Commission
says NSA revelations call into question US role in internet governance, which
should be more global
The Guardian, Ian Traynor in Brussels, Wednesday 12 February 2014
 |
| Neelie Kroes, the European commissioner for digital affairs. Photograph: Stephanie Lecocq/EPA |
The mass
surveillance carried out by the US National Security Agency means that
governance of the internet has to be made more international and less dominated
by America, the European Union's executive has declared.
Setting out
proposals on how the world wide web should function and be regulated, the
European commission called for a shift away from the California-based Internet
Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (Icann), which is subject to US law,
is contracted by the US administration and is empowered to supervise how
digital traffic operates.
"Recent
revelations of large-scale surveillance have called into question the
stewardship of the US when it comes to internet governance," said the
commission.
"Given
the US-centric model of internet governance currently in place, it is necessary
to broker a smooth transition to a more global model while at the same time
protecting the underlying values of open multi-stakeholder governance …
"Large-scale
surveillance and intelligence activities have led to a loss of confidence in
the internet and its present governance arrangements."
Besides
criticising US domination of how the internet and digital traffic are organised,
including the allocation and determination of domain names, the Brussels
institution also warned against increasing governmental attempts to control the
internet, as in China, Russia, Iran and increasingly Turkey, which passed a
stringent law last week curbing online freedoms.
"Governments
have a crucial role to play, but top-down approaches are not the right answer.
We must strengthen the multi-stakeholder model," said Neelie Kroes, the
commissioner for digital affairs. "Our fundamental freedoms and human
rights are not negotiable. They must be protected online."
She spoke
out against giving the United Nations the power to organise and supervise the
internet or to grant such authority to the International Telecommunications
Union, voicing fears that it would confer too much power on governments.
The
commission called for a clear timeline for diluting US authority over Icann and
making it more "global"; for agreement on "a set of principles
of internet governance to safeguard the open and unfragmented nature of the
internet"; and a mediation body that would scrutinise conflicts arising
from contradictory national jurisdictions over the internet.
Decisions
over domain names and IP addresses should also be globalised, Brussels said.
"The next two years will be critical in redrawing the global map of
internet governance," said Kroes.
Brussels is
to take its proposals to an international conference on the issue in Brazil in
April. Brazil, angered by the NSA revelations, has been highly critical of the
US role in internet governance.
"Nearly
every person has an interest in keeping the internet open, whether this is an
economic, social or human rights interest," said Marietje Schaake, a Dutch
liberal MEP who sits on an international body examining internet governance.
"Governments
are trying to bring the internet under national control. States like Russia and
China use the argument of increasing cyber-security to increase control over
their own population. Organisations such as Icann, which registers domain names
worldwide, currently function under US law. That has to change."
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