politics

“Digital Munich?” Or Jingoistic Hysteria?

November 8, 2005

Here’s a short follow-up to yesterday’s post on Senator Norm Coleman’s little piece of agitprop in the Wall Street Journal.

Coleman, if you’ll remember, warned of a “digital Munich” being orchestrated by the United Nations to “take over management of the Internet from the U.S. and enable the United Nations to dominate and politicize the World Wide Web.” The European Commission, according to Coleman, is also a part of this scheme.

Last night, however, Reuters, having spoken to European Commission deputy head of international relations Jean-Francois Soupizet, wrote that “Soupizet said the EU was against setting up a new U.N. mechanism to intervene in developing the Internet infrastructure, which the EU says should be left to current operators on a day-to-day basis.”

In addition, according to Reuters, the U.N. report, “put[s] forward a more multi-national approach to running the Internet which serves a billion users worldwide, saying this would be more democratic and transparent [than the current setup], a view the 25-nation European Union shares.”

Now, we’re still not sure about the desirability or the feasibility of all this. But it seems to further undercut Coleman’s contention that the United Nations is poised to take over the Internet, squashing free speech in the process.

Paul McLeary is a former CJR staff writer. Since 2008, he has covered the Pentagon for Foreign Policy, Defense News, Breaking Defense, and other outlets. He is currently a defense reporter for Politico.