As predicted ....
In the first Internet governance conference since the Obama administration announced it would turn over control of the Internet to international authority, multiple governments made not-so-subtle advances toward exercising their control over the future of the Web
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“We would discourage meeting participants from debating the reach or limitations of state sovereignty in Internet policy,” the U.S. State Department said ahead of the NETMundial Global Multistakeholder Meeting on the Future of Internet Governance in Sao Paulo, Brazil last week. Regardless, that’s exactly what representatives from some of the 80 countries in attendance wanted to talk about, according to Wall Street Journal columnist L. Gordon Crovitz.
“The participation of governments should occur with equality so that no country has more weight than others,” Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff said during the opening of the conference.
The Russian representative followed up by objecting to “the control of one government,” and called on the United Nations to decide “international norms and other standards on Internet governance” — a sentiment that echoed Russian President Vladimir Putin’s assertion last week that the Internet was a “CIA project,” and that Russia “must purposefully fight for [its] interests.”
“National sovereignty should rule Internet policy and governance,” the Chinese representative responded. “Each government should build its own infrastructure, undertake its own governance and enforce its own laws.”
A representative from Saudi Arabia agreed, saying ”International public policy in regard to the Internet is the right of governments and that public policy should be developed by all governments on an equal footing.”
India’s representative said multiple governments taking a role in Internet governance is ”an imperative that can’t be ignored,” while the European Commission’s said ”The Internet is now a global resource demanding global governance.”
The conference was originally intended to address the global concerns raised by the year-long revelations detailing the length and breadth of U.S. National Security Agency bulk surveillance programs — the same reason many speculate the Obama administration decided to suddenly cede Internet governance to the “global multi-stakeholder community.”
