This week I attended the GovCert.NL Symposium in the Netherlands. This is the 6th annual gathering of “Computer Emergency Response Teams (CERTs) and other experts in Internet security and privacy. About 50% of the participants were Dutch, I would guess, and maybe 85% from Europe, although there were attendees from as far away as the USA, Japan and Australia. There were some fascinating presentations, including an analysis of the role of money mules in phishing scams, analysis of a new “man in the middle”-style attack on banks, attempts by governments to implement digital identity systems, a detailed recounting of the Estonian “cyber riot” that temporarily crippled the Internet in that country, advocacy for Bitfrost, a new operating system platform based on new privacy/security assumptions, and, oh, a very interesting discussion of the Whois-privacy problem in ICANN. 😉
Net Non-Neutrality Trade Threat? China Blocks RSS Feeds
IGP noted early on how progressive companies like eBay were viewing the content blocking and filtering aspects of the net neutrality debates as having broader economic impacts. Now it seems Silicon Valley is picking up on this emerging issue.
OECD: Mobilizing Civil Society for the Internet Ministerial
A series of meetings in Ottawa, Canada this week started setting the foundation for civil society participation in the Seoul Ministerial on The Future of the Internet Economy. IGP is involved in this initiative, along with APC and EPIC's Public Voice, as part of the reference group coordinating civil society participation. There were 3 meetings of interest: an initial exploratory gathering of civil society Forum participants on Wednesday October 3rd; official OECD intergovernmental meetings on Thursday October 4th; and a liaison betwen nonstate actors and the South Korean government officials responsible for organizing the logistical aspects of the Seoul meeting.
Another National Internet Threatened: Russia
First it was China, experimenting with its own special DNS name space and its own Great cyber-Wall to guard what content can and cannot enter the country. Now, Putin's Russia is said to be planning to give it a try. From IGP's extensive network of spies in Moscow (well, ok, it's actually from a two month-old Russian newspaper), we learn that the Security Council of the Russian Federation has declared that Russia will create its own Web, in Cyrillic, “completely independent from the traditional WWW.” Several reasons were cited for the creation of an independent network. One was — surprise — “information safety and security.” The newspaper writes: “Today it is a matter of fact that Russian users are accessing the internet via channels which are in the control of the US government.”
Response to Patrik Faltstrom on DNSSEC implications
Our 9 September blog post on DNSSEC has generated significant attention. It is gratifying to see DNS experts like Patrik Faltstrom respond. Not so gratifying is that Patrik's response reveals that even technical experts in DNS can fail to understand the governance implications of the technologies they work with daily....
The Politics of DNSSEC: The Light Begins to Dawn at IETF
We republish below an astounding post by VeriSign's DNS expert, Dr. Phillip Hallam-Baker, made on the IETF list. In it, he incisively describes the political implications of signing the root using DNSSEC, something we at IGP have been trying to do for about a year now. He also calls for...
Public Comments Require Changes in ICANN new gTLD Policy
The ICANN comment period on its new gTLD policy is over. The comments reflect overwhelming opposition to the Council's attempt to impose a standard of “morality and public order” on new TLD strings. The vast majority of comments — about 60 of the 75 or so comments — criticized the policy of censoring TLD strings and asked ICANN to stick to technical and operational criteria.
IGF's MAG renewed, governments flex muscles?
Finally, the UN Secretary-General has renewed the mandate of the multistakeholder Advisory Group (MAG) for the Internet Governance Forum. Officially, the Advisory Group's mandate expired with the closure of the IGF's first meeting in Athens in November 2006. Since then, the Advisory Group's status has been in limbo. What looked like an understandable delay for some time – there was a changeover of leadership in the UN headquarters in early 2007 – became a problem in May this year. Following open consultations in Geneva, the Advisory Group was supposed to meet to discuss the agenda for the IGF's Rio meeting in November. Without a formal mandate, however, the AG could not hold a meeting. The official public consultation had to be extended into another two days of unofficial, half public meetings. Now, there is not only a new mandate including some concrete tasks, there is also a new position.
Timeline of the WHOIS saga
Researchers at IGP have prepared a comprehensive timeline of the Whois service and the controversy over Whois and privacy, with links to relevant documents. The timeline was prepared by Dr. Milton Mueller and doctoral student Mawaki Chango as part of their draft paper for the annual Telecommunication Policy Research Conference at the end of September. Comments or suggested additions of important missing elements to the timeline are welcomed; use the reply function on the blog
Whois Privacy Stalemate…Again
The report of the Whois Working Group was published today. The Working Group could not achieve agreement on how to reconcile privacy and data protection rights with the interests of intellectual property holders and law enforcement agencies. So the Working Group Chair redefined the meaning of “agreement.” See the full story.
