Rep. Kelly Op-Ed Explains Why Preserving Internet Freedom is an American Duty

Rep. Kelly: “Whether the Obama administration acknowledges it or not, America has strong interests in ensuring that freedom of speech and commerce remain protected on the Internet”

WASHINGTON — U.S. Representative Mike Kelly (R-PA) – a member of the House Ways and Means Committee – authored a new op-ed published today by Red Alert Politics describing the stakes of surrendering American stewardship of the Internet to a multi-national body or any other entity. Rep. Kelly is the sponsor of legislation – the Internet Stewardship Act of 2014 – which prohibits any transfer of the Internet’s critical functions without congressional approval.

Preserving Internet freedom is an American duty

By Rep. Mike Kelly

Over the past generation, nothing has revolutionized politics, economics, entertainment, business, and basic social interaction across every continent more than the World Wide Web. By any measure, whether as a tool or a toy or something in between, the Internet has made people smarter, richer, freer, and, yes, happier.

Who’s to thank for all of it? The United States of America.

Since its infancy, the Internet’s primary functions have been under the control of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), an agency of the U.S. Department of Commerce. Under America’s care, the web has been able to safely expand to unthinkable horizons, enabling new ideas to spread and new markets to grow all over the world. And the world is undeniably better off for it.

While it may have seemed inevitable, there is no guarantee that such an impressive evolution would’ve occurred under the stewardship of any other nation.

As the American Center for Law & Justice (ACLJ) has stated, “It is no accident that [the Internet’s growth] has occurred in an atmosphere of freedom and very light regulatory control” and that its “tremendous success has happened in a place protected by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.”

In a letter to my office, ACLJ chief counsel and civil liberties expert Jay Sekulow added, “It is also no accident that, absent this kind of robust protection of free speech in many parts of the world, the Internet suffers from great censorship.”

For this reason, the Obama administration’s recent decision to surrender control over the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) to “the global multistakeholder community” warrants serious scrutiny.

Thus far NTIA has failed to explain how this so-called global stakeholder group will be organized or how the U.S. will prevent it from being controlled by a foreign government or group of governments, including authoritarian regimes, or by the United Nations’ International Telecommunications Union (ITU).

Such uncertainty should alarm all Americans, and beneficiaries of the Internet everywhere.

The president of the non-partisan Frontiers for Freedom put it well when he wrote, “There is nothing that improves on the Internet by giving control of it to an unspecified UN-like organization that will include the world’s despots and those with a track record of censuring and punishing opposition views.”

The powerful rulers of places like China, Russia, and Iran have already robbed their own citizens of the Internet’s full offerings. Why on Earth would they suddenly learn to love freedom and appreciate dissent if given even more power? They simply wouldn’t.

Whether the Obama administration acknowledges it or not, America has strong interests in ensuring that freedom of speech and commerce remain maximally protected on the Internet, for the benefit of American citizens as well as for people worldwide.

This is why I’ve introduced the Internet Stewardship Act of 2014, which would give Congress the final say over any transfer of the Internet by requiring explicit congressional approval through the enactment of legislation that must be signed by the president, whoever he or she may be.

Placing any future transfer in the hands of our legislative branch will ensure that the issue is properly deliberated, as well as force the president to make the case for such a transfer openly and convincingly. Recent actions by the executive branch to change federal policy unilaterally – from Obamacare to immigration to power plant regulation – make the enactment of this bill especially important, and urgent.

The bottom line is this: American protection of the Internet has provided reliability and certainty to literally billions of Internet users – from individuals to businesses to governments – in every corner of the globe. Our democratic principles have been as indispensable to the web’s growth and vitality as they’ve been to that of our republic. Keeping the Internet free and safe from hostile powers overseas who by their very nature despise freedom is not just a moral responsibility, but a thoroughly American duty.

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