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Lawmaker pushes to sue Obama for Internet ‘surrender’


waving flagBy Joel Gehrke (@Joelmentum) • 9/9/16 Politics Reporter, The Washington Examiner

 URL of the original posting site: http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/lawmaker-pushes-to-sue-obama-for-internet-surrender/article/2601440

Some groups want the House GOP to sue President Obama over transitioning Internet control away from the U.S. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

Some groups want the House GOP to sue President Obama over transitioning Internet control away from the U.S. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

A Pennsylvania Republican and some outside groups want the House GOP to sue President Obama to prevent the transition of the Internet away from U.S. government oversight.

Rep. Mike Kelly filed a resolution Friday that, if adopted, would allow Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., to ask a judge to block the Obama administration from proceeding with the Internet transition, which is supposed to take place at the end of the month. Conservative groups and activists asked House and Senate leaders to consider such a lawsuit last month, citing provisions in recent appropriations bills that banned the Commerce Department from spending taxpayer money on the transition.

“The American people’s Congress has prohibited this hasty surrender in law and the administration must follow it,” Kelly, a three-term Republican, said Friday.

Congressional Republicans have been increasingly frustrated with President Obama‘s decision to relinquish federal control over ICANN, the California-based nonprofit that manages the databases that underpin the Internet. Kelly has previously warned that the transition might allow foreign governments to take over the .gov and .mil domains used by the federal government, while several Senate Republicans worry that the proposed alternative would allow authoritarian regimes to censor Internet websites in the United States and around the world.

“Such a rushed transition puts the Internet at serious risk of falling under the influence of bad actors abroad who despise the free flow of information,” Kelly said.

The idea of a transition has been popular in some quarters of the tech community for years, but it didn’t become U.S. policy until President Obama‘s team decided to endorse the proposal in the wake of the Edward Snowden leaks. Foreign governments were outraged to learn the extent of the National Security Agency’s surveillance apparatus and the decision helped mollify some of that anger.

“The trust in the global Internet has been punctured,” Fadi Chehade, then-CEO of ICANN, said following a 2014 meeting with then-Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff. “Now it’s time to restore this trust through leadership and institutions that can make that happen.”

Senate Republicans fear that the handoff will allow other countries to dominate, and even censor, the functioning of the Internet.OH HELL NO

“The proposal will significantly increase the power of foreign governments over the Internet, expand ICANN’s historical core mission by creating a gateway to content regulation, and embolden [its] leadership to act without any real accountability,” Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, wrote in a letter to the Commerce Department last month. “We have uncovered that ICANN’s Beijing office is actually located within the same building as the Cyberspace Administration of China, which is the central agency within the Chinese government’s censorship regime.”

Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., wants at a minimum to delay the transition, to allow for further testing, but proponents of the transition say that’s not possible.

“We can’t test extreme emergency measures such as we’ve built over any period of a few months or even a few years,” Netchoice executive director Steve DelBianco argued in a Senate hearing in May. “The notion of a delay simply sends the signal that the U.S. believes that the role we hold is so valuable that we’re not giving it up, and we’ve reiterated to China, Russia and the United Nations that they want to step into those shoes. And that’s the biggest danger of the delay.”

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On October 1st the USA Will Hand Over Control of the Internet, Endangering Free Speech – Call Congress Now!


waving flagBy Bethany Blankley September 7, 2016

URL of the original posting site: http://constitution.com/october-1-u-s-loses-control-internet-free-speech-call-congress-now/

obama- Marxist tyrantObama has once again broken federal law by instructing the U.S. Dept. of Commerce to relinquish U.S. control of the Internet’s Domain Name System to a ‘privatized’ international body, which will take place on October 1, 2016.

  • Call your senators: 202-224-3121.

  • Tell them to pass S.3034,“Protecting Internet Freedom Act.”

  • The United Nations and other countries have no authority to control access to information and eliminate Americans’rights protected by the First Amendment.

  • Obama broke the law. Americans have a constitutional right to free speech and freedom of the press.

Tyrant Obama

icann

Here’s what happened.

Congress ordered a federal agency (NTIA) to not let a government contract lapse– especially one that includes the IANA function (comparable to an “Internet phone book”), which has been managed by a non-profit organization in California since 1998. The agency chose not to comply with a Congress mandate. Meaning, a federal agency run by unelected bureaucrats ignored elected members of Congress, which is illegal. And Obama is doing nothing about it.

Assistant Secretary for Communications and Information and NTIA (National Telecommunications & Information Administration) Administrator, Lawrence E. Strickling, confirmed that “the NTIA intends to allow the IANA functions contract to expire as of October 1.” Because the agency did not comply with Congress, and failed to renew its contract before the end of this month, the government will be illegally allowing the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) to take over management of the IANA function.
(ICANN is “the private (non-government) non-profit corporation with responsibility for IP address space allocation, protocol parameter assignment, domain name system management, and root server system management functions, the services previously performed by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA).”) The Commerce Department does not have the authority to “turn over control of the Internet to ICANN.” It’s against federal law.

The Washington Examiner reports that:

“the feds are constitutionally prohibited from transferring federal property without approval from Congress. A coalition of 25 advocacy groups like Americans for Tax Reform, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, and Heritage Action sent a letter to Congress making those points last week.”

