- <title>Is Pentagon deciding the Norwegian negotiating position on Internet governance?</title>
- <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Is_Pentagon_deciding_the_Norwegian_negotiating_position_on_Internet_governance_.html</link>
- <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Is_Pentagon_deciding_the_Norwegian_negotiating_position_on_Internet_governance_.html</guid>
- <pubDate>Tue, 3 Nov 2015 13:40:00 +0100</pubDate>
- <description><p>In Norway, all government offices are required by law to keep a
-list of every document or letter arriving and leaving their offices.
-Internal notes should also be documented. The document list (called a mail
-journal - "postjournal" in Norwegian) is public information and thanks
-to the Norwegian Freedom of Information Act (Offentleglova) the mail
-journal is available for everyone. Most offices even publish the mail
-journal on their web pages, as PDFs or tables in web pages. The state-level offices even have a shared web based search service (called
-<a href="https://www.oep.no/">Offentlig Elektronisk Postjournal -
-OEP</a>) to make it possible to search the entries in the list. Not
-all journal entries show up on OEP, and the search service is hard to
-use, but OEP does make it easier to find at least some interesting
-journal entries .</p>
-
-<p>In 2012 I came across a document in the mail journal for the
-Norwegian Ministry of Transport and Communications on OEP that
-piqued my interest. The title of the document was
-"<a href="https://www.oep.no/search/resultSingle.html?journalPostId=4192362">Internet
-Governance and how it affects national security</a>" (Norwegian:
-"Internet Governance og påvirkning på nasjonal sikkerhet"). The
-document date was 2012-05-22, and it was said to be sent from the
-"Permanent Mission of Norway to the United Nations". I asked for a
-copy, but my request was rejected with a reference to a legal clause said to authorize them to reject it
-(<a href="http://lovdata.no/lov/2006-05-19-16/§20">offentleglova § 20,
-letter c</a>) and an explanation that the document was exempt because
-of foreign policy interests as it contained information related to the
-Norwegian negotiating position, negotiating strategies or similar. I
-was told the information in the document related to the ongoing
-negotiation in the International Telecommunications Union (ITU). The
-explanation made sense to me in early January 2013, as a ITU
-conference in Dubay discussing Internet Governance
-(<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Telecommunication_Union#World_Conference_on_International_Telecommunications_2012_.28WCIT-12.29">World
-Conference on International Telecommunications - WCIT-12</a>) had just
-ended,
-<a href="http://www.digi.no/kommentarer/2012/12/18/tvil-om-usas-rolle-pa-teletoppmote">reportedly
-in chaos</a> when USA walked out of the negotiations and 25 countries
-including Norway refused to sign the new treaty. It seemed
-reasonable to believe talks were still going on a few weeks later.
-Norway was represented at the ITU meeting by two authorities, the
-<a href="http://www.nkom.no/">Norwegian Communications Authority</a>
-and the <a href="https://www.regjeringen.no/no/dep/sd/">Ministry of
-Transport and Communications</a>. This might be the reason the letter
-was sent to the ministry. As I was unable to find the document in the
-mail journal of any Norwegian UN mission, I asked the ministry who had
-sent the document to the ministry, and was told that it was the Deputy
-Permanent Representative with the Permanent Mission of Norway in
-Geneva.</p>
-
-<p>Three years later, I was still curious about the content of that
-document, and again asked for a copy, believing the negotiation was
-over now. This time
-<a href="https://mimesbronn.no/request/kopi_av_dokumenter_i_sak_2012914">I
-asked both the Ministry of Transport and Communications as the
-receiver</a> and
-<a href="https://mimesbronn.no/request/brev_om_internet_governance_og_p">asked
-the Permanent Mission of Norway in Geneva as the sender</a> for a
-copy, to see if they both agreed that it should be withheld from the
-public. The ministry upheld its rejection quoting the same law
-reference as before, while the permanent mission rejected it quoting a
-different clause
-(<a href="http://lovdata.no/lov/2006-05-19-16/§20">offentleglova § 20
-letter b</a>), claiming that they were required to keep the
-content of the document from the public because it contained
-information given to Norway with the expressed or implied expectation
-that the information should not be made public. I asked the permanent
-mission for an explanation, and was told that the document contained
-an account from a meeting held in the Pentagon for a limited group of NATO
-nations where the organiser of the meeting did not intend the content
-of the meeting to be publicly known. They explained that giving me a
-copy might cause Norway to not get access to similar information in
-the future and thus hurt the future foreign interests of Norway. They
-also explained that the Permanent Mission of Norway in Geneva was not
-the author of the document, they only got a copy of it, and because of
-this had not listed it in their mail journal.</p>
-
-<p>Armed with this
