Re: NTIA request for feedback on DNSSEC deployment at the root zone

Brian E Carpenter wrote, to multiple mailing lists of which 
ietf(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org is the only relevant as far as I am individually concerned:
> On 2008-10-10 03:50, Olaf Kolkman wrote:
>
> > > There are links to a number of process flow diagrams that may interest
> > > you.
> > For easy accessibility of those links see:
> > http://www.ntia.doc.gov/DNS/DNSSEC.html
>
> I don't think we should endorse in any way the implication that
> the NTIA or any other part of the US (or any other) government
> gets to decide about this. So I suggest that any formal reponse
> from the IAB or IESG should be very clear that this is a decision
> for the community to take and implement.
Wow, that's a late wake up call! The legaleese that binds ICANN to the 
US government has been around since ICANN inception. It's this very 
legaleese that makes the US government the ultimate "permission" gate 
needed for DNSSEC root deployment.
> That being said, it's obviously a very desirable thing to do,
> and government encouragement seems welcome. I can't comment
> on which of the detailed proposals is technically best.
This inability makes sense to me, because the IETF (if I'm correct, your 
contributions are mainly supportive of the IETF-IESG "progress" - i.e. 
effectiveness, influence, assertions of legitimacy and 
representativeness, and why not, power) didn't challenge the ICANN-US 
governemnt-Verising position in DNS operational issues. In other words, 
the IETF has not been concerned (beyond relatively minor activity in 
dnsop wg) with the ICANN mission, which is multi-faceted.
Like it or not, civil servants somewhere in an office called NTIA are 
faced with the task of deciding about these (boring but required) DNSSEC 
KSK scenarios. Indeed, this activity looks like the last "permission" 
before actual implementation progress towards deployment - hopefully it 
is. At its face value, the NTIA call for comments plainly delineates the 
scope of the issues, their relevance, available options, and the like. 
If you challenge *now* their legitimacy to so fulfill their "historic 
role", I don't see whoose  "progress" it is.
I would add, as a careful observer of NTIA involvement in ICANN / 
Internet governance, that processes followed by civil servants paid by 
the US federal government seem quite transparent, open, and accountable, 
thanks to things like 1) every output documents in the public domain, 2) 
subject to FOIA inquiries (Freedom of Information Act), 3) parliamentary 
oversight through reports to the "the House" and hearings, 4) the NOI 
process (Notice of Inquiry) that is being used in the current instance. 
(Each of these have specific instances where Internet governance aspects 
were the central subject matter.) In my view, this overall procedural 
landscape compares fairly well to e.g. the un-timeliness of release of 
IAB meeting minutes (pun intended to Olaf). Thus, in the above "like it 
or not," the arrangement is not as distateful as it looks like at first 
glance.
In other tribunes, I may be very critical of what NTIA does or does not. 
But this is somehow unrelated to the processes that are followed.
Regards,

--

- Thierry Moreau

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