The Letter That Won US Internet Control 576
K-boy writes "Pushing my own scoop, but I think it's a valuable piece of Net history, I have come into possession of the vital letter sent by Condoleezza Rice to the EU over Internet governance. And posted it on the Web.
The letter is pretty stern but you should also read it bearing in mind that letters of this type are not only very rare but they are always written in very, very soft diplomatic language. This was not.
The result of the letter was that the EU dropped its plan for an inter-governmental oversight body for the Internet and we have ended up with the status quo (ICANN, US government control).
The letter was never meant for publication."
It's hardly control (Score:3, Insightful)
just another soft-diplomatic letter to me (Score:5, Insightful)
Kick ass, Condi! (Score:5, Insightful)
The alarming thing, though, I guess, is that this is considered "strong language" in diplomatic circles. It strikes me as direct, but quite tactful.
Re:It's hardly control (Score:1, Insightful)
Say One Thing Do Another... (Score:2, Insightful)
I am all for the ICANN doing its business. Heck, I would hate to have some big government manage the Internet. HOWEVER, I also do wish that the current administration would keep its grubby paws off the Internet as well! I am referring to the hoopla regarding the xxx domains!
Re:underwhelming (Score:5, Insightful)
I'll set my mom on you! (Score:5, Insightful)
I get the feeling that the head honchos at ICANN basically ran out of decent arguments for maintaining control ("erm, we just like the power buzz!") and just went for big political guns. I mean really, like there's a good excuse for keeping control other than potential political blackmail.
The Net was created by the US government, a whole bunch of US, Asian and Europeans built the hardware running it and a British guy invented the Web. Doesn't look like multicultural involvement has made it terribly unstable. I think China's Great Firewall is an excellent example of what happens when one government has too much control.
Call me cynical...
government control? (Score:4, Insightful)
ICANN encourages government [icann.org] representation, which includes any country. They even have meetings [icann.org] all across the world, there's no excuse for these concerned countries not to participate.
People seem to think that because ICANN agreed with the US on the
Re:No. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:How! (Score:3, Insightful)
Evidence of authenticity please (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:underwhelming (Score:5, Insightful)
All three of these are typically mediated in diplomacy through indirection. You don't want to trap yourself, because words are your best tool (unless you are willing to make physical threats or change associations). It's convention that most of diplomacy is filler content designed to continue a relationship along the status quo. Redefining a relationship or asserting a new position are all actions with finality. That is usually reserved for when such actions are necessary.
For example, you would normally speak directly against a general position and not directly mention your opponent's position as their position. Neither would you speak from your position as solely your position (the U.S., Iran, North Korea, and China are exceptions) - you would express a general opinion developed from some previous consensus, like a document, or some rhetorical one. Finally, you would not crticize the opponents position, but suggest considerations and alternatives. Labeling an opponent's position with negative terminology and then contrasting that with your positive position is generally viewed as "strong."
I like it (Score:2, Insightful)
However, the administration should follow what they preach. As the recent
Re:perhaps the failure of XXX was other than purit (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Question for experts? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I'll set my mom on you! (Score:5, Insightful)
What are the chances that Condoleezza Rice actually has any clue what the "authoritative root zone file" is?
Pretty high. Dr. Rice is a very bright person with a background as provost at Stanford. It wouldn't take long for her to understand the concept if indeed just the name 'authoritative root zone file' didn't imply enough.
Re:I'll set my mom on you! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:just another soft-diplomatic letter to me (Score:5, Insightful)
What it really is, is a letter written by somebody in commerce (probably at nist), who understands the technical terminology, and then softened by the head of commerce and signed by Rice.
If you have ever read any of Rice's work, you would quickly realize that little to nothing in here is from her.
Re:perhaps the failure of XXX was other than purit (Score:3, Insightful)
The Register is a joke (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Kick ass, Condi! (Score:3, Insightful)
But, where is the strong wording here? This appears to read as straight, polite, directed and to the point.
The internet's structure (sans spam) seems to be working well. Why change it. If Mongolia created the internet and kept it working fine, I'm sure that most of the users would be ok with that - sans little fears and a bit of "why can't our country run out part of it" pride.
