Internet Governance a Potential 2016 Election Issue, But Not Yet Ready for Campaign Trail

The near-certainty of a prolonged timeline for the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) oversight transition and a set of upcoming policy forums mean Internet governance could become an issue in the 2016 presidential election campaign under the right set of circumstances, but that time hasn’t come yet, stakeholders said in interviews. ICANN and NTIA are now operating under the assumption that the IANA transition won’t be finished until at least July 2016 (see 1507080044), about the time the Democratic and Republican parties will be officially naming their presidential nominees.

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, one of the 16 major candidates for the GOP’s nomination, heightened the IANA transition’s visibility as a policy issue in recent weeks because of his ongoing hold on Senate consideration of the Domain Openness Through Continued Oversight Matters (DOTCOM) Act (S-1551) and his attempt to attach a modified version of S-1551 to Senate consideration of the House-passed highway funding bill (HR-22). Cruz’s proposed DOTCOM Act amendment includes language that would allow Congress to vote on ICANN’s forthcoming IANA transition plan, reflecting an amendment he unsuccessfully attempted to attach to S-1551 during Senate Commerce’s June markup of the bill (see 1506250059).

Although Cruz has heightened the IANA transition’s visibility, his hold on S-1551 hasn’t politicized the IANA transition “in a way that we’ve seen with other highly charged IT issues” like net neutrality, said Information Technology and Innovation Foundation Vice President Daniel Castro. Cruz could politicize the IANA transition if his DOTCOM Act amendment to HR-22 cleared or he successfully offered his IANA transition vote language to S-1551, because that would force other members of the Senate who are presidential candidates to “take a stand,” Castro said. Barring that, it would take a major cyberattack or IT market “hiccup” to increase the political spotlight on Internet governance issues, he said.

Cruz hasn’t gained much support among Capitol Hill Republicans in his bid to give Congress a vote on the IANA transition, but he could conceivably use the issue to gather support among GOP base voters, said Phil Corwin, principal of e-commerce and IP law consultancy Virtualaw. Cruz and the rest of the GOP’s presidential contenders are looking “for issues that differentiate themselves from the others and that resonate with the base,” Corwin said. Internet governance could become one such issue for Cruz if he begins to talk about it on the campaign trail, particularly if Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., doesn’t allow a Senate vote on Cruz’s amendment to HR-22 or if Cruz decides to filibuster S-1551, Corwin said. Cruz also could conceivably include Internet governance as an issue in the campaign if he feels he can use it to play into the base’s concerns about U.S. foreign policy, particularly as it relates to China and cybersecurity issues following the recent Office of Personnel Management data breach, Corwin said. Cruz’s campaign didn’t comment.

Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., is the only major candidate in either party to feature Internet issues as a prominent part of his campaign platform. Rubio’s Internet policy platform is largely critical of what he sees as federal interference with the Internet via the FCC’s net neutrality rules, but his campaign also noted Rubio’s 2012 co-sponsorship of a resolution supporting the U.S.’s opposition to proposals that would expand the ITU’s role in Internet governance (see report in the Sept. 20, 2012, issue). The ITU’s role in Internet governance became the marquee issue during that body’s controversial 2012 World Conference on International Telecommunications.

Few other candidates in either party have substantial experience on Internet governance issues apart from Cruz, Rubio and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who’s running for the Democratic nomination, said Shane Tews, visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute’s Center for Internet, Communications and Technology Policy. Clinton was “strongly supportive of advancing multistakeholderism” during her time as head of the State Department, said John Laprise, an Internet governance scholar and consultant. “The general consensus is that if Clinton was elected it would be full speed ahead” on those issues, Laprise said. Clinton led State until early 2013, giving her a high-level role in the department’s coordination of the U.S.’s position on the 2012 WCIT and other international Internet governance issues during President Barack Obama’s first term. Clinton’s campaign didn’t comment on whether she plans to raise Internet issues as part of her platform.

“I bet if you asked during a debate ‘what is the IANA function?,’ no-one would be able to tell you,” Tews said. “What it really means is do we continue to let private companies interact with end users and at times governments versus do we go to a completely government-controlled Internet system?” Most Republican candidates’ positions on Internet issues remain unclear at this point, but several candidates’ opposition to the Obama administration’s foreign policy positions indicates they’d likely oppose ITU involvement on Internet governance, Laprise said. “Many Republicans are none too fond of the U.N. to begin with, so that might make interactions with the ITU more difficult,” he said.

Clinton, Cruz and Rubio are highly unlikely to stray from the U.S. government’s longstanding policy of favoring multistakeholder Internet governance, so for them the issue would largely serve as “an opportunity wave the flag, which sounds really good during a debate,” Tews said. The IANA transition, for instance, would be most likely to appear as a proxy for overall Internet freedom and as a way to discuss other issues, particularly cybersecurity, privacy and surveillance, she said. “I wouldn’t anticipate that we’d hear about the IANA functions or ICANN’s role at the minutiae level,” Tews said. The intersection of Internet governance and privacy issues could be particularly ripe for debate given the recent attention that privacy advocates gave to the ICANN Generic Names Supporting Organization’s Policy Development Process Working Group on Privacy & Proxy Services Accreditation Issues, said Access U.S. Policy Manager Amie Stepanovich. The working group’s initial proposal to bar the owners of some domain names associated with commercial websites drew criticism from privacy groups who viewed the proposal as potentially exposing marginalized groups to increased online harassment (see 1507010065).