United States to give up its oversight on domain name assignment

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Exterminator

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In the wake of an NSA spying scandal which has shaken the faith of many in the United States' dedication to digital privacy, the U.S government has announced that it will be ceding its oversight of ICANN - the organization which manages domain name assignment for every site on the internet.

According to a press release from the NTIA, a branch of the U.S Department of Commerce, the United States seeks to turn over this authority to an international group which will have its structure and administration determined over the course of next year.

The task is currently handled by ICANN, an organization which has managed the assignment of domain names (like .com, .org and .net) since its inception 1998. Now, the U.S has asked ICANN to "convene global stakeholders" and transition the role the U.S government currently plays into a more overarching structure, which will be handled by an outside organization.

According to a statement made by ICANN president FadiChehadé, the group will hold its first meeting on the transition on March 23rd in Singapore. ICANN also hopes to include participation from all major governments and internet organizations, as a means of promoting communication and proper development.

"We are inviting governments, the private sector, civil society and other internet organizations from the whole world to join us in developing this transition process. All stakeholders deserve a voice in the management and governance of this global resource as equal partners."

While the United States has faced heavy criticism for its role in global spying and mass data collection, there is no indicator that the controversy is related to this transition. According to the NTIA, the role of the U.S government in the oversight of domain name assignment was always envisioned to be temporary - and since ICANN has "taken steps in recent years to improve its accountability and transparency", the transition can finally happen.

Source: NYTimes
 
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Nico@FMA

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Rather old news because 2 years ago here within the Netherlands there was a huge convention in regards to intelligence agencies and the internet in general, topic's discussed where freedom of internet, freedom of international trade and freedom of internet development without having the US watching every move.

Europa is in a advanced stage to create its own internet and this is going to happen regardless if the US steps down from ICANN.
To many scandals and to many US companies & laws have polluted foreign internet connections.
So US internet authority is going to be side lined here in the EU.
That said it was logic step for the US to do this anyway, because the idea behind it is that they will lose their monopoly if the EU gets it own internet running.
Call it a last ditch to maintain some influence by the US and its many pupped companies.
Same goes for cloud services, here within the Netherlands all government and institutions are moving their data to Dutch based companies on Dutch services and laws being put into place that if such Company has servers in the US that US supreme court cannot get a hold on the data even if they wanted to.
Same goes for Germany and France.

Will this stop spying and data gathering? No but it will stop US having a monopoly and a dictating position.
Then again US internet is in many ways far behind to EU counter parts.
So from a technical point of view and from a end user point of view there is so much to gain for EU.
 
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