If you value your free and open Internet, then I urge you to read this column and take appropriate action with regard to contacting your representatives in Congress. I don’t usually begin my columns with a warning, but in this case it is justified, because in less than ten days from today, our president will be fulfilling and finalizing a promise he made early on in his presidency to turn over the control of the Internet as we know it to a multinational corporation which includes the countries of Russia, China, and Iran, and which do not have a First Amendment right to free speech.
If you do not trust these countries to always provide free and unrestricted access to your use of the internet, including your confidential information, and your expression of freedom of speech, then you have one week to contact your senator and representative and as many other members of Congress as you can, to express your opposition.
The Internet was started by the United States, in particular the Department of Defense. So yes, technically, we own it. However, in 1998, the Commerce Department began contracting with ICANN, a California nonprofit corporation, to take over management of the Internet’s domain name system and assignment of IP numbers.
Since that time ICANN has operated under a contract from the the U.S. Commerce Department. American oversight freed engineers and developers to run the networks without political pressure from other governments. China and Russia can censor the Internet in their own countries, but not globally, because Commerce would block them from tampering with web addresses. All that would change if Commerce gives up its control over ICANN, which is what the administration plans to do on October 1.
For the most part, the Commerce Department has allowed ICANN to govern itself, but it has always maintained the authority to pull the nonprofit’s contract, which allowed the federal government to ensure that its contracting partner did not stray from its original mission.
But some governments do not like ICANN’s current hands-off approach to internet regulation. They want more control over how internet traffic is managed and what domain names are allowed to exist.
Two years ago Congress blocked the administration’s effort to end U.S. protection of the Internet by refusing to finance the giveaway, but that spending ban expires after midnight on September 30.
The President does not have the authority on his own to make the transfer because the Constitution says Congress must approve transfers of U.S. property. The U.S. Contract with ICANN says deliverables, including the root zone of the Internet, are “the property of the U.S. government.” But it appears he still intends to do so by going through other government agencies such as the FCC.
The Obama administration has admitted this move would end American exceptionalism with regard to the Internet, but it wants to placate other governments who became upset over Edward Snowden’s disclosures in 2013.
As L. Gordon Crovitz, a columnist for the Wall Street Journal, writes: “The internet was not broken when Mr. Obama decided to fix it by ending U.S. protection.” Crovitz goes on to remind us that ever since the Telecommunications Act of 1996, congressional policy has been to “preserve the vibrant and competitive free market” for the Internet “unfettered by federal or state regulation.”
Frank V. Vernuccio, Jr., J.D. is the editor-in-chief of the New York Analysis of Policy & Government. He writes in The Bronx Chronicle that “…Members of both parties should be able to unite around defending the Power of the Purse, the most fundamental Constitutional power of the American People’s elected representatives. If enacted legislation is no longer considered binding, a fundamental check on Executive power will have been lost. Legislators also have a solemn responsibility to future generations to ensure that the future of the Internet is not placed at risk by prematurely ending U.S. oversight…”
Crovitz wrote in a more recent column about the steps the authoritarian regimes will take when the U.S. gives up its oversight. A Russian representative has stated that the other governments will get a role “more meaningful than just advisory” once the takeover is completed.
ICANN is presently located in Los Angeles. In the event any facilities are relocated to China, they could go in the same building as the agency responsible for censoring that country's Internet. "We have uncovered that ICANN's Beijing office is actually located within the same building as the Cyberspace Administration of China, which is the central agency within the Chinese government's censorship regime," according to senators who oppose the move, noting that some of the American companies involved with the transition process have already "shown a willingness to acquiesce" to Chinese demands to aid with censorship.
Republican senators Mike Lee and Ted Cruz and Representative Sam Duffey are leading the effort to prevent the loss of U.S. control. It is their concern that the agency could be used by totalitarian governments to shut down the Web around the globe, either in whole or in part.
