Sen Cruz slams internet transition plan on Senate floor

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Sen Ted Cruz (R-TX) hammered on the Senate floor the Obama Administration's deal to relinquish supervision of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). Sen Cruz said President Obama’s decision “poses a significant threat to our freedom,” and that “it will empower countries like Russia, China and Iran to be able to censor speech on the internet.” Sen Cruz said that he isn’t convinced that an international regulatory body would be free from influences that could lead to internet censorship. The senator also highlighted national security concerns. “Congress has received no insurance from the government to keep dot-gov or dot-mil” domain names, he said, which could facilitate “foreign phishing scams.”

A national security expert refuted this, saying that the transition wouldn’t affect .mil or .gov names. According to the expert, these are already under the jurisdiction of the federal government and would remain there regardless of who controlled IANA. That expert also argued that US supervision of ICANN and IANA would give some countries a political excuse to attempt to intervene in the affairs of the organizations, but that they would have no such leverage in the hands of an international body.


Sen Cruz slams internet transition plan on Senate floor