The Weekly Screed (#900)

“It’s not a secret!” 

(but we’re not telling)

By David Benjamin

“Why do people hide things? Why do people keep secrets? Because they have something to hide.”

— Andrew Goldstein, lead prosecutor, Office of the Special Counsel

BARCELONA — I tried. Honest.

Last Tuesday morning, dispatched by my EE Times editor, I shlepped to Hall 4, Auditorium A, Mobile World Congress, to report on a panel of big shots talking about data privacy, a subject that’s arguably the most compelling legislative, political and judicial issue ever raised by the advent of the portable phone.

I blithely encroached on the portal to Auditorium A in an area that bore the strange device “Ministerial Programme” and the ironic device, “Welcome”. Inches from my destination, I felt a plucking at my sleeve. I looked into the eyes of an usherette in blazer and red scarf, who told me, no, no, you’re not allowed. I smiled indulgently and told the lass it’s okay, I’m the press. “I’m a reporter, si?”

My usherette, nonetheless, ushered me backwards, to the “information” desk, where various info-bereft elves lapsed into a redundant use of the word “private.” This apparent policy — elitist exclusion — struck me as ludicrous at a lollapalooza whose annual mission is to stridently promote shiny, costly gadgets of dubious utility to a “public” who number in the billions. So, I figured the elves were kidding me. I shrugged amiably and steered back toward Auditorium A.

Momentarily, I sensed more tugging at my sleeve. My usherette, although polite, seemed irked. She said again that this was a “private session.” I said that yeah, I’d got the drift, thanks. But, I said, look, kid, affairs like this are only “private” insofar that they’re not open to the general public, the riffraff as it were. I started to explained (hurriedly, I was late now) that “private” panel discussions among big thinkers who hash out major social issues are just the sort of get-togethers where professional reporters (like me) are the “welcome” exception. We serve the distinguished guests by chronicling their banter, enlightening the public and uplifting the riffraff.

We all benefit from a free press, kid.

No, you don’t, not you, replied a woman who burst upon the scene to rescue my overmatched usherette. On her badge, I spotted the intruder’s affiliation — GSMA, the outfit that hosts the show — and her first name, Frederica. Notebook poised, I asked her last name. Hastily, she tucked her badge into her bodice.

Being a reporter, I swiftly realized that Frederica represented an uptick in my opposition. To better my odds, I tactically reduced my agenda to two questions: Who gets in, I asked, and why can’t I?

Frederica responded with one or two fairly moronic talking points, but no sort of answer that could remotely pacify a bulldog journalist. She said, “It’s by invitation only.” This retort only posed more questions, the most obvious of which was, “Who’s invited?” and, more subtly, “If this is so private, why were its time and location so boldly publicized by the Mobile World Congress?”

Indeed, the Mobile World p.r. office proudly broadcast that it had assembled an all-star team of data-privacy gurus: David Redl, assistant secretary for communications & information, U.S. Department of Commerce, Marguerite Ouedraogo Bonane, president of the Commission de l’Informatique et des Libertés, Ventsislav Karadjov, vice-chair of the European Data Protection Board, Markus Reinisch of Facebook, vice-president for public policy of EMEA (Europe, the Middle East & Africa), Oyeronke M. Oyetunde, group head of regulatory affairs for the MTN Group, David Pringle, head honcho of Pringle Media, and Juan Montero Rodil, Telefónica’s director of competition, regulatory law and privacy. 

Frederica cut me off in mid-question. She said, “The press is not welcome. It’s an invitation-only round table on data privacy.” She added that “there is strictly no press” allowed in this part of the building — and there never has been. I said, “Really? No reporter has ever set foot there?”

Proudly, Frederica confirmed this. I felt like Dr. Livingstone dipping my toe in the source of the Nile.

But I was also slightly annoyed. I might have raised my voice as I told Frederica that it was my job to write the story of this unexpectedly clandestine confab in Auditorium A. If I’m not allowed to attend, I explained, my story had to be about how I did not get into Auditorium A.

“Federica,” I intoned, “the story becomes you.”

“I’m losing my patience,” said Frederica, inaccurately. She had been impatient with me the moment she pounced. She ordered me to change my tone and stop writing down everything she said.

I kept writing.

“You’re misinterpreting my words,” she added, “and you’re going to force me to escalate.”

I pictured a cordon of muscled myrmidons in SWAT gear descending on me. “Escalate?” I asked, writing down the word. “How?

