EXISTENCE IS IDENTITY

It isn’t recent news that the United Nations has for some time now been seriously seeking full control over the Internet. The quest still continues: An article that is to appear on this month’s issue of New Scientist magazine informs us of the latest:

WHENEVER you surf the web, send emails or download music, an unseen force is at work in the background, making sure you connect to the sites, inboxes and databases you want. The name of this brooding presence? The US government. Some 35 years after the US military invented the internet, the US Department of Commerce retains overall control of the master computers that direct traffic to and from every web and email address on the planet.

But a group convened by the UN last week to thrash out the future of the net is calling for an end to US domination of the net, proposing that instead a multinational forum of governments, companies and civilian organisations is created to run it.

That last sentence simply means that “control of the Internet should be turned over from the U.S to the U.N.” Important to know, is that the name of that article is “Is Uncle Sam Watching You?” Of course, the implication of that is that the thought of Uncle Sam allegedly watching you—and providing you with an invaluable service—is “brooding” ... so let us have the bureaucrats at United Nations watch you instead, and for sure—which of course, is not “brooding”. I suppose you’d want to know why:

The UN’s Working Group on Internet Governance (WGIG) says US control hinders many developments that might improve it. These range from efforts to give the developing world more affordable net access to coming up with globally agreed and enforceable measures to boost net privacy and fight cybercrime.

US control also means that any changes to the way the net works, including the addition of new domain names such as .mobi for cellphone-accessed sites, have to be agreed by the US, whatever experts in the rest of the world think. The flipside is that the US could make changes without the agreement of the rest of the world.

It is in light of all this unbearable and intolerable, and potentially abusive control of the U.S government over its own property that Markus Kummer, Swiss bureaucrat and executive director of the WGIG, proposes that …

The internet should be run multilaterally, transparently and democratically. And it must involve all stakeholders …

... by which he means that control over the internet should be handed to the WGIG —i.e., to him, Markus Kummer. I shall remind any reader however, that all property rights to the core technology of the Internet belongs to the United States.

The reason is that the net was developed [here in the U.S] in the late 1960s by the Pentagon’s Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) in a bid to create a communications medium that would still work if a Soviet nuclear strike took out whole chunks of the network. This medium would send data from node to node in self-addressed “packets” that could take any route they liked around the network, avoiding any damaged parts.

This of course means that any one country using, or connected to the Internet today, is doing it by the sole permission [of the U.S Government] and not by right.

But once again, following in the footsteps of “The Universal Declaration of Human Rights,” the looting moochers of the United Nations are attempting to turn “needs” into “rights”—hence the justification of a U.N controlled Internet: the poor countries of the world need guaranteed, cheap internet access, therefore they have a right to it. As to the rights of the inventors of the Internet … oh no! The U.N—being the statist organization that it is—chooses to recognize only “positive,” “economic,” “human rights.” But “property rights?” Give me a break!

As to how “cheap,” or “free,” internet access is to be “guaranteed” to “developing countries” if control of the net were turned over to the WGIG … you might just be about to witness the first step toward global, progressive taxation.

But here is something to know that is just as—if not more—alarming if Markus Kummer’s dream were to become reality: the total sacrifice of U.S national security—among other interests:

Today the internet has 13 vast computers dotted around the world that translate text-based email and web addresses into numerical internet protocol (IP) node addresses that computers understand. In effect a massive look-up table, the 13 computers are collectively known as the Domain Name System (DNS). But the DNS master computer, called the master root server, is based in the US and is ultimately controlled by the Department of Commerce. Because the data it contains is propagated to all the other DNS servers around the world, access to the master root server file is a political hot potato.

Currently, only the US can make changes to that master file. And that has some WGIG members very worried indeed. “It’s about who has ultimate authority,” says Kummer. “In theory, the US could decide to delete a country from the master root server. Some people expect this to happen one day, even though the US has never abused its position in that way.”

Kummer is right: it is exactly about who has “ulimate authority,” and of course, we ought to want everything, save for the U.S having that. And once again, what exactly is the “position” that the “U.S has never abused”? Its position as sole and rightful creator, owner and possessor of the master root server. No more needs to be said about that.

Now suppose that the Internet were to be run “democratically” as proposed by the thugs at the U.N, the same people who, if they had the power, wouldn’t allow the U.S to fight a war in its own defense, for the purpose of keeping a dictator in power, no less—and they dare to speak of “human rights!”

Would there be any better way for the enemies of the U.S—which happen to greatly outnumber its genuine allies—to control or intimidate it than by having the power to categorically deny it access to the Internet, i.e., the power to stifle its vital means of communication by mere, arbitrary, majority vote? That was rhetorical. The “virtues” of Democracy outside of its proper sphere—from the murder of Socrates in Ancient Greece to the election of Adolf Hitler in Nazi Germany—are very well known.

Here’s another interesting prospect to consider:

[W]ith the internet now a critical global resource, some governments, particularly in developing countries [Admin—Read: “statist countries”] such as China, India and Brazil, want a forum where vast swathes of internet policy- from cybercrime to spam to privacy protection [Admin—to “free speech”]- can be both discussed and acted on.

That is at best a red herring—as “cybercime” will very much be anything statist bureacrats wish it to be … and the door will finally be open for the day when the word “liberty” will be part of the “Internet Index of Prohibited Words.”