[kictanet] IGP proposal to decentralize authority over the, Internet domain name system (DNS)

alice alice at apc.org
Sun May 20 20:29:51 EAT 2007


IGP has published a proposal to decentralize authority over the
Internet domain name system (DNS) as it transitions to a new, more
secure technology known as DNS Security Extensions (DNSSEC).View the
paper here <http://internetgovernance.org/pdf/SecuringTheRoot.pdf>

At a symposium in Washington DC last Thursday (May 17), the Internet
Governance Project (IGP) unveiled a plan to decentralize control over
the process of
digitally signing the root zone file using public key encryption. The
need for the plan was made clear recently when news of a U.S.
Department of Homeland Security report on DNSSEC implementation
triggered international controversy by raising fears that the US
government planned to control the "master keys" to the Internet. The
IGP proposal would distribute control over the process of signing the
root zone file to multiple organizations, all of them nongovernmental
in nature, defusing fears that U.S. national security agencies will
control the Internet's DNS root zone keys. The proposal increases the
resilience of the system, eliminates the threat of political
interference in Internet administration, and diffuses liability among
the entities involved.

The international meeting in Washington, "Internet Governance and
Security: Exploring Global and National Solutions," was jointly hosted
by Syracuse University's School of Information Studies, the George
Mason University Law School's Critical Infrastructure Protection
Program, and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology at Lausanne's
Executive Master's Program in e-Governance. The event brought together
legal and policy experts in Internet governance, representatives of
the IETF, ICANN, DHS, the U.S. Commerce Department, the Internet
Systems Consortium, and students from the e-Governance program.





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