Internet users, beware—a little-known United Nations body may
soon give the government the right to poke around your inbox.

As Senior Editor Peter Suderman
recently reported, nations in the U.N.’s International
Telecommunications Union (ITU) are scheduled to meet in December at
the World Conference on International Communications (WCIT) to
discuss proposals and finalize negotiations over Internet
regulation rules. These proposals have been kept under wraps—that
is, until the watchdog website WCITleaks.org released official
documents on Friday, revealing plans to control the Internet on an
international level. Sounds scary? Well, it is.

Leaked proposals from nations like Russia, China, and the Arab
States uncover plans that may give the U.N. power to intervene on
issues of Web content filtering and cybersecurity, while
legitimizing government censorship. One such proposal, supported by
Russia, Egypt, Rwanda, and Algeria, aims to add an international
legal definition of spam to the ITU’s existing treaty. The
establishment of such a definition would provide governments a
legal excuse to inspect personal emails in the name of fighting the
spam menace. And while the document notes that the United States
does not support the inclusion of a spam definition, delegates from
the U.S. have made little attempt to prevent authoritarian nations
from pushing legislation that may greatly limit online freedom.

Other provisions listed in the 212-page document include a
provision from China that “encourages Member States…to take
appropriate measures for ensuring network security”—a
mildly-phrased addition that the Internet Society calls “a very
active and inappropriate role in patrolling and enforcing newly
defined standards of behaviour on telecommunication and Internet
networks.”

Internet regulation is frightening, no doubt, but
internationally recognized justification for governmental snooping?
Now that just bytes.

The folks at Tech Liberation Front parse the implications of
WCIT preparations here.