UN report on web open door to gov't control of Internet, critics warn,

Buried at the end of a wonkish UN report about problems women face online last month was a proposal that free speech advocates say could lay the groundwork for a government grab of the web. The report, titled “Cyber Violence against Women and Girls: A Worldwide Wake‐Up Call,” described the bullying, harassment and threats faced by female Internet users as “a problem of pandemic proportion” ‐‐ and suggested governments across the globe may one day need to use their “licensing prerogative” to ensure that only Internet service providers “that supervise content and its dissemination” be “allowed to connect with the public.”
“Telecoms and search engines, the indispensable backbone bringing the content to users, have a particular role and responsibility to protect the public from violent or abusive behaviors,” the report, released at UN headquarters in Manhattan on Sept. 24, argued. “Regulators have a role to play, even if the solution to this challenge must be sought primarily in the political realm.”The report’s authors dropped the bombshell without providing a game‐plan specific to the recommendation, but critics and free speech advocates cut through the bureaucratic language and discerned a chilling call for worldwide censorship. "This UN proposal is a well-intentioned, but terrible idea," said Peter Scheer, of the First Amendment Foundation. "Much of what is termed "cyber violence" is protected speech under the First Amendment. It is protected not because harassing or bullying speech has social value---it does not. It is protected because, as much as we deplore that type of expression, we fear even more the prospect of government agencies deciding what we can and cannot say or read." The report justified the radical recommendation by claiming 73 percent of women and girls with Internet access worldwide have experienced some degree of "cyber violence," which appeared to include everything from mild insults to serious threats. In Europe alone, UN research shows, 18 percent of women were victimized “as young as age fifteen,” said Doreen Bogdan-Martin, strategic planning and membership chief for the International Telecommunications Union, the UN’s information technology arm.