A website outlines the senators’ concerns: “The Obama administration is pushing through a radical proposal to give up control of Internet domains …If that proposal goes through, countries like Russia, China, and Iran could be able to censor speech on the Internet, including here in the U.S. by blocking access to sites they don’t like. Right now, the Obama administration’s proposal to give away the Internet is an extraordinary threat to our freedom and it’s one that many Americans don’t know anything about.”
If you do not trust these countries to always provide free and unrestricted access to your use of the internet, including your confidential information, and your expression of freedom of speech, then you have one week to contact your senator and representative and as many other members of Congress as you can, to express your opposition.
The Internet was started by the United States, in particular the Department of Defense. So yes, technically, we own it. However, in 1998, the Commerce Department began contracting with ICANN, a California nonprofit corporation, to take over management of the Internet’s domain name system and assignment of IP numbers.
Since that time ICANN has operated under a contract from the the U.S. Commerce Department. American oversight freed engineers and developers to run the networks without political pressure from other governments. China and Russia can censor the Internet in their own countries, but not globally, because Commerce would block them from tampering with web addresses. All that would change if Commerce gives up its control over ICANN, which is what the administration plans to do on October 1.
For the most part, the Commerce Department has allowed ICANN to govern itself, but it has always maintained the authority to pull the nonprofit’s contract, which allowed the federal government to ensure that its contracting partner did not stray from its original mission.
But some governments do not like ICANN’s current hands-off approach to internet regulation. They want more control over how internet traffic is managed and what domain names are allowed to exist.
Two years ago Congress blocked the administration’s effort to end U.S. protection of the Internet by refusing to finance the giveaway, but that spending ban expires after midnight on September 30.
The President does not have the authority on his own to make the transfer because the Constitution says Congress must approve transfers of U.S. property. The U.S. Contract with ICANN says deliverables, including the root zone of the Internet, are “the property of the U.S. government.” But it appears he still intends to do so by going through other government agencies such as the FCC.
The Obama administration has admitted this move would end American exceptionalism with regard to the Internet, but it wants to placate other governments who became upset over Edward Snowden’s disclosures in 2013.
As L. Gordon Crovitz, a columnist for the Wall Street Journal, writes: “The internet was not broken when Mr. Obama decided to fix it by ending U.S. protection.” Crovitz goes on to remind us that ever since the Telecommunications Act of 1996, congressional policy has been to “preserve the vibrant and competitive free market” for the Internet “unfettered by federal or state regulation.”
Frank V. Vernuccio, Jr., J.D. is the editor-in-chief of the New York Analysis of Policy & Government. He writes in The Bronx Chronicle that “…Members of both parties should be able to unite around defending the Power of the Purse, the most fundamental Constitutional power of the American People’s elected representatives. If enacted legislation is no longer considered binding, a fundamental check on Executive power will have been lost. Legislators also have a solemn responsibility to future generations to ensure that the future of the Internet is not placed at risk by prematurely ending U.S. oversight…”
Crovitz wrote in a more recent column about the steps the authoritarian regimes will take when the U.S. gives up its oversight. A Russian representative has stated that the other governments will get a role “more meaningful than just advisory” once the takeover is completed.
ICANN is presently located in Los Angeles. In the event any facilities are relocated to China, they could go in the same building as the agency responsible for censoring that country's Internet. "We have uncovered that ICANN's Beijing office is actually located within the same building as the Cyberspace Administration of China, which is the central agency within the Chinese government's censorship regime," according to senators who oppose the move, noting that some of the American companies involved with the transition process have already "shown a willingness to acquiesce" to Chinese demands to aid with censorship.
Republican senators Mike Lee and Ted Cruz and Representative Sam Duffey are leading the effort to prevent the loss of U.S. control. It is their concern that the agency could be used by totalitarian governments to shut down the Web around the globe, either in whole or in part.
A website outlines the senators’ concerns: “The Obama administration is pushing through a radical proposal to give up control of Internet domains …If that proposal goes through, countries like Russia, China, and Iran could be able to censor speech on the Internet, including here in the U.S. by blocking access to sites they don’t like. Right now, the Obama administration’s proposal to give away the Internet is an extraordinary threat to our freedom and it’s one that many Americans don’t know anything about.”
Comments