Inside the scramble to fix Biden’s plan for the future of the internet

The White House is set to announce plans for its much-anticipated Alliance for the Future of the Internet, a bid to rally a coalition of democracies around a vision for an open and free web. But behind the scenes, digital rights advocates, foreign governments, and even other US officials have scrambled to push the White House to rethink its initial plans, leaving the fine points of the proposal in flux with days to go before the big reveal. alliance was originally conceived as a group of “like-minded countries” making a set of specific commitments to “promote a new and better vision of an open, trusted, and secure internet.” That includes commitments in areas related to cybersecurity, privacy and data transfers, among other things. The initial proposal raised alarm bells with civil society groups and other US government agencies alike. They argued it was sidelining existing forums dedicated to internet freedom and was being rushed out without thorough vetting from government agencies and civil society, leading to policy suggestions that risked undermining the alliance’s own goals.