Republican senator and failed presidential candidate Ted Cruz is on a mission to save the internet. He is demanding that the US should keep control of ICANN, the organisation which runs the internet鈥檚 address book, and is even threatening to shut down the federal government if he doesn鈥檛 get his way.
If a company wants to plug computers into the internet, it can ask ICANN for a block of numbers that describe their place on the network, known as IP addresses. On top of those numbers, the company can also ask for web addresses, like google.com, which make it easier for people to find its services.
ICANN is based in California 鈥� a historical by-product of the US being the birthplace of the internet 鈥� and holds a contract with the US Department of Commerce to manage these and other functions. That contract runs out at midnight on 30 September, after which ICANN will no longer be legally bound to the US government. This is what Ted Cruz is railing against, with a threat to amend a crucial government-funding bill to include a block on the transfer. He successfully used the same tactic in a fight over health reforms in 2013, leading to two-week government shutdown.
Advertisement
So a digital Rolodex has become a political football. Cruz has latched on to the impending administrative change, calling it 鈥淥bama鈥檚 Internet Giveaway鈥�. A that 鈥渢he president鈥檚 radical proposal would remove First Amendment protections from the Internet and empower authoritarian regimes like Russia, China, and Iran to censor speech online.鈥�
Clerical role
During a Senate hearing on Wednesday, chaired by Cruz, the senator talked up the value of ICANN, saying that the internet had become an 鈥渙asis of freedom鈥� under US guardianship. But Cruz鈥檚 mistake is to think that ICANN and its government contract has much power over the internet as things stand. Chris Coons, the Democratic senator from Delaware, pointed out that ICANN鈥檚 role is more clerical than regulatory. The 鈥渋nternet鈥� that Cruz seeks to retain control of is already a distributed network of networks, one not overseen from the central hub of ICANN.
For instance, ICANN can do nothing about proposals like those put forward by the UK government this week to . The idea is that UK internet service providers would opt to use an internet address book crafted by the National Cyber Security Centre, a spin-off from GCHQ, the UK鈥檚 spy agency.
This address book would not allow UK internet users to access websites that NCSC and GCHQ have identified as harmful or dangerous, ideally protecting them from scams. But it鈥檚 not clear how the decision to blacklist sites will be taken, leading to .
That already happens in China, where ICANN is powerless against the nation鈥檚 鈥淕reat Firewall鈥�, which prevents internet users from accessing many mainstream services. Iran also censors the internet within its borders, through its control of the physical infrastructure that data flows through. Earlier this month, Gabon shut down internet access to the entire country, again thanks to control of the physical infrastructure.
Enemy of the net?
Nor is the US any great champion of internet freedom itself. Reporters Without Borders, the press freedom campaign group, has classed the US as an 鈥溾�� since 2014, along with countries like China, North Korea and Syria. Ironically, Cruz cited RWB鈥檚 criticism of China鈥檚 web censorship numerous times during Wednesday鈥檚 hearing.
If we are to take Cruz鈥檚 pleas for freedom and good governance at face value, perhaps 鈥渃ontrol鈥� should be handed over to a country like Iceland, which consistently ranks first in measures of internet freedom. The fact is that all such handovers, including the forthcoming change, are symbolic and technically largely irrelevant. However, they are politically important: many fear that if the ICANN handover does not go through, the organisation will lose the trust of its members, and China and Russia will end up gaining more control, which could further fracture the net along national lines.
There are also questions to be asked over ICANN鈥檚 effectiveness. It employs roughly 3000 internet governance professionals, but does nothing to tackle the real problems we see online 鈥� a lack of competition for Silicon Valley鈥檚 internet giants and an inability for individuals to control their own data.
And despite the hot air, ICANN will remain headquartered in Los Angeles, California, just down the road from Silicon Valley. The organisation will remain subject to Californian 鈥� and ultimately American 鈥� law. If Cruz really wanted to protect internet freedoms and rights, he would be thinking about and arguing for new ways to promote competition online and give users control, not getting obsessed over minor technicalities of an existing sideshow.
