It’s RMS news week!

Richard Stallman was at the UN World Summit on the Information Society and part of the security was that everyone had to wear an RFID tag to get through the security checks. Stallman’s privacy hackles were raised by this and he proceeded to wrap his tag in tinfoil and encouraged others to do likewise. This really annoyed security, enough that eventually they refused to let him exit a room.

UN Security eventually let him out, and then would not allow him to enter the room where he was appearing on another panel.

I got to the room just as the panel was about to start, at the moment that the problem suddenly evaporated and Richard was allowed to enter. No doubt some of our UN hosts had been dealing with security during those two hours, and eventually got an order from a high-enough officer or something. We’ll probably never know who, but imagine the headlines: Kofi Annan frees Richard Stallman. So, I walk in and Richard relates the entire situation to me in front of the audience present, including more than one government minister, and other folks arriving for the panel. I humorously remind Richard that he and I both have immunity as delegates, and he responds “You mean, I should have shot that guy Kramer?”. Kramer is the CompTIA representative who comes along to these things to relate an pro-software-patenting and generally anti-Free-Software viewpoint which gets Richard very steamed up. There’s a laugh, and I explain that our immunity probably doesn’t go that far. Richard goes on to say that he wouldn’t really kill anyone, but no doubt UN Security has heard this entire exchange too.