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August 3, 2012

Russia: UN Should Control Internet

Don’t tell Al Gore, but Russia and China are leading the charge to take custody of the internet from a handful of U.S.-based NGOs and give it to the UN.

The BBC reports that Russia has submitted a proposal to give a UN council responsibility for “allocating at least some of the internet’s addresses as well as the ‘determination of the necessary requirements’.” That last sounds vaguely ominous; what kinds of “requirements” would Putin like to place on entities looking to set up shop on the web? More:

President Vladimir Putin has signalled Russia’s final submission could go further. In 2011 he said he was keen to discuss “establishing international control over the internet using the monitoring and supervisory capabilities of the International Telecommunication Union”.

The Russia Today news service has since reported that China and India had backed this stance.

The UN, which has a deplorable record when it comes to human rights and basic freedoms, wants control over the most important communications tool in the world?  The same UN that elected Iran to the UN Arms Trade Treaty conference, appointed a Libyan representative to lead the Human Rights Commission, named Robert Mugabe its Special Tourism Envoy, and awarded a prize funded by money stolen from Equatorial Guineans by their brutal dictator? Many UN members would like nothing better than to censor or ban the irritating news stories that can so swiftly spread across the web.

Fortunately, the UN negotiation process (as dysfunctional as they come, requiring unanimous consent from however many countries take part) means that the U.S. can veto the idea.

Putin and company know this will happen and presumably plan to decry American unilateralism and dictatorial control. We hope American diplomats can somehow deny America-haters the ammunition, but one way or another, the proposal has to go. The likes of Robert Mugabe, Fidel Castro, and Kim Jong Un can do what they like to the internet within their own borders, but they should have no say whatever beyond them.

Posted in Economics & Business, Quick Takes
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  • Corlyss

    Bad idea, if for no other reason than two totalitarian regimes conspire to make it so. It would make the UN’s graftmeter explode, and once having been given the job, it could never be withdrawn.

    I repeat, bad idea on the merits and based on the origin.

  • Malesch Morocco

    And you think the Obama admin
    Istration would veto it?

    Don’t bet the house.

  • http://inthisdimension.com alex scipio

    Give it to the UN. Several patches are always in force on the current internet, it keeps running out of addresses, and if we were to design it now for the actual uses to which it has been built – far beyond the original design – it would be far more robust, faster, easire to administer, etc.

    I say give it to the UN and let America design and begin implementing a new one. Watch how long the UN version lasts…

  • Smallz

    FIRST!

    Sorry commies, we were here 1st.

  • Eurydice

    The BBC link leads to an article about Miley Cyrus – so I still don’t get how Putin thinks a resolution like this could be enforced.

  • thibaud

    Why is this Russian proposal problematic for Via Meadia?

    It wasn’t too long ago that VM was admonishing those silly liberal Americans who failed to grasp “the moral foundations of Russia’s approach” in Syria. As Mead put it in his two cheers for Putin post:

    “Washington looks particularly clueless in that it doesn’t just seem to be rejecting the Russian point of view; it seems completely unaware that such a point of view exists, and that even if the Russians don’t have the right answers, they have asked vital questions that Washington doesn’t understand.”

    As Putin and the people around him look to rebuild Russian identity and Russian policy in the wake of the Soviet collapse, the Orthodox Church is an important focus for their work. Internally, Orthodox Christianity can replace Marxism-Leninism as a philosophical basis for Russian patriotism and identity. In a country where the principle alternatives to Putinism seem to be fascism on the right and communism on the left, the importance of the Russian Orthodox Church as a mass base for conservative and nationalist but non-crazy Russian politics should not be undervalued. Externally, Orthodox Christians in the Balkans and the Middle East are eager to renew their relations with a power that sympathizes with their needs and world view. Regardless of Putin’s own religious views, an alliance with Orthodoxy is vital to any attempt to govern Russia and to rebuild its foreign influence.
    The Obama administration seems to have underestimated the depth of Russia’s commitment to its Syria policy, and even to have misunderstood the moral foundations of Russia’s approach.

  • thibaud

    Correction to above – please post shorter version (and add Preview!), below:

    Why is this Russian proposal problematic for Via Meadia?

    It wasn’t too long ago that VM was admonishing those silly liberal Americans who failed to grasp “the moral foundations of Russia’s approach” in Syria. As Mead put it in his two cheers for Putin post:

    “Washington looks particularly clueless in that it doesn’t just seem to be rejecting the Russian point of view; it seems completely unaware that such a point of view exists, and that even if the Russians don’t have the right answers, they have asked vital questions that Washington doesn’t understand.”

  • Eurydice

    @thibaud – well, Syria and the Internet are two different things. It’s not unreasonable for Prof. Mead to have different opinions about different subjects.

  • Gligor

    From a dear friend who really knows what is going on in this area: “Yes, this proposal has been around in various forms. No way will UN get to allocate IP address space – there isn’t any IPv4 left and IPv6 is fully taken care of by the five RIRs, and ICANN; thank you very much.”