But I do agree with Condi and Gonzales in this case. We created it, we have a system that works, and we're running it. Why change this into a system which could encourage bureaucracy?
Wow. It could be just as effective as a UN. Wait. That would be a very bad idea.
Re:true or not? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Question for experts? (Score:3, Insightful)
The ".EU" situation is more complex. The two letters domains are supposed to be defined in a table managed by the UN. There are good reasons for that: Jon Postel did not want to be in the business to define what was or was nt a country. Think for example of Palestine, Macedonia or East Timor: neighboring nations threaten or stage war to prevent their recognition. Leaving it to the UN provides a good layer of isolation. The EU proponents were asking for an exemption, and the processing of that exemption was stalled for several years. AFAIK, it is finally resolved, and the domain is supposed to start operation this month.
The question of control over national domains is however a very good one. ICANN has been attempting for many years to impose policies on national domains. They tried to impose conflict resolution procedures aligned with the interests of trade mark owners. They tried to levy management fees. This is, IMHO, an unnecessary irritant.
Of course, the WSIS proponents like China or Saudi Arabia know full well that the US cannot in practice "disconnect a country from the Internet." A government could instruct its ISP to stop connecting to some parts of the Internet, but the ones actually doing that are precisely the promoters of "governance by the UN" -- a World Summit on Internet Censorship?
Re:I'll set my mom on you! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:why fix whats not broken (Score:4, Insightful)
HOWEVER, what does concern me is growing evidence of U.S. puritanism in the decision process, like the blocking of the .xxx domain on what seems like shallow premises
It's not so much the domain name that got blocked, per se (as other posters have said, .biz and .info were no problem) but the idea of forcing "adult content providers" *cough* pornographers *cough* to use the .xxx domain and the .xxx domain only. It would make censorship easy, but how the heck would you force about 70% of the internet to move onto one domain? It got kaboshed not because of puritanism but practicality.
Re:true or not? (Score:3, Insightful)
What does skin color have to do with anything exactly?
Re:FUCK THAT! (Score:4, Insightful)
Stepped right into the cut [aclunc.org].
Re:I'll set my mom on you! (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh please,
ANY organization of any significant size is corrupted, it is not the organization though but the people working there.
If you think the US Government is any less corrupt than any similar size organization you live in a dream world, just look at current US politics.
Ask yourself this: Last time you were given incorrect change in your favour, did you correct that mistake or did you just pocket the difference and thought: "Suckers"? If people are tempted by change to be dishonest why would they suddenly become more honest when the payoff is a lot bigger?
Encouraging IPv6, not hoarding IPv4 (Score:5, Insightful)
IPv6 is what we need. Look at the glass as half full, those US institution are encourage/accelerating the switch to IPv6. The hoarding IPv4 perspective is shortsighted. Reallocation does not solve the problem, it postpones the problem a little bit. Getting over IPv4 and moving to IPv6, the soon the better, those institutions are doing us all a favor. It would be interesting to know if encouraging IPv6 has factored into their internal discussions.
Re:FUCK THAT! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:underwhelming (Score:3, Insightful)
Where's the proof? (Score:5, Insightful)
Even without those errors - Where is the proof that this is real?
Re:Decentralization...good or bad? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Honourable? (Score:3, Insightful)
Either could be transcription errors; it was probably on paper when received. Possibly also if the letter was drafted in London they may use British spelling, at least for communication with the British govt. Diplomats are supposed ot be sensitive to nuances like that; though that level of cultural sensitivity seems unlikely with the current administration.
Jingo! (Score:5, Insightful)
granted, the US can be bought, too
Priceless.
Re:Say One Thing Do Another... (Score:2, Insightful)
Now ICANN is getting bitten in the ass for making the right call. Verisign is suing them over that decision, and is using the lawsuit as a weapon to get further (non-competitive) control over
My biggest problem with ICANN is that Verisign has too much influence over them. Verisign needs to be nuked.
Re:I'll set my mom on you! (Score:3, Insightful)
What are the chances Rice wrote this in the first place? It was only cosigned by her (along with Guiterrez), and I believe writing this type of thing is almost always delegated down to someone with expert knowledge in whatever field is being discussed. Her signature just means she supports the position outlined. The article just said it was from Condoleezza Rice because she is a well known member of the Bush administration and the article writer was obviously just trying to make the Bush administration look like a bunch of bullies (why else would he claim this is an example of "strong language" and is "pretty stern" when if you are to actually read it, it is nothing of the sort).
