President Barack Obama continues to weaken America’s place on the world stage and now he is relinquishing control of the Internet America brought to the world to the United Nations.
The U.S. government’s plan to give away authority over the Internet’s core architecture to the “global Internet community” could endanger the security of both the Internet and the U.S. — and open the door to a global tax on Web use.
Some are calling this giveaway of the Internet, Obama’s equivalent of Jimmy Carter giving away the Panama Canal. The United States has run the web well and fairly. The international community has been pressuring the US to give up the control due to the NSA scandal and now it appears that the Obama administration is caving.
The U.S. Commerce Department announced late Friday it would relinquish control of The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) — the organization charged with managing domain names, assigning Internet protocol addresses and other crucial Web functions — after its current contract expires next year.
It is claimed by the Obama administration that this move only removes federal oversight from the ICANN. However, it is very likely that the United Nations will assume control and begin taxing domain names, it will eventually expand to internet commerce. It also opens the door to greater problems with internet security.
While the U.S. has never used ICANN in a war or crisis situation, the potential exists for it to obstruct Internet commerce or deter foreign cyber attacks – powerful tools in the globalized information age.
After numerous recent widespread and successful cyber attacks against the U.S. have already been linked to emerging world powers like China, it isn’t difficult to image a future scenario in which management of ICANN could help ensure intellectual property, economic, national and international security.
