Activists and investigative journalists are highlighting the linkage between modern surveillance technologies and repressive governments. The emerging narrative around surveillance technology provides the perfect frame for public activism. You have a clear bad guy – a Gadhafi, an Assad, the Iranian theocrats, the Chinese Communist Party. You have a symbolic token, a technology, which links the bad guys and their bad actions to reachable actors – the corporate vendors – who are part of our own society and jurisdiction. You can then campaign on a simple moral impulse – the reachable actors must not be allowed to aid, abet or profit from the violence and political injustice of the bad guys. This in turn leads to what seems like a simple and effective policy response – to sever the link between reachable actors and the bad guys by somehow banning or regulating the transfer of this technology on a global basis. This blog post offers a critique of this budding movement, turning a critical eye upon a righteous cause.   more »

A powerful Senator is starting to ask NTIA questions about IP addressing. On October 4, 2011, The U.S. Senate Commerce Committee's chairman, Senator Jay Rockefeller, sent a challenging but private letter to the administration official responsible for overseeing ICANN, Lawrence E. Strickling. IGP has obtained a copy of the letter through the US Freedom of Information Act. The letter, which poses 22 tough questions, focuses not on the old controversies related to new gTLDs, but on the IANA contract.   more »

An international law enforcement action against a large botnet that used the DNSChanger malware is making pathbreaking Internet governance law. A lawsuit initiated by Regional Internet Registry RIPE-NCC may set an important legal precedent. At issue is the extent to which an IP address registries can be used as tools of transnational law enforcement. It has significant implications for RPKI and secure BGP deployment as well.    more »

Is there such a thing as a Freudian typo? If so, the new IANA contract certainly contains one. On page 9, it requires the Contractor to promptly notify the NTIA of "any outrages." They meant outages, of course. But we like the proposed language much, much better. IGP has been almost solely responsible for ICANN's outrage notification function for the past six years, and we would be happy to share that duty with others. All kidding aside, the new IANA contract solicitation, which was posted by the U.S. Commerce Department November 10, represents a milestone in ICANN's relationship to the U.S. government.    more »

The Dakar meeting was an important milestone in ICANN’s development. It marked the completion of the reform of the GNSO and the finalization of the new Noncommercial Stakeholders Group (NCSG). If you support the “multi-stakeholder” model of Internet governance and you think representatives of business interests should be balanced with representatives of public interest groups and nonprofits, then the fate of the NCSG should be important to you (however boring the bureaucratic details may be). Just before the Dakar meeting the NCSG concluded the first Stakeholder Group-wide election for its Chair and for 4 GNSO Council seats. the GNSO Council has now - finally - been rebalanced and reformed. While most of the progress is irreversible, some of the old controversies are still brewing.   more »

The government of India has taken the next step in evolving the IBSA proposal for a new UN body on Internet governance. It has proposed a "UN Committee for Internet-related policies" (CIRP). Of course, the CIRP is highly controversial, and is raising fears that the "UN is out to take over the Internet." Given the inherent tension between networks and states, that is not a threat to be taken lightly. Nevertheless, it is important to understand precisely what was proposed, and careful description seems to be lacking from some of the current dialogue. So this article tries to provide an unbiased analysis of what CIRP is, and isn't.   more »