"I think China's Great Firewall is an excellent example of what happens when one government has too much control."
Well then you must be really happy that ICANN (a private non-for-profit corporation) is in control.
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I'll set my mom on you! (Score:3, Insightful)
And this has to do with corruption what?
Here's a question: Does it matter who does the censoring? In the EU you have anti hate laws that prevent certain forms of Speech, in the US you have things like the DMCA that prevent other things.
The difference? One came out historical context, the other one was paid for by lobbying groups on behalf of the industry.
You know, there is another saying: Two wrongs don't make a right, and you are not morally "scot free" because the other one may have screwed you over.
Furthermore, I have worked in Retail in the past as well, if at the end of the day the money in the register doesn't add up, guess who is paying for that? Hint: It's not the company.
Re:government control? (Score:3, Insightful)
No. It is a non-profit company based in the US (under US law), working on exclusive contract with US Department, while taxing people all over the world (2/3 of income supposedly from Europe, due to ccTLDs)
The U.N. is a multinational organisation, where its headquarter happens to be situated in New York on have extraterritorial soil.
> ICANN encourages government representation,
Oh, that's nice. Guess, why they need to encourage it.
> They even have meetings all across the world,
Cool, make the next meeting on Maui.
> People seem to think that because ICANN agreed with the US on the
No, there are more problems than this single one, it is only the latest one. Remember, when they practically removed the At-Large-members from the decision process? The process of subcontracting the
Re:just another soft-diplomatic letter to me (Score:3, Insightful)
The submitter seems to be European. The site it's hosted on is European. By European standards, this letter might seem harsh. By American standards, it's pretty mild.
I'm not trying to start a flamewar myself, but I think it's a pretty well known thing that Americans are by and large plain-spoken people, whatever side of the political fence you're on (though that's changing a bit as "marketing-speak" starts to infiltrate everyday speech). Generally, we say what we mean and we don't disguise it in a bunch of niceties or doublespeak.
When I saw the description of the letter in the article submission, I was expecting things like "we categorically refuse to hand over control to a bunch of cheese-eating surrender monkeys" but there's nothing like that here. It seems to me a pretty respectful and diplomatic way of saying we don't want to turn over control. I mean, "we ask the European Union to reconsider its new position on Internet governance and work together with us to bring the benefits of the Information Society to all"? That's harsh? That's "stern"?
If that's considered stern or harsh, then the rest of the world needs thicker skin.
Re:perhaps the failure of XXX was other than purit (Score:3, Insightful)
DNS != WWW (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:How! (Score:5, Insightful)
This administration has gone crazy for secrecy, classifying more documents than any previous administartion. We shouldn't roll over and accept that a letter like this should be anything but completely public.
Re:government control? (Score:3, Insightful)
Clinton agreed to make it independent, but that changed:
From The Guardian [guardian.co.uk].
After all, ICANN voted and agreed to use the .xxx domain but that offended some conservative types and their protests to the US government got it stopped. So now, they have interfered.
Re:I'll set my mom on you! (Score:4, Insightful)
I wasn't trying to make an history lesson. Thanks for your concern. By the way (and I take it you are American), would you be here today if European hadn't RE-(you have it)-discovered America? Or maybe you are a so-called "Native American" (and even then, you wouldn't be here. And even if I'm in Europe, I certainly wouldn't be here either).
On mathematics and algorithmics history, you may want to check this [wikipedia.org] or that [wikipedia.org]. It's not always about WHO discovered something, but sometimes also about WHO brought back the discovery to other future scientists. The same thing applies to computer history.
Anyway history was definitely not my point in my previous message. I just am bored with all those "the Internet must remain american because DARPA is" postings that are, I think, totally flawed logic. And yes, there was some humor inside.
Re:You are suffering from transnationalist's disea (Score:5, Insightful)
I like to think of governments as particularly firmly established and powerful insurance companies.
