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(LifeSiteNews) — Authoritarian governments intend to control their people through “fragmentation” of the internet, says David Huberman, Senior Technical Engagement Specialist for the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN).

A nonprofit overseen by the U.S. government until the Obama administration, ICANN coordinates the maintenance and procedures of several databases related to the internet’s domain name system and IP addressing, which is necessary for safeguarding stable and secure operations on the world wide web.

In remarks made to the online infrastructure industry gathering CloudFest 2023 last month and reported by German news publication Der Spiegel, Huberman warned that “the potential fragmentation of the Internet is a worrying topic.” He specifically highlighted China, Iran, and Russia as examples of “authoritarian governments that want to control their people.”

At the same time, Huberman and ICANN reject proposals to cut off Russia’s access to the internet as a way of quashing Kremlin propaganda defending its ongoing invasion of Ukraine. “We say no. We have to remain neutral,” he said, echoing the position taken by tech mogul and free-speech minded Twitter owner Elon Musk.

The report does not cover whether or how Huberman elaborated, but “fragmentation” in this context generally refers to the blocking of internet access to or from certain countries or regions of the world, or barriers to the interaction among different internet services and functions, whether due to technical issues, government policies, or private decisions.

READ: ‘Banana republic’: Conservatives blast Trudeau, Liberals for passing internet censorship bill C-11

Reporting on the story, Breitbart’s Peter Caddle adds that authoritarian regimes aren’t the only ones who pose such risks.

“Politicians in the United Kingdom appear to be just as keen on implementing widespread Internet censorship, with the country’s planned Online Safety Bill set to hand regulators widespread powers to force social media firms to censor content deemed to problematic,” he writes, citing provisions that would effectively gut the privacy of personal messaging applications such as Signal and WhatsApp.

In the United States, bipartisan support has mounted for banning the social video platform TikTok due to its links to China and concerns that it is harvesting data on American users for nefarious purposes. But critics say that legislation currently being considered to do so, the RESTRICT Act, would actually give the president broad discretion to restrict any platforms and services he deems threatening.

The Epoch Times’ Joshua Phillips took the comments as a vindication of his 2014 warning that by ceding U.S. oversight of the internet to international authorities such as the United Nations-affiliated International Telecommunications Union, former President Barack Obama was potentially “allow[ing] authoritarian regimes in China and Russia to gain stronger influence over the global Internet.”

READ: Canada has taken another big step to becoming Communist China

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