The International Telecommunication Union wants to get its hooks into the Internet, and free speech could be at risk.
The ITU, a United Nations agency, is holding a conference in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, from December 3-14 about global regulation of the internet. International conferences are often about superficial glad-handing at cocktail parties. The ramifications of this meeting could be far more serious, however, given that the UN is dominated by corrupt dictatorships who would like nothing better than to censor and tax web traffic.
Perhaps the main reason why the internet has become such a huge success is that is operations have been developed by non-governmental agencies and groups.
The Wall Street Journal explains why international governmental regulation of the internet is a bad idea:
“Having the Internet rewired by bureaucrats would be like handing a Stradivarius to a gorilla. The Internet is made up of 40,000 networks that interconnect among 425,000 global routes, cheaply and efficiently delivering messages and other digital content among more than two billion people around the world, with some 500,000 new users a day … The self-regulating Internet means no one has to ask for permission to launch a website, and no government can tell network operators how to do their jobs.”
What’s more concerning is that the Obama administration is apparently hedging about how forcefully it will oppose an international treaty regulating the internet.
Google, which has been way too cozy with the administration, has nonetheless launched an online petition to support internet freedom for the two billion users around the world:
“A free and open world depends on a free and open Internet. Governments alone, working behind closed doors, should not direct its future. The billions of people around the globe who use the Internet should have a voice.”
Watch FNC’s Megyn Kelly discuss possible UN control over the internet with Brooke Goldstein and a Google video declaring that a free and open world depends upon free and open internet:
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