By the end of this week, the Obama administration will give the keys of the internet to "the global internet community."
The lightly regulated core of the internet, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) and the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA), would be ceded to other governments which mostly want closure or censorship.
Formed in 1998 as a nonprofit corporation and overseen by the U.S. Commerce Department, ICANN coordinates the internet's naming system. The government's contract with ICANN ends Friday, which means the nonprofit becomes independent. Opponents of this transition, including Texas U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, have argued that allowing ICANN to become independent will allow other governments to exert undue influence on the internet.
Allowing the transition to move forward is consistent with Barack Obama's globalism, Hillary Clinton's global initiative and George Soros' globalist agenda. The only thing worse than a government monopoly is a totally unregulated one. But don't worry; it would not be for long. China wants to control the internet; Vladimir Putin has announced his desire to gain control of it.
Why change a successful model for one that can get us into a fight with Russia and China? We created it and have built so much of our business and information technology on it, to put it out there for the world to fight over is not sane.
Lawrence Strickling, assistant secretary of commerce, told Congress in June he had no vision of how other governments could seize control of the internet as a whole.
As a whole? I don't think Congress or intelligent Americans are fooled by that tricky phrase. What this really is about is delaying domain name approvals, making English a minor language in searches, setting a registry we can't use, raising charges for access, timing of access and cyber attacks. Saudi Arabia wants to prevent use of .wine, .gay, .Muslim, .catholic, .baby, to name a few. A denial of information to citizens would be expanded to the world if Russia, China and a host of other dictatorial governments had more influence over ICANN and its operations.
A change in oversight could send users to the wrong website or no website. IP addresses could need approval for certain posts, and interactions might need approval from authorities. The fight against cyberterrorism on American business, U.S. government or even the grid would be more than compromised.
This decision does not need to be partisan; a host of Republicans and Democrats support America in charge of the internet.
Nancy Pelosi said this summer that "she thought the system as it was running was doing a fine job."
Taking the U.S. out of the equation will not solve political infighting. It will only make the fight bigger until maybe the United Nations gets it. Maybe that's Obama's end game since many have argued that he wants to be secretary general. His solution to a problem seems to make it bigger.
The system is not broken but soon will be if Congress does not act. Congress can still stop this. It has the power to defund any act or any department. If Congress is sincere in protecting this valuable part of America, it will.
We don't get the opportunity to weigh in very often. We can watch as the institutions in our country dissolve before our eyes, or we can act.
Let your representative and senator know where you stand on this issue. I would rather read it did not happen than see the results.
Jim Folkner is a local businessman.