Basically, a government collects insurance premiums (taxes), pays its employees and executives (senior government officials) with both money and perks, enacts programs to help prevent the need to pay out on claims (e.g. law enforcement, safety departments, education to hopefully provide employable skills, etc.), and pays out to victims of certain types of misfortune (either directly in the form of monetary aid or with other support paid for with tax money.)
As you point out, though, the difference between a government and, say Lloyd's of London or Allstate or whoever is that governments can compel the purchase of their products with armed force. (Don't believe me? Try refusing to pay your taxes...)
The only real differences between different governments are how quickly the guns come out when they want to offer a new "product" ("Democratic" governments are kind of like public companies in that the shareholders often get to vote on new programs [though all kinds of shenanigans can be performed by government authorities to sway the vote or work around a vote that doesn't go the way they want] first, and are then asked more or less politely to participate a few times before the guns come out. Despotic governments break out the guns as part of the planning of the new "product"), what kinds of situations they cover (e.g. degree of health-care provided, how much education is subsidized, etc) and how well they cover them, and what proportion of the premiums gets skimmed off to pay for the salaries, bonuses, and perks of the government officials and employees.
Or so I like to think.
The most ridiculous part of the letter (Score:5, Insightful)
What? The history of the Internet's growth was based on private-sector investment? Intergovernmental structure would be a burden? As everybody on Slashdot knows, this is a complete rewrite of history. From the late 1960s and before even that, up until the mid-1990s when NSFnet began handing things over to corporate America, the Internet was funded by, invested in, and overseen by the US government. There was absolutely no private-sector investment, just government funds sent to the private sector. The government paid for decades of R&D to create the Internet, and oversaw its creation. Now she is trying to claim that the Internet was created by private sector investment, and that government oversight would just cramp what she says the private-sector investment created. And of course, neither she nor Bush has any intentions of removing government oversight from the Internet. What a joke!
Re:Honourable? (Score:3, Insightful)
Out of curosity, since when would an American English user use the British English spelling?
As evidenced by the fact that it's capitalized, it's an official title. You don't "correct" the spelling of someone's title. That's be like "correcting" the spelling of their name.
Re:Kick ass, Condi! (Score:1, Insightful)
I really hope this whole charade hasn't been the result of international animosity toward the Bush administration. Even the most inept U.S. administration will only be around for eight years, while the Internet will be around in some form or another until civilization goes through a retraction cycle.
Re:The most ridiculous part of the letter (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course not! Since there currently is no government oversight for the internet, there's no way to remove it! That's what all the controversy is about. The EU and the UN want someone to be in CONTROL of the internet, because they fear its laissez faire and unregulated nature.
The point everyone except Condoleeza seem to be missing is that the internet doesn't need governing!
Re:I'll set my mom on you! (Score:2, Insightful)
In this case, the US has done a pretty good job of upholding their rhetoric regarding freedom of expression and the internet.
Napster getting shut down. 2600 not permitted to link to certain things. Scientology forcing Google to remove websites from its index. Scientology forcing Slashdot to remove comments. Pressuring ICANN to say no to .xxx twice.
The only difference in freedom of expression between the USA and, say, Germany, is that the Germans ban hate speech, and the USA bans speech that people with lots of money don't like.
Quit it with the "freedom of expression" cheerleading. It's not true, and every time an American claims that they are better than the rest of the world in this respect, it sounds like you are all a bunch of brainwashed morons.
Rhetoric [answers.com]: Language that is elaborate, pretentious, insincere, or intellectually vacuous
Yup, sounds about right.
Why it doesn't work that well today (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm worried that I'm feeding a troll here, but I'll take your post at face value.
It's not bad, but there's plenty that could be improved. Ask yourself why:
Little of this is directly related to the technical issue at hand, of course, but I think there are plenty of reasons the Internet as it's evolved isn't as good as it could be if we were making the decisions today with what we now know.
The problem isn't pride, it's that the US government has demonstrated repeatedly that it doesn't give a shit about the international community's views on issues as fundamental as going to war or the health of the planet, and it's willing to make any sacrifices it deems necessary to further its own business and economic interests. This is why the EU, amongst others, would be more than happy for the US government not to have direct control over any aspect of a fundamental technology on which they rely. It's the same reason we're developing an independent GPS-style satellite network, and collaborating on EU-wide defence agreements and technology, and making up our own minds on going to war for oil, and countless other things.
