In a brazen, unlawful and unconstitutional act, Barack Hussein Obama Soetoro Sobarkah handed over control of internet domain to an international, private corporation known as ICANN. He did it without constitutional authority and he did it without congressional approval, and it may lead to further problems in the future for many Americans.
On Saturday evening, the Commerce Department handed over control of the Domain Naming System (DNS) to ICANN (The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers). ICANN is a nonprofit organization that is responsible for coordinating the maintenance and procedures of several databases related to the namespaces of the Internet – thereby ensuring the network’s stable and secure operation.
According to ICANN’s website, “On 1 October 2016, the IANA functions contract officially expired. As a result, the coordination and management of the Internet’s unique identifiers is now privatized and in the hands of the volunteer-based multistakeholder community.”
Investigative journalist Ben Swann reports that the DNS is “one of the internet’s most important components because it pairs web addresses with servers. In other words, it allows us to type in a known URL, such as FreedomOutpost.com, rather than an IP address that might appear as a string of numbers.
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The internet was largely built in the united States, and thus, we have always maintained control over how the DNS is controlled. However, with this transfer, that is no longer the case. ICANN now has the final say. What’s even more disturbing is that the United Nations is more than likely to take control of ICANN.
L. Gordon Crovitz wrote at The Wall Street Journal prior to ICANN taking control, “When the Obama administration announced its plan to give up U.S. protection of the internet, it promised the United Nations would never take control. But because of the administration’s naiveté or arrogance, U.N. control is the likely result if the U.S. gives up internet stewardship as planned at midnight on Sept. 30.”
He went on to point out:
It’s shocking the administration admits it has no plan for how Icann retains its antitrust exemption. The reason Icann can operate the entire World Wide Web root zone is that it has the status of a legal monopolist, stemming from its contract with the Commerce Department that makes Icann an “instrumentality” of government.
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Without the U.S. contract, Icann would seek to be overseen by another governmental group so as to keep its antitrust exemption. Authoritarian regimes have already proposed Icann become part of the U.N. to make it easier for them to censor the internet globally. So much for the Obama pledge that the U.S. would never be replaced by a “government-led or an inter-governmental organization solution.”
The Protecting Internet Freedom Act would have blocked the transfer of ICANN without Congressional approval. That did not pass. Now, four senators have filed lawsuit against the Obama administration to keep that control. Part of the lawsuit reads, “The proposal will significantly increase the power of foreign governments over the Internet.”
Indeed it will. Let’s not even begin to get in the pitiful ICANN security that has been breached hundreds of times, which ICANN has admitted.
But what of ICANN itself? William F. Jasper of The New American writes about the ICANN Keyholders.
One of the keyholders is “Russian security expert” Dmitry Burkov, who “has flown in from Moscow for the ceremony.” Burkov goes back to the days of the Brezhnev era of the Soviet Union and worked in the Soviet Academy of Sciences under Soviet dictator (and KGB boss) Yuri Andropov. It was pretty much a certainty back then that scientists who rose through the ranks in the Soviet Academy were not only Communist Party members, but also KGB-controlled assets. Comrade Burkov’s continued rise under Vladimir Putin’s KGB-FSB regime points toward the very strong likelihood that he is an asset of the FSB (the rebranded KGB), which has taken a very strong interest, of course, in cyberespionage and control of the Internet. We have reported, for instance on the outsized and alarming impact that KGB/FSB asset Yevgeny Kaspersky is having on computer security, with thousands of western banks, corporations, institutions, and government agencies — and millions of consumers worldwide — using Kaspersky software and consulting services.
“The key issue with internet governance is always trust,” Burkov told The Guardian reporter. “No matter what the forum, it always comes down to trust.” Indeed, but what has he done to earn the trust that supposedly accompanies selection as an ICANN keyholder? For that matter, how trustworthy are any of the 21 keyholders, and how were they selected? If ICANN’s story is to believed, they simply put out a “wanted” ad on the World Wide Web and asked if anyone was interested in having this cool, awesome responsibility. This is how The Guardian describes what occurred: “The initial selection process was surprisingly low-key: there was an advertisement on Icann’s site, which generated just 40 applications for 21 positions.” Hmmm. 7.4 billion people on the planet and only 40 responded to this offer? Sounds like either we’re facing a global glut of motivationally challenged slackers, or ICANN is dishing out an unbelievable narrative. Surely, considering only the millions of professional techies and the tens of millions of computer nerds trolling on the Internet 24/7 in their moms’ basements, at least a few thousand would have responded to ICANN’s wild-beyond-imagination invitation. But only 40 applied? And Dmitry Burkov was one of the lucky 21 chosen as a keeper of the keys. That doesn’t seem to pass the most basic smell test.
And Burkov is far from the only security concern. You see, according to The Guardian’s account, it doesn’t take all 21, or even 14, or even 7 keyholders to start the security ceremony. Apparently, only a minimum of three keyholders is required to form a masterkey. That means incredibly high stakes are resting on a very few vulnerable, unvetted, and unprotected individuals. Even if they happen to be totally clean and innocent when selected, they are obviously prime targets for bribery, extortion, seduction, cooptation, kidnapping, and murder by governments, corporations, terrorists, and organized crime.
So, not only should Americans be concerned with ICANN controlling DNS, but we should also be concerned that our enemies in the UN may also soon control ICANN, and as Swann has pointed out, now that DNS is in the hands of an international corporation, those First Amendment protections will not apply on the world stage.
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