US lawmakers on Thursday said they are united when it comes to keeping the Internet free from centralized control and preventing the UN from gaining power over Web content and infrastructure.
The US government wants to bring as much ammunition as possible to a December meeting in Dubai where delegations from 193 countries will discuss whether to hand governance of the Internet over to the UN.
The US fears December’s treaty-writing conference could turn the Internet into a political bargaining chip and could empower efforts by countries like China, Russia and Iran to erode Internet freedoms and isolate their populations.
“We may have our differences on domestic telecommunications policy, but having those policies decided at the international level would be the worst thing that could happen,” US Representative Marsha Blackburn said at a hearing before a US House of Representatives Energy and Commerce subcommittee.
Blackburn commended US President Barack Obama administration’s efforts to thwart giving an international governing body power over the Internet.
Vinton Cerf, regarded as one of the fathers of the Internet and now vice president and chief Internet evangelist at Google Inc, cautioned that a move toward top-down control dictated by governments could hinder innovation and growth.
That path, he said, “promotes exclusion, hidden deals, potential for indiscriminate surveillance and tight centralized management.”
A bipartisan group of lawmakers on Wednesday introduced a resolution to reject the proposed international takeover of the Internet and preserve the “multi-stakeholder” model of governance.
“In many ways, this is a referendum on the future of the Internet,” US Representative Mary Bono Mack said at Thursday’s hearing.
“If this power grab is successful, I’m concerned that the next Arab Spring will instead become a ‘Russia Winter’ where free speech is chilled, not encouraged, and the Internet becomes a wasteland of unfilled hopes, dreams and opportunities,” said Bono Mack, a sponsor of the resolution.
Social media sites Twitter, Facebook and YouTube played a big role in last year’s Arab Spring revolution.
The Internet is currently policed loosely, with technical bodies such as the Internet Engineering Task Force, the Internet Corp for Assigned Names and Numbers and the World Wide Web Consortium largely dictating its infrastructure and management. The US holds significant sway with those bodies.
When the delegations gather in Dubai, they will renegotiate a UN treaty last revisited in 1988 and debate proposals that would consolidate control over the Internet with the UN’s International Telecommunications Union (ITU).
“During the treaty negotiations, the most lethal threat to Internet freedom may not come from a full-frontal assault, but through insidious and seemingly innocuous expansions of intergovernmental powers,” US Federal Communications Commissioner Robert McDowell said.
Proposals out of the Middle East, McDowell said, would change the definition of telecommunications in a way that arguably would include the Internet and would suddenly sweep an entire industry into the rubric of ITU rules.
The US lawmakers fear that countries like China, Russia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and others could politick smaller nations who have little interest in the issue to back them in giving them greater ability to isolate their populations and silence political dissidents.
‘TERRORIST ATTACK’: The convoy of Brigadier General Hamdi Shukri resulted in the ‘martyrdom of five of our armed forces,’ the Presidential Leadership Council said A blast targeting the convoy of a Saudi Arabian-backed armed group killed five in Yemen’s southern city of Aden and injured the commander of the government-allied unit, officials said on Wednesday. “The treacherous terrorist attack targeting the convoy of Brigadier General Hamdi Shukri, commander of the Second Giants Brigade, resulted in the martyrdom of five of our armed forces heroes and the injury of three others,” Yemen’s Saudi Arabia-backed Presidential Leadership Council said in a statement published by Yemeni news agency Saba. A security source told reporters that a car bomb on the side of the road in the Ja’awla area in
‘SHOCK TACTIC’: The dismissal of Yang mirrors past cases such as Jang Song-thaek, Kim’s uncle, who was executed after being accused of plotting to overthrow his nephew North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has fired his vice premier, compared him to a goat and railed against “incompetent” officials, state media reported yesterday, in a rare and very public broadside against apparatchiks at the opening of a critical factory. Vice Premier Yang Sung-ho was sacked “on the spot,” the state-run Korean Central News Agency said, in a speech in which Kim attacked “irresponsible, rude and incompetent leading officials.” “Please, comrade vice premier, resign by yourself when you can do it on your own before it is too late,” Kim reportedly said. “He is ineligible for an important duty. Put simply, it was
SCAM CLAMPDOWN: About 130 South Korean scam suspects have been sent home since October last year, and 60 more are still waiting for repatriation Dozens of South Koreans allegedly involved in online scams in Cambodia were yesterday returned to South Korea to face investigations in what was the largest group repatriation of Korean criminal suspects from abroad. The 73 South Korean suspects allegedly scammed fellow Koreans out of 48.6 billion won (US$33 million), South Korea said. Upon arrival in South Korea’s Incheon International Airport aboard a chartered plane, the suspects — 65 men and eight women — were sent to police stations. Local TV footage showed the suspects, in handcuffs and wearing masks, being escorted by police officers and boarding buses. They were among about 260 South
Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa on Sunday announced a deal with the chief of Kurdish-led forces that includes a ceasefire, after government troops advanced across Kurdish-held areas of the country’s north and east. Syrian Kurdish leader Mazloum Abdi said he had agreed to the deal to avoid a broader war. He made the decision after deadly clashes in the Syrian city of Raqa on Sunday between Kurdish-led forces and local fighters loyal to Damascus, and fighting this month between the Kurds and government forces. The agreement would also see the Kurdish administration and forces integrate into the state after months of stalled negotiations on
RSS