The world's leading search company has decided to come out
swinging against an effort by the International
Telecommunications Union (ITU), the telecommunications arm of
the United Nations, to seize a larger role for itself in
Internet governance. "There is a growing backlash on Internet
freedom," Google says on its website. "Forty-two countries
filter and censor content. In just the last two years,
governments have enacted 19 new laws threatening online free
expression." Google worries that these censorious governments
could use the upcoming World Conference on International
Telecommunications, which starts December 3, as an opportunity
to grab more authority over the Internet. "The ITU is the wrong
place to make decisions about the future of the Internet,"
Google argues. Founded in 1865 to manage interconnections among
the world's telegraph lines and later its telephone network, the
ITU had a large role in world telecommunications policy for many
decades. But the ITU was a creature of state telecommunication