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Quick show of hands: the four countries would you most trust to establish a UN-sponsored “International Code of Practice for Information Security” on the Internet? If your list includes China, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, then you’ll love the new Code of Conduct (PDF) presented at the 66th Session of the General Assembly of the United Nations in New York last week.

The proposed code will be voluntary, but it is clearly aimed at staking reason for the nation when it comes to the Internet. As a preamble, the document states that “political authority in matters related to public Internet is the sovereign right to” not by the IETF or ICANN, or a stakeholder forum, involving business and civil society.

The code requires countries to respect the “human rights and fundamental freedoms” and pledged to “support the fight against criminal and terrorist activities that use information technology and communications, including networks.” States also undertake not to use Internet tools to “carry out hostile activities or acts of aggression.”

But the documentary committed “to curb incitement to terrorism information, secession-ism, or extremists, or that undermine political stability, economic and social in other countries’ as well as their spiritual and cultural environment.”

Governments have the responsibility to “bring all elements of society, including information communication and partnerships with the private sector, to understand the roles and responsibilities for security.”

It’s very general, but it is not difficult to see how information that undermines the stem “social stability” will lead to problems, yes, the gist of the text is part of the problem. Other signatory countries would be invited by China to begin to suppress Falun Gong messages pro-, for example?

Syracuse professor of Internet governance, and Martin Müller, an expert warns of the dangers of such conduct would have caused. “This section would allow each state the right to censor or block international communication in almost any reason”, writes of the Internet Governance Project Blog. “Like, for example, Facebook, mobilizations against dictators, dissident blogs, etc.” By undermining the spiritual and cultural environment “in particular could be used to filter the declarations of the government should not, and could also be used as trade protectionism, cultural. ”

For Mueller, the code of conduct “is another futile attempt to superimpose the territorial sovereignty of an Internet that is fundamentally incompatible with him … The UN should not be allowed to ratify the language that attempts to adjust the global Internet back in the boxes the country. “