heads up ... Deadline approaches for Russia and China-led U.N. Internet takeover

[Radio Relay]

Deadline approaches for Russia and China-led U.N. Internet takeover | The Daily Caller

Russian Prime Minister and President-elect Vladimir Putin gestures while speaking at the State Duma, Russian Parliament's lower house, in Moscow, Russia, Wednesday, April 11, 2012. FILE (AP Photo/Ivan Sekretarev)

The State Department is expected to finally name a lead negotiator next month for high level international talks with the U.N. in December that would decide the fate of the Internet, a senior U.S. official told Florida Republican Senator Marco Rubio last week.

The nomination would come nearly a year after then-Russian Prime Minister Vladmir Putin announced in June 2011 that he and his allies sought to establish international control over the Internet. At the time, Putin had “reaffirmed” Russia’s support of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) — a little-known U.N. agency responsible for the international regulation of long-distance calls and satellite orbits — as his preferred instrument to bring about international cooperation on cybersecurity and Internet issues. Russia is a co-founder of the ITU, dating back to 1866.

Democrats and Republicans have been quarreling over how to expand executive branch power over the Internet and to regulate and surveil Americans: the FBI wants to wiretap social networks, the CIA wants to spy on Americans through their dishwashers, and a member of Congress wanted to give DHS the ability to spy on the legislative and judicial branches.

“While focusing on (and overselling) the liberating promise of social media in authoritarian regimes,” said Morozov, “it conceals a number of emerging domestic threats that have nothing to do with dictators—and everything to do with aggressive surveillance, disappearing privacy, and the astonishing greed of Silicon Valley.”