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U.S. officials and high-tech business giants have launched an assault against what they view as a massive threat to the Internet and to Silicon Valleys bottom lines: foreign governments.

In a congressional hearing Thursday, they will warn lawmakers of a growing movement led by China, Russia and some Arab states to hand more control of the Web to the United Nations and place rules on the Internet that the U.S. companies say would empower governments to clamp down on civil rights and free speech.

That could mean the Web might look drastically different in other countries than it does in the United States, opponents of the proposals say. An Internet user in Uzbekistan could be more easily tracked by government officials and might get access to only a portion of the Google search results seen in the United States, for example.

In a rare coordinated effort to knock down the proposals, Google, Microsoft, Verizon and Cisco also warn of financial risks to their businesses if new rules are adopted. They say some nations may push forlaws on Internet firms that could lead to tariffs on Internet service providers such as Verizon, or even Web firms such as Facebook that enable people to communicate over the Internet.

The threats are real and not imagined, although they admittedly sound like works of fiction at times, said Robert McDowell, a Republican member of the Federal Communications Commission.

The U.S. companies protests come ahead of a key December meeting in Dubai, where United Nations members will reconsider a 1988 communications treaty. Several foreign governments have argued that the treaty needs to be updated, given the growing influence of Internet communications.

The number of Web users is expected to grow from 2.3billion today to 3.4billion in four years, according to a new report by Cisco. Facebook and Twitter proved to be vital for revolutionaries during the Arab Spring protests last year. And in many developing countries, the only outlet to the outside world is what people read online.

So much has changed since the 1988 revisions, so the global policy and regulatory framework needs to be updated, Hamadoun Toure, secretary general of the International Telecommunications Union, the U.N.s telecom authority, said in a speech this month.

Many nations want more say over the shape of the Web. The Internet has been heavily influenced by U.S. firms and American academics who set the standards, they argue. China, in particular, has been critical of the United States efforts to encourage open Web policies around the world.

The ITU has criticized the U.S. outcry against the proposals by foreign governments. We are baffled. There is so much misinformation on this, said Alexander Ntoko, head of corporate strategy for the ITU. He said the Americans are exaggerating how much the U.N. could shape the Web.

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U.S. tech companies warn of threat to Internet from foreign governments