Where's the outcry on the UN push to regulate the Internet?

The bureaucrats at the United Nations, prodded by developing countries and exemplars of democracy like Russia and China, have hit on an enticing new way to control global communication and commerce: They want to regulate the Internet.

It's one of those rare issues in this heated campaign season that is uniting the political left, right, and middle in Washington. Business leaders beyond Silicon Valley would be smart to sit up and take notice, too -- and fast. American opponents are being seriously outpaced by United Nations (UN) plans to tax and regulate that are already grinding forward in advance of a December treaty negotiation in Dubai. "Having the UN or any international community regulate the Internet only means you're going to have the lowest common denominator of 193 countries," notes Richard Grenell, who served as spokesman and adviser to four US ambassadors to the UN between 2001 and 2009. The conduit is a little known UN agency called the International Telecommunication Union, which coordinates cross-border issues such as radio spectrum and satellite orbits. At the December 2012 World Conference on International Telecommunications in Dubai (bureaucratically titled the WCIT-12) the ITU will consider expanding its purview to the Internet. That may be six months away -- but ITU working groups are already laying the groundwork. Behind the effort are efficient censor machines like China, and autocrats like Russian President Vladimir Putin, who last year declared his desire to establish "international control" of the Internet. These are "not exactly bastions of Internet freedom," as Florida Republican Senator Marco Rubio put it during a hearing last month. "Any place that bans certain terms from search should not be a leader in an international Internet regulatory framework."