[ga] Y2K and the Internet, Part 4: The Internet, Y2K, and Beckwith Burr

[Michael Sondow <msondow@iciiu.org>]

The Internet, Y2K, and Beckwith Burr


The Asia-Pacific Y2K Workshop 

	During the week of ICANN meetings in Singapore in March of this
year, the Asia-Pacific organizations that hosted the ICANN meeting
held conferences and workshops as part of their annual international
Asia-Pacific networking conference. One of these was the Y2K
Workshop, hosted by APIA - the Asia Pacific internet Association -
and its secretary general Izumi Aizu. Participants in the Y2K
Workshop included such Internet notables as Evi Nemeth, system
administrator at Colorado University's Supercomputing Center.
	The message of the APIA Y2K Workshop was that, unlike in other
infrastructure industries such as energy and telecommunications,
there has been no centralized coordination of Y2K remediation
efforts in the Internet, as a result of its decentralized and
unregulated situation. This puts the Internet in a dangerously
vulnerable position as regards preparation for the date change.
	Speakers at the workshop noted that, in contradiction with the
small effort that had so far gone into coordinating Y2K remediation
in the Internet, it is the most complex system running in real time
in the world. They noted further that the Internet's unique
architecture - autonomous distributed inter-networking - poses a
unique problem for system-wide updating compatibility, and that this
problem had not been addressed.

The Internet: Infrastructure of Infrastructures

	The Internet is and will in 2000 be used by critical
infrastructures like power, aviation, road and sea transport, and
water supply for the exchange of Y2K information, so that the
security of the Internet into the new millenium may be a requirement
for the security of those infrastructures. The Internet is the
infrastructure of the infrastructures.
	What has been done to ameliorate the problem? Parts of the Internet
have taken it upon themselves to ensure their continued
functionality. The root system of domain name servers began working
some time ago to ensure compliance. A number of Internet
organizations such as CIX, ISOC, ISPA, and CPSR have joined in an
Internet Y2K campaign, although they did so as late as December,
1998, whereas it is now recognized that complex systems may take as
much as three years or longer to completely remediate and test. Most
major backbone ISPs have completed their remediation, although Weiss
Research, an independent analysis service, reported in June, 1999,
that MCI-Worldcom had completed only 30% of its Y2K remediation
plans. What about the thousands of unaffiliated small and
medium-size ISPs that still provide more than a third of Internet
connectivity? The APIA conferencers deduced that if their situation
did not considerably improve in time, they would not be ready for
the year 2000. 
	And it has not improved. Lulled into apathy by the unfounded
reassurances of the U.S. Government and tranquilized further by the
"Don't worry, be happy" message of the American media, those ISPs,
as part of the American public, have adopted a wait-and-see approach
that is a guarantee of disaster. If the U.S. stock market regulator
- the S.E.C. - has told financial services companies to get
compliant or get out, how much more essential is such an order for
Internet service companies?

Coordination and Interoperability

	Until the creation of ICANN there has been no entity centralizing
Internet services, therefore there has been little or no
coordination of remediation work. Yet coordination is the Achilles'
heel of Y2K remediation because, as John Mauldin (Year2000Alert) and
John Koskinen (Chairman, President's Council on Year 2000
Conversion) and others have pointed out, the interoperability of
remediated systems is as important for continued functionality as is
date-change compliance, and this is as true in the Internet as it is
in air and sea transport and international banking. If
newly-replaced systems and programs cannot exchange information with
each other, the Y2K bug will have succeeded in its evil work just as
surely as if they had crashed due to incapacity to use the date
2000. It is not enough for an ISP's sytem to be compliant; it must
be able to communicate with its up- and down-stream providers and
with the myriad of databases and testing programs that make up the
day-to-day work of Internet connectivity. Without centralized
coordination, such interoperability cannot be assured or relied on.
	Since a year ago, there is a central world-wide Internet
ccordinating authority: ICANN. It's stated over-riding purpose, as
given in its articles of incorporation, is to protect the stability
and functionality of the Internet. What has ICANN done to ensure the
functionality of the Internet through the date change and into the
year 2000? The simple answer is: nothing. Nowhere on its website is
there any reference to the Y2K problem except for a document from
three root nameserver operators claiming that the root nameserver
system is compliant, which has nothing at all to do with the
backbone, the ISPs, and the connectivity question. The unelected
ICANN board and its corporate attorneys have been so busy
instituting policies for which they have no mandate nor legislative
authority that they have had no time to coordinate Y2K remediation
efforts, a task they could and no doubt should have assumed.

Responsibility

	Who is responsible for this dangerous and untoward situation? The
ICANN board itself? Not really, since its members are themselves
ignorant of the scope of the Y2K problem, not responsible for the
functionality of any systems, and probably would not know how to
approach a solution to the problem of coordination and
interoperability. They were chosen for the ICANN board in what Joe
Sims, ICANN's former attorney, characterized to Congress as a
haphazard process (although the truth of this characterization
remains somewhat in doubt).
	Who, then, is responsible? Clearly, it is the person who represents
the U.S. Government in the formation of ICANN: Beckwith Burr. She is
the person who lead the task force on domain names of the U.S.
Government's Office of Management and the Budget, was charged by
Commerce Secretary William Daley with finding a solution to the
domain name problem, who wrote the D.O.C.'s White Paper, who
shephearded at every stage the creation of ICANN and who has
legitimized ICANN's authority and power by signing, in the name of
the Government and the American people, the agreements which define
how the domain name system will function in the future.
	Beckwith Burr was called by the Joint Subcommittees of the House
Science Committee - which had congressional oversight of the
Internet before it was passed from the National Science Foundation
to the Department of Commerce this year - and appeared as a witness
in the October 7, 1998, hearing in Washington. Congresswoman
Morella, head of the Congress Y2K Committee, asked Ms. Burr: "Who is
the person at the D.O.C. who is in charge [of Y2K issues regarding
the Internet]." Ms. Burr replied: "I will get that information."
	Did she supply the name of the person responsible? Is there such a
person, other than Ms. Burr herself? It seems unlikely. And even if
responsibility could theoretically be shrugged off her shoulders
onto some other person, it is Beckwith Burr herself who has had, and
still has, responsibility for the Internet in the D.O.C.

Why No Action?

	Why has Becky Burr not taken steps to use the new ICANN authority
for coordinating Y2K remediation in the Internet? The answer is
undoubtedly that she has been too busy putting into effect the plans
of her corporate sponsors IBM, MCI, AT&T, and the telcos (see Gordon
Cook's January 2000 Report on ICANN at www.cookreport.com) to have
time for the millenium bug. Matters such as how to get NSI to
capitulate and sign the anti-competitive Registrar Accreditation
Agreement and pay the domain name tax to ICANN, how to establish an
antitrust law- and due process law-violating Uniform Dispute
Resolution Procedure so that trademark interests can take the domain
names they want from their rightful holders, how to protect herself
and ICANN from lawsuits, and how to further her career as a
government representative of corporate America, have kept Ms. Burr
from having time for things like the millenium bug and Internet
stability.

Who's To Blame?

	Will the Internet crash in 2000 as a result of insufficient
preparation for the date change? No one knows for sure, but it seems
likely. Officials in Washington who should have paid attention to
the problem and didn't will need someone to blame, a scapegoat, in
order to deflect the pointing finger from themselves. Who better to
take the fall than Beckwith Burr, who with her creation ICANN
promised central control of the Internet but hasn't been able to
deliver it where it counts most: stability and continued
functionality?

	But "scapegoat" is the wrong term. After all, Becky Burr is
responsible.

                 .............................


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