George Packer Quotes
I don't think they need to be nice to reporters, but the White House seems to imagine that releasing information is like a tap that can be turned on and off at their whim.
Packer, George. "The Press and the President." The New Yorker, Condé Nast, 14 May 2013.
There were many critics who were concerned that the ITU was trying to regulate the Internet, but no one could be sure as the proceedings and meetings of the ITU are not publicly available. This is a classic UN problem. They see themselves as representing governments and not people. The Governments have the information and so they delude themselves into believing that they are transparent, when the reality is that for the individual they are totally opaque. Most critics who worry about UN regulation of the Internet, are just as concerned with what other countries are proposing than what there own government’s position is. And most governments themselves do not release the actual transcripts or proceedings of the ITC meetings but only documents giving their positions. This is an example of secrecy being promoted as transparency where the UN covers for member nations who want to maintain secrecy.
George Packer is an American journalist, novelist, and playwright. He is best known for his writings for The New Yorker and The Atlantic about U.S. foreign policy and for his book The Assassins' Gate: America in Iraq. Packer also wrote The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America, covering the history of America from 1978 to 2012. In November 2013, The Unwinding received the National Book Award for Nonfiction. His latest book Our Man: Richard Holbrooke and the End of the American Century was released in May 2019.
