Obama wanted an open Internet he could spy on. Thanks to the NSA, he may get neither.

[Commentary] Brazil’s legislature is considering a bill that would store Brazilian citizens' Web data on domestic servers rather than on US ones in a bid to keep the information out of the National Security Agency's reach. Brazil also plans to lay new undersea fiber optic cable directly to Europe and build a South American version of the Internet, thereby circumventing the US-controlled portions of the Internet. This may sound ominously familiar to another project: Iran's attempt to build a "halal" Internet that's segregated from the Western version.

The United States is in the uncomfortable position of having to defend a contradictory position on Internet governance. Spying on Americans' and allies' online activity may not be antithetical to the White House's diplomatic goal — promoting Internet freedom overseas — but the military mission is orthogonal to it. If the Internet does start falling to pieces, it'll be an ironic consequence for the country that did so much to build it up.