[ga-watchdog] Re: [ga] Nomination Procedures for the Chair of the General Assembly (GA)

[Jeff Williams <jwkckid1@ix.netcom.com>]

Ben and all,

  I can understand you concern here.  In part I share it with you.
It would seem that the Federal Election Commission should be overseeing
this process.  I am wondering why the ICANN/DNSO would not have
contacted them to insure that this election does not turn out to be
the Illegitimate one that last election the ICANN/DNSO had ending on
Oct. 8th.  I have contacted them in the past, and they were very willing
to assist.  They can be contacted at http://www.fec.gov/

  As with the last DNSO run election, it appears that I along with some
400 other members of our group will not be able to participate.  Why is this
and what is the reason for this?  I have yet to receive and answer.  Have you
perhaps Ben?

  As most of us know several of these persons that are part of the
"Watchdog" committee have engaged in false and nearly fraudulent
statements on several occasions on the DNSO GA, IFWP, and
Domain policy lists conducting these related discussions and debates.
So I would have to disagree with Kent's, and Roberto's "Appointment?"
to this "Watchdog" committee.

  In addition in that I and several (14) others that are members of the
DNSO GA as well as the DNSO Announce lists are unable to post
we will not be able to vote either.  That seems to point to the
ICANN/DNSO again actively perpetrating fraud...

Ben Edelman wrote:

> As I reviewed the Nomination Procedures for the GA Chair, I was struck by
> the section I've excerpted at the bottom of this message.
>
> I think we've all come to understand the difficulty of "bootstrapping" --
> that even the act of setting procedures for a process has effects on the
> results, making it difficult or impossible for at least the first iteration
> of a process to be legitimate since its procedure was determined, in a
> sense, arbitrarily.  I'd like to think I'm sensitive to that problem -- and
> correspondingly lenient towards the first round of elections, nominations,
> review committees, etc.  But the nomination watchdog committee described
> below caught my eye, for it seems to suffer from a "who will watch the
> watchers" problem.
>
> I've met certain of the watchdog committee members -- I believe I've met or
> at least seen Jonathan, Kent, Javier, and Roberto at various of the ICANN
> meetings of the past year, though it's certainly possible that my memory
> fails me.  But I don't recall meeting Bradley at any such occasion, nor do I
> see him in quick perusal of the LA remote participant lists (see
> <http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/icann/la/archive>).  Not to single him out
> unduly, but is some additional level of authentication perhaps in order for
> at least the members of the watchdog committee?
>
> I recall from MAC deliberations one means of authentication considered for
> the Membership at large: The transmission by fax of government-issued
> photographic identification to some central trusted facility that would
> cross check IDs with registration lists.  As I recall, the MAC worried that
> this would be overly burdensome for a Membership ultimately hoped to be
> quite large, and the process was thought to be unmanageable when faced with
> thousands of kinds of identification from hundreds of different countries.
>
> I understand and agree with the MAC's concerns in their context, but, here,
> might it be appropriate to ask the watchdog committee members to
> authenticate themselves in this way -- to each prove that a sovereign state
> certifies their existence by issuing appropriate documents?  Might we then
> post their photo IDs online, of course protecting key information about each
> (social security number and, conceivably, street address, I suggest, for US
> IDs)?
>
> Again, my concern is not so much with the particular individuals under
> consideration here but with the overall process.  It seems unwise, to me, to
> nominate to a position of power even a single individual who perhaps no
> member of the Names Council or ICANN Board has ever met, without at least
> requiring some reasonable baseline level of authentication.
>
> I'm certainly open to alternative methods of authentication -- a "network of
> trust" (where, if I trust, say, Jonathan Zittrain and he says he knows Kent
> Crispin, then I accept Kent's legitimacy even if I've never met him) comes
> to mind, for example, and I'm sure there are numerous other suitable methods
> too.
>
> In general, I think we need to take appropriate precautions to assure that
> this and other ICANN-related processes aren't tainted by fraud.  I support
> the role of the Watchdog Committee, and I think the procedures for choosing
> the GA Chair by and large do an adequate job of preventing fraud.  But I
> nonetheless remain concerned by the prospect of arbitrarily-chosen, unknown
> participants on the Committee or in any other office.  Thoughts from others?
>
> Ben Edelman
> Berkman Center for Internet and Society
> Harvard Law School
>
> The DNSO Listadmin wrote:
>
> >       Nomination Procedures for the Chair of the General Assembly (GA)
> ...
> >   9. A nomination watchdog committee shall be formed to police the
> >      nomination process to help detect and cure any instances of
> fraudulent
> >      activity in connection with the nomination process.
> ...
> >
> >           The committee shall consists of the authors of the
> >           nominations procedures proposals submitted to the GA, which
> >           includes Jonathan Weinberg, Kent Crispin, Javier Rodriguez,
> >           Roberto Gaetano and Bradley Thorton.

Regards,

--
Jeffrey A. Williams
Spokesman INEGroup (Over 95k members strong!)
CEO/DIR. Internet Network Eng/SR. Java/CORBA Development Eng.
Information Network Eng. Group. INEG. INC.
E-Mail jwkckid1@ix.netcom.com
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