The plot against the Internet

Bureaucrats from around the world will gather behind closed doors in Dubai next week to plot an end to the Internet as we know it — or so Washington would have you believe.

Hill lawmakers warn that the 120-plus U.S. delegation needs to fend off efforts by China, Russia and developing nations to use a United Nations branch organization to censor or tax the Net. Google is orchestrating an online petition drive, and even Grover Norquist is involved.

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(Also on POLITICO: Tech less generous to Hill newbies than telecoms)

The hype is a perfect storm for Matt Drudge: The U.N. will take over the Internet — unless you act fast.

“It was very important for the United States to send a shot across the bow and let countries like China and Russia know that we are onto the games they’re trying to play,” said Rep. Mary Bono Mack (R-Calif.), who led a successful effort to pass a resolution against the interference in August. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) backed a companion measure in the Senate.

(Also on POLITICO: House Dems hit Verizon’s net neutrality stand)

What’s more likely — almost certain to happen, really — is that the World Conference on International Telecommunications will fail to change much of anything about the way the Web works or who cashes in during the two weeks of meetings that start Monday in this Middle Eastern enclave.

But paranoia runs deep in D.C. — almost as deep as the pockets of the tech companies and front groups that don’t want to take any chance that the U.S. government would endorse a treaty that would scramble their business models.

(Also on POLITICO: Senate committee approves email privacy bill)

Bruce Mehlman, a tech lobbyist whose clients include Red Hat, said “vigilance against such incursions” of government regulation “will be the eternal price of liberty.”

Google’s petition drive asks supporters to sign this statement: “A free and open world depends on a free and open Internet. Governments alone, working behind closed doors, should not direct its future. The billions of people around the globe who use the Internet should have a voice.”

(Also on POLITICO: FTC maverick a mystery on Google)

Even Norquist is in on the act. The Digital Liberty division of his Americans for Tax Reform machine warns that China, Russia and Brazil will stop at nothing in their efforts to clamp down on the Internet.

But as it turns out, the Internet is not about to be dismantled.

(Also on POLITICO: Grover Norquist’s not over)

In a consensus-driven process, member states of the International Telecommunications Union, a branch of the U.N., will negotiate a new treaty on international telecommunication regulations. It’s only one vote per country, and, by definition, that will weed out extreme proposals, experts say.

At the end of the day, the U.S. doesn’t have to sign the treaty — it’s all voluntary. 

So why all the hysteria about the Dubai confab?