The International Telecommunications Union, an arm of the United Nations, is meeting in Dubai, United Arab Emirates this week to discuss updating international telecommunication codes. One of the items expected to draw considerable discussion is to what extent governments should be able to control access to the Internet.
This comes up a week after Syria shut down access to the Internet — and cellular telephone service — as it tries to survive in a growing civil war. Egypt limited Internet access during demonstrations protesting the Mubarak regime last year, China has blocked Internet service at times as well, and there is growing interest among authoritarian governments around the globe in preserving their right to control Internet during times of emergency. The Russian government wants the International Telecommunications Union, which is hosting the conference, to adopt language that would enable it to terminate Internet access in the interest of “decency” or “territorial integrity.”
For Americans with a long and deeply entrenched right to free speech and unfettered access to the Worldwide Web, shutting down or controlling the Internet is (currently) unthinkable, but in countries where denying or controlling information is a longstanding practice, the ability to clamp down on the Internet is considered a matter of national security.
The concept of the Internet is for a truly worldwide network of information that offers citizens in all countries the ability to get, share and generate information. That “threat” raises the possibility that what is currently truly worldwide could one day devolve into a series of national internets that could be controlled or manipulated by individual governments.
It does not seem likely that the United Nations would promulgate language that would bring the Internet under the control of individual countries, but it is very probable that a number of countries will support such wording. In the end, totalitarian regimes like North Korea and Syria, and semi-totalitarian nations like China and Russia, will do what they feel they have to do to stay in power or to control the spread of information, whatever the International Telecommunications Union or the United Nations may decide.
The more interesting question for Americans is at what point, if any, would our government take action to shut down or to control information on the Internet and what would it take in the way of a perceived threat to the United States to cause the public to
support government control of the Internet? It sounds far-fetched now, but who prior to Sept. 11, 2001, would have dreamed that the public would allow the encroachments upon our constitutional rights contained in the Patriot Act? What might Americans accept in the name of national security were there another devastating act of terrorism like that of 2001?
