Keeping Internet governance out of the wrong hands

[Commentary] As Freedom House has documented, Internet freedom is in decline, as censorship and online surveillance expands around the world. Authoritarian governments seek United Nations regulation or agreements among states to justify their Internet restrictions and wall off parts of their country's Internet from outside influence. To defend Internet freedom, the US government has wisely focused on keeping global Internet governance out of their control and instead leaving the internet's key technical functions to engineers, business and civil society, whose mission is to preserve the internet as an open, globally interconnected platform. The US government would do well to continue this policy by completing the transition to a fully privatized internet Domain Name System.

[Lagon is president of Freedom House and served as U.S. ambassador to Combat Human Trafficking under former President George W. Bush. Donahoe is an officer of the Freedom House Board and former U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Human Rights Council under President Obama.]