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IP: NTIA Exerting dubious Stewardship over DNS NOI - open
From: David Farber <farber () cis upenn edu>
Date: Tue, 07 Oct 1997 22:39:16 -0400
From: Gordon Cook <cook () netaxs com> Dear Mr. Irving: Until I have evidence to the contrary I shall assume that you are well intentioned. I have however some disturbing evidence about the process of the Internet DNS NOI for which you have been given responsibility. NTIA was established in part to give the White House a voice in telecommunications policy. I understand that in agreeing to the establishment of NTIA people like Henry Geller set very clear conditions such that NTIA would never try to originate its own policy. Your own web pages make it pretty clear that you are here to carry out and not to originate policy. What I see happening with the NTIA role in the Inter Agency Task Force on DNS seems to be contrary to the original intent of the role of your agency - namely you have been given the role of shaping the redesign of DNS and, by extension, the response of the US government not only to DNS but to Internet governance as a whole. If this does not place NTIA in a policy making role, I don't know what would. Furthermore, at the same time that NTIA is telling Internet industry representatives that nothing has been decided and that it wants them to meet with it to place all ideas on the table, there are continuing indications that elements within the IATF are looking favorably on an outcome involving an internationally focused stewardship for gTLDs. I have been told by multiple people for the past five weeks that some key people within the gov't NOI effort are well disposed to the IAHC agenda and have discussed scenarios where the infrastructure fund might be given to some large American corporations for the development of the IAHC database. To say that this runs counter to recent other indications that your people allegedly want to hear from other industry players is to put it mildly. I might remind you that it also runs directly counter to the tenor of the recent congressional hearings. By the way, you did give IAHC extra time to answer the NOI. Why? Do you wonder that for this and many other reasons sources are telling me that all the policy people (Burr, Kahin and Nelson) feel is needed is a bit of tweaking of IAHC? Given these events I question whether and why NTIA should have been assigned any role that could leave it as the government office in charge of Internet affairs. Unless that is, Clinton and Gore have hornswaggled Ira Magaziner into backing a plan that would grant this political arm of the White House undue influence over the Internet in an effort to help it impose its profoundly mistaken ideas about using encryption in order to give the police agencies of the federal government access to the privacy of American citizens and American business. You can't burn the candle at both ends Mr. Irving. If you try, it is my most earnest hope that Congress will cut you off at the knees. ************************************************************************ The COOK Report on Internet For subsc. pricing & more than 431 Greenway Ave, Ewing, NJ 08618 USA ten megabytes of free material (609) 882-2572 (phone & fax) visit http://cookreport.com/ Internet: cook () cookreport com New Special Report: Internet Governance at the Crossroads ($175) http://cookreport.com/inetgov.shtml ************************************************************************ ************************************************** "Photons have neither morals nor visas" -- Dave Farber 1996 **************************************************
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- IP: NTIA Exerting dubious Stewardship over DNS NOI - open David Farber (Oct 07)