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posted by janrinok on Friday September 30 2016, @12:36PM   Printer-friendly
from the too-little-too-late? dept.

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/09/state-ags-sue-to-stop-internet-transition-228893

Four Republican state attorneys general are suing to stop the Obama administration from transferring oversight of the internet to an international body, arguing the transition would violate the U.S. Constitution. The lawsuit — filed Wednesday in a Texas federal court — threatens to throw up a new roadblock to one of the White House's top tech priorities, just days before the scheduled Oct. 1 transfer of the internet's address system is set to take place.

In their lawsuit, the attorneys general for Arizona, Oklahoma, Nevada and Texas contend that the transition, lacking congressional approval, amounts to an illegal giveaway of U.S. government property. They also express fear that the proposed new steward of the system, a nonprofit known as ICANN, would be so unchecked that it could "effectively enable or prohibit speech on the Internet."

The four states further contend that ICANN could revoke the U.S. government's exclusive use of .gov and .mil, the domains used by states, federal agencies and the U.S. military for their websites. And the four attorneys general argue that ICANN's "current practices often foster a lack of transparency that, in turn, allows illegal activity to occur."


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 01 2016, @04:16PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 01 2016, @04:16PM (#408813)

    Take a look around you. It was never constitutional to ban sodomy, and yet that remained on the books and enforced for years. Or, how about the draft?

    The fact that crimes have been committed by US government agents acting under color of law by no means nullifies the fact that such crimes have been committed. By your same logic, it's perfectly legal to legal to beat my girlfriend to a pulp as long as I can escape punishment; obviously this is a ludicrous statement and the reality is that such an act would merely make me a criminal-at-large.

    Rather than covering one's eyes to reality and trying to block out the ugliness of it, the only solution that seems to have a chance to stem the tide of rampant criminality by government agents is to embrace reality via awareness of the limitations of government authority and the acknowledgement that acting outside said authority is literally illegal. This may well lead to situations where uniformed criminals need to be dissuaded from their criminal behavior with lethal force, and an example of such a case was already referenced in my first post here [soylentnews.org] in regards to John Bad Elk vs United States. Preferably, though, the knowledge that potential victims recognize criminal acts by gov agents to be the crimes they are and warnings to desist will be sufficient to curb such criminal behavior much like how "normal" home burglars state they greatly fear a confrontation with an armed homeowner.

    So, what is the limit to government authority in the USA? It is limited to that of its source, which via the Constitution and the process of delegation of authority is no greater than that of a single human being's. The only exceptions are those with full and voluntary consent, consent which can be withdrawn at any time for any or no reason.