Obama-UN Internet Takeover Is Just Hours Away

October 1 is D-Day for the start of the international takeover of the Internet, a scheme the Obama administration and the United Nations have been advancing for years. Why are GOP leaders AWOL as President Obama and the United Nations move to transfer critically important jurisdiction over the Internet to an unaccountable UN-aligned monopoly? Why are Ryan and McConnell doing nothing?

On October 1 — which is only hours away — U.S. oversight of the Internet’s domain name system is scheduled to be stripped from the U.S. and transferred to the new Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) designed by global “multistakeholder” activists. Members of Congress, national security experts, military professionals, constitutional authorities, privacy advocates, and human rights activists are warning that this pending transition to “independent” oversight by “the international community” is fraught with danger.

However, as on so many other crucial issues, the Republican-controlled Congress is acting as a rubber stamp for Obama. Although few Americans are aware of the serious threat posed by this impending transition, the UN’s Internet takeover scheme is not something that has sprung upon us recently or ex nihilo; we have been reporting on this growing peril for the past several years (see here and the articles linked below, following this story).

Rick Manning, president of Americans for Limited Government (ALG), yesterday blasted House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) for failing even to attempt to block the Internet giveaway, while at the same time caving in to threats of a government shutdown by President Obama and the Democrats if the Republicans didn’t give them all the funding they demanded. One of the key issues was a deal to provide the city of Flint, Michigan, a liberal Democrat stronghold, with $170 million in federal funds for their municipal water supply.

“So, Democrats block the continuing resolution, demand money for the Flint, Mich. water supply,” noted Manning. “House Republicans led by House Speaker Paul Ryan relent and agree to add it to the House water bill after that proposal was defeated in the House Rules Committee, and got nothing in return.”

“Republicans have majorities in both houses of Congress, Democrats were actively demanding extra add-ons for these bills, and they couldn’t even get a rider stopping the irreversible transition of U.S. oversight of the Internet’s domain name system," ALG’s Manning charged. “That, even though the Department of Justice has repeatedly failed to respond to the House and Senate Judiciary Committees on a number of outstanding legal concerns with the Internet transition of U.S. oversight of the domain name system,” he said, referring to the most recent letter from Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) and House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.).

In their September 21 letter to Attorney General Loretta Lynch, the chairmen raised serious national security concerns and important constitutional matters that the Department of Justice has failed to address, despite repeated requests. The DOJ has failed to address, the chairmen pointed out, “how the transfer will effect free speech and the openness of the Internet, if U.S. control of the .mil and .gov domains will be compromised, if the transfer will open the Internet to undue influence from foreign nations, if the transfer will lead to the improper conveyance of United States government property, or if the transfer affects any existing antitrust immunity and increases the likelihood of significant antitrust litigation.”

ALG’s Rick Manning charges that “these issues risk either creating an unaccountable global Internet monopoly or a potentially fractured domain name system if antitrust does come into play. The transition proposal contemplates neither scenario, and these issues cannot be addressed once the transition occurs on October 1.” (See here for a detailed legal analysis by ALG’s senior editor Robert Romano of the anti-trust issues involved in the transfer.)

The letter by chairmen Grassley and Goodlatte asked Attorney General Lynch to answer “whether or not the administration has the constitutional authority to conduct the IANA transition without the authorization of Congress because of the United States property interests in the root zone file — or other similar components of the Internet that were created and financed by the United States.” The chairmen pointed out that under Article IV, Section 3 of the Constitution, Congress has the exclusive power “to dispose of and make all needful rules and regulations respecting the territory or other property belonging to the United States.”

On September 26, a stellar coalition of 77 generals, admirals, intelligence experts, cybersecurity professionals, and industry leaders sent a letter to Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs General Joseph Dunford, calling on them to intervene in opposition to President Obama’s radical plan to jeopardize the security of the Internet, which is vital to national (and global) security.

“As individuals with extensive, first-hand experience with protecting our national security, we write to urge you to intervene in opposition to an imminent action that would, in our judgment, cause profound and irreversible damage to the United States’ vital interests,” the letter states. Of immediate concern, say these national security professionals, “is the prospect that the United States might be transferring to future adversaries a capability that could facilitate, particularly in time of conflict, cyberwarfare against us.” The letter continued, “In the absence of NTIA’s stewardship, we would be unable to be certain about the legitimacy of all IP addresses or whether they have been, in some form or fashion, manipulated, or compromised. Given the reliance of the U.S. military and critical infrastructure on the Internet, we must not allow it to be put needlessly at risk.”

Among the signers of the letter are Adm. James A. “Ace” Lyons, USN (Ret.), former commander-in-chief U.S. Pacific Fleet; Lt. General William “Jerry” Boykin, USA (Ret.), former deputy under secretary of defense for intelligence; Lt. Gen. Thomas McInerney, USAF (Ret.), former deputy chief of staff, United States Air Force; Hon. Charles E. Allen, former under secretary of the Department of Homeland Security for intelligence and analysis; Lt. Gen. C. E. McKnight, Jr., USA (Ret.), former director, Command and Control Systems for Nuclear Forces, Joint Chiefs of Staff; Dr. Lani Kass, former firector, Air Force Chief of Staff’s Cyber Task Force; Rear Adm. Philip S. Anselmo, USN (Ret.), former director of Command Control Communications Computers and Intelligence (C4I); Rep. Brian Babin (R-Tex.), Chairman, House of Representatives’ Committee on Science Space and Technology Subcommittee; Jody R. Westby, CEO, Global Cyber Risk LLC and former chief administrative officer & counsel, In-Q-Tel.

