Stories from Abroad

The 20^th Plenipotentiary Conference of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) elected the first woman to one of five top executive positions in the history of the organization. Member States of ITU, the United Nations specialized agency for information and communication technology, completed the elections for the posts of ITU Secretary-General, ITU Deputy Secretary-General, Director of ITU's Telecommunication Standardization Bureau (TSB) and Director of ITU's Telecommunication Development Bureau (BDT). The winning candidates are:

Officials in Beijing are providing governments around the world with technology and training that enable them to control their own citizens. As Chinese companies compete with their international counterparts in crucial fields such as artificial intelligence and 5G mobile service, the democratic norms that long governed the global Internet are falling by the wayside. When it comes to Internet freedom, many governments are eager to buy the restrictive model that China is selling.

The internet is growing less free around the world, and democracy itself is withering under its influence. Disinformation and propaganda disseminated online have poisoned the public sphere. The unbridled collection of personal data has broken down traditional notions of privacy. And a cohort of countries is moving toward digital authoritarianism by embracing the Chinese model of extensive censorship and automated surveillance systems. As a result of these trends, global internet freedom declined for the eighth consecutive year in 2018.

The United Kingdom is targeting the likes of Alphabet and Facebook by introducing a digital services tax that aims to raise about $500 million a year for the government. UK Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Hammond unveiled the measure in his Autumn Budget. He said it was designed to hit the largest internet businesses, not start-ups. It would affect profitable companies with annual revenues that exceed about $640 million, he said.

China Telecom, a state-owned telecommunications company, has been "hijacking the vital internet backbone of western countries," according to researchers from the US Naval War College and Tel Aviv University. China Telecom, the country's third-largest telco and internet service provider, has had a presence inside North American networks since the early 2000s when it created its first point-of-presence (PoP).

A Q&A with Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai. 

Throughout my time here in New Delhi, I look forward to strengthening friendships—and building new ones—with colleagues across both government and industry. Together, we can help deliver digital opportunity for all those we represent.

Britain's Information Commissioner has slapped Facebook with a fine of $644,000 — the maximum possible — for its behavior in the Cambridge Analytica scandal. The ICO's investigation found that between 2007 and 2014, Facebook processed the personal information of users unfairly by giving app developers access to their information without informed consent. The fine was the maximum allowed under the law at the time the breach occurred.

Four years ago, the United Nations predicted that more than half of the global population would be connected to the internet by 2017, buoyed in part by “the fastest growing technology in human history”: mobile broadband. The world missed the mark.