Ali When you spend the last twenty plus years preaching privacy and the virtuals of a free and open society and then you get your hands a caught in the cookie jar, you have no choice but to publicly swallow humble pie. More commennts within On 12/17/13 4:59 AM, "Ali Hussein" <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: Listers Apologies for cross posting. In a landmark ruling a Federal District Court judge ruled on Monday that the National Security Agency program that is systematically keeping records of all Americans’ (and non Americans) phone calls most likely violates the Constitution, and he ordered the government to stop collecting data on two plaintiffs’ personal calls and destroy the records of their calling history. For the Americans to try and recover some moral authority they needed to do this. Which by the way I like since as thin as it maybe it becomes a scary world where no one has Moral authority. Despite the system being broken, is the American influence on Internet Governance the best we have right now? I can't imagine such a ruling in China or Russia, let alone India, Brazil or South Africa - the so called BRICS countries championing a new dispensation on Internet Governance.. I still think we need to take this opportunity to widen the discussion on how we want to see our internet governed in future. And thus the BRICS to start this discussion I think can only have future positive outcomes. We tend to have a local pre-occupation on Internet governance but this discussion needs to be global. Badru