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 documents and proposals being distributed to be shielded 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 institutions, 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 document:
• “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 Assigned 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 institutions, including ICANN, oversees the Web’s management and its technical standards.
The Russian and Chinese justification for Internet censorship—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 cyberspace as well as key information and network infrastructure from threats, interference, and sabotage attacks.”21
This statement comes from the government that, more than any other, tries to interfere with and sabotage the Internet. Beijing employs tens of thousands of specially trained hackers whose job is to pry loose military and technological secrets from American and European governments and companies. Now this Internet pirate-regime is calling for greater “security”!
But the reality, of course, is that the only “hostile behavior” or “act of aggression” that is likely to invade Chinese cyberspace is the truth. Facts, accurate reporting, correct data, and public debate are the only acts of aggression China is trying to regulate. Indeed, China wants the ITU to collect IP addresses of Internet users so it can identify dissidents, whom it will move to suppress.
AMERICA SEEMS TO BE ACQUIESCING
As you are reading these outrageous proposals, you are probably saying to yourself what we said when we first saw them—that the United States and the European Union would never permit these changes and regulations to take effect.
But not so fast. Crovitz reports that while the leaked documents suggest that US negotiators are objecting to the regulatory changes behind closed doors, they are doing so “politely.”22
Very politely. Apparently, the US called the Chinese proposals for Internet control “both unnecessary and beyond the appropriate scope” of UN regulation. Then, to soften the blow, the leaked document notes that “the US looks forward to a further explanation from China with regard to the proposed amendments, and we note that we may have further reaction at that time.”23
American delegates also objected to proposals to give the ITU a role in regulating Internet content, tamely noting that they do “not believe” the ITU can play such a role.
Crovitz writes that the American objections are “weak responses even by Obama administration standards.”24
From Washington, the Obama administration’s response to the Internet governance proposals has been muted and laggard. Ambassador Phil Verveer, deputy assistant secretary of state for international communications and information policy, noted that some of the pending proposals, if adopted, “could limit the Internet as an open and innovative platform by potentially allowing governments to monitor and restrict content or impose economic costs upon international data flows.”25
But, in the next breath, he denied that any of the pending proposals would give the ITU “direct Internet governance authority.”26
Verveer’s circumspection in attacking the regulatory proposals—and his use of wording such as “could limit” and “potentially allow”—indicates less than hard and fast opposition. And the administration’s willingness to keep secret the negotiations themselves suggests that Hillary Clinton’s State Department and Barack Obama’s White House may be slender reeds to rely on in keeping the Internet open and free.
Both Secretary of State Clinton and President Obama owe us an explanation of why they countenanced secrecy in these negotiations during which our free speech is on the line!
Indeed, as of this writing, the only statement from the administration on the possible UN Internet controls came from a May 2, 2012, blog entry by the White House’s Office of Science and Technology Policy, which read: “Centralized control [of the Internet] would threaten the ability of the world’s citizens to freely connect and express themselves by placing decision-making power in the hands of global leaders who have demonstrated a clear lack of respect for the right of free speech.”27