[discuss] Artificial conflation of issues not helpful. [Was: Digest, Vol 3, Issue 67]

[Michel Gauthier]

Dear George,

Interesting to see this burst of mails fustigating JFC Morfin for 
something he did not say.
Would VGNICs become a worrying issue? I thought it was only securely 
applying RFCs?

At 20:55 19/02/2014, George Sadowsky wrote:
>Those that believe there is such a linkage have the obligation to 
>describe in detail, with evidence, exactly what they believe that linkage is.

I am puzzled by such a sentence, certainly out of a good intent, but 
a killer for US interests. This is because outside the US no one is 
naive enough to spend time, proving in the US, something they 
consider as obvious. I think this is up to you to prove that that 
UKUSA http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UKUSA_Agreement people would be so 
dumb stupid non professionals. .

Anyway, the question is not to know if something credible which was 
never said is true. The question is to know if something can be done 
to restore enough trust in the US root system for people not to move 
to non-ICANN resolution services, or perform them by themselves in 
using their own "top-file".

Simple questions:

1. Why do people want to offer root server service?

2. How much does it costs to them?

3. How much are they get paid?

4. Who has access to the logfiles?

5. ICANN has no control on the root file. It can only advises. 
Everyone has control on his/her own EZOP top-file report. So why is 
ICANN so excited about the root file?


I said no one would spend time proving to you the obvious. However, I 
want to help you understand. Here are the root servers list you 
(ICANN) provide. They are receiving the DNS logs in real time. Which 
one do not have ties/contract with the USG (BTW how were them 
chosen)? Which one can you swear are not spied by the NSA?

-   VeriSign, Inc. (A, J)
     in contract with U.S govt

-   University of Southern California (ISI) (B)
     Deep ties with In-Q-Tel ["in-Q-tel" "University of Southern 
California" search ob Google =  11 500  links]

-   Cogent Communications 'C)
     claims 50% of the top U.S. government contractors as its customers.

-   University of Maryland  (D)
     CIA is said the biggest employer of grads - http://cyber.umd.edu/about


-.  NASA Ames Research Center (E)
     U.S Govt

-  Internet Systems Consortium, Inc. (F)
    http://www.thefreelibrary.com/NSA+partners+with+ISC2+to+create+new+InfoSec+certification.-a098668829

-  Department of Defence (NIC) (G)
    U.S Govt

-. US Army (Research Lab)  (H)
    U.S Govt

-  Netnod (J)

-  RIPE NCC  (K)

-. ICANN (L)
    USG contractor

-  WIDE Project (M)

My feeling (and my report, as you most probably discussed with your 
fellow members of the ICANN BoD) is that you somewhat might confuse

- the good of your country. People trust K. Alexander for doing his 
job. They distrust those who pretend to be horrified,, because  it 
means they actually distrust/oppose their country. So, how do you 
want people in turn to trust them.

- the good of ICANN, i.e. making it more palatable through an MS 
globalization for a better contribution to the IG.

- the good of the IG and users, which is much wider than the ICANN scope.

People are  no fools The only news Snowden really brought to informed 
users asd professionals (IETF and Govs) is what Avri talks about:

At 00:36 20/02/2014, Avri Doria wrote:
>I think that if you look at the work being started in the IETF, you 
>will find great deals of energy being expended on fixing the actual 
>problem, the technical weaknesses that allowed such pervasive 
>surveillance to be done so easily.

M G