United States Government Retains Control Over "The Internets"

The United States Government has departed from previously stated policy, and will retain complete oversight of the main computers that control traffic on the Internet. They had previously intended to eventually, officially, pass the responsibility to ICANN, a private, non-profit, U.S.-based, international company, once certain conditions were met.

Michael D. Gallagher, assistant secretary for communications and information at the Commerce Department, shied away from terming the declaration a reversal, calling it instead "the foundation of U.S. policy going forward."

"The signals and words and intentions and policies need to be clear so all of us benefiting in the world from the Internet and in the U.S. economy can have confidence there will be continued stewardship," Gallagher said in an interview with The Associated Press.

He said the declaration, officially made in a four-paragraph statement posted online, was in response to growing security threats and increased reliance on the Internet globally for communications and commerce.

I can appreciate that nothing has really changed for now; the U.S. Commerce Department was already in control of these mysterious machines, holding veto power over ICAAN, the company performing the day-to-day operations. Isn't it interesting though, that with an increased GLOBAL reliance on the Internet's communications and commerce capabilities, the U.S. Government would act to keep control in U.S. hands, away from global influence (or at least a semblance thereof)?

Well maybe it's not so bad - what do these computers (and ICANN) do anyway?

The computers in question serve as the Internet's master directories and tell Web browsers and e-mail programs how to direct traffic. Internet users around the world interact with them every day, likely without knowing it. Policy decisions could at a stroke make all Web sites ending in a specific suffix essentially unreachable.

Though the computers themselves -- 13 in all, known as "root" servers -- are in private hands, they contain government-approved lists of the 260 or so Internet suffixes, such as ".com."

From ICANN:

ICANN is responsible for coordinating the management of the technical elements of the DNS to ensure universal resolvability so that all users of the Internet can find all valid addresses. It does this by overseeing the distribution of unique technical identifiers used in the Internet's operations, and delegation of Top-Level Domain names (such as .com, .info, etc.).

These computers have complete control over what the global population can and can't access on the internets, and ICANN operates to ensure universal access to valid addresses. No biggie!

All sarcasm aside, this announcement doesn't really seem to change the day-to-day operations of oversight of the internet, so I'm not going to jump to conclusions and assume that the next time some poor German lad goes surfing for supermodels he'll get directed, say, here instead. Or that when some Arab family in the middle east tries to find out how to immigrate to the U.S. they get sent here instead. But something seems fishy. Could there be political reasons behind the announcement?

The announcement comes just weeks before a U.N. panel is to release a report on Internet governance, addressing such issues as oversight of the root servers, ahead of November's U.N. World Summit on the Information Society in Tunisia (WSIS).

Some countries have pressed to move oversight to an international body, such as the U.N. International Telecommunication Union, although the U.S. government has historically had that role because it funded much of the Internet's early development.

Ambassador David Gross, the U.S. coordinator for international communications and information policy at the State Department, insisted that Thursday's announcement was unrelated to those discussions.

But he said other countries should see the move as positive because "uncertainty is not something that we think is in the United States' interest or the world's interest."

Sound familiar? The U.S. Government is, for some reason, thumbing its nose at the wishes of other countries, all the while claiming that the world's interest is, or should be, in line with its own. In addition, the Americans have completely undermined a U.N. panel's upcoming report on Internet Governance.

Indeed, angering allies and undermining the U.N. has become the U.S. government's modus operandi. The question of who should govern the Internet is a controversial one, and mere months before the topic was to be discussed in a global forum, the U.S. retreats into full "you're either with us or against us" mode, all in the name of 'security.' Contrast that attitude with the official Welcome Statement by President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali of Tunisia, host of Phase II of the upcoming, aforementioned WSIS:

The World Summit on the Information Society, proposed by Tunisia in 1998, is the first major event of the new millennium and constitutes a historic opportunity for the international community to agree on a common vision of the Information Society and to develop an approach for action aimed at bridging the digital divide and allowing the advent of an Information Society that is balanced and accessible to all.

Gosh, well if anybody can bridge a divide and allow for balance and accessibility, it's George W. Bush!