President Obama’s effort to transfer a final component of the Internet to international control amounts to an effort to “fix a system that ain’t broke,” critics in Congress charge, and put foreign states in a position to violate human rights around the globe.
“I think there needs to be, at least in the short term, a ripcord to pull so that we can fall back to the way things were in case we see some of these worst-case scenarios play out,” Rep. Blake Farenthold, R-Texas, told the Washington Examiner.
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Critics have been voicing similar concerns since the Department of Commerce announced in March 2014 that it would seek to transfer control of Internet Assigned Numbers Authority, the administrative agency responsible for overseeing addresses on the Web, to the Los Angeles-based Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, a global organization comprising more than 160 governments and some private stakeholders.
Proponents of the transfer have called it the best way to maintain a free and open Internet. In a February letter addressed to senators, former ICANN CEO Fadi Chehade called it one of the “clearest ways to maintain a globally interoperable, stable and secure Internet.”
He added, “I share the longstanding belief that such freedom from government control over the technical functioning and interoperability of the Internet is best achieved as the United States leads by example” by transitioning oversight.
IANA, which matches Internet protocol addresses with computers and websites and ultimately allows them to connect, performs an unseen but critical function that enables users on the Web to connect with each other.
Opponents of the transfer have expressed concerns about the fact that nefarious operators could end the traditional freedoms of the Internet, blocking users from viewing blacklisted content.
Though Farenthold said there could be some legitimacy to the idea of transferring IANA to a multi-stakeholder body with the appropriate safeguards in place, he said the administration is trying to rush the process without paying heed to those details.
“We are looking at fixing something that ain’t broken,” he said. “All you can really point to with the U.S. is some vague concern that we’ll misuse the control that we have, yet nobody can point to any significant instances of that.”
Leading Republicans in Congress have pointed in particular to China, Iran and Russia, which have all advocated for state-based control of the Web, and have more imposing censorship regimes than countries in the Western world.
“ICANN’s Beijing office is actually located within the same building as the Cyberspace Administration of China … the central agency within the Chinese government’s censorship regime,” Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, Oklahoma Sen. James Lankford and Utah Sen. Mike Lee noted in a May letter expressing their concern to Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker.
On the other side of the coin, proponents of the transition plan noted that IANA is a small agency, and that ICANN has safeguards in place to prevent a handful of governments from assuming control. That includes, for instance, a rule that would tentatively prevent any substantive regulatory changes without consensus from the group’s governing board.
“That’s ultimately accurate, but we’re down to the base, the operating parameters of the Internet at this point,” Farenthold said, “and we just need to make sure that some of the values that we as Americans see are protected.”
Farenthold pointed to the possibility of a group of stakeholders denying Israel’s existence, and doing away with their top-level country domain. “These are crazy, worst-case scenarios, but this is a crazy world that we live in,” he said.
Members of Congress have expressed similar concerns about top-level U.S. domains, including “.gov” and “.mil,” authority over which would be transferred to the international community unless legislation or the rules of the transition prevent it from happening.
Despite the concern from Congress, Commerce officials were hoping to complete the transition by the end of the year, and gave the plan a greenlight in early June. Yet it could face one more hurdle, thanks to a provision in last year’s omnibus legislation that prohibits any federal funding from being used for the transfer.
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In early June, House Subcommittee on Commerce Rep. John Culberson, R-Texas, emphasized his intent to see that rule enforced through the end of the year. “This is very important to me,” Culberson said in a handwritten note affixed to a letter to Pritzker.
Whether the administration can argue that the transfer wouldn’t require funding or attempts to proceed without congressional authorization, thereby setting up a legal battle that would continue after the president leaves office, remains to be seen. Farenthold said he wasn’t sure how the administration would act, but emphasized that he saw no need to rush.
“My crystal ball isn’t any better than your crystal ball,” Farenthold said. “I’m not necessarily saying it shouldn’t be done, I just don’t think it’s right to be done yet until everybody has gotten their arms around everything that’s going to happen and all the provisions.”
