Ted Cruz Is Picking A Big Fight Over The Internet, And Top Republicans Are Backing Him
The former presidential hopeful and more than two dozen allies in Congress want the US to retain oversight of the Web’s domain name system, but experts say that would embolden Russia and other authoritarian governments.
posted on Sept. 14, 2016, at 5:14 p.m.
Hamza Shaban
BuzzFeed News Reporter
Republican Sen. Ted Cruz has a new battle to fight in the Senate: trying to block the long-planned transfer of the internet’s technical management from the US government to an international body. Cruz is calling the move an internet “giveaway” and warns that it will open the Web to Russian, Chinese, and Iranian manipulation. But experts say blocking the transition would actually accomplish what Cruz fears, by undermining the stability and credibility of the internet’s current, long-standing stewardship model.
The internet is a complex network beyond the control of any one country, but one part of it — its global domain naming system, which allows you to type one unique Web address that takes you to the right site no matter where you are in the world — is technically under the control of the US Commerce Department. Since 1998, the Commerce Department has been contracting out this responsibility to an international nonprofit called the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). However, the internet’s creators envisioned it as a space free from the interventions of governments — including the United States. So that vision led to plans for the Commerce Department to remove itself as the middleman and cede its management role to ICANN entirely on Oct. 1.
Sen. Cruz and his allies in Congress are arguing that if the domain name system switches to new management, antagonistic foreign governments might censor what people see online, undermining the openness of the Web. But during a contentious hearing in the Senate Wednesday, a top Commerce Department official and the President of ICANN dismissed Cruz’s concerns of Russian, Chinese, and Iranian manipulation of the Web.
Cruz has led been at the center of quixotic quests to block Obama Administration efforts before — including in 2013, when efforts to defund Obamacare led to a government shutdown — but he often did it to the chagrin of party leadership. This time, however, he’s been quite successful gathering support on Capitol Hill. Cruz counts more than two dozen lawmakers as allies in opposition to the transfer of management to ICANN, including Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn, whose office confirmed to BuzzFeed News that Republicans are working on a provision to delay the transfer by attaching a provision to a short-term spending bill that must pass by Sept. 30 for the government to remain open.
-snip-
https://www.buzzfeed.com/hamzashaban/ted-cruz-is-picking-a-big-fight-over-the-internet-and-top-re?utm_term=.kwxOReml57#.dk562W5Qkj