Oh, for goodness' sake, quit with the "we created it" crap already. Sure, the US paid the majority (but by no means all) of the very early money several decades ago, and did a lot (but by no means all) of the very early research. The US is not responsible for all of the work even going back that far, and it certainly isn't responsible for many of the advances that have given the Internet most of the success it's had over the past decade or so.
However, the fact that you apparently don't know that (or choose to ignore/disbelieve it) is an excellent example of why the rest of us don't want you guys in charge any more.
IIRC, there was nothing in the original proposals that specified that the UN would be involved in running the Internet instead of ICANN (though as screwed up organisations go, ICANN are one of the few to really give the UN a run for their money). The important point was simply that it would be something under multilateral control, not a talking shop for the US government.
US doesn't really control the Internet (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The most ridiculous part of the letter (Score:5, Insightful)
Private-sector funding, in conjuction with many government grants, throughout the 1990s ushered in a completely different era in the Internet's history. Had the powers at be continued to restrict access, we'd have something that looks like Internet2.
As for your statement regarding "absolutely no private-sector investment," I'm fairly certain that following companies will strongly disagree:
That list can continue on and on, but I think you get the point. I'm not sure where you're from, but here in the US, Uncle Sam does NOT lay telephone wire/fiber/cable. Once again, private-sectore investment.
Does this mean that the Internet was invented by the private-sectore, no; merely, the Internet as we now know it was built through private-sector investments.
Adding levels of bureaucratic oversight to anything constrains development. NASA is a good example of this. Adding "Safety" committees to make sure space travel is 99.999999% safe has brought development of new/risky programs to a crawl.
As a side note, I don't see the purpose of political bashing here. I highly doubt anyone else in either Rice's or Bush's position would gladly give up control of the Internet.
Re:Kick ass, Condi! (Score:1, Insightful)
Yeah. If this is "strong language", imagine the "soft language" in diplo-speak. Any wonder why Iran and N.Korea keep enriching nuke materials and Sudan keeps slaughtering her people?
I guess that's one more thing why I could never work in state dept. I just can't kiss ass that well.
Re:I'll set my mom on you! (Score:1, Insightful)
Napster being sued out of existence had what to do with free expression or DNS?
Napster was sharing free expression in the form of music. With a centralised service like Napster, it would have been simple to track down and prosecute the copyright infringers without affecting the people using it legally. It simply wasn't necessary to completely shut down Napster. The copyright infringement is a red herring.
Scientology again is a matter of intellectual property protection.
Oh, so waving the magic "intellectual property" slogan excuses censorship? In countries you consider to be less free than the USA, waving the magic "common good" slogan excused censorship. Both are poor excuses.
Backing down from the relaxed use of TLDs and forcing businesses into an xxx ghetto is interference with speech.
That's disingenuous. Introducing .xxx in no way "forces businesses into a ghetto". ICANN approving .xxx is totally different to requiring porn to use domains under that TLD.
You can however get shove-cock-into-my-cunt.org and ICANN won't even blink.
That's because nobody with money cares. What about all the domains taken off people for criticising businesses?
On the other hand Germany constrains actual speech, rather than merely enforces property ownership.
Again, you are mischaracterising things. This has nothing whatsoever to do with property ownership. "Intellectual property" isn't property, interested parties use that term as a form of propaganda.
Re:I'll set my mom on you! (Score:5, Insightful)
[We] created the internet
Really? Did you lay down the phoneline that comes up to my house? Didn't think so. Did you pay for the ADSL hardware at my local exchange? Didn't think you did that, either. How about the D-Root Server [public-root.com] that guarantees the performance and stability of Internet services in the UK and western Europe? Hmm, then I'd say that statement is bullshit.
Create your own root and use it instead.
Ignoring the fact that only five of the public root servers are in the States to begin with (there are eight or so others scattered around the globe), we already have [orsn.org]. And that is completely ignoring the fact that anybody can set up a DNS server at any time, for any reason, and with any purpose. (And many of the fine folk here at slashdot, have.
