Hello everybody on this website, however many there are of you. This is my final research essay for my english class that got an A+. My professor informed me that it was very educational and she learned quite a bit from reading it, so she suggested I share it with as many people as possible. Enjoy!

The US Government and The Internet: Should They Have Control?

The Internet over the past few decades has become more and more impactful in modern society; it is where most people get their news, or use it to do their jobs. It affects our lives in many ways, even if we do not realize it. The biggest part the Internet has in the present time is allowing us to see and talk to family and friends over facetime or cell phone and getting essentials by ordering them online. Since the Internet is such an important part of our lives, should the US Government have the power to regulate and control it?

The United States first created the Internet back in January 1983 and held most of the responsibilities until about a few years ago, when they transferred power over to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). ICANN oversees the basics of the Internet: IP address, Domain Name System, and network protocol number assignments. “In this view Internet governance relates to the control over the resources that makes these interconnections possible: critical Internet resources such as domain names, IP addresses (equivalent to telephone numbers in the telephone system), and the protocols through which the communications takes place.” (Purkayastha & Bailey 1)

There is a drawback to having a private company have control over the backbone of the internet however, they do not have all the means and income a government would in order to keep the internet safe and secure. “A more pressing concern is ICANN’s financial woes. ICANN is struggling with what watchdogs call a “budget crisis.”” (Grabowski) Grabowski says this could affect Americans’ right to freedom of speech, which is a gift not many countries in the world have, some observers contend that ICANN’s core values have been compromised since it is no longer in the U.S. jurisdiction and therefore in the jurisdiction of the First Amendment, a federal constitutional right that provides freedom of speech. “Free speech: ICANN has instituted a mandatory dispute resolution policy that serves to limit critical speech. An analysis of case law under the Uniform Domain Name Resolution Policy (UDRP) demonstrates that numerous complainants have used domain name challenges as part of an attempt to silence critics. Further, ICANN policy prohibits anonymous ownership of websites.” (Purkayastha & Bailey 1)

The US Government is considering taking back control of what it gave ICANN because of these concerns, and many people agree with this. “But it is understandable why the U.S. government may want to backtrack. Since the handover, many experts argue that ICANN has fallen short of meeting its goals.” (Grabowski). Countries are also losing respect for ICANN, With the European Union rejecting it’s authority and Brazilian Officials apparently telling ICANN only governments can control the Internet. ICANN has become weaker and weaker in keeping the internet the same for everyone. “It seems that with the U.S. no longer backing ICANN, the organization is being easily bullied by other nations to bend to their will. ICANN lost 99% of its spine when the U.S. relinquished control over it.” (Grabowski) In the modern state of US relations with foreign nations like China and Russia this will cause some very big issues that could impact the globe.

Such the case is with the app Tik Tok, which at the moment is very popular among Americans. The main concern the US Government has with Tik Tok is that the company who owns it is based in China, where by Communist China Law companies are required to share data they collect from their consumers to the Chinese Government. “Like other social networking apps, both TikTok and WeChat collect extensive data on their users, and the core American concern appears to be that the Chinese government will be able to access this data and potentially leverage it for espionage or blackmail.” (Gertz 1) At the moment the US Government has only two ways to get rid of threats such as Tik Tok. The first Gertz says is the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), which is an interagency committee with authority to review, block, and where necessary compel divestment of foreign acquisitions of U.S. businesses. The second, which according to Gertz, the Trump Administration used/was going to use, is the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), designed to allow presidents to respond to emergency national security concerns. However, even if the government goes through with this it will not permanently get rid of Tik Tok. Gertz says that the ban would mostly only block new downloads and updates of WeChat or Tik Tok from any app stores within the U.S., but would not cut off access overnight. This means that the two ways available to the US Government of getting rid of such threats as Tik Tok and We Chat are very inefficient.