-knowledge I asked the Ministry to reconsider and asked who was the
-author of the document, now realising that it was not same as the
-"sender" according to Ministry of Transport and Communications. The
-ministry upheld its rejection but told me the name of the author of
-the document. According to
-<a href="https://www.regjeringen.no/no/aktuelt/unga69_rapport1/id2001204/">a
-government report</a> the author was with the Permanent Mission of
-Norway in New York a bit more than a year later (2014-09-22), so I
-guessed that might be the office responsible for writing and sending
-the report initially and
-<a href="https://www.mimesbronn.no/request/mote_2012_i_pentagon_om_itu">asked
-them for a copy</a> but I was obviously wrong as I was told that the
-document was unknown to them and that the author did not work there
-when the document was written. Next, I asked the Permanent Mission of
-Norway in Geneva and the Foreign Ministry to reconsider and at least
-tell me who sent the document to Deputy Permanent Representative with
-the Permanent Mission of Norway in Geneva. The Foreign Ministry also
-upheld its rejection, but told me that the person sending the document
-to Permanent Mission of Norway in Geneva was the defence attaché with
-the Norwegian Embassy in Washington. I do not know if this is the
-same person as the author of the document.</p>
-
-<p>If I understand the situation correctly, someone capable of
-inviting selected NATO nations to a meeting in Pentagon organised a
-meeting where someone representing the Norwegian defence attaché in
-Washington attended, and the account from this meeting is interpreted
-by the Ministry of Transport and Communications to expose Norways
-negotiating position, negotiating strategies and similar regarding the
-ITU negotiations on Internet Governance. It is truly amazing what can
-be derived from mere meta-data.</p>
-
-<p>I wonder which NATO countries besides Norway attended this meeting?
-And what exactly was said and done at the meeting? Anyone know?</p>
-</description>
- </item>
-
- <item>
- <title>New book, "Fri kultur" by @lessig, a Norwegian Bokmål translation of "Free Culture" from 2004</title>
- <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_book___Fri_kultur__by__lessig__a_Norwegian_Bokm_l_translation_of__Free_Culture__from_2004.html</link>
- <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_book___Fri_kultur__by__lessig__a_Norwegian_Bokm_l_translation_of__Free_Culture__from_2004.html</guid>
- <pubDate>Sat, 31 Oct 2015 09:00:00 +0100</pubDate>
- <description><p>People keep asking me where to get the various forms of the book I
-published last week, the Norwegian Bokmål edition of Lawrence Lessigs
-book <a href="http://www.free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a>. It was
-published on paper via lulu.com, and is also available in PDF, ePub
-and MOBI format. I currently sell the paper edition for self cost
-from lulu.com, but might extend the distribution to book stores like
-Amazon and Barnes & Noble later. This will double the price and force
-me to make a profit from selling the book. Anyway, here are links to
-get the book in different formats:</p>
-
-<ul>
-
- <li><a href="http://www.lulu.com/shop/lawrence-lessig/fri-kultur/paperback/product-22406445.html">Buy
- paper edition from lulu.com</a></li>
-
- <li><a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf">Download
- PDF, size 7.9 MiB</a> (gratis/free)</li>
-
- <li><a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub">Download
- ePub, size 11 MiB</a> (gratis/free)</li>
-
- <li><a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/archive/freeculture.nb.mobi">Download
- MOBI, size 3.8 MiB</a> (gratis/free)</li>
-
-</ul>
-
-<p>Note that the MOBI version have problems with the table of content,
-at least with the viewers I have been able to test. And the ePub file
-have several problems according to
-<a href="https://github.com/IDPF/epubcheck">epubcheck</a>, but seem
-to display fine in the viewers I have tested. All the files needed to
-create the book in various forms are available from
-<a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">the
-github project page</a>.</p>
-
-<p>The project got press coverage from the Norwegian IT news site
-digi.no. Check out the article
-"<a href="http://www.digi.no/juss_og_samfunn/2015/10/29/vil-apne-politikernes-oyne-for-creative-commons">Vil
-åpne politikernes øyne for Creative Commons</a>".</li>
-
-<p>I've <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">blogged
-about the project</a> as it moved along. The blogs document the translation
-progress and insights I had along the way.</p>
+ <title>Free software archive system Nikita now able to store documents</title>
+ <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_software_archive_system_Nikita_now_able_to_store_documents.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_software_archive_system_Nikita_now_able_to_store_documents.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Sun, 19 Mar 2017 08:00:00 +0100</pubDate>
+ <description><p>The <a href="https://github.com/hiOA-ABI/nikita-noark5-core">Nikita
+Noark 5 core project</a> is implementing the Norwegian standard for
+keeping an electronic archive of government documents.