I did no better with this question than I had with “Who?” and “Why?”

Frederica simply threw up her hands and forsook me. No bouncers appeared.

Of course, by now, I was resigned to my exclusion. Mobile World’s mess of mystery ministers were free to shmooze away in cozy secrecy up in Auditorium A. To mark the moment and bid farewell, I lifted my Pentax for a photo of the scene.

But this was not farewell. After one click, a sort of semi-bouncer (shorter than me) materialized and said, “No photos in this area.” I dizzied at the irony. Here we were, in the heart of a convention hall hosting a massive mobile-phone event where, on any given day, its shutterbug participants snapped – at minimum – 10,000 dumb snapshots a minute on their smart devices. There could not possibly be, in this joint, one square foot where there are no photos.

I was about to say something like, “You kiddin’?” when my semi-bouncer’s colleague, taller and smoother, intervened. I’m sorry I didn’t get his name. I told him about Auditorium A. He sympathized. I posed my two questions. He had no idea who or why, but made it clear that such riddles were above his pay grade. We shook hands and I prepared to split the scene but not before another GSMA woman, probably dispatched by Frederica, intercepted my retreat.

Rankled from the get-go, this woman — her visage hawklike, her badge deftly concealed — condemned my tone, deplored my attitude, scorned my questions and stormed off in a huff. We lasted barely ninety seconds together.

My defeat was complete. But, as I attempted one last photo, my camera battery died. I was replacing it when a third GSMA Valkyrie — unsummoned and superfluous — swooped. She began with the sort of edgy cordiality that one affords a ufologist in a straitjacket. Unlike her predecessors, she had two entire names. The first was Claire. I’m withholding the other one, out of simple courtesy.

Claire wanted to know if she could help me with my “problem.” I said, “That depends. Are you going to stonewall me like everyone else?”

Oops. Wrong sentence.

Claire went directly to combat mode. She objected to my tone. “You’ve been very rude to the staff here,” she said. “They’re just doing their jobs.”

I tried this as a cue, replying that I, too, by golly, was here for my job — covering a session about data privacy, one of the great thorny issues in the great big Mobile World. Quickly, as Claire was forming a talking point, I took another stab at my questions. Who gets in? Who are those people? And why forbid the press? What have the two Davids, Marguerite, Ventsislav, Markus, Oyeronke and Juan have to hide? Why is their conversation a secret?

“It’s not a secret,” Claire insisted. “It’s private.”

Claire said that, since time immemorial, “all ministerial programs have been private. They’ve never been open for the public to watch. Governments just want to discuss things privately.”

In an auditorium? (But I didn’t say this.)

Claire said that Mobile World hosts lots of nice programs that are open to the public. Why don’t I go there? I circled stubbornly back, replying that this program, on data privacy, is newsworthy. It has been from the birth of the the U.S. Constitution to the drafting of Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation. Why is this important discussion restricted to a closed, secret, “private” club?

Seeing no end to my impertinence, Claire threw up her hands. There was no talking to me! In the tradition of Frederica and that other woman, she stalked away. I was left pondering the public relations skills of GSMA. Each of my seeming p.r. pros had been evidently dispatched to soothe my savage breast. But each lost her cool when I started taking notes on what she said. Each could have halted my pen by declaring our dialog off the record. None, even Claire, seemed to know the simplest protocols of the working press. Nor did they grasp the idea that the easiest way to start a cockfight with a journalist is to tell him where he’s not allowed to go.

As Claire waved me off and fled, I lobbed feckless questions. “Governments? Discussing things privately? Which governments? Are these private governments? Democracies or dictatorships? Elected by the public, or by “private” interests? Governments accountable to the press and the public? Or not? Claire, shouldn’t they be? Claire?”

But Claire was gone, and my questions were as a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal in the ministerial void. I fixed my camera and reviewed my scribbles. As I did, I spied a figure lurking near. Watching me? I wondered if Frederica and Claire had summoned him to shadow me, to set off alarms and summon troops if I waxed violent. So, as I was leaving, I went right up and asked if he was watching me. Bemused, he said, “Me? No, I’m just security.”

He and I parted, both laughing at my moment of paranoia. My humor lingered as I recalled the title of the conference that I could not that day — by hook or crook, charm or tantrum — crash. “Data Privacy:” it was called, “Strengthening the Lines of Trust”.