Part 14 (1/2)

KEEP THE INTERNET FREE!

How do we stop this power grab and keep the Internet free? Richard Whitt, public policy director and managing counsel for Google, emphasized the importance of a cyber-roots rebellion against UN control. ”I think a key aspect of this [battle] is that this cannot be the US against the world,” said Whitt. ”If that is the formula, we lose, plain and simple. This has to be something where we engage with everybody around the world. All of the communities of interest who have a stake, whether they know it right now or not, in the future of the Internet, we have to try to find ways to engage them.”34

Nina Easton, writing on fortune.com, says that ”business leaders beyond Silicon Valley would be smart to sit up and take notice [of the UN initiative]-and fast. American opponents are being seriously outpaced by UN plans to tax and regulate that are already grinding forward in advance of a December treaty negotiation in Dubai.”35

But what happens if a majority of the 193-member ITU votes for a plan that regulates, censors, and controls the Internet? The United States should walk out of the conference in Dubai and refuse to be bound by its strictures. We should work to persuade our European allies to join us.

If the ITU enacts rules on the Internet and the US and the EU refuse to abide by them or recognize them as binding, Internet administrators and the major online companies and servers will be in a bind. They will face a push-pull that may well lead them to compromise our freedoms in order to appease the ITU.

Another bad outcome would be a compromise-in the tradition of the United Nations. Building on the model of the UN Rio Conferences, the so-called middle ground might recognize ITU jurisdiction over the Internet but restrict its power so it does not regulate content or adopt the other nefarious proposals being put forth by Russia and China.

But a compromise of this sort would be a terrible blow to freedom of speech. Conceding that a global body-where autocrats, corrupt regimes, and tyrants have a voting majority-controls the Internet would be the first step in restricting its freedom.

Since the ITU normally does not vote on proposals, preferring instead to negotiate a consensus, Cerf worries that there may be a series of incremental changes that would, together, doom Internet freedom. He cites a proposal by Arab states changing the definition of ”telecommunications” to include ”processing” or computer functions. FCC commissioner McDowell warns that such a definitional change would ”swallow the Internet's functions with only a tiny edit of existing rules.”36

Indeed, the way the UN works is that such proposals are always, at least partially, adopted. Once a suggestion is raised and ratified by becoming the subject of high-level UN negotiations, a consensus almost always emerges. In this case, it is easy to see how the United States and Europe, heavily outvoted in the ITU, would focus on watering down the Internet regulations while leaving the basic premise-that the ITU can regulate the Net-fundamentally unchallenged.

To counter this consensus approach, we need a ma.s.sive sense of public outrage (in this election year) demanding that the United States pull out of these negotiations and the Dubai Conference and refuse to recognize the authority of the ITU or its member states or its UN sponsor to even discuss Internet regulation. This is the time for us to stand up and demand an end to this process before it goes any further.

Would the United States cravenly agree to partic.i.p.ate in secret negotiations on proposals by Russia and China to restrict global free speech, free press, or freedom of religion? No way. Yet these talks are just as pernicious and destructive of our liberties.

The Internet must see to its own self-preservation! Its users need to spread word of the UN effort virally and arouse a cyber-roots rebellion against the proposed treaty or even the negotiations concerning it. If we want to preserve our freedom to use the Internet as a free exchange of ideas, we have to act and act soon.

Internet users of the world! Speak up!

PART FIVE

TRANSFER OF WEALTH: THE RIO+20 TREATY

Until June 2012, the United States showered the world with foreign aid. We couldn't afford it. It went to the pockets of third world tyrants and dictators. Countries who received our largesse snubbed us at every turn. And some of the money went to our outright enemies.

But at least we had control over how much we gave and who received the money.

In June 2012, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton journeyed to Rio to attend the twentieth anniversary of the original Rio Conference on global sustainability. There, she set a bold new precedent: She committed the United States to giving the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP)-an incipient global EPA-$2 billion toward an eventual fund of $100 billion, in turn to be given to the nations of the third world, nominally to a.s.sist in their adjustment to global climate change.

There's nothing new about the $2 billion commitment. But what is new is that:

a) It implied an American commitment to an even more ma.s.sive transfer of wealth running to the full $100 billion; and

b) It left it up to a new ”Green Climate Fund” headquartered in Switzerland to decide how to spend the money. We would have no control over who received the funds.

The Green Climate fund was formally created at a UN climate conference in Durban, South Africa, in December 2011. It is to be administered by a twenty-four-nation interim board of trustees. Its short-term goal is to ama.s.s $100 billion, including $30 billion in ”fast start-up” money that has already been pledged by member nations. Hillary's $2 billion was part of that fund.

Hillary's pledge was made at the Rio+20 Conference, where 190 nations gathered on the twentieth anniversary of the 1992 Rio Conference on global sustainability. They committed themselves to the development of a worldwide ”green economy in the context of sustainable development and poverty eradication.”1