If you think Facebook has problems, they’re nothing compared to the fiasco at the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. Americans should be far more alarmed about what’s happening with the obscure, private California company that oversees the Internet’s backbone.
ICANN’s gross mismanagement of behind-the-scenes technical operations threatens the security, interoperability, and openness of the entire Internet, industry experts warn. Unlike the Facebook situation, however, there may not be much lawmakers can do.
That’s because 18 months ago, America surrendered oversight of ICANN. Despite earlier imposing network neutrality regulations to keep U.S. Internet service providers honest, then-President Barack Obama paradoxically decided ICANN was better off without any government intervention. ICANN now has absolute control of key Internet infrastructure and answers to no one.
Proponents insisted this power shift was necessary because the world no longer trusted the U.S. to oversee the Internet after the Edward Snowden scandal. There was a risk that other countries could form an alternate Internet rather than participate in our existing global, interconnected cyberspace.
The Internet is “best protected by geeks” — like Mark Zuckerberg? — “rather than any government,” the media argued. It’s no big deal, academics said. This will “not affect Internet users and their use of the Internet,” ICANN assured.
But, just as I forewarned in a Washington Examiner column, absolute power has corrupted ICANN absolutely. The Internet is drastically changing for the worse under its stewardship. And the transfer likely can’t be reversed, concede advisers for President Trump, who campaigned against it.
ICANN’s core values have been compromised since it’s no longer subject to U.S. jurisdiction and the First Amendment. Who.is, ICANN’s worldwide database of who owns which website and how to contact them, soon won’t be publicly available anymore, despite strong objections from U.S. officials. Businesses and law enforcement rely on these open records to track down scammers, pirates, child pornographers, and other bad actors online.
Mission creep could worsen at ICANN. A growing number of activist-types inside the organization endanger its mission of managing Internet traffic in a neutral way.
“The company started hiring the wrong type of people,” explained Domain Name Wire’s editor Andrew Allemann. “It started hiring people that don’t want to do boring work. People who want to make a name for themselves. It hired people who want to be at the helm of a growing organization that takes on an important role in the world … Hiring people that want to make a difference is usually a good thing, but not for an organization that should be boring.”
With company culture becoming more woke, might an employee decide to make a name for themselves by following the lead of the Twitter employee who temporarily deactivated Trump’s account? An ICANN employee could conceivably punish Russia for election meddling or “resist” a democratic nation that elects a controversial leader by disabling their Internet domain. Individual employees have the power to bring the entire Internet to its knees, Business Insider revealed.
ICANN has long tried to play the role of Switzerland in virtual world conflicts, maintaining that it “is not the Internet content police.” But digital rights group Electronic Frontier Foundation cautioned that censorship is a “real concern.”
A more pressing concern is ICANN’s financial woes. According to Allemann, ICANN is struggling with a “budget crisis.” Revenues haven’t kept up with ballooning expenses, highlighted by an ever-expanding bureaucracy that’s handsomely compensated with high salaries, generous benefits, and essentially “free vacations.”
Could greed affect ICANN officials’ handling of important issues, such as whether the disputed dot-amazon domain be given to Brazil’s rain forest or to Amazon’s Jeff Bezos?
There may be insufficient checks and balances to prevent such corruption. ICANN boasts of its multi-stakeholder governance model, which solicits input from government representatives, tech experts, and others. But ICANN’s board can decide to take their advice or not. Sometimes the board disregards even its own bylaws, an independent review found!
It’s no wonder that a mutiny is underway. Now that ICANN is no longer covered by the American flag, many powerful nations see the Internet’s emperor has no clothes.
The European Union has “started rejecting the organization’s authority,” online tech publication The Register reported. Brazil officials told ICANN that only governments control the Internet. Russia announced it’s developing its own Internet that will operate separate of ICANN’s. Brazil, India, China, Turkey, and South Africa could join them in this “splinternet,” leaving Americans cut off from half of the world’s Internet users.
“ICANN lost 99 percent of its spine when the U.S. relinquished control over it. It now lost the remaining 1 percent,” observed industry analyst Theo Develegas of Acroplex.
So, what was the point of Obama’s initiative, again? It turns out, if you like your Internet the way it is, you can’t keep it.
Mark Grabowski is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He is an internet law professor at Adelphi University in Garden City, N.Y.
