WCIT-12

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Telecommunication_Union#World_Conference_on_International_Telecommunications_2012_.28WCIT-12.29

The ITU will facilitate the The World Congress on International Telecommunications or WCIT, a treaty-level conference that addresses the international rules for telecommunications, including international tariffs.^[11] The previous conference to update the International Telecommunication Regulations (ITRs) was held in Melbourne in 1988.^[12] The next conference is taking place in Dubai in December 2012.

[...]

In August 2012, ITU called for a public consultation on a draft document ahead of the conference.^[13] It is claimed the proposal would allow government restriction or blocking of information disseminated via the internet and create a global regime of monitoring internet communications – including the demand that those who send and receive information identify themselves. It would also allow governments to shut down the internet if there is the belief that it may interfere in the internal affairs of other states or that information of a sensitive nature might be shared.^[14]

[...]

Proposals currently under consideration would establish regulatory oversight by the U.N. over security, fraud, traffic accounting as well as traffic flow, management of Internet Domain Names and IP addresses, and other aspects of the Internet that are currently governed either by community-based approaches such as Regional Internet Registries, ICANN, or largely national regulatory frameworks.^[17] The move by the ITU and some countries has alarmed many within the United States and within the Internet community.^[18][19] Indeed some European telecommunication services have proposed a so-called "sender pays" model which would requires sources of Internet traffic to pay destinations, similar to the way funds are transferred between countries using the telephone.^[20][21]

The WCIT-12 activity has been attacked by Google, who has characterized it as a threat to the "free and open internet".^[22]

>>34
Same problem, and also expensive. You also require licenses for the frequencies that you use.
Yeah, right, banning the 2.4GHz band. Why not ban knives too, those can be used by criminals.

But before I get too involved, please detail your plans of how exactly steganography would be useful.
For short messages (under, say, 10KB, so perfectly suitable for email), steganography (used in conjunction with cryptography) completely defeats DPI and any kind of crypto regulations. Simply that fact alone is enough to prove that surveillance and crypto legislation are nothing but a mere hindrance to ``hardcore cybercriminals''.

You are already required to turn over keys and passwords to the government when requested.
Depends on the country. Also, that kind of request requires a warrant (except in prison state UK), so if they have a keys/passwords warrant they could probably have gotten a hardware keylogger warrant anyway.

You are already required to have a license to use the airwaves (It's just an EM wave! How can they possibly regulate an natural phenomenon and a fundamental force of nature?!?!?!?).
That one actually makes sense, because the spectrum crosses property boundaries easily and, generally, waves emitted by someone on their private property will travel far beyond that, into public space, potentially interfering with other people's communications. Someone needs to arbitrate that, so naturally the public servants do it.

It's illegal to export software, including cryptographic software, to many countries.
I heard Zimmerman still sells his OpenPGP source code book overseas.

The idea that math can't be banned or that information wants to be free is purely academic.
And it is entirely correct.

Governments
You mean public servants?

operate in the real world, and if you don't follow their laws, they will send scary men to to take you and put you in prison.
Good old confinement torture.

they won't care any more about what you say that they care about potheads who keep saying that it's wrong to ban a naturally growing plant.
And they are also absolutely right. Most [i]possession[/u] crimes are idiotic by definition (maybe with the exception of loaded guns and bombs).