Google CIE Vint Cerf Says the UN Wants to Control the Internet

Culture

Vint Cerf, the co-creator of the TCP/IP networking protocols that serve as the Internet’s foundation, and Google's current Chief Internet Evangelist, wrote a post on Google's official blog urging people to take action against the International Telecommunication Union's plan to amend the International Telecommunications Regulations treaty to regulate the Internet — reported BGR.

Cerf claims that the meeting between the ITU, which is an agency of the UN, with governments from across the world during the next couple of weeks to decide whether to apply the treaty to the internet could "add several damaging regulations to the Internet," as authoritarian governments could potentially propose rules which would be at odds with freedom of speech and expression.   

“Several authoritarian regimes reportedly propose to ban anonymity from the web, making it easier to find and arrest dissidents [...] others have proposed moving the responsibilities of the private sector system that manages domain names and internet addresses to the United Nations. Yet other proposals would require any internet content provider, small or large, to pay new tolls in order to reach people across borders,” wrote Cerf in a CNN piece according to BGR.