A federal government agency has been illegally spending taxpayer money to develop a plan to transfer control of the Internet away from the U.S. government, according to a pair of top Republicans.
Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., and Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, echoed other lawmakers who fear that the impending transfer will allow foreign governments with a history of human rights abuses to gain influence over the management of the Internet.
But the lawmakers, who chair the Judiciary Committees in their respective chambers of Congress, raised two legal objections about the transfer in a letter to the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA).
Congress barred that agency from using public money to facilitate the Internet transfer in the omnibus spending bill that passed last December, but the agency has continued to work on the project.
“[I]t is a violation of federal law for an officer or employee of the United States government ‘to make or authorize an expenditure or obligation exceeding an amount available in an appropriation or fund for the expenditure or obligation,'” Goodlatte and Grassley wrote in a Monday letter to NTIA assistant secretary Lawrence Strickling. “It is troubling that NTIA appears to have taken these actions in violation of this prohibition.”
The lawmakers also suggested that the Obama administration doesn’t have the authority to proceed with the transfer, because the unilateral hand-over of technological systems related to the Internet that were developed by the U.S. government might require congressional approval. That question has been debated since at least 2000, when the Government Accountability Office issued a report on a potential transfer, although there is no definitive answer.
“[W]e remain concerned that NTIA’s planned transition … may potentially relinquish ownership of United States property,” the lawmaker wrote. “It does not make sense to proceed without definitive answers to this question, and doing so may possibly violate the Constitution.”
