For 20 years, the US has maintained loose control over ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, which regulates the backbone of the internet. A California-based nonprofit created in 1998 by the US government and composed of citizens from multiple countries, ICANN manages “root zone files,” which make up the internet’s address book.

Now the US is giving up its supervisory role, a decision by President Obama that risks letting countries like Russia, China and Iran change what citizens in other countries can read. Control of the root zone file, says Ted Cruz’s spokesman Phil Novack, lets ICANN “determine who gets a site, the policies governing those sites, and which sites get to operate and which sites get shut down.” Cruz has said that ““Like Jimmy Carter gave away the Panama Canal, Obama is giving away the internet.”

An Independent Organization

Since the US created the internet, the Department of Commerce has kept a supervisory role even as the internet has gone global. The agreement between ICANN and the department runs out tonight at midnight, since Obama decided not to renew it. transforming ICANN into a completely independent organization.

The US government has said since 1998 that it would relinquish control, but kept delaying. Due in part to Edward Snowden exposing spying by the NSA on foreign countries, pressure increased lately for the US to cede control.

Without a check on its power by the US, ICANN may be susceptible to influence by nations like Russia, China and Iran which want to censor and control the web. Those countries already censor the internet within their borders. Paul Rosenzweig, a visiting fellow at The Heritage Foundation and professor with expertise in cyber security, explained, “It will not be ‘control’ for China and Russia, but it will be significantly more influence.”

Four Republican state attorneys general for Arizona, Oklahoma, Nevada and Texas sued the Obama administration over the transfer. The US currently uses the .gov and .mil domains, and their suit expresses concern that ICANN could revoke that authority.

Another fear is that the “Whois” feature revealing who owns websites could be removed, allowing US enemies to operate without consequences. In 2014,  ICANN’s Expert Working Group issued a report recommending that Whois be abolished, with names only available for release under certain circumstances.

It’s not just conservatives like Cruz who are concerned about the transfer. FCC board member Michael O’Rielly, an Obama appointee, said earlier this month, “I have grave concerns that one or more foreign governments would be able to unduly influence or control the new ICANN.”

Mark Grabowski, an internet law professor at Adelphi University in New York, penned an article in The San Diego Union-Tribune raising the same concerns about the American government addresses and transparency. He noted that the transition plan “lacks adequate accountability measures to ensure that ICANN doesn’t suffer the systematic corruption that has plagued other international governing bodies, such as FIFA.”

ICANN’s Response and the Critics

In response to Novack’s statement ICANN issued a four-page statement claiming that Cruz does not understand the web nor what ICANN does. ICANN “is a technical organization and does not have the remit or ability to regulate content on the Internet,” it said. It warned that if the US government kept control, it “would create a powerful incentive for other governments to set up their own root zone  splintering the Internet, providing opportunities “or confusion and abuse, and reducing the addressable market of 3.4 billion users that US industry and the rest of the world currently enjoy.”

Critics dismiss concerns about the transfer as overblown. The website Politifact, which fact-checks political claims, points out the differences between an independent ICANN and the UN, declaring that since ICANN will not operate quite the same way the UN does, there is nothing to worry about. This misses the point. Just because an international organization is structured differently than the UN, does not mean it will fairly represent the interests of the US and a free society.

Additionally, there has been talk over the years of moving ICANN over underneath UN control. Shortly after ICANN was created, the UN formed a Working Group on Internet Governance “to investigate and make proposals for action … on the governance of Internet.”

Critics also assert that because ICANN merely governs the internet’s address book, it will not get involved with regulating content. Nothing prevents it from doing so. In 2009, the organization issued notices of enforcement against several domain name registrars for not curtailing spam.

The Senate considered blocking the transfer on Wednesday, but backed down, fearing the Democrats would force a government shutdown in retaliation. The House of Representatives has one last chance to stop the transfer today. Will they have the backbone to save the internet’s backbone?

Rachel worked as a cyber lawyer for domain name registrar Go Daddy Software, Inc., from 2003-2004. Follow Rachel on Twitter at Rach_IC.