Hours
left before Obama's Internet giveaway 'irreversible', Time
expiring for opponents of one world strategy for Net by Bob Unruh 9/29/16
Sen. Ted
Cruz has posted online a countdown clock that reveals there’s
just hours left before the U.S. gives away the Internet in a move critics have
warned is “irreversible.”
It was
the late Phyllis Schlafly who, earlier this year, characterized President
Obama’s plan to give away U.S. oversight of the Internet’s domain name system
as “like telling the fox to guard the chicken coop,” trusting the likes of
Cuba, Venezuela and China to ensure the continued freedom of the Web.
The
transfer of oversight to an obscure non-profit called the Internet Association
for Assigned Names and Numbers, ICANN, set for Saturday, “could be the most
dangerous use yet of Obama’s now-famous pen,” the conservative icon said at the
time.
On Thursday,
after months of Congress failing to halt Obama’s move, four states took action
on their own. The lawsuit by Arizona, Texas,
Oklahoma and Nevada
against the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, the
Department of Commerce and others seeks a halt to the plan.
Filed in
U.S. District Court in Galveston, Texas, the lawsuit argues the U.S. funded the
foundations of the Internet and for decades has been managing it appropriately,
including through contracts such as the NTIA’s agreement with ICANN to perform
Internet Assigned Numbers Authority functions. But that
contract is expiring Friday, and Obama’s plan is to give up that authority to
ICANN.
The lawsuit
isn’t the only opposition that has arisen in the fourth quarter. A coalition of
77 national security, cybersecurity and industry leaders wrote a letter to
Defense Secretary Ash Carter and Gen. Joseph Dunford, the chairman of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff, just days ago asking for intervention.
David Limbaugh’s book chillingly
documents the destructive “transformation” of the United States — get “The
Great Destroyer: Barack Obama’s War on the Republic” “As
individuals with extensive, first-hand experience with protecting our national
security, we write to urge you to intervene in opposition to an imminent action
that would, in our judgment, cause profound and irreversible damage to the
United States’ vital interests,” the letter said.
“Indeed,
there is, to our knowledge, no compelling reason for exposing the national
security to such a risk by transferring our remaining control of the Internet
in this way at this time. In light of the looming deadline, we feel compelled
to urge you to impress upon President Obama that the contract between NTIA and
ICANN cannot be safely terminated at this point.”
The
signers included former Assistant Secretary of Defense Frank Gaffney Jr.,
former Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence Lt. Gen. William
“Jerry” Boykin (Ret.), former Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl, former Director of
the Defense Nuclear Agency Vice Adm. Robert Monroe (Ret.) and former Chief
Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York Andrew McCarthy,
among others.
They
warned: “In the absence of U.S. government involvement in IANA, it seems
possible that, over time, foreign powers – including potentially or actually
hostile ones – will be able to influence the IANA process. Even coercing the
delay in approving IP addresses could impact military capabilities. From a
broader view, given the well-documented ambition of these actors to restrict
freedom of expression and/or entrepreneurial activity on the Internet, such a
transfer of authority to ICANN could have far-reaching and undesirable
consequences for untold numbers of people worldwide.”
Just a
few days earlier, GOP senators, including Chuck
Grassley, Ted Crux, Roy Blunt, Richard Burr and Ron Johnson, released a
statement opposing the giveaway. “It is
profoundly disappointing that the Obama administration has decided to press on
with its plan to relinquish United States oversight of crucial Internet
functions, even though Congress has not given its approval. For years, there
has been a bipartisan understanding that the ICANN transition is premature and
that critical questions remain unanswered about the influence of authoritarian
regimes in Internet governance, the protection of free speech, the effect on
national security, and impacts on consumers, just to name a few,” they said.
“Without
adequate answers to these questions, it would be irresponsible to allow the
transition to occur in 15 days simply because of an artificial deadline set by
the Obama administration.
