Cruz Files NDAA Amendment to Attach Anti-IANA Transition Language
Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, filed a proposed amendment Tuesday that would seek to attach language from an anti-Internet Assigned Numbers Authority transition bill to the National Defense Authorization Act for FY 2017 (S-2943). The proposed language, which Cruz began circulating last month in the form of the draft Protecting Internet Freedom Act (see 1605240067 and 1606020056), would prohibit NTIA from allowing the IANA transition to occur unless Congress “expressly grants” the NTIA administrator the authority to allow it to proceed. Cruz's bill also would require NTIA to certify within 60 days of enactment that the U.S. government has “secured sole ownership” of the .gov and .mil top-level domains and that the government has a contract with ICANN that grants the U.S. “exclusive control and use of those domains in perpetuity.”
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“If Congress sits idly by and allows the administration to terminate U.S. oversight of the Internet, we can be certain that authoritarian regimes will work to undermine the new system of Internet governance and strengthen the position of their governments at the expense of those who stand for liberty and freedom of speech,” Cruz said on the Senate floor Tuesday. “This prospect is truly concerning” given that the IANA transition-related plans that ICANN has submitted to NTIA “unquestionably decreases the position of the U.S., while it increases the influence of over 160 foreign governments within ICANN in critical ways.” The IANA transition plans also have “the potential to expand ICANN’s historical core mission by creating a potential gateway to content regulation, and it would only further embolden ICANN’s leadership, which has a poor track record of acting in an unaccountable manner and a proven unwillingness to respond to specific questions” posed by the Senate, Cruz said.
Cruz's introduction of the Protecting Internet Freedom Act language as an NDAA amendment makes his bill more visible given the must-pass nature of the NDAA, but it's “unlikely to make the proposal any more likely to pass on an up-or-down vote,” an internet lobbyist told us in an interview. “I just don't see Cruz getting any further with this amendment than he did” when he attempted to attach a similar proposal seeking a congressional vote on the IANA transition as part of the Senate Commerce Committee's markup last year of the Domain Openness Through Continued Oversight Matters (DOTCOM) Act (S-1551). Senate Commerce voted down Cruz's amendment last year 19-5 (see 1506250059), but Cruz later placed a hold on S-1551 that has stymied further Senate action on the bill.
The Heritage Foundation's lobbying arm Heritage Action for America endorsed the Protecting Internet Freedom Act Tuesday before Cruz introduced the bill's language as a NDAA amendment. Cruz's bill “would provide an important Congressional check on the system to ensure that any transition is in the best interest of the U.S. and Internet freedom more broadly,” Heritage Action said in a blog post. The U.S.' ability “to provide support for the ICANN community's future demands that the ICANN board adopt additional changes would be far less than if the U.S. contractual relationship remained in place,” Heritage Action said. “Ending [NTIA's contract with ICANN to administer the IANA functions] prematurely could remove the main incentive for the Board to compromise with the ICANN community at a critical juncture.”