[LINK] The Hypocrisy Of US Congress: As Big A Threat To The Internet As The UN They're Condemning

[Frank O'Connor]

Well Yeah,

But to be fair, whilst disparate voices in Congress have been raised concerning various measures to constrain the freedom of the Internet (on questionable justifications such as the abortive 'War on Terror', security, copyright protection and IP) not much has actually happened. SOPA, CISPA and other measures were defeated by public campaigns (or more accurately by the light of adverse publicity being shone on various Congress people and Senators), the NSA and CIA have been stymied in the more draconian measures they wanted to take for monitoring Internet traffic (and also I believe by lack of technical capability ... I doubt they have the hardware to do the traffic analysis they would like to do) by the US constitution (which, unlike most other jurisdictions, actually enshrines free speech and many individual rights applicable to network users in its Amendments).

That said, the American Constitution has degenerated to a mere statement of good intent on numerous occasions over the last two hundred years when it has been violated.

For mine ... as long as Congress and the President continue to operate under the light of public scrutiny then the various freedoms enshrined under the Constitution will continue to apply. The Constitution may have been ignored over the years ... but these bozos still have to get elected, and doing things that are not in the interests of their electorate tends to be frowned upon by same.

The ITU on the other hand reports only to its members behind closed doors and (peripherally) to the UN, has a record of putting licenses and moolah before principle, has been angling for a seat at the Internet table for years (and if the recent report concerning the documents unearthed is in any way correct) has a long term plan for taking control of same).  The ITU has a standards process that enshrines politics, religion and economic constraints and influences as part of its processes ... which I'd suggest isn't really terrific in the context of developing network standards and developing and maintaining a robust Internet.

The ITU represents Big Comms and the 'Boys Club' standards that have maintained their monopolies over the last 100 years. The NBN is being built in this country by the government, because Big Comms has been quite happy charging a premium rent for obsolete connections and had no plans to upgrade same because of the lucrative amounts that accrued to them through monopoly controlling the last yard. I don't want these lads controlling in any way the Internet.

If the ITU did take over the functionality of ICANN, or the IETF, who here thinks that they wouldn't institute a charging regime that maximised their take from domain names (yes, ICANN is no White Knight ... but once governments took an interest in the Net and ISOC and others caved it was inevitable), assigning blocks of IP numbers, approving changes to IP standards at the Application and Transport Layers, and/or assigning ports for use by same? The bottom line is that the torturous ITU standards process (read licensing regime) would probably ensure that Big Metal resumed its various monopolies in the new environment of the Net ... and the expense and inconvenience of that would be borne by all users.

Finally ... despite what the statements below say ... two wrongs don't make a right.

Just my 2 cents worth ...
---
On 22/06/2012, at 9:11 AM, Kim Holburn wrote:

> http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120619/22411019394/hypocrisy-congress-as-big-threat-to-internet-as-un-theyre-condemning.shtml
> 
>> The Hypocrisy Of Congress: As Big A Threat To The Internet As The UN They're Condemning
>> 
>> from the we-don't-regulate-the-internet,-except-when-we-do dept
>> 
>> While it's great to see Congress continue to speak out against the UN's dangerous efforts to tax and track the internet to help out governments and local telco monopolies, it's pretty ridiculous for Congress to pretend that it's declaring "hands off the internet" when it has its own hands all over the internet these days. As Jerry Brito and Adam Theirer write, over at the Atlantic, if Congress is really serious about supporting a free and open internet, it should look in the mirror first:
>> 
>>> The fear that the ITU might be looking to exert greater control over cyberspace at the conference has led to a rare Kumbaya moment in U.S. tech politics. Everyone -- left, right, and center -- is rallying around the flag in opposition to potential UN regulation of the Internet. At a recent congressional hearing, one lawmaker after another lined up and took a turn engaging in the UN-bashing. From the tone of the hearing, and the language of the House resolution, we are being asked to believe that "the position of the United States Government has been and is to advocate for the flow of information free from government control."
>>> 
>>> If only it were true. The reality is that Congress increasingly has its paws all over the Internet. Lawmakers and regulators are busier than ever trying to expand the horizons of cyber-control across the board: copyright mandates, cybersecurity rules, privacy regulations, speech controls, and much more.
>>> 
>>> Earlier this year, Congress tried to meddle with the Internet's addressing system in order to blacklist sites that allegedly infringe copyrights -- a practice not unlike that employed by the Chinese to censor political speech. The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) may have targeted pirates, but its collateral damage would have been the very "stable and secure" Internet Congress now wants "free from government control." A wave of furious protests online forced Congress to abandon the issue, at least for the moment.
>> 
>> It goes on to discuss other proposals to regulate parts of the internet, including CISPA and other online security laws. Of course, in each of these cases, the politicians in Congress will come out with a litany of reasons why it "makes sense" (or more accurately "we have to do something!") to pass these laws. But that pre-supposes that all those countries that Congress is now condemning for wanting more ability to spy on and control citizens don't have reasons to do so. Given the increasing evidence that the US government, via the NSA, is already spying on wide swaths of the population -- and Congress' apparent total lack of concern about this, it's incredibly hypocritical to pretend that the US government supports a free and open internet with privacy protections for citizens, when its own actions reveal something very, very different.
> 
> -- 
> Kim Holburn
> IT Network & Security Consultant
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