“In fact,
Democrats at both the state and national level have echoed many of these
concerns. For example, former President Bill Clinton has warned that ‘[a] lot
of people who have been trying to take this authority away from the U.S. want
to do it for the sole purpose of cracking down on Internet freedom and limiting
it and having governments protect their backsides instead of empower[ing] their
people.’ “The
issue of Internet freedom should unite us Americans – Republicans, Democrats
and independents alike.
Partisanship
and political gamesmanship have no place when it comes to the Internet, basic
principles of freedom, and the right of individuals in our great nation and
across the globe to speak online free from censorship.”
In the
lawsuit, the states warn that .gov addresses are at risk. “The NTIA currently
has the authority to authorize changes performed by ICANN. Should NTIA fail to
renew the contract and relinquish its approval authority, ICANN could take
unilateral actions adversely affecting the .gov address. The sole control that
the U.S. government would have to safeguard .gov and .mil is through an
exchange of letters, which are non-binding and lack the certainty of a legal
contract that would guarantee U.S. control and ownership in the future.”
ICANN
could, for example, the letter noted, “eventually delete the .gov top-level
domain name or transfer it to some other entity, cutting off communications
between the states and their citizens and forcing the states to use ordinary
top-level domain names (such as .com) to try to community with their citizens.”
ICANN
also “could charge additional fees,” the states noted. Congress
already has acted twice to prevent the move, adopting “appropriations riders
prohibiting any use of taxpayer funds ‘to relinquish the responsibility of the
National Telecommunications and Information Administration … with respect to
Internet domain name system functions, including responsibility with respect to
the authoritative root zone file and the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority
functions.'”
Rep. Ted Yoho, R-Fla., has been
especially critical of the transfer. His
interview with Greg Corombos of Radio America: Rep. Ted
Yoho, R-Fla., says U.S. must not relinquish control over Internet “Is this
move going to strengthen America, or is this move going to weaken it? I think
it’s very clear that if we do what President Obama wants to do, it’ll weaken
America’s stance again,” said Yoho, who is a strong supporter of the DOTCOM
Act.
That bill
passed the House of Representatives overwhelmingly last
year but didn’t get action in the Senate. “The U.S.
has been in control of the domain names of the Internet since its inception. If
we relinquish this control, it goes possibly to the U.N. Then you have
countries like Russia, China and Iran and any other country that wants to play,
and [they get to] determine how to regulate those domain names within their
countries,” Yoho explained.
He warned
of authoritarian leaders controlling what their people can access.
“I think
you’re going to see a decrease in access to the Internet, a decrease of freedom
over the Internet to an extent we have never experienced before,” he said. Judith Bergman of the Gatestone
Institute said
the move could “spell the end of the current era of free speech on the
Internet, as well as free enterprise.”
Authoritarian
governments around the world already have bolstered Bergman’s case. China
issued a statement saying, “It is necessary to ensure that United Nations plays
a facilitating role in setting up international public policies pertaining to
the Internet.”
The
Russians weighed in, arguing, “We consider it necessary to consecutively
increase the role of governments in the Internet governance, with strengthening
the activity of the International Telecommunications Union [the UNs
telecommunications arm] in this field … in the development of ethical aspects
of Internet use.” Last month, a coalition told leaders
of both parties
in Congress that it already has ordered the NTIA “not to let lapse the
government contract.”
But the
Obama administration is doing exactly that. “It is,
by its own admission, doing so as part of a drawn-out process resulting in the
decision to let the IANA contract lapse – precisely what Congress forbade NTIA
to do,” coalition members said.
“If NTIA
allows the contract to lapse, it will have violated federal law,” the letter
said. “The decision to abandon an 18-year contractual relationship governing
the Internet has obviously consumed significant NTIA resources, both to fund
outside experts and to pay for time spent on the issue and on NTIA employees
making a decision about whether the extend the contract.”
http://www.wnd.com/2016/09/hours-left-before-obamas-internet-giveaway-irreversible/
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