NSA efforts have focused on exploiting applications, weakening encryption standards, and subverting telcos and big hosted service providers. None of those are managed by Internet governance bodies. Altering the internal structure of ICANN would not inhibit NSA activities one bit.
The revelations of NSA spying have pissed off a lot of other countries, and no doubt increased their desire to splinter the Internet into a federation of national networks, which would be easier for them to each respectively control. That would help them protect from NSA spying... but it would also give them greater capability to control every other aspect of Internet access.
This is the approach that was rejected at the ITU, and recall that we all cheered that result.
I think it's interesting that this article describes the values of freedom and democracy as cherished by the U.S. Aren't they cherished by all people? Who doesn't want to be free?
There is a group of people who don't cherish those values, and those are the leaders of national governments that are known to be oppressive, censorious, or both. Would China really be a better steward of "Internet values" than the U.S.? I don't think so.
NSA efforts have focused on exploiting applications, weakening encryption standards, and subverting telcos and big hosted service providers. None of those are managed by Internet governance bodies. Altering the internal structure of ICANN would not inhibit NSA activities one bit.
The revelations of NSA spying have pissed off a lot of other countries, and no doubt increased their desire to splinter the Internet into a federation of national networks, which would be easier for them to each respectively control. That would help them protect from NSA spying... but it would also give them greater capability to control every other aspect of Internet access.
This is the approach that was rejected at the ITU, and recall that we all cheered that result.
I think it's interesting that this article describes the values of freedom and democracy as cherished by the U.S. Aren't they cherished by all people? Who doesn't want to be free?
There is a group of people who don't cherish those values, and those are the leaders of national governments that are known to be oppressive, censorious, or both. Would China really be a better steward of "Internet values" than the U.S.? I don't think so.