WASHINGTON – Secret negotiations involving dozens of countries preparing for a United Nations summit on international telecommunications could lead to changes in a global treaty that would diminish the Internet’s role in economic growth and restrict the free flow of information.
The U.S. delegation to the World Conference on International Telecommunications to be held in Dubai in December has vowed to block any proposals from Russia and other countries that they believe threaten the Internet’s current governing structure or give tacit approval to online censorship.
But those assurances have failed to ease fears that bureaucratic tinkering with the treaty could damage the world’s most powerful engine for exchanging information, creating jobs and even launching revolutions, according to legal experts and civil liberties advocates who have been tracking the discussions. Social networks played a key role in the Arab Spring uprisings that last year upended regimes in Egypt and Tunisia.
Russia, for example, has proposed language that requires member states to ensure the public has unrestricted access and use of international telecommunication services “except in cases where international telecommunication services are used for the purpose of interfering in the internal affairs or undermining the sovereignty, national security, territorial integrity and public safety of other states, or to divulge information of a sensitive nature,” according to a May 3 U.N. document that details the various proposals for amending the treaty.
The wording of this provision could allow a country to repress political opposition while citing a U.N. treaty as the basis for doing so. The provision also appears to contradict Article 19 of the U.N. Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which says people shall have the right to access information “through any media and regardless of frontiers.”
Read More at Fox News. Associated Press.
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Get ready, guys, our government is already monitoring everything on the internet and this administration wants to give all authority over everything Americans do to the UN. Look-up Agenda 21. It is already being adopted by local communities (like Omaha) by ignorant lefties who have no idea what is really going on. And look at the drones the EPA now has flying over Iowa, Nebraska and Kansas. WAKE UP AMERICA–TOTALITARIANISM IS AT THE DOOR!
if the un takes over the internet, it will be the end of the internet as we know it todey. People are pretty dumb to vote for this idiot we have in the white house, but i don’t believe thay are dumb enough to let the un come into the United States of America and take over the internet and guns. If they try, it will mean big trouble.
PS : oh yes, as of today we are not slaves, the white house would like us to be. I am not too worried about myself, because i wiil not last too many more years, but my kids will have to pujt up with the crap.
WHO DO THESE **** RUG TOP SAND JOCKEY LOVERS *** think they are ? Do they think they can rule the world in every sense ? Sorry you RUG TOP SAND JOCKEYS, you are saddley mistaken . Go back to your sand boxes.
The INTERNET is world wide , that is what WWW ( world wide web ) stands for.