Can we control the Internet? This was a major issue discussed by Mr. David Gross, the US Coordinator for International Communications and Information Policy, at a conference in the Kazakhstan Institute of Management, Economics and Strategic Research (KIMEP) in Almaty on Thursday, April 5^th 2007. A large number of KIMEP students and faculty members attended the meeting that was organized by KIMEP Department of Journalism and Mass Communication.

At the first time in its history KIMEP hosted such a distinguished guest within its facilities. Mr. Gross has 25 years of experience in the field of communications. In the year 2001, President George W. Bush nominated him to a position of the US Coordinator for International Communications and Information Policy.

Since Mr. Gross joined the State Department, he has led a great number of US delegations to important telecommunications conferences on an international, even global, scale. Among them are the largest in the history of UN World Summits on the Information Society in Geneva in 2003 and in Tunis in 2005. Ambassador Gross has conducted numerous discussions with senior representatives from more than 70 countries. He has also taught lectures at higher education institutions all over the world.

The US Ambassador David Gross began his talk with describing the way he spends his day. “I am going around the world, talking to senior political people, trying to understand better what’s happening, trying to find common ground, trying to advance policies for people to live and work well,” he said. He also talked about the reason he is engaged in the sphere of telecommunications. As he said, his work helps him to fulfill his strong “commitment to try to find a better world” and not only for his “family, community and country, but for everyone”.

He pointed out that telecommunications have a significant impact nowadays on the way people live and work as they eliminate a sense of isolation, especially in such places of the world as Sub-Saharan Africa, and help people build a sense of belonging, a sense of community. “One of the characteristics connecting the whole world is that everybody, virtually everybody, likes to be connected to each other, and likes to talk … The connection is of a great value to all of us,” he said.

Ambassador Gross also talked about the opportunities the new information technologies offer for the development of states and societies, for human beings in particular.

Mr. Gross also mentioned freedom of speech and free flow of information as inalienable parts of the telecommunications. At this point, the Ambassador proposed the participants of the meeting to shift to the “challenging” questions.

The first to ask questions were the KIMEP professors. They wanted to find out more about the US domestic policy regarding the telecommunications, about the degree of government access to people’s private emails and telephonic conversations in both the USA and internationally, about restrictions on the web usage in China, about the Internet as a tool for progress in Sub-Saharan Africa, etc.

Then, a turn for students to ask questions came. However, most of them were interested in the US foreign policy rather than in a control over the Web. Some of them were curious with regards to the US-Iraqi war: reasons, preconditions, outcomes, possible consequences, and the further US policy towards the Islamic state.

A second-year journalism student Julia asked the US Ambassador: “Terrorism nowadays has its own Internet websites. How, in your opinion, can we control this or maybe even stop it?” Mr. Gross answered to the wondering student that terrorists are early adapters meaning that they are the first who take advantage of the new information technologies and this “creates a lot of tension” among the people responsible for the free flow of information over the world wide web. “This is an old phenomenon,” he said. However, the issue is still in the process of resolving.

Another second-year BAIJ student Anastasia asked a not less “interesting and thoughtful”, as Ambassador Gross pointed out, question that stated: “The time will come when the US troops and the US itself will withdraw from Iraq… What kind of policy afterwards the US will practice: a fully political indifference towards Iraq or interference with the political life of Iraq?” Mr. Gross said he did not know the exact answer; however, he tried to guess and did it this way: “I think we will continue close friendly relationships with Iraq”. However, those relations will not bother the domestic policy of the Islamic State any more. He also pointed out that Iraqis are very remarkable and smart people probably meaning that they will overcome all the obstacles on their own after the US withdraw from their home country.