Internet governance too US-centric, says European commission

Commission says NSA revelations call into question US role in internet governance, which should be more global

The Guardian, Ian Traynor in Brussels, Wednesday 12 February 2014

Neelie Kroes, the European commissioner for digital affairs. Photograph:
Stephanie Lecocq/EPA

The mass surveillance carried out by the US National Security Agency means that governance of the internet has to be made more international and less dominated by America, the European Union's executive has declared.

Setting out proposals on how the world wide web should function and be regulated, the European commission called for a shift away from the California-based Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (Icann), which is subject to US law, is contracted by the US administration and is empowered to supervise how digital traffic operates.

"Recent revelations of large-scale surveillance have called into question the stewardship of the US when it comes to internet governance," said the commission.

"Given the US-centric model of internet governance currently in place, it is necessary to broker a smooth transition to a more global model while at the same time protecting the underlying values of open multi-stakeholder governance …

"Large-scale surveillance and intelligence activities have led to a loss of confidence in the internet and its present governance arrangements."

Besides criticising US domination of how the internet and digital traffic are organised, including the allocation and determination of domain names, the Brussels institution also warned against increasing governmental attempts to control the internet, as in China, Russia, Iran and increasingly Turkey, which passed a stringent law last week curbing online freedoms.

"Governments have a crucial role to play, but top-down approaches are not the right answer. We must strengthen the multi-stakeholder model," said Neelie Kroes, the commissioner for digital affairs. "Our fundamental freedoms and human rights are not negotiable. They must be protected online."

She spoke out against giving the United Nations the power to organise and supervise the internet or to grant such authority to the International Telecommunications Union, voicing fears that it would confer too much power on governments.

The commission called for a clear timeline for diluting US authority over Icann and making it more "global"; for agreement on "a set of principles of internet governance to safeguard the open and unfragmented nature of the internet"; and a mediation body that would scrutinise conflicts arising from contradictory national jurisdictions over the internet.

Decisions over domain names and IP addresses should also be globalised, Brussels said. "The next two years will be critical in redrawing the global map of internet governance," said Kroes.

Brussels is to take its proposals to an international conference on the issue in Brazil in April. Brazil, angered by the NSA revelations, has been highly critical of the US role in internet governance.

"Nearly every person has an interest in keeping the internet open, whether this is an economic, social or human rights interest," said Marietje Schaake, a Dutch liberal MEP who sits on an international body examining internet governance.

"Governments are trying to bring the internet under national control. States like Russia and China use the argument of increasing cyber-security to increase control over their own population. Organisations such as Icann, which registers domain names worldwide, currently function under US law. That has to change."