April 2010 - Internet Governance Project

Who do you trust to sign the root?

Posted on April 30, 2010November 20, 2017 by Brenden KuerbisCybersecurity, Internet Identifiers

ICANN's Trusted Community Representative (TCR) program, which proposes to distribute signing authority for the DNS root zone among representatives of the Internet community, was launched by ICANN about two weeks ago.

DNSEXT Working Group participant Thierry Moreau observes that

basically, the concept (and details) of TCRs is the ICANN answer to the concern over a strengthening of DNS control, [and over allowing] international participation. The concept of TCR is also original – no other crypto deployment ever required, or seemed to require, a similar level of transparency.

But, despite the good intentions there are questions.

At the ARIN meeting

Posted on April 20, 2010November 20, 2017 by Milton MuellerInternet Identifiers

I have been attending the American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN) meeting in Toronto. ARIN is one of the RIRs, i.e., the Internet address registry and policy making authority for North America. Although I have observed and participated on RIR lists for some time and interacted with RIR representatives at ICANN, WSIS and IGF, this is the first time I have been able to attend a meeting. I'm glad I did.

Committee OK's funding for cybersecurity R&D, including Internet standards and assessing methods

Posted on April 20, 2010November 20, 2017 by Brenden KuerbisCybersecurity

As reported last week, the House Homeland Security Committee has passed a $2.7 billion appropriations bill, H.R. 4842 Homeland Security Science and Technology Authorization Act of 2010. The bill allocates $150 million over two years to the Department of Homeland Security's Science and Technology Directorate.

The bill continues the funding of Internet standards works dealing with securing critical Internet resources, as well as offers an opportunity for improving our understanding of how domestic efforts to improve cybersecurity impacts global Internet governance.

North American Network Operators Group to formally organize

Posted on April 17, 2010November 20, 2017 by Brenden KuerbisIG Institutions

The North American Network Operators Group (NANOG), which is little known outside of the technical community but serves a vitally important role in the successful functioning of the Internet, has decided to organize under 501(c)3 status. To date, NANOG had its meetings and activities organized under the auspices of Merit, a Michigan-based educational and networking research non-profit which managed NSFNet, the precursor to the modern Internet. Since 1994, the NANOG mailing list has served as a primary method of inter-carrier communication in the region, used to share information and resolve operational problems. How the change will impact NANOG's activities and the operators who participate is to be determined, but it represents another step in the continuing formalization of Internet governance institutions.

Internet Society Attacks Beckstrom's DNS “sky is falling” talk

Posted on April 15, 2010November 20, 2017 by Milton MuellerCybersecurity, IG Institutions

It's not often you get to see the Internet Society butt heads directly with ICANN, which some consider its creature. In comments filed today with ICANN, the President and CEO of the Internet Society (ISOC), Lynn St. Amour, sent some sharply-worded criticism to ICANN President and CEO Rod Beckstrom. The comment, which was sent to the entire ICANN Board, criticized Beckstrom for his comments before the Governmental Advisory Committee at the Nairobi meeting last month, when he claimed that the domain name system is “under attack as never before” and implied that it is likely to collapse at any moment. Beckstrom made these comments by way of promoting his idea of a “DNS CERT”.

NPR misses the point on the politics of global Internet governance

Posted on April 9, 2010November 20, 2017 by Brenden KuerbisGeopolitics of IG, IG Institutions

NPR concluded yesterday a series on “the newest arena of international conflict – cyberspace.” To be honest, it was very gratifying to hear major media bringing the vitally important topic of global Internet governance to a wider audience. By and large it was good reporting, highlighting the increasing contention as national governments world-wide struggle with the ramifications of a global communications network. One point they missed though was that “global Internet governance stands…neutral, apolitical, and largely hands off [from government interference today].” This is simply incorrect.

Cyber-Spin: How the Internet gets framed as dangerous

Posted on April 8, 2010November 20, 2017 by Milton MuellerCybersecurity

At the beginning of this year, a set of powerhouse organizations in cybersecurity (CSO Magazine, Deloitte, Carnegie Mellon's CERT program, and the U.S. Secret Service) released the results of a survey of 523 business and government executives, professionals and consultants in the ICT management field.

The media coverage generated by this survey provides an unusally clear illustration of how cyber security discourse has become willfully detached from facts. It shows clearly how there is an organized industrial and political imperative to drill into our heads the idea that the Internet is a dangerous thing and its threats are spiralling upwards at an uncontrollable rate. It doesn't matter what facts are uncovered, they are all interpreted to support this preconception.

With that intro, here is the lead sentence from the January 25 2010 Carnegie-Mellon University news release about the 2010 CyberSecurity Watch Survey: “Cybercrime threats posed to targeted organizations are increasing faster than many organizations can combat them, according to the 2010 CyberSecurity Watch Survey…”

Stop right there. A careful review of both the survey and the ensuing responses to it quickly reveals that that conclusion did NOT come from the survey itself, and was not supported by its data.

Google's Leaving China-What do Chinese People Think?

Posted on April 7, 2010November 20, 2017 by Sophie WuFree Expression Online

Google announced its new approach in China: An update in March, 22, 2010, two month after its initial announcement in January that the company no longer wants to operate a filtered search engine in China. The final decision is to redirect Google.cn to Google.com.hk to provide uncensored search in simplified Chinese.

Google launched Google.cn in January 2006, agreeing to follow the requirement from the government of China that the search engine would censor input queries and offer filtered results. Some of the sensitive keywords will return no results and some will return filtered results with the notice “According to the local law and regulation, some of the search results are not displayed.”

ITU on Internet governance debates

Posted on April 6, 2010November 20, 2017 by Brenden KuerbisGeopolitics of IG

From IP Watch, an extensive interview with ITU Strategist Alexander Ntoko, which covers among other things, ITU's recommendation to member states to continue the IGF, and the ITU's preparations for the upcoming Plenipot this October in Mexico, including how the ITU-ICANN debate is “about countries wanting to play an equal role in those global policies that affect the internet,” how “the management of IPv6 is peanuts” compared to international spectrum management, but “there has to be clarity in what membership wants us to do.”

Evaluate Continued Uncertainty

Posted on April 1, 2010November 20, 2017 by Milton MuellerInternet Identifiers

On March 26, ICANN’s General Counsel, John O. Jittery, had a nervous breakdown. Internal observers speculated that the breakdown may have been caused by the stress and ignominy of losing the independent review challenge that concluded ICANN's denial of ICM Registry's application for a .xxx domain was unfair and discriminatory. Unfortunately for ICANN, the deranged lawyer managed to get links to the incoherent documents he produced posted on the organization’s front page as a request for public comment.

Month: April 2010