A landmark attempt to set global rules for overseeing the Internet
threatened to fall apart on Friday as a rift pitting the United States
and some Western countries against the rest of the world widened,
participants in the talks said.
A 12-day conference of the
International Telecommunications Union, taking place in Dubai, is
supposed to result in the adoption of a new international treaty
governing trans-border communications.
But in a critical session
at the midpoint of the conference on Friday, delegates refused to adopt a
U.S.-Canadian proposal to limit the treaty's scope to traditional
communications carriers and exclude Internet companies such as Google,
the ITU said on its website.
Further complicating the negotiations
was what a U.S. official at the talks called the "surprise"
announcement of an accord among some Arab states, Russia and other
countries to pursue treaty amendments that are expected to include
Internet provisions unacceptable to the United States
A still-secret draft of the coalition's proposals is to be introduced soon by the United Arab Emirates, the official said.
"It doesn't look good," said a former U.S. intelligence official tracking the talks for private technology clients.
The
emergence of the new coalition, whose members are generally seeking
greater Internet censorship and surveillance, is likely to harden battle
lines separating those countries from the United States and some allies
in Western Europe.
The United States and others objected to the introduction of complex new material midway through the conference.
"All
of the indicators we have so far is it's something that could be a
clear effort to extend the treaty to cover Net governance," said policy
counsel Emma Llanso of the nonprofit Center for Democracy &
Technology, which draws funding from Google and other U.S. Internet
companies.
"What we're seeing is governments putting forward their
visions of the future of the Internet, and if we see a large group of
governments form that sees an Internet a lot more locked down and
controlled, that's a big concern."
Concerns about government controls
The
U.S. ambassador to the conference said in an earlier interview that his
country would not sign any agreement that dramatically increased
government controls over the Internet.
That would potentially
isolate America and its allies from much of the world, and technology
leaders fear that the rest of the globe would agree on actions such as
identifying political dissidents who use the Internet and perhaps trying
to alter the Net's architecture to permit more control.
The
147-year-old ITU, which is now under the auspices of the United Nations,
historically has set technology standards and established payment
customs for international phone calls. But under Secretary-General
Hamadoun Touré, it has inched toward cyber-security and electronic
content issues, arguing that Internet traffic goes over phone lines and
is therefore within its purview.
The ITU is considering other
issues in its most extensive rewrite of the treaty in 15 years,
including proposals that content providers shoulder the costs of
transmission. But none is as controversial as the projected Internet
controls.
The Internet's infrastructure, while initially funded in
part by the U.S. government, is now largely in private hands. It has
been subject to little government control, although many nations have
attempted to regulate Internet communications in various ways.
ICANN,
a self-governing nonprofit under contract to the U.S. Department of
Commerce, is ultimately responsible for making sure that people trying
to reach a given website actually get there, but most technology
policies are developed by industry groups.
At the ITU meeting, the
American delegation had counted on support from at least Japan,
Australia and other affluent democracies.
But its effort to stave
off wholesale changes has been hindered by complications in Western
Europe, where some countries were supporting a change to the economic
model that would have Google, Facebook and others pay for at least some
of the costs of Internet transmission.
Smaller groups at the ITU conference will work through the weekend, with the full body meeting again on Monday.
© Thomson Reuters 2012