Sen. Cruz: Foreign nations void of free-speech protections have no place regulating U.S. internet use
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) in a Facebook post Tuesday invoked former President Reagan as he urged “colleagues on both sides of the aisle” to defend the internet against President Obama’s plans to cede control of it on Oct. 1 to an international organization that would inevitably leave the internet more vulnerable to censorship and taxation.
“I urge my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to come together to ensure that we protect freedom of the #Internet for generations to come,” says Sen. Cruz.
The senator, who is chairman of the Subcommittee on Oversight, Agency Action, Federal Rights and Federal Courts, gathered half a dozen experts to weigh in on the implications of President Obama’s scheme to hand over regulation of U.S. internet to a global “nonprofit” organization whose members include China, Iran and Russia – countries that, as Sen. Cruz points out, don’t have a right to free speech enshrined in their governing documents.
The Daily Wire has the details:
President Barack Obama’s Commerce Department has agreed to shift the country’s Internet domain system over to a nonprofit organization called the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) starting October 1. Defenders of the move argue that it’s a necessary symbolic move, while others argue (correctly) that it would give control to foreign governments like Russia and China which frown upon free speech…
What exactly is ICANN? According to The Atlantic and The Washington Examiner, ICANN is a “multistakeholder” organization featuring countries like China and Russia. ICANN “helps assign domain names and top-level domains”–such as “.com” and “.org”–and is working toward adding even more domain names. Up until October 1, the U.S. had control over ICANN to ensure that the organization would not fall under international control and allow authoritarian regimes to engage in censorship. That all changes when the U.S. government’s contract with ICANN expires.
President Obama is again taking a swipe at American sovereignty. Under no circumstances should we allow foreign nations to control U.S. internet use, least of all those who have little-to-no respect for free speech. Click here to get involved and help Tea Party Patriots push back against President Obama’s executive overreach when it comes to forfeiting control of the internet to foreign nations!