Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin on Wednesday slammed the administration’s decision to withdraw its oversight of an Internet governance board, calling it a “colossal” error.
The former Republican vice presidential candidate echoed concerns from other conservatives Wednesday in a Facebook post about the Obama administration’s move to cede oversight over the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, which manages the way domain names are assigned, to let it become a more globalized organization.
“Evidently relinquishing America’s control of the internet via our Icann control of domain names was what Obama meant when he led his adoring followers in those strange, kind of creepy chants of ‘Yes-We-Can,’” Palin wrote on Wednesday. “Surrendering our control of the Internet is a colossal foreign policy error with long term negative repercussions for freedom.”
Since the announcement last week that the Commerce Department would give up its control of ICANN in 2015 at the end of its contract, which its held since 2000, conservatives have warned that the move could allow authoritarian governments to gain more control over the Internet.
“This is nothing more than a gift to authoritarian regimes who seek to stifle the freedom the Internet gives to voices around the world fighting for basic human rights,” Palin wrote. “No amount of Obama/liberal media spin can justify this.”
Read more