By DICK MORRIS
Published on
TheHill.com
on November 27, 2012
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Next week, the United Nations' attempt to take over the Internet will
move into high gear when the International Telecommunications Union
meets in Dubai with representatives from 193 countries to craft a new
governing structure for the Internet. The meetings are expected to last
two weeks.
If you haven't heard about this issue, there's a reason. The negotiators
have kept the tightest possible lid on their discussions to prevent word
of the regulatory proposals from leaking out.
Indeed, the negotiations were totally secret until two George Mason
University researchers, Jerry Brito and Eli Dourado, created a website
called WCITLeaks.org and invited anyone with access to documents
outlining the U.N. proposals to post them online. On June 12, 2012, an
anonymous leaker posted a 212-page memo detailing the status of the
negotiations and the proposed terms of the treaty.
This information has not been officially or authoritatively available,
despite the fact that the conference convenes next week.
But the first reports are horrific. Vinton Cerf, one of the founders of
the Web and currently a vice president of Google, warns that "the open
Internet has never been at higher risk than it is now." He adds, "If all
of us do not pay attention to what's going on, users worldwide will be
at risk of losing the open and free Internet."
The very concept of U.N. control of the Web is horrible. The U.N. is
corrupt and biased in favor of authoritarian regimes. But this
particular regulatory proposal is even worse. It takes the leading force
for democracy in the world today -- the Internet -- and could transform
it into an instrument for propaganda and oppression.
Its most obnoxious feature would let countries censor websites that
originate within their borders and force Internet users to pay a high
fee for accessing foreign sites. If adopted, this provision would erect
a wall of user fees, keeping people from viewing foreign sites and
leaving Chinese and Russian users only a government-censored product to
read.
The draft treaty stipulates that the U.N. will assign e-names and
provide host governments with names along with IP addresses, which will
let them identify dissidents.
Congress needs to speak up. With a new secretary of State coming up for
Senate confirmation, the conservatives on the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee need to ask the designee whether he or she approves of these
secret negotiations and press him or her on the question of U.N.
regulation of the Internet.
The proposed treaty stems from an initiative by Russia and China to
restrict the Internet. It appears to have been the brainchild of Russian
President Vladimir Putin. After a 2011 meeting with Secretary-General
Hamadoun Touré of the International Telecommunications Union -- the U.N.
agency to be vested with control of the Web -- Putin turned vocabulary
on its head, saying "if we are going to talk about democratization of
international relations, I think a critical sphere is information
exchange and global control over such exchange." How Internet regulation
would "democratize" things, he did not explain.
Touré, a native of Mali, is the ideal person to suit Putin's objectives.
If Putin was seeking the right man for the job of controlling the
Internet, Touré is it. He studied at the Technical Institute of
Electronics and Telecommunications in Leningrad and got his master's and
doctorate from the Moscow Technical University of Communications and
Informatics.
Before we give him control over the Internet, we are entitled to ask why
Soviet Russia would want to help a young man from Mali gain expertise in
telecommunications, electronics and "informatics." We can only
speculate, but the thought is not comforting.
We need Congress to step up and fight against U.N. control of the
Internet. Even without these terrible provisions, the very concept of
U.N. regulation of this free medium is repugnant.
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