN member states would like the power to restrict free speech and information, and their proposals are aimed at making it easier for them to do that. If regulations were changed, however, the fear is that it could become even easier for those countries to filter and block specific online content, rather than having to use brute force to shut off the Internet altogether – something that is much more obvious than a secretive filtering or controlled-access scheme, and therefore easier to criticize or defend against.