Considering the Obama administration’s contempt for the Constitution’s system of checks and balances, its record for ignoring Congressional requests and concerns, and President Obama’s penchant for “legislating” by executive order, it is not surprising that the administration has completely ignored these appeals by Congress, as well as military and cybersecurity experts. Nor is it a surprise that the Republican leaders have failed, once again, to fight for America’s vital interests. As ALG’s Manning notes, their failure even to engage Obama on this issue is inexcusable.

“Did they even try?” Manning asks. “Ryan and McConnell have not issued any public statements on the matter, so we must assume they actively agree with surrendering U.S. oversight of the Internet. They didn’t even put up a fight. House and Senate Republicans are not what they say, they are what they do. And what they are doing is allowing President Obama to give away the Internet to the international community, threatening the American people’s vital Internet freedoms. And don’t let any Republican tell you different.”

The clock is ticking; October 1 is only hours away. Opponents of the Internet giveaway are urging voters to deluge their U.S. senators, representatives, House Speaker Paul Ryan, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell with phone calls and e-mails urging them to take action to stop the transfer before the October 1 deadline.

Yes I agree.This Obama Internet giveaway to the UN is the end of free speech on the Internet.

Sooner or later the 57 Muslim countries are going to take over free speech on the Internet.

Just one way they could do it is threaten search engines like google to put any website like frreerepublic etc that criticize Islam on a blacklist so that no one will be able to find any website that doesn’t conform to the koran (eventually). they could threaten to take away their domain name ,ip address etc.

This is just one way I one little guy can see they can do it. 57 Muslim countries have a lot of money (Saudi etc..) and engineers . I'm sure they will do this and more.

If this happens and Texas lawsuit or Trump doesn’t stop it free speech , freedom , the Internet are over. Islam will dominate the world.

Sure you can create rougue Internets etc. but that takes a lot of money ,expertise and trouble. Google and search engines is what most 99% of poeople want is convenience and we are busy working don't have countless hours to devote to some rouge internet. 99% of speech wiil be controlled by dictatorships and Islam. Muslims will not tolerate any criticism of Islam and they are not beyond threatening search engines.. if your site ever criticizes Islam it will be invisible to 99% of search engines . Islam is a cult.

Most of the countries in the world are dictatorships and 57 are Islamic . we would just be 1 out of 200. 57 act as block controlled by Islam. if this happens eventually we are done

Good thinking.

Let me add one more scary thought. Which is worse? International control of internet addressing or a Clinton administration control over Internet addressing?

We desperately need Trump -- for safety, for jobs, and for protecting the free internet.

Some other thoughts. If Google didn't like the way the internet was blocking its traffic, it could establish a private address space and redirect traffic via this backdoor. In fact, probably every large U.S. corporations has its own private addressing space to conduct their private business -- in other words, they do not ride on the internet, but on the same underlying telecom physical infrastructure.

You may have to publish to two websites -- the actual site the internet directs you to and a secondary site that lives behind the private server.

Of course, a lot of this "safety infrastructure" is in place today to recover corporate websites from a DDoS attack.

Browser makers could also modify their search algorithms to search for the original IP address plus a back up secondary address should the main one be blocked by the internet authorities.

And this would prompt a cyber-security war between the rebel freedom fighter internet types and the internet authorities. The authorities would constantly try to take down the domains of private sites that support the black market internet.

In this battle, freedom fighters would no doubt adopt some of the techniques of global telecom fraudsters who daily redirect international voice calls for their own profit.

Fraudsters make deals to redirecting traffic to servers in the destination country where the traffic is broadcast via antennas onto the local mobile network illegally. This phenom is called SIM Card Bypass Fraud. And it's estimated to be a $6 billion/year criminal operation for fraudsters.

So there are many ways to recover from a tyranny of the internet, but they are inconvenient, ugly, costly, and would take time to evolve.

If I am in error in any of this thinking here, please let me know.

ICANN is the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. While I disagree with ceding control, it’s much ado about nothing. They literally manage the assignment of internet addresses and DNS. The worst that will happen with this is that it’s likely we’ll see a substantial uptick in spam since foreign entities will likely buy up tracts of American IP addresses to spam from the comfort of their own borders.

The FFC commissioner, Bolton, Gaffney, Cruz, Duffy plus from video below, cyber security expert, Morgan Wright, on For the Record yesterday with Britt Hume...Morgan Wright, says after Oct. 1, there is no putting the toothpaste in the tube...Brave New World where we don’t know if the address entered is really where we are going...

At 22 minute mark...maybe 4 minutes long...Ironic that no one covered this issue BEFORE the votes when something could have been done...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1jGZnDzr_4

One obvious concern he noted is that there is no guarantee that you are actually going to the address to which you think. you are being directed.

It is not much ado about nothing...May not be issues on Sunday, but it is a Brave New World according to Wright, and I think that is a very good description.

Mere fact that Obama is pushing for this and other power being ceded to UN tells me all I need to know!

f they are down, they are down and we will have bigger things to worry about.

Maybe for you but my son and grandkids are 500 miles away. I have food, water and power
so my priority is comms with them.

Whenever something happens, first thing people seek out is information...what happened, who is affected, duration, etc.
In a SHTF moment, government will not necessarily give us the whole or straight story...

Need internet, twitter, etc. to spread information...

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