On Mon, Oct 7, 2013 at 7:05 PM, Jari Arkko
<jari(_dot_)arkko(_at_)piuha(_dot_)net> wrote:
This wording is surprising. It looks like it is the revelations that
undermined confidence, and not the NSA actions. I would prefer
something like, to avoid shooting the messenger:
Of course :-) We meant that the loss of privacy causes concern, not the
revelations.
No, it is the revelations that cause concern.
Nobody is in the least concerned about the fact that the British government
and royal family has been replaced by a group of reptilian dopplegangers
apart from David Ike who is the only person who knows about it.
It is the actions that justify the concern but without the revelations
there is no concern.
The problem with the language used as I see it is that it is unfortunately
rather close to the language used by the establishment types who run round
telling us all not to worry our heads about what they are doing and we must
certainly not ever question their motives or intentions.
The reason I keep reminding people about the previous uses of the syncretic
power of GCHQ and the NSA is that they prove that we do need to keep
questioning their motives. For years people were dismissed as paranoid
leftist hippies for suggesting that the CIA installed a dictatorship in
Greece. And now it is known that exactly that happened.
In the same way, the idea that US government might attempt to use control
over ICANN or IANA for leverage has to be taken seriously. The question is
not whether Steve Crocker is comfortable with the situation, it is whether
the governance infrastructure is strong enough to prevent abuse over
centuries.
The US government is currently shut down because some folk in Congress are
trying to use the threat of a recession to deny access to health care to a
fifth of the population. It is certainly not inconceivable that a future
Congress would attempt to abuse control over ICANN is nonsense. It is a US
registered corporation subject to US law.
If nothing is done then sooner or later there will be some idiot on his
hind legs in the Senate talking for 21 hours demanding that Cuba or
Palestine be dropped out of the DNS root or be denied IPv6 allocations or
some equally stupid grandstanding demand designed to give him a platform on
which to run for higher office.
I think the US executive branch would be better rid of the control before
the vandals work out how to use it for mischief. But better would be to
ensure that no such leverage exists. There is no reason for the apex of the
DNS to be a single root, it could be signed by a quorum of signers (in
addition to the key splitting which I am fully familiar with). And every
government should be assigned a sovereign reserve of IPv6 addresses to
prevent a scarcity being used as leverage.
--
Website: http://hallambaker.com/