“Big Brother is Watching You!”
Most of us are familiar with that chilling message of unceasing police state surveillance from George Orwell’s famous novel 1984. In the terrifying Orwellian state, no one can escape the all-seeing eye of Big Brother. Privacy does not exist, not even inside one’s own home — or even inside one’s own mind. All of one’s words, actions, facial expressions — even thoughts — are constantly monitored through electronic surveillance.
Revelations over the past several years regarding government “data mining,” and widespread warrantless searches of email, cell phones, social media, and Internet traffic by the NSA, FBI, and other federal agencies have shown that this Orwellian feature of totalitarian repression is already a very real and imminent danger to our liberty.
Now, imagine if we were to kick this abuse up a few notches by turning over control of the Internet to the United Nations. This is an outfit, remember, that has none of the checks and balances or mechanisms of accountability that are built into our U.S. Constitution. Many of the member nations of the UN are totalitarian regimes that already employ Orwellian surveillance, censorship, and repression to the limits of their technological capabilities.
The United Nations’ Grab for Internet Control
Yet, as insane as it may seem, the ruling powers here in the United States are preparing to turn over the Internet — which was invented and built here in the United States— to the UN.
The United Nations convened the 9th Internet Governance Forum on September 5, 2014, in Istanbul, Turkey. The Government of Turkey hosted the conference. The Turkish government, according to the liberal-left human rights organization Freedom House, is “the world’s leading jailer of journalists” and is infamous for censoring the Internet, as well as numerous other human rights violations.
Opportunely, the person who oversaw the Istanbul meeting was Wu Hongbo, under-secretary-general of the UN’s Department of Economic and Social Affairs. Comrade Hongbo, besides representing the UN, ultimately answers to his real bosses in Beijing, the leaders of the Communist Party of China. The communist Beijing regime, of course, is notorious for brutal repression of all human rights, including rigid censorship and aggressive policing of the Internet. Under-Secretary-General Hongbo issued the UN’s official invitation for the Istanbul confab “on behalf of the Secretary-General of the United Nations,” Ban Ki-moon.
Hongbo was in Istanbul, joined by fellow Communist Party comrades, who attended as “official participants” as well as members of the IGF’s Multistakeholder Advisory Group. China’s representation included: Professor Liang Guo of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences; Lee Xiaodong, CEO of CNNIC (China Internet Network Information Center, an agency of China’s Ministry of Information); and Chen Hongbing, China’s permanent representative to the UN office in Geneva, Switzerland. These are the folks that have helped build and maintain China’s shameful “Great Firewall,” that the Communist regime uses to spy on, censor, restrict, and police Internet usage.
Among those representing Vladimir Putin and the Kremlin at the IGF/Istanbul were Robert Aleksandrovich Schlegel, a member of Russia’s parliament, the State Duma. He is also a spokesman for the Russian Internet Governance Forum, where his official bio boldly admits (or perhaps boasts) that Schlegel was press director of the “Nashi” movement, Putin’s version of the Hitler Youth.
These are but a few of the repellent individuals who were in charge at the UN’s IGF/Istanbul.
In the past two decades the Internet has provided a platform that has allowed a flowering of independent, alternative media that now challenge the so-called mainstream media and provide a range of news and opinion not previously available. This is absolutely vital to freedom. Do we really want to see control of the Internet turned over to Wu Hongbo, Aleksandrovich Schlegel and others of their kind?
The Obama administration apparently thinks so, and has been giving its blessings to move in that direction. No surprise there. As we have reported, it is also being promoted by the usual cast of globalist, world-government-promoting organizations, led by the Council on Foreign Relations and its British sister organization, Chatham House. No surprise there either. Former Department of Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff is a member of the Global Commission on Internet Governance launched by Chatham House earlier this year.
The Obama administration has already begun the phased transfer of Internet control to a vague and uncertain governance structure that has been set up as an innocent-appearing transition platform that, ultimately, is set for transfer to UN control.
Do you value your freedom? Do you want censorship or Big Brother watching your every move?
Have you contacted your congressman and senators to let them know that you want them to oppose “global governance” of the Internet by the United Nations?
