ITU - monitoring oppressive regimes

We're watching the 'oppressors': world telecoms boss

The head of the world telecoms body said on Tuesday that oppressive regimes are increasingly using their control over the Internet to deprive citizens of information but that those governments are being watched as well.

"Access to information is a basic human right," said International Telecommunication Union (ITU) Secretary General Hamadoun Toure, in Cairo for the Telecom Africa 2008 conference.

He said he is "very concerned" that legislation on so-called cyberterrorism could also be used against innocent citizens, as has been the case with "real world" anti-terrorism legislation that is used against regime opponents.

"There is always a fine line between national security and people's freedom," Toure said. "But you cannot use security to cut people off from information.

"During the (2007) uprising in Myanmar when the citizens were cut off from the Internet we were one of the first UN agencies to make a clear statement on this issue," he says.

Neither the ITU nor any other body has an enforcement role, Toure says, but they can complain when they see regimes limit access to information, such as switching off mobile networks ahead of demonstrations to stop the word from spreading.

"We let them know that it's easy for us to track down the origin of those issues, so if ever a country was to come to international justice it would be easy for us to help them prove it."

Asked about the move by Egypt's state-run ISP TE-Data to block access to an opposition movement's website, Toure said that "just cutting people off for political reasons is not right."

"I hope there will be a body to which these groups can go in future."