Masters of the Internet?
Department of Homeland and Security wants master key for DNS – heise.de: is this one more Big Brother tactic or is the U.S. looking to protect its interests as the creator of the Internet?
The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) wants to have the key to sign the DNS root zone solidly in the hands of the US government. This ultimate master key would then allow authorities to track DNS Security Extensions (DNSSec) all the way back to the servers that represent the name system’s root zone on the Internet. The “key-signing key” signs the zone key, which is held by VeriSign. At the meeting of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) in Lisbon, Bernard Turcotte, president of the Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA) drew everyone’s attention to this proposal as a representative of the national top-level domain registries (ccTLDs).
It At the ICANN meeting, Turcotte said that the managers of country registries were concerned about this proposal. When contacted by heise online, Turcotte said that the national registries had informed their governmental representatives about the DHS’s plans. A representative of the EU Commission said that the matter is being discussed with EU member states. DNSSec is seen as a necessary measure to keep the growing number of manipulations on the net under control.
The problem is, under the current administration, this will not be used for good. It will be used to silence political enemies, and for scare tactics. Surely someone besides me sees through this transparent nonsense.
This is one of the only times I trust privatization over government regulation.
These kinds of things are nothing new. The feds many years ago required that all ISPs be set up in a way that allows them to conduct network “wiretapping.”
http://tinyurl.com/3be4lv
For the record, this was under Clinton.
“Who guards the guards?”
Why should the internet be controlled by the Department of Homeland Security. In 10 years more of 90% of the internet traffic will not be US related.
One more reason for nations to develop their own intranets China style.
Regardless of the reason they want it, this cannot be a good thing. The current administration will likely use it to either spy on internet traffic or to silence and scare political enemies. Or, given the level of control business has over the American government, be used to track people who download music or something similar.
No government should be allowed to have such deep access to the inner workings of the internet.
America needs to start following the guidleines set in the US Declaration of Independence. Specifically, the part that says that, if the Government should ever become detrimental to the pursuit of life, liberty and happiness, it should be abolished and replaced. The general consensus I’ve noticed is that the Bush administration has caused some significant loss of freedom among the American people, and that should be grounds for a serious investigation and some loss of governmental power, at the very least.
I should note that I once read an article detailing how the course of events surrounding the American War on Terror greatly resembles the downfall of the Roman Empire, but I don’t have a link.
Why shouldnt the US government hold power over the projects and systems it was pivitol in creating to begin with? The evil US everyone here has painted so far could just as easy be an agent that represents us the people, the US tax payers, that laid the foundation for what we all use today and was paid for using our money. Just because the internet allows a lot of fun activities to exist doesnt mean that is its purpose and the US couldnt/shouldnt leverage it where we can to meet our own ends.
This reminds me of the interstate highway system. Those roads are nice to use to go see Grammy over Christmas vacation but it wasnt built with that purpose in mind.
6. Why shouldnt the US government hold power over the projects and systems it was pivitol in creating to begin with?
Simply because those systems are used so heavily in other countries. Had the US government retained it’s control over the internet from the beginning, there wouldn’t be a problem.
Companies lose their trademarks if they fail to defend them, and this isn’t much different. The Internet has become so widespread that the US no longer has any claim to power over it, regardless of how important it was in creating it.
Besides, it doesn’t particularly matter which country is involved. If my country, Canada, had been the one to create the internet, and 20 years later, tried to assert dominance over it, I would have a problem with that too. No government should have such deep access to such a wide-spread and powerful tool. It gives far too much power to silence enemies and spy on citizens, which is not something a government should have. Especially not such a careerist-filled government as exists in, well, most or all democratic countries I know about. Such politicians have the nature to use that power to further the goal of getting re-elected. This is why freedom of speech is written into your constitution; the ability to silence people who could harm your chances of being re-elected is too good for most politicians to pass up.
It is true that the person responsible for this request could actually be someone genuinely concerned with protecting the US (although I can’t think of any good reason that it would be needed to protect a country), but once that first step is taken, it won’t be long before politicians and lobbyists are trying to get the law used for their own ends.
I don’t think the US government is ‘evil’, just entirely too bureaucratic and political, with the result that most of the people in charge are more concerned with staying in charge rather than governing the country properly.
Control over the internet in the hands of the U.S. DHS.
Gawd.
It’s the Jews. Or the Republicans. Or the Democrats. I don’t trust ANY of them.
By the way, kidz, it isn’t “us the people” — it’s, “WE THE PEOPLE”.
WE THE PEOPLE elect the prez and his pal, the haliburton veep. WE THE PEOPLE also elect the House of Reps and the Senate. The majority of both halves of Congress are not willing to continue with the Iraq debacle, and they see the Iran thing coming. The prez is pissy about it, but he’s quite possibly the stupidest President in – well – ever. WE THE PEOPLE have spoken, and our reps are passing that on, and the prez (with minimal military background, and ZERO common sense) is pissy about it. Screw the prez, screw puppetmaster dick, end the war now.