EU DisinfoLab proposes using ICANN’s security system against “disinformation,” raising questions about internet governance and the boundaries of free speech.
EU DisinfoLab, a non-profit officially operating independently but regularly making policy recommendations to the EU and member-states, is now pushing for a security structure created by ICANN (the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) to be utilized in the “war on disinformation.”
EU DisinfoLab, which receives grants from George Soros’ controversial Open Society Foundations, is now testing the water regarding “repurposing” of an ICANN security operation set up to combat malware, spam, phishing, etc., and turn it into a tool against “disinformation sites.”
Attempting to directly enlist ICANN would be highly controversial, to put it mildly, at least at this stage. Given its importance in the internet infrastructure – ICANN manages domain names globally – and the fact content control is not among its tasks (DisinfoLab says ICANN “refuses” to do it) – this would represent a huge departure from the organization’s role as we understand it today.
But now DisinfoLab proposes to use “the structure already created by ICANN” against legitimate security threats, to police the internet for content that somebody decides to treat as “disinformation.” It would require “minimal amount of diligence and cooperation” from registries, a blog post said, to accept ICANN-style reports and revoke a site’s domain name.
The justification for all this is that alleged “disinformation doppelganger” sites use domain names that are deceptively similar to “trusted news sites.”
And, according to the group, who better to wipe out whatever domain name is deemed to belong to a “disinformation site” than a DNS registrar – and ICANN is the top authority for them all.
During the pandemic, ICANN’s Domain Name System Threat Information Collection and Reporting (DNSTICR) was used to identify domain names that contained terms related to Covid, but the goal was to find out if the sites abused the keyword(s) to mask phishing or malware proliferating operations, rather than to “moderate” any type of Covid-related content.
Now DisinfoLab wants to use a system based on DNSTICR to allow for reporting of “genuinely open-and-shut (disinformation) cases” to registrars for removal.
But, what authority would decide what’s a “genuinely open-and-shut case”?
DisinfoLab’s idea: registries or registrars could “grant media trade associations ‘trusted notifier’ status.”
No word on what methodology these “trusted notifiers” would use to perform their “arbiter of truth” role.
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