A Letter to You from our Founder

Dear Visitor to the Individual Membership Section of The Authenticity Alliance Site,
Thank you for your interest in Individual Membership Section of The Authenticity Alliance.

As one of the five original Individual Experts in the ITU Global Cybersecurity Agenda High Level Experts Group (HLEG), I had the pleasure of collaborating with some of the most talented people in the world of information security. The insights they offered at our meeting at ITU headquarters in Geneva were important and valuable.

And yet...

Because the charter and culture of the International Telecommunication Union is all about consensus, I fear that an abundance of insights and good intentions may not win this struggle against the criminals and predators who have turned the world's information infrastructure into a huge outdoor favela. If the Internet has brought about a global village, this village is a sad slum where we desperately guard our wallets and our children, expecting the worst and frequently getting it.

We believe we have the solution.

And we ask that you take a moment to examine this admittedly audacious claim.

Our solution consists of a twelve-part set of methods and procedures and standards that are adopted, mostly intact, from the worlds of certification and real estate. While it resembles the World e-Trust Initiative of Hamadoun Touré and Alexander Ntoko, my writing a book about the updated version required I give a name to that which was being initiated. I came up with the Quiet Enjoyment Infrastructure. (The ITU folks must have liked it, as the meeting they hosted at ITU headquarters on March 7, 2005 was called the Quiet Enjoyment Infrastructure Meeting.)

The World e-Trust Initiative and the Quiet Enjoyment Infrastructure surely benefited from a rare opportunity to initiate something big at the ITU without the burden of gaining the consensus of most of the world's nations and its sector member organizations. In November 2006 the membership of the ITU recognized Dr. Touré's extraordinary talents and leadership qualities by electing him Secretary General.

Dr. Touré's authority would at first appear to give our initiative a big boost. But now he represents the entire ITU, in all its consensus-driven-ness. Now all voices must be heard before action is taken. As the Global Cybersecurity Agenda meeting reminded me, there are lots and lots of voices. And certainly more than one agenda.

Missing from those voices are voices of individuals. Not official delegates of telecommunications ministries, NGOs and other sector member organizations, but ordinary individuals like you and me. (While I work for an ITU sector member organization and Individual Membership Section of The Authenticity Alliance sponsor, here I speak for myself and my family.)

Please take a good look at the World e-Trust Initiative / Quiet Enjoyment Infrastructure. Challenge its assumptions and assertions. If it passes your tests and if you agree that it deserves the support of the one organization in the world that legitimately has the duly constituted public authority to apply standards in the same manner that your city's buildings department applies building codes, then please sign our Memorandum of Support. We think the leadership of the ITU will be delighted and encouraged to learn that everyday users of the Internet think that in this situation bold initiatives based upon sound designs and detailed plans should trump endless years of meetings.

Sincerely,
Wes Kussmaul
Parent of Young Internet Users