+<a href="http://www.arkivverket.no/arkivverket/Offentlig-forvaltning/Noark/Noark-5/English-version">The
+Noark 5 standard</a> document the requirement for data systems used by
+the archives in the Norwegian government, and the Noark 5 web interface
+specification document a REST web service for storing, searching and
+retrieving documents and metadata in such archive. I've been involved
+in the project since a few weeks before Christmas, when the Norwegian
+Unix User Group
+<a href="https://www.nuug.no/news/NOARK5_kjerne_som_fri_programvare_f_r_epostliste_hos_NUUG.shtml">announced
+it supported the project</a>. I believe this is an important project,
+and hope it can make it possible for the government archives in the
+future to use free software to keep the archives we citizens depend
+on. But as I do not hold such archive myself, personally my first use
+case is to store and analyse public mail journal metadata published
+from the government. I find it useful to have a clear use case in
+mind when developing, to make sure the system scratches one of my
+itches.</p>
+
+<p>If you would like to help make sure there is a free software
+alternatives for the archives, please join our IRC channel
+(<a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/%23nikita"">#nikita on
+irc.freenode.net</a>) and
+<a href="https://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/nikita-noark">the
+project mailing list</a>.</p>
+
+<p>When I got involved, the web service could store metadata about
+documents. But a few weeks ago, a new milestone was reached when it
+became possible to store full text documents too. Yesterday, I
+completed an implementation of a command line tool
+<tt>archive-pdf</tt> to upload a PDF file to the archive using this
+API. The tool is very simple at the moment, and find existing
+<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fonds">fonds</a>, series and
+files while asking the user to select which one to use if more than
+one exist. Once a file is identified, the PDF is associated with the
+file and uploaded, using the title extracted from the PDF itself. The
+process is fairly similar to visiting the archive, opening a cabinet,
+locating a file and storing a piece of paper in the archive. Here is
+a test run directly after populating the database with test data using
+our API tester:</p>
+
+<p><blockquote><pre>
+~/src//noark5-tester$ ./archive-pdf mangelmelding/mangler.pdf
+using arkiv: Title of the test fonds created 2017-03-18T23:49:32.103446
+using arkivdel: Title of the test series created 2017-03-18T23:49:32.103446
+
+ 0 - Title of the test case file created 2017-03-18T23:49:32.103446
+ 1 - Title of the test file created 2017-03-18T23:49:32.103446
+Select which mappe you want (or search term): 0
+Uploading mangelmelding/mangler.pdf
+ PDF title: Mangler i spesifikasjonsdokumentet for NOARK 5 Tjenestegrensesnitt
+ File 2017/1: Title of the test case file created 2017-03-18T23:49:32.103446
+~/src//noark5-tester$
+</pre></blockquote></p>
+
+<p>You can see here how the fonds (arkiv) and serie (arkivdel) only had
+one option, while the user need to choose which file (mappe) to use
+among the two created by the API tester. The <tt>archive-pdf</tt>
+tool can be found in the git repository for the API tester.</p>
+
+<p>In the project, I have been mostly working on
+<a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/noark5-tester">the API
+tester</a> so far, while getting to know the code base. The API
+tester currently use
+<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HATEOAS">the HATEOAS links</a>
+to traverse the entire exposed service API and verify that the exposed
+operations and objects match the specification, as well as trying to
+create objects holding metadata and uploading a simple XML file to
+store. The tester has proved very useful for finding flaws in our
+implementation, as well as flaws in the reference site and the
+specification.</p>
+
+<p>The test document I uploaded is a summary of all the specification
+defects we have collected so far while implementing the web service.
+There are several unclear and conflicting parts of the specification,
+and we have
+<a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/noark5-tester/tree/master/mangelmelding">started
+writing down</a> the questions we get from implementing it. We use a
+format inspired by how <a href="http://www.opengroup.org/austin/">The
+Austin Group</a> collect defect reports for the POSIX standard with
+<a href="http://www.opengroup.org/austin/mantis.html">their
+instructions for the MANTIS defect tracker system</a>, in lack of an official way to structure defect reports for Noark 5 (our first submitted defect report was a <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/noark5-tester/blob/master/mangelmelding/sendt/2017-03-15-mangel-prosess.md">request for a procedure for submitting defect reports</a> :).
+
+<p>The Nikita project is implemented using Java and Spring, and is
+fairly easy to get up and running using Docker containers for those
+that want to test the current code base. The API tester is
+implemented in Python.</p>