Re: [ga] Mr. Qaddafi Salutes Verisign

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

Sandy and all assembly members,

  You present some good and useful thinking points here Sandy.
But in essence John is correct.  ICANN cannot move the
DNSO/USG Roots due to contractual restrictions.  So that
escape is not available for consideration.

  What is interesting and I would like to here John or any other
of the legal minds on this Forum is that with the Presidents
recent presidential order, are these illegal Web Sites/Domain
name not subject to a military tribunal type trial if it can be
found that they are "Aiding and abetting" the terrorists states
and/or organizations in any way?

Sandy Harris wrote:

> John Berryhill wrote:
>
> > Look, it's very simple.  Companies in the US must obey the law.  When the
> > law says that it is illegal to do business with certain entities or with any
> > entities in certain countries, then US companies must cease to do such
> > business.  There really should be nothing earth-shattering about that.
>
> Yes, that much of it is simple. Dealing with it simple, too. If you think
> Verisign or some other US company are breaking the law, then you should
> bring the matter to someone's attention. The only question is whether to
> call the company first or just turn them in.
>
> However, there are a bunch of complications.
>
> For one thing, some of the anti-terrorism laws might eventually be ruled
> unconstitutional in the US. Certainly organisations like the ACLU are
> asking some hard questions:
>
> http://www.aclu.org/news/2001/n111401b.html
> http://www.aclu.org/news/2001/n092401a.html
>
> Also, booting certain nations off the net might play straight into the
> hands of various extremists there. Consider the fact that Taliban banned
> the Internet in Afghanistan as "unIslamic".
> http://www.dfn.org/focus/afghanistan/internetban.htm
>
> Or the reports of a "Great Firewall of China" designed to censor that
> nation's net access:
> http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/5.06/china.html
>
> Or this account of the role of a computer network (UUCP rather than
> Internet) in the defeat of a Soviet coup attempt:
> http://som.csudh.edu/cis/lpress/articles/relcom.htm
>
> There's some sort of trade-off there. Do the forces of Goodness, Right
> and Openness gain more by helping the victims of Benighted Gov'ts to
> get access to the net or by blocking it? What do those victims want?
>
> Should we block, for example, www.rawa.net, the Revolutionary Assoc
> of Women of Afghanistan?
>
> Should we block Cuba, since the US embargo them? Canada has never
> joined that embargo, nor has most of Europe.
>
> Then there's the whole question of the international nature of the net,
> and ICANN's mission to run the thing in the interests of its users
> worldwide. ICANN is a California corporation, hence obviously subject
> to US law. What happens when the mission and US law conflict?
>
> There's some precedent on that. For years, the US and various other
> gov'ts have been trying to restrict strong cryptography with export
> laws. The two bodies that supervise the IETF (the Internet Engineering
> Steering Group and Internet Architecture Board) issued a strong
> statement on that. Thanks to Jon Postel's sense of humour, it got
> published as RFC 1984:
>
> ftp://ftp.isi.edu/in-notes/rfc1984.txt
>
>     ... various governments have actual or proposed policies on
>       access to cryptographic technology ...
>
>     (a) ... export controls ...
>     (b) ... short cryptographic keys ...
>     (c) ... keys should be in the hands of the government or ...
>     (d) prohibit the use of cryptology ...
>
>     We believe that such policies are against the interests of
>     consumers and the business community, are largely irrelevant
>     to issues of military security, and provide only a marginal
>     or illusory benefit to law enforcement agencies, ...
>
>     The IAB and IESG would like to encourage policies that allow
>     ready access to uniform strong cryptographic technology for
>     all Internet users in all countries.
>
> Later on, there was a complex debate over whether the IETF should
> build support for net.wiretaps into its protocol standards,
> mostly on the raven mailing list:
> http://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/raven
>
> Some people there argued that obviously we had to do this because
> of CALEA (US Communications Assistance to Law Enforcement Act).
> Those people lost the debate.
>
> This led to another document from the IAB and IESG:
> ftp://ftp.isi.edu/in-notes/rfc2804.txt
>
>     The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) has been asked to
>     take a position on the inclusion into IETF standards-track
>     documents of functionality designed to facilitate wiretapping.
>
>     This memo explains what the IETF thinks the question means,
>     why its answer is "no", and what that answer means.
>
> So there are some well-known precedents for the notion that
> international standards for the Internet should place the
> interests of users above the laws of various nations, in
> particular attempting to deliver real security even though
> US law attempts to restrict cryptography to stuff the NSA
> can easily break.
>
> I'm inclined to think that argument applies to international
> standards for domain names. Libya and Iraq, for example,
> are recognised by the UN or International Postal Union or
> whoever assigns country codes. Hence they should have DNS
> service for the corresponding top-level domian.
>
> If Verisign cannot deliver that because of US laws, then
> ICANN, as responsible stewards of an international Internet,
> should look for a non-US contractor to run the root.
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Regards,

--
Jeffrey A. Williams
Spokesman for INEGroup - (Over 121k members/stakeholdes 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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