Will Cisco Products phone home to ICANN?

IGP has spent a lot of time trying to get people to appreciate the massive global governance issues caused by adding security to the Internet's core infrastructure. We just didn't expect them to become this obvious so quickly. Case in point: various technical lists are abuzz with news that Cisco, the world's largest router manufacturer, is discussing the possibility of making every one of its products do DNSSEC validation by default.

The US Commerce Dept position paper for the ICANN Board negotiations

IGP has obtained a copy of the US Commerce Department's position paper for its February 28 negotiations with the ICANN Board over the new top level domain program. The USG Submission to the GAC Scorecard shows that the U.S. Commerce Department's ICANN crew has gone off the rails. It supports direct governmental veto power over domains and demands that ICANN completely rewrite most of the consensus policies developed over 4 years.
The specific policies recommended by the U.S. will astonish anyone who believes that the U.S. supports Internet freedom and democratic governance. For beginners, the U.S. is demanding that ICANN give any government in the world the authority to veto a top level domain. The U.S. wants to make all top level domains go through an initial “review by governments, via the GAC.” In this initial evaluation process, “Any GAC member may raise an objection to a proposed string for any reason. If it is the consensus position of the GAC not to oppose an objection raised by a GAC member or members, ICANN shall reject the application.”

GAC-Board consultations will be transparent – but something important is missing

ICANN has released new information about its crucial negotiations between the Board and its Governmental Advisory Committee over the new gTLD program. They have set the date (28 February and 1 March) and place (Brussels, Square Brussels Meeting Centre) for the meeting. They have also answered the question whether it will be open or not. The answer is Yes. “The meeting will be open, scribed and streamed live over the Internet.” While it will be possible for the general public to attend and observe the proceedings, only GAC members, ICANN Board members, some staff members and “subject matter experts” will be allowed to speak, however.

ISP security performance and the cost of botnet mitigation

As mentioned briefly in a post last Friday, our recently completed study on ISP botnet mitigation showed that between 5 to 10 percent of all broadband subscribers in the Netherlands had their machines recruited into a botnet at some point in 2009. This week we offer a little closer look at that finding, which is conservatively based on the unique IP sources present in three distinct datasets of malicious network hosts: a large spam trap, the DShield distributed intrusion detection system, and Conficker sinkholes. Our results indicate that, from an economic perspective, the use of automation in botnet mitigation has an interesting effect on the incentives of ISPs. Read on to find out more and download the report.

The most dangerous man in America then; the “most dangerous” man in the world now?

Last night I got a chance to view the excellent 2009 documentary film “The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers.”
Of course, it is impossible to mention the Pentagon Papers now without thinking “Wikileaks,” and I admit that it was an interest in the parallels and differences in the cases that put that selection in my Netflix queue. It turned out to be a far more rewarding choice than I had expected. The film brings the 40-year old Ellsberg/Pentagon Papers sequence of events to life as vividly as the Private Manning/Wikileaks case is alive now. And without that historical knowledge and context one’s awareness of the Wikileaks case is impoverished. A fascinating aspect of this film is the way it documents how different the technological and publishing environment was – but one is also struck by the similarities in the political debate. Despite efforts to drive a wedge between Ellsberg and Wikileaks, this documentary, which was made more than a year before the Wikileaks controversy hit, shows how fundamentally similar the cases are.

Call for Papers: Global Internet Governance: Research and Public Policy Challenges for the Next Decade

May 5 and 6, 2011
American University, School of International Service, Washington, DC

Building on the success of its first four regional workshops in Paris, France (2008), Brussels, Belgium (2009), Seoul, So. Korea (2009) and Montreal, Canada (2010), the purpose of the Washington, DC regional GigaNet workshop is twofold: Day one (May 5) is dedicated to outreach sessions exploring issues in global Internet governance among policy makers, academics and civil society at large. Day two (May 6) features presentations of scholarly research based on a rigorous peer reviewed selection process.

Deadline for abstract submissions has been extended to February 25, 2011! Submissions can be made through the Easy Chair web site.

Decisions will be made by March 15, 2011.

Manuscripts expected by April 18, 2011.

What is Evgeny Morozov Trying to Prove? A review of “The Net Delusion”

Evgeny Morozov’s new book “The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom” deserves an extensive review here. It grapples with key questions of Internet governance in a highly original way. But it is also a frustrating book to try to make sense of. The tone of the work is urgent but the take-home message is murky, if not confused and contradictory.

Here is an example of the kind of phenomenon that gives me concern. One of the many promotional events for the book summarizes its theme as follows: “It is not the young protestors and dissidents but rather the regimes in Teheran and Beijing that are the Web's greatest beneficiaries.” Having read the book, I can say conclusively that that assertion is false on two counts: it is not an accurate encapsulation of what the book actually says, nor is it true of the real world as a general rule. But as we will see, Morozov himself is directly responsible for these kinds of misinterpretations. The book’s aura of Internet-powered publicity seems designed to capitalize on simplistic inversions of conventional wisdom (it makes for great tweets and sound bites, after all). And the book’s analysis is so full of logical contradictions that one could, in fact, find support for that interpretation – and many others as well.