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
Offentlig Elektronisk Postjournal -
OEP) 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 .
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
"Internet
Governance and how it affects national security" (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
(offentleglova § 20,
letter c) 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
(World
Conference on International Telecommunications - WCIT-12) had just
ended,
reportedly
in chaos 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
Norwegian Communications Authority
and the Ministry of
Transport and Communications. 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.
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
I
asked both the Ministry of Transport and Communications as the
receiver and
asked
the Permanent Mission of Norway in Geneva as the sender 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
(offentleglova § 20
letter b), 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.
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
government report 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
asked
them for a copy 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.
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.
I wonder which NATO countries besides Norway attended this meeting?
And what exactly was said and done at the meeting? Anyone know?