All of this whining by socialist Europeans that would rather see the internet turn into some type of global hippie commune where no commerce is transacted and those of us in the first world have to pay for internet connections for some tribal village in Africa...
Ok, what?
Some countries are, or I should say, were backing this whole fucked up scheme because they are (understandably) pissed off with the incompetance of the ICANN. The EU is backing this scheme because they are pissed off with the US for a whole lotta reasons, and the Usual Suspects (China, etc.) are backing this for the Usual Reasons.
Look, I dont want control to go to the WGIG any more than you do, but fucked up posts like yours do not help the issue.
Re:Enough with this idea of the UN TAXING the Net! (Score:3, Insightful)
It is my belief that the UN is hopelessly corrupt and that the UN exists to create programs that move money through itself so that money can be stolen, all while claiming to be an international body whose mandate is to better the world.
I challenge you to list anything of consequence the UN has accomplished. And if you can, I can list genocides and wars the UN has done nothing about when its charter is "to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind" or how many blatantly repressive governments sit on its human rights council when its charter is "to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small" ? The UN has no credibility. I know things have been bad here in the US lately. But for as bad as it is, the UN is far far worse, and I dont want those jackasses screwing up the internet.
Re:I'll set my mom on you! (Score:4, Insightful)
She's also a classically trained concert pianist, as if all that other stuff weren't enough.
You can agree or disagree with her politics, and I happen to disagree strongly, but you can't deny that she's what they call "one of the great minds of our generation." She just happens to stand as proof that you can be totally brilliant and wrong at the same time.
Re:I'll set my mom on you! (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:FUCK THAT! (Score:3, Insightful)
So what's your position on the whole "FIRE!" in a crowded theatre issue?
> If there are restrictions on the software that only allow it to be "free" in certain circumstances...
You mean restrictions like "You may copy and distribute verbatim copies of the Program's source code as you receive it, in any medium, provided that you conspicuously and appropriately publish on each copy an appropriate copyright notice and disclaimer of warranty?" Absolute freedom from restrictions means that any for-profit company could do whatever they wanted with any open-source software and no one could say the first thing about it.
> My personal opinion (for what it's worth) is that the US pushes the concept of "free speech" a hell of a lot more then it actually practices it.
And my personal opinion is that if the government keeps you from saying something, it's almost 99% certain that you can walk two blocks and say it all you want. In all the examples given, not once were people kept from expressing their opinions unless they did it while lying on the sidewalk and obstructing traffic.
Shall we agree to respectfully disagree?
Re:The most ridiculous part of the letter (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:How! (Score:1, Insightful)
> after it has been issued?
>
> This administration has gone crazy for secrecy, classifying
> more documents than any previous administartion.
If you think that the Clinton administration was any less
"secret" in their dealings, then you are very naive.
Re:I'll set my mom on you! (Score:3, Insightful)
Because it means that by and large, the 1st ammendment has been upheld in the areas of the internet pertinent to the discussion, against pressure by those with money and a sticks up their asses to corrupt it.
Here's a question: Does it matter who does the censoring? In the EU you have anti hate laws that prevent certain forms of Speech, in the US you have things like the DMCA that prevent other things.
I'm going to make a judgement call here and say that political speech is the most important form of speech. Perhaps you disagree, but when all is said and done, I'll take censorship of the discussion of copy-prevention circumvention over censorship of political beliefs because without political speech you can't undo DMCA-style censorship, but talking about copying DVDs will do little to relieve political censorship.
Re:I'll set my mom on you! (Score:3, Insightful)
"By large" is already showing that there is an erosion. Ultimatly though it were the courts who upheld it, not the politicians.
No I do agree, but limiting hate speech is in my eyes not something that is preventing political speech. You cannot scream "Fire" in a crowded theater either, even the US Supreme Court acknowledges that there are limits on free speech.
The difference, as I see it, is that in Europe there are clearer guidelines about what is valid and what isn't. That doesn't mean there is outright censorship.
The point I was merely driving home is that there is no absolut freedom, it always requires a limit to some degree or the other.
Re:Kick ass, Condi! (Score:1, Insightful)
No, it was invented in Switzerland by someone from the UK.
If you're going to play up your accomplishments to make a case, be sure not to lie like you just did.