Jim Harper compares if the US Government had control over phone lines to if they have control over the Internet. Harper argues that if the US Government had control over phone lines, they could listen in on your conversations legally and block phone communication out of a building or complex. They could do the same with your Internet. Congress considered two bills nicknamed SOPA and PIPA, the Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect IP Act. “One of the major ideas behind SOPA and PIPA is to cut Internet sites that violate copyright out of the domain name system.” (Harper 1) The main goal for these acts was they would have required service providers to “black out” Domain Names, or in other words websites, that violated copyrights and other laws. The concern of these Acts was how much of a burden would be placed on the Internet Service Providers to regulate the websites they oversee. If these regulations and overseeing is not done correctly, the right to Freedom of Speech could be violated. “Blacking out an entire building — just like a website — would cut off the lawful communications right along with the unlawful ones. It’s through‐​the‐​looking‐​glass information control, with enormous potential to obstruct entirely lawful communications and impinge on First Amendment rights.” (Harper 1) Harper says that the SOPA and PIPA bills threaten websites such as Craigslist and Wikipedia, and will in time threaten the core of the Internet. “The Internet is not the government’s to regulate. It is an agreement on a set of protocols — a language that computers use to talk to one another. That language is the envelope in which our communications — our First‐​Amendment‐​protected speech — travels in hundreds of different forms.” (Harper 1)

The NSA (National Security Agency) said they use the Internet as a surveillance tool to act against terrorism. “The most commonly used argument to justify mass surveillance of the kind undertaken by the NSA (as well as its British equivalent, the General Communications Headquarters—GCHQ) is the protection of civilians against political violence (or terrorism).” (Purkayastha & Bailey 1) The Snowden revelations are evidence that Edward Snowden gave newspapers of the NSA’s dealings with surveillance and spying, both on foreign countries and targets, as well as people in the US. “We already know of the United States and Canada spying on the Brazilian oil company Petrobras and the Ministry of Mines and Energy (which were involved in the auction of oil fields of the coast of Brazil), and the weakening and hacking of the SWIFT network (which is used by finance majors such as VISA and Mastercard for international settlements).” (Purkayastha & Bailey 1) However according to Purkayastha & Bailey, US senators Ron Wyden and Mark Udall scrutinized confidential documents of the intelligence agencies and reported that the list of phone records the NSA had collected played little to no role in the disruption of terrorist plots. There is even more concern, as Purkayastha & Bailey say that big global U.S. corporations, such as AT&T, Verizon, Microsoft, Google, etc….are deeply implicated in the NSA’s dragnet surveillance. We know that currently ICANN controls the backbone of the Internet, but back when the US Government mainly controlled it, they abused and used it to their advantage. “The unilateral control of the DNS system by the United States is problematic for a variety of reasons. The most important of these is that it enables the U.S. government to control the creation and deletion of online property. We have seen instances of the U.S. government or courts forcing registries the world over to remove domain names from the addressing system. This is what happened, for example, with Wikileaks and ‘.iq’ before the Iraq war.” (Purkayastha & Bailey 1)

In conclusion, I am convinced that ICANN should not be left by itself to control the backbone of the Internet, as it is clear that ICANN alone is unable to sustain stability in the Internet. I have mixed feelings with the Snowden revelations. It is illegal what Edward did and by definition he committed treason against his country and government. To an extent the public should not know certain information and dealings of the US Government. I would have no problem with the NSA surveilling if it was proved they were using it to stop terrorist attacks and other National Security breaches, and it was not being abused for other uses. Therefore it is also clear that the US Government should not be trusted with control of the Internet. My solution is that an organization like the UN should be made, where each country in the world has a representative present at discussions and a say in the direction the Internet goes in. There is one fact that most people can agree on: the thought of governments being able to use the Internet to spy and gather information on you is scary. The need for a secure, unbiased, and team driven Internet is now more than ever. This issue is one of many in the world, and only time will tell what will be the consequences of our actions. But what other options are available to us? Should we create another organization like the UN? Or maybe merge discussions about the Internet into the UN? Whatever happens, we can only hope that our world leaders will make the right choice in the present, to give us a good future.

---

Works Cited

Gertz,Geoffrey. “Why Is The US Government Banning TikTok And WeChat?” The Brookings, August 2020. https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2020/08/07/why-is-the-trump-administration-banning-tiktok-and-wechat/

Harper, Jim. “The Internet Is Not Government’s to Regulate.” Orange County Register, January 19 2012. https://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/internet-is-not-governments-regulate

Mark Grabowski, Should the U.S. Reclaim Control of the Internet? Evaluating ICANN’s Administrative Oversight Since the 2016 Handover, NEB. L. REV. BULL. (Aug. 6, 201, https://lawreview.unl.edu/Should-the-U.S.-Reclaim-Control-of-the-Internet%3F

Purkayastha, Prabir & Bailey, Rishab. “U.S. Control of the Internet, Problems Facing the Movement to International Governance.” The Monthly Review, July 7 2014. https://monthlyreviewarchives.org/index.php/mr/article/view/MR-066-03-2014-07_7