WND EXCLUSIVE
U.N.
PLOTTING TAKEOVER OF INTERNET
'Several nations are set on asserting
intergovernmental control'
Wednesday, November 07, 2012
Next
month, the 12th World Conference on International Telecommunications, or
WCIT-12, will be held in Dubai. At the meeting, the 193 member countries of the
U.N.’s International Telecommunications Union, or ITU, will consider
renegotiating a fairly obscure treaty known as theInternational Telecommunication
Regulations, or ITRs.
The 24-year-old
agreement delineates much of the ITU’s rule-making authority over
telecommunications.
The hope of
several countries is that they can expand the ITU’s jurisdiction to the
Internet, replacing the current governing system with one that is controlled by
a U.N. bureaucracy.
In testimony
given last May at a hearing of a U.S. House Energy & Commerce
Subcommittee, Republicans and Democrats were united in their opposition to any
move by Russia and China to transfer control of the Internet to the U.N.
Rep. Greg
Walden, R-Ore., chairman of the Communications and Technology Subcommittee,
said, “Nations from across the globe will meet at a United Nations forum in
Dubai at the end of this year, and if we’re not vigilant, just might break the
Internet by subjecting it to an international regulatory regime designed for
old-fashioned telephone service.”
Walden said that
as the U.S. delegation to the WCIT takes shape, he urges the Obama
addministration “to continue the United States’ commitment to the Internet’s
collaborative governance structure and to reject international efforts to bring
the Internet under government control.”
Rep. Anna Eshoo,
D-Calif., the ranking member of the subcommittee, echoed Walden’s comments.
“Beyond just
imposing new regulation on how Internet traffic is handled, several nations are
set on asserting intergovernmental control over the Internet,” she said. “Now,
we have had some real battles here over the issue of ‘Net neutrality, and it
seems to me that we are calling on the international community for hands off,
international ‘Net neutrality, as it were, when it comes to the Internet.”
Vinton Cerf,
vice president and chief Internet evangelist for Google, was even more explicit
in his concerns over the power grab for a technology that has become an
integral part of 35 percent of the world’s population.
“A new
international battle is brewing, a battle that will determine the future of the
Internet,” Cerf said. “And if all of us from Capitol Hill to corporate
headquarters to Internet cafés in far-off villages don’t pay attention to what
is going on, users worldwide will be at risk of losing the open and free
Internet that has brought so much to so many and can bring so much more.
“As you can
see,” he continued, “the decisions made this December in the ITU could
potentially put regulatory handcuffs on the ‘Net with a remote U.N. agency
holding the keys.”
The
International Telecommunication Union, previously the International Telegraph
Union, is a U.N. agency that is responsible for information and communication
technologies. The ITU was first formed in 1869 and has seen its mandate
increase from regulating telegraph communication to helping assign the orbits
used by space satellites.
It now seeks to
increase its mandate by regulating and taxing the Internet.
This new
direction would have far-reaching consequences for the future of
communications. Cisco estimates that by 2016, roughly 45 percent of the world’s
population will be Internet users; there will be more than 18.9 billion network
connections; and the average speed of mobile devices will be four times faster
than today.
Robert McDowell,
an FCC commissioner, was succinct in his statement of the threat facing the
U.S. today.
“For many years
now, scores of countries led by China, Russia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, but many,
many others have pushed for – as Vladimir Putin said almost a year ago –
‘international control’ of the Internet through the ITU,” he said.
“Six months
separate us from the renegotiation of the 1988 treaty that led to insulating
the Internet from economic and technical regulation,” he continued. “What
proponents of Internet freedom do or don’t do between now and then will
determine the fate of the ‘Net and affect global economic growth as well as
determine whether political liberty can proliferate.”
Russia, China,
Iran and the Arab countries have been maneuvering to impose these controls, not
through direct proposals but “through the backdoor,” through small expansions
of intergovernmental powers.
They have
offered proposals that would have the U.N. exert outright control over the
Internet while maintaining that they have no wish for the ITU to exert Internet
governance. They then state that any regulation of the Internet would be of the
“light-touch” variety.
The Arab States
have submitted a new rule that would change the definition of
telecommunications to include “processing” and “computer functions.” The change
would essentially give the ITU control over the Internet with a simple
redefinition of terms.
In another example, China proposed the creation of a
system where Internet users are registered using their IP addresses. China was
joined by Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan to propose to the U.N. General
Assembly that it create an “International Code of
Conduct for Information Security” to “mandate international norms and
rules standardizing the behavior of countries concerning information and
cyberspace.”
All of the moves
are designed to reduce the unrestricted freedom and growth of the Internet.
Such changes would make it easier for a totalitarian government to identify and
silence political dissident.
While not
officially part of the current WCIT negotiations, it provides a hint at the
direction these countries would take.
All of this is
being done under the cover of a very real looming crisis. Just as the world ran
out of Internet Protocol Addresses in 2011, it may also be running out of phone
numbers over which the ITU does have some jurisdiction.
Many of the
world’s current phone numbers are used for voice over Internet protocol, or
VOIP, services such as Skype or Google Voice. It is the explosion of VOIP usage
that has caused the shortage of telephone numbers. The WCIT-12 will attempt to
resolve this issue.
If that was the
only issue on the table, the conference would be a non-event, but beyond the
regulation of the Internet, there are other proposals to be deliberated as
well.
Currently, the
Internet is regulated by a “multi-stakeholder” model where different
organizations share responsibility for the Internet’s governance. These groups
include the Internet Engineering Task Force (which helps coordinate the design
of Internet technical standards) and the Internet Corporation for Assigned
Named and Numbers, which manages Internet names.
Not all of the
member nations are happy with the current arrangement. Many governments have
argued that the present regulatory environment unfairly serves American
business and ideological interests.
Several foreign
government officials are lobbying for the creation of an international
universal service fund of sorts where foreign, usually state-owned, telecom
companies would use international mandates to charge certain web destinations
on a per-click basis to fund the build-out of broadband infrastructure across
the globe.
Estimates of
revenue generated from that tax are in excess of $800 billion. Google, iTunes,
Facebook and Netflix are mentioned most often as prime sources of funding.
To date, all of the discussions leading up to WCIT-12
have been held largely behind closed doors. While some proposals have been
leaked through a Wikileaks-style site, WCITleaks.org,
most of the process is still shrouded in secrecy. Having these clandestine
negotiations continue out of public view makes the final outcome difficult to
determine.
Many skeptics
say that a U.N. takeover of the Internet is unlikely. Even in the event that
Russia, China and others are able to push through the measures they propose and
put the Internet under U.N. control and tax usage on a per-click basis, nations
such as the United States and its allies would pull out of the organization and
develop Internet standards outside of the World Organization.
The effect of
this “Balkanization” of the Internet is difficult to predict. If the worst-case
scenario would happen, the Internet would be split along regulatory lines, with
China, Russia and other nations following the ITR rules and the technological
requirements and the rest of the world attempting to maintain the status-quo
through the existing protocols.
Actually, this
Balkanization has already happened to a degree. China in particular, through
the deployment of its “Great Firewall of China,” has already shown that a
government that has the will and the technical capacity can create a national
network that is independent of the wider global ‘Net.
If WCIT-12 were
to go in the direction of an empowered U.N. bureaucracy, this segregation would
only be accelerated.
Anyone concerned
about the future the Internet should at least be paying attention.
