The U.N.'s Push for Power Over the Internet

Omnifarious writes "China (along with other member nations) is trying to push a proposal through a little known UN agency called the International Telecommunications Union (aka ITU). This proposal contains a wide variety of problematic provisions that represent a huge power grab on the part of the UN, and a severe threat to a continued global and open Internet. From the article: 'Several proposals would give the U.N. power to regulate online content for the first time, under the guise of protecting against computer malware or spam. Russia and some Arab countries want to be able to inspect private communications such as email. Russia and Iran propose new rules to measure Internet traffic along national borders and bill the originator of the traffic, as with international phone calls. That would result in new fees to local governments and less access to traffic from U.S. "originating" companies such as Google, Facebook and Apple. A similar idea has the support of European telecommunications companies, even though the Internet's global packet switching makes national tolls an anachronistic idea.'"

Comments

Re:ITU regulations

[betterunixthanunix]

Judging by the fact I took about 20 downmods the second American primetime hit for daring to engage in sensible debate, I'd say that absolutely it sounds worse than the Chinese government.

Name the American law that makes criticism of the US government a crime. Americans, myself included, were outraged by the Obama administration going as far as suggesting that the government should have agents that look through blogs to "correct" statements that are not in the government's interest. There may be jingoist idiots in America, but that is a far cry from China, where the government actually employs people to decide which websites should be blocked.

Criticize America all you want; you are still free to do so. Be glad that the Chinese government does not have a say in global Internet policies, because as bad as the American approach is, the Chinese approach is far worse.

I'll admit I do struggle to see how Americans can even begin to criticse other countries for anything relating to human rights.

How about the fact that we do not arrest journalists for criticizing our government? How about the fact that it is considered outrageous for us to torture people who are not even US citizens? How about the fact that, even with the world's largest prison population, American prisons are a far cry from the sort of prisons in the middle east or Russia, or even several European nations?

American human rights violations are bad, sure. They are lightweight compared to the violations that we have seen out of other countries. In America, when you go to prison, your family knows where you are, the maximum length of your sentence, your physical condition, and so forth. In many countries, people simply disappear when they go to prison; their families have no idea how they are doing or even where they are.

I can criticize the government in America without disappearing in the middle of the night. There is no government agency for you to report my name to when I point out that America has more prisoners than any other country. In China, people who criticize the government can be reported, and face detention and "reeducation." That is the kind of difference that we are talking about.

Only one nation to date has actually forced it's internet censorship on other nations, and that's America

That is because no other nation has the power to do so. Don't think for a moment that China would hesitate to stifle foreign websites about Tibet, if they had the power to do so.

America has already created it's defacto international firewall equivalent - by outright removing DNS entries for sites it disagrees with

One single line in your system's hosts file would be enough to evade that. In China, when a website is blocked, the national firewall prevents any connection to that website from being made. The Chinese government hired tens of thousands of people to collect the IP addresses of Tor entry nodes and open proxies, and added those to the list of blocked addresses.

Let's not kid ourselves -- the US government's internet censorship is done to protect business interests. There can be no question about that. The Chinese government's censorship is to protect the power of the communist party, to prevent people from saying things that the party disapproves of (as opposed to copying media in ways that the government disapproves of), and to prevent people from finding out what the Chinese government does to its citizens. If you do not see a difference, you need your head checked.

You can't even argue the US as having the censorship moral high ground anymore, that argument has long walked.

As opposed to China? Iran? Russia? How many countries represented in the ITU are not guilty of censoring the Internet?