Fellow Conservative,
On Saturday, Barack Obama is poised to surrender control of the Internet to the international community, most likely the United Nations.
Right now, the United States government oversees the “address book” of the Internet. If you want to create a website, the domain name or address needs to be filed with the non-profit organization, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). If you find a web address that isn't already taken, you can pay ICANN a small fee to have it registered to you. Most importantly, you can name your website whatever you want and the organization is powerless to censor you.
The US role in this process has been simple. No censorship. It doesn’t matter what you want to call your website or what you want to host on it. ICANN is prohibited from interfering because as long as it is a governmental entity, it is bound by the 1st Amendment.
What Obama is scheduled to do in less than 48 hours will change that. He is giving up the United States’ authority to enforce free speech on the Internet and choosing to hand this responsibility over to the United Nations.
Today, the United States Senate passed a Continuing Resolution to fund the Government. This bill did NOT include a measure to stop Obama from surrendering the Internet.
This issue has been credited as one of the reasons behind Ted Cruz’s decision to endorse Donald Trump. Both Cruz and Trump are fighting to stop Obama’s Internet surrender before it’s too late.
Cruz has introduced the Protecting Internet Freedom Act in an attempt to stop Obama’s plan from moving forward.
As I said, ICANN is the organization that manages the “address book” of the Internet. It ensures that when you type in conservative-daily.com, you go to our website and not some liberal site.
Because the Federal government has managed this organization, it has been forced to operate in-line with the 1st Amendment’s free speech protections. The minute Obama gives up our oversight control, that will end.
Senator Cruz explained the issue perfectly in a recent committee hearing:
“Because of the First Amendment to our Constitution, which affords more protection for speech than anywhere else in the world, the United States Government—as long as it has authority to oversee the infrastructure of the Internet—has a duty to ensure that no website is denied Internet access on account of the ideas it espouses. Once the government is out of the picture, First Amendment protections go away. The First Amendment by its term binds the government, it doesn’t bind private individuals. That means that when ICANN escapes from government authority, ICANN escapes from having to worry about the First Amendment, having to worry about protecting your rights or my rights.”
You don’t have to be an Internet expert to understand how dangerous this will be.
This is just the latest in Obama’s attempts to cede US sovereignty and power to the United Nations. Even though Congress has not approved his actions, the President is moving forward with it anyway.
GOP leadership refused to allow Ted Cruz’s amendment to be added to the funding bill that was passed this morning. They wanted a “clean” bill to fund the government, saying that the internet issue could be addressed on its own.
I know this isn't a particularly "sexy" issue. You're not going to see this issue covered on the news and it won't be talked about around water coolers. But it is extremely important that Obama be stopped from moving forward with this.
We are officially out of time. If We the People are going to succeed, you need to act now!
Sincerely,
Joe Otto
Conservative Daily
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