Conservatives are fighting to protect the internet, even as the government prepares to hand control to foreign countries.
According to Politico, Sept. 14 is the first day of hearings on Sen. Ted Cruz’s Protecting Internet Freedom Act. The act would keep the government from removing itself from internet framework oversight without congressional approval.
Currently, the U.S. Government plans to transfer responsibility for the internet’s framework to a private, multi-stakeholder group on Oct. 1. But the group (the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or Icann) includes totalitarian countries like Russia and China.
If the U.S. relinquishes oversight of Icann at the end of this month, Russia and China (along with more than 100 other countries) will suddenly be granted a say in how the framework for the Internet is run -- not just in their own countries, but globally.
Both have been linked to internet problems. Russia has been repeatedly linked to hacking scandals. “The Great Firewall,” for example, has strictly ruled the Chinese internet, blocking access to news, current events, and sites like Facebook and Google for nearly 20 years.
Cruz’s Protecting Internet Freedom Act demands that first, the contracts between the government and Icann are not allowed to lapse, and second, according to the Article IV, Section 3 of the Constitution, only Congress could legally allow the contracts to lapse in the first place.
The Conservative Action Project, a group of more than 100 conservative leaders, published a memo on Sept. 13, outlining the “irreparable damage to our national security” and “internet freedom” if the U.S. government refuses to maintain oversight.
“The internet has become the foundation of international commerce for one reason. It operates under the protection of American legal, cultural, and political freedoms,” the memo states, and it needs to remain that way.
The memo was signed by 116 conservative leaders, including Media Research Center founder and president, Brent Bozell.
Since 1998, when Icann was created, the U.S. National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) has maintained oversight of the Domain Naming System, which allows internet users to access websites through domain names (like Newsbusters.org or MRC.org) and facilitates email use.
But on Sept. 30, contracts between NTIA and Icann (the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) expire, leaving Icann to independently control the Domain Naming System without direct U.S. oversight.
NTIA admits it is caving to international pressure. According to NTIA, U.S. government control “has long been a source of irritation to foreign governments,” some of whom have called for the United Nations to instead take control of Icann.
“[C]alls for replacing the multistakeholder model with a multilateral, government-run approach will only grow louder if the U.S. government fails to complete the transition,” the NTIA said.
Wall Street Journal columnist J. Gordon Crovitz warned on Aug. 28 that “U.N. control is the likely result if the U.S. gives up internet stewardship” due to antitrust exemption conflicts. Icann has claimed it will not seek U.N. oversight, and denies antitrust concerns.
Icann’s opposition to U.S. oversight is supported by organizations like Human Rights Watch, Article 19, and Public Knowledge, all which have received funding from liberal billionaire George Soros.
In 2010, Soros promised to give Human Rights Watch $100 million over the course of 10 years. Between 2000 and 2010, Human Rights Watch received an additional $9.2 million from Soros.
Soros gave the Brazilian chapter of Article 19 $277,920 between 2012 and 2014, and Public Knowledge has received at least $1.49 million from Soros between 2003 and 2013.
