Part 13 (1/2)

The proposal for Internet regulation has been gaining supporters outside of just the group of authoritarian countries that are pus.h.i.+ng for its adoption. Brazil and India, for example, have joined Russia and China in backing aspects of the proposal. Together these four nations comprise the BRIC group (Brazil, Russia, India, and China), which is often poised as a counterweight to the power of the US and the European Union. Vinton Cerf commented that ”Brazil and India have surprised me with their interest in intervening and vying for control [over the Internet].”9

Otherwise, Cerf noted that support for ITU regulation of the Net came from countries like Syria and Saudi Arabia, ”who are threatened by openness and freedom of expression.” He said these countries ”are most interested in gaining control [over the Internet] through this treaty.”10 It has not escaped the notice of the dictators and monarchs who rule these countries that the Internet and social media played key roles in the Arab Spring revolutions of recent years.

Under the one-nation, one-vote rules of the ITU, technologically backward and tiny countries can literally force the rest of the world to submit to regulation of the Internet! And don't discount the very real possibility that Russian and Chinese leaders are working overtime to buy the votes of African, Latin American, Asian, and Oceanian nations. These countries, often with only very small Internet user populations, may have no stake in preserving Internet freedom and may be willing to sell it out for some financial reward (either to their countries or to themselves personally).

And what a welcome move Internet regulation would be for the petty tyrants and strongmen who rule most of Africa! The pesky revolutions and civil wars could be nipped in the bud by Internet controls. How happy they would be to rein in free speech so they can rule-and plunder-their populations in peace.

(See Part Ten in this book on the status of global freedom to understand how tyrants and dictators const.i.tute a majority of the members.h.i.+p of the UN.)

All this has led Cerf, one of the founders of the Web and currently a vice president of Google, to tell Congress recently that these proposals for regulation mean ”the open Internet has never been at higher risk than it is now.”11

Cerf warned, ”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 that has brought so much to so many.”12

Cerf said the implications of the potential treaty regulating the Internet are ”potentially disastrous.” He added that more international control over the Net could trigger a ”race to the bottom” to restrict Internet freedom, ”choking innovation and hurting American business abroad.”13

Richard Grenell, who served as spokesman and adviser to four US amba.s.sadors to the UN between 2001 and 2009, said that ”having the UN or any international community regulate the Internet only means you're going to have the lowest common denominator of 193 countries.”14

We would not know of this plan to squelch Internet freedom but for a courageous-and still anonymous-leaker who unveiled a 212-page planning doc.u.ment that Crovitz, writing in the Wall Street Journal, reports is ”being used by governments to prepare for the December conference.”

The leak materialized when Jerry Brito and Eli Dourado, George Mason University researchers, frustrated by the secrecy of the talks, created a website called WCITLeaks.org and invited anyone with access to doc.u.ments outlining the UN proposals to post them online ”to foster greater transparency.”15

That those who would protect the freedom of the Internet had to go to such lengths to find out what is being contemplated is itself a scandal. Why on earth would the delegates from the United States and the European democracies consent to secret negotiations and allow the doc.u.ments and proposals being distributed to be s.h.i.+elded from public view or scrutiny? These talks do not concern top-secret military or intelligence matters. There is no valid reason for having kept them secret. But the fact that the Western delegates consented to the gag order indicates how supinely they are confronting this threat to freedom.

Of course, the autocratic nations want to negotiate to squelch the Internet in secret. Secrecy for the likes of the rulers in Moscow, Beijing, and Tehran is the norm. The last thing they would want is for their own people to know of their efforts to keep the truth from them. And, these tyrants must realize that exposure of their plans would help to doom them. (That's why we wrote this book!)

Dourado-one of the two courageous men who facilitated the leak-explained that ”these proposals show that many ITU member states want to use international agreements to regulate the Internet by crowding out bottom-up inst.i.tutions, imposing charges for international communication, and controlling the content that consumers can access online.”16

Crovitz, one of the only journalists covering this horrific development, notes that ”the broadest proposal in the draft materials is an initiative by China to give countries authority over 'the information and communication infrastructure within their state' and require that online companies 'operating in their territory' use the Internet 'in a rational way'-in short, to legitimize full government control.”17

The Internet Society, which represents the engineers around the world who keep the Internet functioning, says this proposal ”would require member states to take on a very active and inappropriate role in patrolling” the Internet.18

Crovitz reports other proposals in the planning doc.u.ment:

”Give the UN power to regulate online content for the first time, under the guise of protecting against computer malware or spam.

”Russia and some Arab countries want to be able to inspect private communications such as email.

”Russia and Iran propose new rules to measure Internet traffic along national borders and bill the originator of the traffic, as with international phone calls. That would result in new fees to local governments and less access to traffic from US 'originating' companies such as Google, Facebook and Apple. A similar idea has the support of European telecommunications companies, even though the Internet's global packet switching makes national tolls an anachronistic idea.

”Another proposal would give the UN authority over allocating Internet addresses. It would replace Icann [Internet Corporation for a.s.signed Names and Numbers], the self-regulating body that helped ensure the stability of the Internet, under a contract from the US Commerce Department.”19 Currently, nongovernmental inst.i.tutions, including ICANN, oversees the Web's management and its technical standards.

The Russian and Chinese justification for Internet censors.h.i.+p-that it would fight hacking (at which they are the world's masters)-is specious. Congressmen Michael McCaul (R-TX) and Jim Langevin (D-RI), the cochairs of the Congressional Cybersecurity Caucus, note that ”[i]t must be made clear that efforts to secure the Internet against malicious hacking do not need to interfere with this freedom and the United States will oppose any attempt to blur the line between the two.”20

China's stated rationale for its efforts to regulate the Internet is preposterous. The tyrants of Beijing say that their proposal ”raises a series of basic principles of maintaining information and network security which cover the political, military, economic, social, cultural, technical and other aspects.” The government statement continued: ”The principles stipulate that countries shall not use such information and telecom technologies to conduct hostile behaviors and acts of aggression or to threaten international peace and security and stress that countries have the rights and obligations to protect their information and cybers.p.a.ce as well as key information and network infrastructure from threats, interference, and sabotage attacks.”21