WASHINGTON — Forget cybercriminals and rogue states: President Obama is the biggest threat to a free and open Internet, at least according to the platform approved at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland on Monday.
“The survival of the Internet as we know it is at risk,” the platform says in its "Protecting Internet Freedom" plank. “Its gravest peril originates in the White House, the current occupant of which has launched a campaign, both at home and internationally, to subjugate it to agents of government.”
Obama pushed for the FCC to reclassify Internet access as a Title II common-carrier service subject to some new regulations, which it did. It was a move Congressional Republicans fought and blamed on what they saw as the president’s intervention. They are also not happy with the administration’s decision to move oversight of Internet domain names to a multistakeholder model.
