Obama Surrendering Internet to Foreign Powers

[OakRidgeStars]

How is this topic gun related?. Try surfing to gun-friendly websites like this one if the Internet is handed over to the gun-hating United Nations.

---

http://www.newsmax.com/Headline/obama-i ... /id/348514

Obama Surrendering Internet to Foreign Powers
Sunday, January 31, 2010 06:41 PM
By: Bradley A. Blakeman

Without the ingenuity of America’s brightest minds and the investment of U.S. taxpayer dollars, there would be no Internet, as we now know it today.

Now, the Obama administration has moved quietly to cede control of the Web from the United States to foreign powers.

Some background: The Internet came into being because of the genius work of Americans Dr.Robert E. Kahn and Dr. Vinton G. Cerf. These men, while working for the Department of Defense in the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency in the early 1970s, conceived, designed, and implemented the idea of "open-architecture networking."

This breakthrough in connectivity and networking was the birth of the Internet.

These two gentlemen had the vision and the brainpower to create a worldwide computer Internet communications network that forever changed the world and how we communicate in it.

They discovered that providing a person with a unique identifier (TCP/IP)that was able to be recognized and interact through a network of servers would allow users to communicate with others.

The servers woulduse a series of giant receivers to recognize the identifier and connect networks to networks, passing on information from computer to computer in a seamless real-time exchange of information. This new process of communication became know as the "information super highway," aka, the Internet.

Now for the bad news: In an effort to show the world how inclusive, sharing, cooperative, and international America can be, the Obama administration set off on a plan to surrender control and key management of the Internet by the U.S. Department of Commerce and its agents.

The key to the control America has over the Internet is through the management of the Domain Name System (DNS) and the giant servers that service the Internet.

Domain names are managed through an entity named IANA, the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority. The IANA, which operates on behalf of the U.S. Department of Commerce, is responsible for the global coordination of the DNS, IP addressing, and other Internet protocol resources.

In short, without an IP Address or other essential Internet protocols, a person or entity would not have access to the Internet.

For years, the international community has been pressuring the United States
to surrender its control and management of the Internet. They want an international body such as the United Nations or even the International Telecommunications Union, (an entity that coordinates international telephone communications), to manage all aspects of the Internet in behalf of all nations.

The argument advanced for those seeking international control of the Internet is that the Internet has become such a powerful, pervasive, and a dependent form of international communications, that it would be dangerous and inequitable for any one nation to control and manage it.

Just this past spring, within months of Obama's taking office, his administration, through the Department of Commerce, agreed to relinquish some control over IANA and their governance. The Obama administration has agreed to give greater representation to foreign companies and countries on IANA.

This amounts to one small step for internationalism and one giant leap for surrendering America's control over an invention we have every right and responsibility to control and manage.

It is in America's economic and national security interests not to relinquish any control. We are responsible for the control, operation, and functionality of one of the modern world's greatest inventions and most powerful communications network.

What better country to protect the Internet than the United States?

We invented it, and we paid for the research and implementation that made it
possible. We are the freest, most tolerant nation on earth, we believe in the
fundamental right of free speech, and we practice a free market of commerce and ideas.

America has always been against censorship and has shared its invention with the world without fee or unreasonable or arbitrary restriction. The user fee to operate on the Internet is not one paid to the U.S. government; a consumer pays it to private Internet companies, who provide access to the Internet through servers for their subscribers.

Look no further than China's recent move against Google to censor the
Internet, and you can envision what can happen when other nations less free
than the United States seek to control the Internet beyond even their own borders.

America needs to wake up. If we lose control over the management of the
Internet, we have given away one of our nation's greatest assets with nothing
in return to show for it.

The Obama administration's actions will set in motion a slow and complete takeover of the Internet by the United Nations or some other equally U.S.-hostile and unfriendly international body. And once it is gone, it will be gone forever.

The surrender of the Internet will spell disaster for our nation, financially, as well as for safety, security and our standing as a great power that values freedom and the free exchange of ideas and information.

As far as I am concerned, America is still the last best hope for a more
peaceful and prosperous world and our president should not be looking for
ways to weaken us. Rather, his job is to work to strengthen us and protect our nation's greatest asset our people's creativity and ingenuity.


Bradley A. Blakeman, who was a deputy assistant to President George W. Bush from 2001-2004, teaches public policy and politics and international affairs at Georgetown University.

[coltman]

Surrendered soveriegnty is never regained. Meanwhile those in power bow, apologize and shake hands with tyrants.

[zephyp]

Well, we can actually thank the Russians for the Internet. When Eisenhower learned they beat us into space with the launch of Sputnik he was quite upset - created ARPA and ordered them to get us into the race. One of the follow on taskers to ARPA was to develop a network capable of withstanding a nuclear holocaust. Back then all of our communications was point to point. They invented the X.25 packet switching protocol from which the Internet was later spawned and all was well.

By the way, the article mentions the DNS which is one of the single most important elements of the Internet. Without that the net is dead. If the US doesnt have control of the top level servers and someone decided to cut us off we could still route traffic, but would be hard pressed to establish new sites. Shutting down DNS for one customer would essentially shut it off for everyone.

[CCFan]

By the way, the article mentions the DNS which is one of the single most important elements of the Internet. Without that the net is dead. If the US doesnt have control of the top level servers and someone decided to cut us off we could still route traffic, but would be hard pressed to establish new sites. Shutting down DNS for one customer would essentially shut it off for everyone.

Or if they control it, they could also route your data wherever they wanted... DNS Poisoning? Think massive "man-in-the-middle" attack....

I'm not up on all the current regulations regarding all of this, but I remember years ago, depending on what level of encryption you were using, you had to agree not to export some software out of the US due to munitions laws (e.g. PGP because of the cipher/key strength)... and now we're just handing it all over???

[WildBill44]

This is what we can expect from an unqualified, un-American, ineligible to even BE foreigner occupying our White House! Until he is removed from that office this sort of thing will continue to happen!

[Rumson]

When I first read this a while ago, I immediately thought of Jimmy Carter and the Panama Canal.

[zephyp]

By the way, the article mentions the DNS which is one of the single most important elements of the Internet. Without that the net is dead. If the US doesnt have control of the top level servers and someone decided to cut us off we could still route traffic, but would be hard pressed to establish new sites. Shutting down DNS for one customer would essentially shut it off for everyone.

Or if they control it, they could also route your data wherever they wanted... DNS Poisoning? Think massive "man-in-the-middle" attack....

I'm not up on all the current regulations regarding all of this, but I remember years ago, depending on what level of encryption you were using, you had to agree not to export some software out of the US due to munitions laws (e.g. PGP because of the cipher/key strength)... and now we're just handing it all over???

There are still export regulations of technology but they've been loosened over the years. Whoever controls the top level DNS could delete all of our domains rendering our DNS essentially useless. The solution would be to cut ourselves off from the rest of the world and establish our own top level servers.