At midnight tonight, the United States will relinquish control over the Internet’s central functions to an internationally-run private entity called the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN).
The United States government created this foundation for the Internet in the 1980s when government agencies and contractors created the authoritative “root zone file” and domain name system, which act as the Internet’s master directory and switchboard. Those two building blocks of the Internet have remained under ultimate United States control ever since.
But now, President Obama has decided to cede this critical infrastructure to an international organization unaccountable to the American people and their Constitution. What is at stake cannot be understated. Like the invention of the printing press before it, the Internet has been the greatest instrument of free speech and the exchange of ideas in the history of mankind.
It draws its strength through a combination of astounding technological achievements, robust decentralization and cooperation, and — for certain core functions that bind the entire “network of networks” together — a unified system ultimately overseen by the freest and most benevolent superpower the world has ever seen. But if the United States hands over that last, critical component to a corporation unconstrained by the First Amendment and other vital assurances of liberty, the American people will have little recourse when that corporation abuses its power.
Many have voiced strong objections to the handover, arguing that it is both ill-conceived and illegal. The Constitution requires congressional authorization before government property can be given away, but no such authorization exists, so the Obama administration has simply insisted that the United States has no ownership over the root zone file, the domain name system, and the rights to make changes to both.
This is an exceedingly odd claim, given that the United States created that infrastructure and has spent the last three-plus decades acting like someone who believes it has control over it. Of equal concern are the First Amendment problems that are created once a non-governmental entity, which claims no obligation to comply with the First Amendment, has exclusive control over the Internet’s infrastructure. If it disagrees with certain speakers on the Internet or deems their speech “offensive,” ICANN and its private partners would have the ability to delete their IP addresses or entire top-level domains (like .il, the domain name for Israel) from the root zone file, making it near-impossible for others on the Internet to access their web content.
One might think that the Obama administration would have placed robust conditions on the handoff to ICANN to ensure that freedom of speech is not impaired by international actors (one can expect China’s influence over ICANN to expand), but none have been established. In response to all this, some have argued that this transition out of U.S. control is unimportant and merely a clerical issue.
But if management of the root zone file were so inconsequential, would those who seek to remove its control from the U.S. government be comfortable with it being in the hands of Vladimir Putin or Kim Jong Un? Others have argued that the U.S.’s role in the Internet is already so diminished and that it functions as merely a rubber stamp such that relinquishment of that role comes with no consequences.
But the U.S’s approval authority has always provided a critical backstop that safeguards against and deters bad behavior. In the end, this handoff is emblematic of the Obama administration belief that American interests are advanced by the diminution of the United States’ role on the international stage. With globalization as the goal, the administration has been far too eager to relinquish American dominance in areas where American exceptionalism is precisely what created that dominance in the first place.
Because of the legal and policy concerns, many members of Congress attempted to intervene, but as is too often the case, Congress has proved incapable of action and it now appears that the handoff will occur absent intervention by a federal court.
That is why I, along with my colleagues in Arizona, Texas and Nevada, have filed suit seeking to put the handoff on hold until its legality can be resolved. It is unfortunate that a lawsuit has become necessary, but as states who rely on their .gov domains to both communicate with and provide government services to their citizens, our states could not stand idly by as control over this critical state infrastructure was handed off to an international body that does not consider itself bound by the Constitution.
Scott Pruitt is Oklahoma’s attorney general. Thinking of submitting an op-ed to the Washington Examiner? Be sure to read our guidelines on submissions.