In response, the coalition of 25 advocacy groups maintain:kingobamafingerconstitution-300x204

“Congress twice enacted appropriations riders prohibiting any use of taxpayer funds ‘to relinquish the responsibility of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration [NTIA] … with respect to Internet domain name system functions, including responsibility with respect to the authoritative root zone file and the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority [IANA] functions.’

“We agree that Internet governance should work from the bottom up, driven by the global comm- unity of private sector, civil society and technical stakeholders. But that “multi-stakeholder” model is fragile. Without robust safeguards, Internet governance could fall under the sway of governments hostile to freedoms protected by the First Amendment.

“If NTIA allows the contract to lapse, it will have violated federal law (31 USC § 1341(a)(1)(A). See also 31 U.S.C § 1350).”

Sen. Ted Cruz (TX) – R introduced S.3034 on June 8, 2016. The bill has been read twice and was referred to the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, which is ridiculous. It’s now the first week in September and the Senate still has not acted. If the Senate does not act they will be allowing a government agency to again break federal law and the very system the U.S. government created. This will end the U.S. government’s “historic role as a guarantor of Internet governance,” and eliminate any constitutional protections of free speech and freedom of the press.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Bethany Blankley

Bethany Blankley is a political analyst for Fox News Radio and has appeared on television and radio programs nationwide. She writes about political, cultural, and religious issues in America from the perspective of an evangelical and former communications staffer. She was a communications strategist for four U.S. Senators, one U.S. Congressman, a former New York governor, and several non-profits. She earned her MA in Theology from The University of Edinburgh, Scotland and her BA in Political Science from the University of Maryland. Follow her @bethanyblankley facebook.com/BlankleyBethany/ & BethanyBlankley.com.

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U.S. Plans to Give Up Oversight of Web Domain Manager


The Wall Street Journal Tech Banner

 http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303546204579439653103639452?mod=WSJ_hp_LEFTTopStories&mg=reno64-wsj

Move Seen in Response to International Concern About Country’s Control Over Internet Structure

By

Gautham Nagesh

Updated March 14, 2014 7:01 p.m. ET

Joel Kjellgren, data center manager, walks in one of the server rooms at the Facebook Data Center, on Nov. 7, 2013 in Lulea, Sweden. Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

WASHINGTON—The U.S. government plans to give up control over the body that manages Internet names and addresses, a move that could bring more international cooperation over management of the Web, but will make some U.S. businesses nervous. The Commerce Department said Friday it plans to relinquish its oversight of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or Icann, which manages a number of technical functions that serve as signposts to help computers locate the correct servers and websites. The action is viewed as a response to increasing international concern about U.S. control over the Internet’s structure, particularly in light of the recent disclosures about surveillance by the NSA and other U.S. intelligence agencies. Other governments have complained that the department’s contract with Icann gives the U.S. unique influence over the Web, which it could use for a wide variety of purposes. In response to those concerns, the Obama administration is convening a process to create a new oversight structure for Icann when the current contract runs out in September 2015. Alan Marcus, senior director of the World Economic Forum, said “the NSA tarnished the U.S. stewardship” of the Web. Mr. Marcus said the U.S. needs to relinquish control over the Web before new leadership can emerge. “There are real issues that get clouded” by U.S. leadership, he said. The action had been debated among technologists and policy makers, but the prospect of the U.S. relinquishing control concerns some businesses because of the potential for censorship. “If you hand over domain-name registration to someone who doesn’t want certain classes of domains registered, then you’re setting up a censorship structure,” said Bill Reinsch, president of the National Foreign Trade Council, which represents businesses. In recent years U.S. policy makers have pushed back against calls from nations including China and Russia for the U.N. and ITU to have a greater role in overseeing the structure of the Web. U.S. officials have previously argued that such an arrangement would lead to the repression of free speech and the Balkanization of the Internet. “We thank the U.S. government for its stewardship, its guidance over the years. We thank them today for trusting the global community to replace this stewardship with the appropriate accountability mechanisms,” Icann CEO Fadi Chehadé said. Icann will launch the process later later this month at Singapore event and collect input throughout the year, with an aim of having the new governance structure completed by September 2015 when the existing contract with the Commerce Department expires. Anyone with an interest in how the Internet is managed is invited to take part. According to Larry Strickling, administrator for the Commerce Department’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration the new governance model must ensure that Icann is free from government influence. The plan must also fulfill several other conditions, such as preserving the security and stability of the Internet while keeping it open and free from censorship. Until 1998, the functions were managed by Jon Postel, a computer scientist at the University of Southern California, one of the early pioneers of the World Wide Web. Upon Postel’s death in 1998, the Commerce Department issued a contract to Icann to take over those functions, making Icann the primary body in charge of setting policy for Internet domains and addresses. Mr. Strickling said the U.S. always viewed its role as overseeing Icann as temporary. “The Internet was built to be borderless and this move toward a more multistakeholder model of governance creates an opportunity to preserve its security, stability and openness,” said Vint Cerf, Google vice president and chief Internet evangelist, in a statement. Some Silicon Valley executives support the move, which they view as inevitable in light of the concerns over the NSA disclosures. “I’m not sure they have any choice,” said Peter Schwartz, senior vice president of global government relations for software maker Salesforce.com Inc., who heard a presentation from Icann Thursday in Silicon Valley. “They’re better off getting out ahead of it.” —William Mauldin contributed to this article. Write to Gautham Nagesh at gautham.nagesh@wsj.com

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