If at first you don’t succeed, try try again. And again. And maybe again a fourth time, just for good measure.
While such perseverance may be laudable elsewhere in life, it’s hardly ideal when applied to federal regulators aiming to control the Internet via increasingly dubious rationales.
Such is the case with the FCC and “net neutrality.” The commission recently adopted an NPRM—a regulatory first step prior to implementing final rules—seeking to re-establish rules enforcing the concept.
Since the repeal of net neutrality under the last administration none of net neutrality proponents’ apoplectic prophecies have come true. The Internet wasn’t destroyed. It’s not loading one word at a time. A “final pillow” wasn’t applied to a “dying” Internet’s face. To the contrary, speeds are up, latency is down, and competition among Internet service providers is more ferocious than ever before.
One might think that, after having been proven wrong, net neutrality proponents might drop their gambit for government control of the Internet and move on to a different concern. One would be wrong.
Instead, the FCC is at it again with new rules seeking to once again impose “net neutrality.” Only this time, there’s a new rationale: net neutrality is apparently vital to American national security.
For veterans of the net neutrality wars, these new claims are beyond befuddling. For roughly twenty years, the net neutrality debate centered around the concept of broadband provider as supposed gatekeeper. Rules were implemented prohibiting providers from blocking, throttling, or engaging in supposedly harmful paid prioritization of data on their networks. Zero-rating—the practice of not counting certain data usage against a user’s data cap—was also in the Commission’s crosshairs.
In practice, since the advent of the Internet and without the benefit of net neutrality rules, providers have not routinely blocked or throttled content. In scant isolated incidents, providers who throttled access largely did so in error, completely unaffected by net neutrality rules. As for the decade-old theory that a cable operator might charge a video service like Netflix fees to protect the cable operator’s video business? As evidenced by the meteoric rise of streaming video and the explosion of competition in the sector over the last few years, this concern didn’t materialize either. Zero rating, meanwhile, has proven useful to veterans seeking access to mobile telemedicine, as well as to T-Mobile customers wanting to watch streaming video on the go.
Having been proven wrong about all of this, proponents now claim that net neutrality is vital to American national security. The concept received scant attention in past Commission proceedings. Of course, all Americans are in favor of enhancing our national security. And if net neutrality was necessary for national security, every American would and should be for it.
As it turns out, net neutrality rules would likely, harm, not help national security.
In its NPRM seeking to re-implement net neutrality rules, the FCC claims that a hostile government could build or acquire a broadband provider in the United States. Absent net neutrality rules, the federal government would be powerless to block it—so the Commission claims.
At best, this claim is inaccurate. The executive branch’s Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, otherwise known as CFIUS, can and does review investments by foreign entities in the United States. CFIUS maintains, and has repeatedly exercised, the authority to block investments deemed hostile to the national security interests of the United States.
Moreover, the FCC is an independent regulatory agency staffed by civilian attorneys and engineers. It is not a national security agency. As a result, the FCC is not privy to the vast wealth of classified information related to national security that other agencies are privy to—nor should it be.
Rather than enhancing America’s national security, net neutrality rules would instead harm it. At the core of net neutrality is the concept of non-discrimination. Under net neutrality rules, broadband providers cannot block or throttle access to websites—including those that are reprehensible or controlled by America’s adversaries. Websites theoretically operated by the KKK, ISIS, Hamas, or others with the intent to harm American national security would be comforted in the knowledge that American broadband providers would be loathe to work with law enforcement to limit access to their website, fearful they might run afoul of net neutrality rules.
If federal agencies can build empires of new regulatory authority based on unfounded claims of national security concerns, there is no end to the potential mischief. Instead, the FCC should focus on what it can lawfully and competently accomplish. Let national security agencies focus on national security.
