Here’s Exactly How the Internet Is Now Under Threat

[Commentary] On January 26th, I interviewed former Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler at Harvard Law School, where I teach. It was the day the new administration announced his successor, who will have very different priorities. We talked about network neutrality, telecom mergers, high-speed access, and the dangers that lie ahead under the next administration. I asked, "In the Trump administration, people are talking about stripping regulatory power from the FCC, and essentially taking the agency apart (including moving jurisdiction over internet access to the Federal Trade Commission [FTC]). 'Modernizing' the FCC is the lingo being used. What’s your thought about that?"

Wheeler said, "It’s a fraud. The FTC doesn’t have rule-making authority. They’ve got enforcement authority and their enforcement authority is whether or not something is unfair or deceptive. And the FTC has to worry about everything from computer chips to bleach labeling. Of course, carriers want [telecom issues] to get lost in that morass. This was the strategy all along. So it doesn’t surprise me that the Trump transition team — who were with the American Enterprise Institute and basically longtime supporters of this concept — comes in and says, 'Oh, we oughta do away with this.' It makes no sense to get rid of an expert agency and to throw these issues to an agency with no rule-making power that has to compete with everything else that’s going on in the economy, and can only deal with unfair or deceptive practices. Because we’re talking about one sixth of the economy. More importantly, we’re dealing with the network that connects six sixths of the economy."

[Susan Crawford is the John A Reilly Clinical Professor of Law at Harvard Law School]