Forget cybercriminals and rogue states, it is President Barack Obama that is the biggest threat to a free and open internet.
That is according to the Republican platform approved Monday at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland.
"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."
President Obama pushed for the FCC to reclassify internet access as a Title II common carrier service subject to some new regs (it did), a move Hill Republicans fought and blamed on what they saw as the President’s intervention. They are also not happy with the Administration decision to move domain naming oversight to a multistakeholder model.
Both were highlighted in the platform.
"The President ordered the chair of the supposedly independent Federal Communications Commission to impose upon the Internet rules devised for the 1930's for the telephone monopoly. He has unilaterally announced America’s abandonment of the international internet by surrendering U.S. control of the root zone of web names and addresses. He threw the internet to the wolves, and they — Russia, China, Iran, and others — are ready to devour it."
The platform salutes the congressional Republicans for bills that attempt to defund the FCC's implementation of net neutrality rules and impeded the domain name hand-off.
But the platform also says that a Republican President will combat censorship of web content abroad and "champion an open and free internet based on principles of free expression and universal values and will pursue policies to empower citizens and U.S. companies operating in authoritarian countries to circumvent internet firewalls and gain accurate news and information online."
