FILE - In this Oct. 17, 2012, file photo, a man raises his hand during at Google offices.Mark Lennihan/The Associated Press
Canada, the United States, Britain and 18 other countries are right to have withdrawn from the International Telecommunication Union negotiations in Dubai. They resisted an attempt by undemocratic countries such as Russia, China, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to turn a revised telecom treaty into a means of restricting free speech and expression on the Internet.
The ITU was founded in 1885; the "T" used to stand for "telegraph." Hitherto, it has been a useful, uncontroversial body, concerning itself with such humdrum matters as harmonizing technical standards for the routing of messages. The negotiations in Dubai were meant to be about such questions as the facilitation of broadband.
The United Arab Emirates (the conference's host) and other countries have proposed that the ITU undertake the governance of the Internet, replacing the non-governmental organizations such as Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers that have formed its overall arrangements until now.
The UAE lately made it an offence punishable by three years in jail to use a website or some other type of information technology to "deride or damage the reputation or stature of the state of any of its institutions." China's interferences with the Internet are notorious.
Terry Kramer, the U.S. ambassador to the conference, said, "There have been active recommendations that there be an invasive approach of governments in managing the Internet, in managing the content that goes via the Internet, what people are looking at, what they're saying."
The flaw in deploying the ITU for Internet purposes is precisely that only governments can vote on it. The standard-setters for the Internet have mostly been industry bodies, drawn from the firms that invented and understand the technologies. Many governments, in contrast, are less concerned with mutual convenience than with bossing people around, or worse. There is particular fear that some governments, if they set the standards, would find it much easier to use a highly invasive technology called Deep Packet Inspection, which has almost godlike surveillance powers.
Some of the world's leading liberal democracies, including Canada, were consequently well-advised to oppose even any mention of the Internet in a revised version of the ITU treaty.