How politicians are trying to break the Internet

A stark warning about governments' ability to abuse technology to muzzle citizens, track movements, and shut down peaceful protests has emerged at this week's Internet Governance Forum in Istanbul.
We are in a post-Snowden reality and his revelations of mass government surveillance programs continue to rattle people around the world. He demonstrated how governments -- the U.S. chief among them -- were conducting broad, unfocused surveillance on individuals.
While reform is needed we cannot allow policymakers to play engineers and break the Internet. Unfortunately, many leaders are proposing to do just that.
They are calling for all of the data of their citizens be stored locally, or in-country. That would fundamentally change how the Internet works.
It would go from a flexible, efficient, and open global network to a rigid, failure-prone network with walls. Worse yet, the proposals would lead to a system even more ripe for government abuse, that would paradoxically have little effect on surveillance.
This policy could create what some are calling a "splinternet" -- a world with country-specific "internets" that don't connect with each other to form today's global network.
Today, the Internet allows information to flow to all parts of the world, with no particular regard for state boundaries. It is a resilient network of networks that enables communications to take the fastest and most efficient routes, and to route around blockages and broken connections.
Since communications do not have to follow pre-determined routes, data can be stored potentially anywhere and accessed everywhere.
This won't be the case under data-localization laws governments are proposing. Requiring Internet services to store data in each user's home country will create huge barriers for providing globally accessible services.
Perhaps the current Internet giants could afford to build servers in each country, but small and medium sized enterprises won't be able to compete.