A BRIEFING ON PUBLIC POLICY ISSUES AFFECTING CIVIL LIBERTIES ONLINE
from
THE CENTER FOR DEMOCRACY AND TECHNOLOGY
CONTENTS:
(1) Domain Names Body Reaffirms Public Role, Without Details
(2) ICANN Board Acknowledges Need for Constrained Scope of Activities
(3) Internal Restructuring Placed on ICANN's Agenda
(4) Meeting Addresses Issues of DNS, IP Address Security
The directors of the body responsible for technical management of the Internet domain name system committed to holding elections for public representatives, but left important implementation questions unresolved. In a resolution adopted at its meeting in Los Angeles, the Board of Directors of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) also refrained from implementing the controversial recommendations of a committee it had tasked to examine public representation. With these actions, the Board effectively deferred making major decisions on its own governance structure until its next public meeting in March, 2002, in Accra, Ghana.
ICANN coordinates critical elements of the Internet's infrastructure, including the naming and addressing systems on which online communications rely. Since its inception in 1998, ICANN has faced criticism for perceived shortcomings in representing the public interest. Presently, nine of nineteen seats on the ICANN Board of Directors are designated for "At-Large" Directors, to be chosen by the Internet user community -- although only five have actually been elected by users.
In November 2000, ICANN created an At-Large Study Committee (ALSC) to make recommendations on the question of public participation for ICANN. The ALSC's final report, released in early November 2001, supported the concept of user participation in ICANN, but several of its recommendations would have limited ICANN's inclusiveness and the voice of the user community. CDT and others questioned the report's practicality and fairness. In particular, the ALSC recommended that voting rights in future ICANN elections be restricted to those owning domain names and that public representation on the Board be limited to just six of nineteen Directors (as opposed to the current nine).
CDT opposed both of these limitations and joined an international coalition to provide workable alternatives. The report of that coalition, the NGO and Academic ICANN Study, is available at http://www.naisproject.org/.
At its Marina del Rey meeting earlier this month, the ICANN Board accepted the ALSC document as a basis for further discussion, but importantly declined to adopt the ALSC's questionable recommendations.
The Board also re-committed itself to a short timeline for resolving representation issues. The terms of the five At-Large Directors publicly elected by Internet users in 2000 are set to expire in November 2002, and there are currently no provisions for their replacement. The Board resolved to begin planning election systems, and declared once again that the selection of new At-Large Directors should take place by November of next year.
More information on ICANN and on CDT's other activities in the area of domain names management can be found at http://www.cdt.org/dns/.
In Marina del Rey, the ICANN Board took a first step towards acknowledging a need to place limits on the scope of its own activities. As part of a resolution establishing a Committee on Restructuring (see below), the ICANN Board noted that "it would be useful... to reaffirm and clarify ICANN's limited mission for technical management and administration."
Throughout its short history, ICANN has run the risk that it would make policy affecting the Internet without adequate processes to guide those policies. CDT and others have warned against the possibility of "mission creep," the likelihood that ICANN's authority over key resources could tempt it to enter policy areas it was never designed to handle. Already there has been some evidence that ICANN's activities are not sufficiently limited; many observers believe that the contracting process undertaken after last year's selection of new global Top-Level Domains (gTLDs) was fraught with questions about ICANN's appropriate policy role.
CDT believes that, in order to retain its legitimacy and protect the best interests of the Internet, ICANN should take every possible step to limit its likelihood of becoming entangled in inappropriate policy decisions. A clear restatement of ICANN's mission -- and, conversely, of areas not in ICANN's mission -- is necessary.
As the issue of public representation in ICANN has continued to gain traction, other stakeholders have begun to complain of deficiencies in the ICANN process. Particularly within ICANN's most diverse stakeholder group, the Domain Name Supporting Organization, there have been long-running debates about the relative representation of various interests, and about the efficiency of the DNSO process in general.
This has led to a call for ICANN to revisit its internal structures. In Marina del Rey, the Board responded by establishing a committee of Board members to examine the issue and to report back to the Board at future meetings.
CDT believes that ICANN's internal structure should accurately reflect the wide range of interests affected by ICANN's activities. We look forward to working with ICANN on this issue, and hope that the committee will utilize an open, transparent process that includes the input of many throughout the Internet community.
With the events of September 11 in mind, much of the Marina del Rey meeting agenda consisted of panel discussions and roundtable meetings on improving the security of the systems under ICANN's administration. Attendees heard from speakers such as security experts Steve Bellovin and Bruce Schneier, U.S. government official John Tritak of the Critical Infrastructure Assurance Office, and Japanese Senior Vice Minister for Public Management, Home Affairs, Posts and Telecommunications Kenji Kosaka.
Notes of ICANN's real-time scribe and RealVideo archives of the speakers and roundtables are available at http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/icann/mdr2001/archive/.
CDT recognizes that security constitutes a core part of ICANN's mission. However, as ICANN continues its work in this area, we urge it to remain mindful of the fact that Internet security is an extremely broad area of which ICANN plays a small, though important, part. As it has already recognized, ICANN cannot and should not use its authority to promote security beyond the systems it manages.
Detailed information about online civil liberties issues may be found at http://www.cdt.org/.
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Policy Post 7.14 Copyright 2001 Center for Democracy and Technology
