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?
-