De-centralised Inetrnet Governance
- Within this section:
- Summary
- Mechanism
- Comment
- Example Mitigations
| Threat Type: De-centralised Internet Governance | Threat To: Public Confidence |
| Potential Impact: Medium/High | Likelihood: Medium/Low |
Summary
Various bodies and companies assert control over parts of the Internet and try to exercise it through technical and political means. This threatens the Internet's stability and usability.
Mechanism
No-one owns the Internet. It was designed to have no central point of failure - data is routed automatically through the network via any available path. As originally designed, the Internet lacked any central service or facility whose failure would cripple its operation. All machines on the Internet 'knew' the address of every other machine, by means of a shared file which was updated every night. The Internet operated like this through the late 1970s and early 1980s until the Domain Name System (DNS) was created.
The DNS is the facility which converts names such as www.govt.nz into addresses of actual machines. It replaced the shared file of machine names. The DNS uses a database of names which is distributed across the world. It relies on "root servers" which are centrally operated, although they are geographically diverse.
The policy and the operations of the DNS have often been the subject of controversy. Internationally, '.com' names are registered by a private company, Verisign, under contract to a non-profit body called ICANN. Verisign unilaterally changed the way in which the DNS operates in a manner which provided Verisign with opportunities for further revenue, but which caused problems for other services on the Internet. After direction from ICANN, Verisign withdrew this change, but threatens to reimplement it and has sued ICANN over the issue. The outcome is a lack of certainty about the way in which a key part of the Internet operates, which makes building on it harder.
Some people question the legitimacy of ICANN itself. It was created in 1998 by the US government, and is supposed to be open and transparent, and to reach decisions in a consensus manner. ICANN has always been the subject of claims that it was unrepresentative and unresponsive.
New Zealand has had its share of controversy over domain names. The operator of the '.nz' domain name space, InternetNZ, has had stormy meetings and negative publicity over the operation of the DNS, although the situation now appears to have been resolved.
Some countries such as China recognise the importance of the Internet to economic growth but seek to control their citizens' access to information on it. Typically such countries use technical means to try to filter information entering and leaving the country via the Internet, with limited success.
Comment
The largest concern is that the DNS becomes unstable as result of interference by some of these parties for political or commercial reasons.
Example Mitigations
Play a part in the political processes around ICANN and enforce accountability.
Monitor New Zealand Internet DNS operations and policies.
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