Posted by Bill Woodcock on Twitter… https://twitter.com/woodyatpch/status/1498472865301098500?s=21
Ukraine (I think I read as) want ICANN to turn root nameservers off, revoke address delegations, and turn off TLDs for Russia.
Seems… instability creating…
-george
It’s already spread to the news - https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/ukraine-icann-russia-internet-runet-disconnection-1314278/
Ryan
Information sharing should increase during wartime, not decrease.
Restricting information is more often the playbook of authoritarian regimes,
and not something we should generally support.
Besides, GhostWriter is based out of Belarus, not Russia proper. ^_^;
https://www.wired.com/story/ghostwriter-hackers-belarus-russia-misinformationo/
Matt
More or less. The Government Advisory Committee member from Ukraine has asked ICANN to:
As the GAC member undoubtedly knows, that’s not how ICANN works. Barring a court/executive order in ICANN’s jurisdiction (and even then, it gets a bit sticky see https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2014/11/13/dc-court-rules-that-top-level-domain-not-subject-to-seizure/), ICANN essentially treats ccTLDs as national sovereign resources. A third party, no matter how justified, requesting a change of this nature will not go anywhere. Simply put, ICANN is NOT a regulator in the forma sense, it is a private entity incorporated in California. The powers that it has are the result of mutual contractual obligations and it’s a bit unlikely the Russian government has entered into any contracts with ICANN, particularly those that would allow ICANN to unilaterally revoke any of the Russian ccTLDs.
I’m not sure what this even means.
ICANN could conceivably do this unilaterally, but there are a lot more root server instances operated by other RSOs (including RIPE NCC, Verisign, ISC, and NASA). Even if all the RSOs shut down their instances, it’d merely increase latency for root queries by a small amount unless all DNS traffic to the RSO IPs were blocked at Russian borders. And even then, Russia has been “testing” operating in a disconnected mode, so it’s highly likely there are root server equivalents in Russia that would continue to resolve root queries.
However, as mentioned, the UA GAC member probably knows all this and I imagine the intent of this letter was less to cause the requested actions to actually occur than it was to raise the profile of the conflict in the Internet governance context.
Regards,
-drc
More or less. The Government Advisory Committee member from Ukraine has asked ICANN to:
- Revoke .RU, .рф, and .SU (all Russian-managed ccTLDs)As the GAC member undoubtedly knows, that’s not how ICANN works. Barring a court/executive order in ICANN’s jurisdiction (and even then, it gets a bit sticky see https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2014/11/13/dc-court-rules-that-top-level-domain-not-subject-to-seizure/), ICANN essentially treats ccTLDs as national sovereign resources. A third party, no matter how justified, requesting a change of this nature will not go anywhere. Simply put, ICANN is NOT a regulator in the forma sense, it is a private entity incorporated in California. The powers that it has are the result of mutual contractual obligations and it’s a bit unlikely the Russian government has entered into any contracts with ICANN, particularly those that would allow ICANN to unilaterally revoke any of the Russian ccTLDs.
I wonder how ICANN would react to ISO removing RU/RUS from ISO 3166-2/3.
Rubens
See .SU.
(SU was moved from allocated to "transitionally reserved” back when the USSR broke up. My recollection is that an agreement was reached by which .SU users would be migrated out to appropriate new ccTLDs, that is, the ccTLDs based on ISO codes created for former Soviet republics, and no new entries would be added to .SU. However, when ICANN tried to propose a plan to finalize removing .SU from the root (around 2006 or so), the operators of .SU reopened registrations and complained to the US Dept. of Commerce, who were overseeing ICANN performance of the IANA Functions contract. Eventually, the Russian government was able to convince ISO-3166/MA to move SU to “exceptionally reserved” (like UK, EU, and a number of others) and forward motion on removing .SU from the root essentially ceased.)
Regards,
-drc
I know someone (non-Russian) using .su for a funny name ending in .su. This
is non-political and caters only to an English speaking audience. These were
registered in the last few years, so they are still open and taking the
registrations.
I would ask what of .ly used for various URL shorteners, and .kp or .cn? All
these are representing evil countries too, why do they get a pass. I'm
certain they would argue .us should be revoked for the same.
This would break connectivity, and that's a bad thing.
- --
Bryan Fields
727-409-1194 - Voice
http://bryanfields.net
The problem with all this talk, especially with trusted international neutral organizations, is that once they bend they will never be trusted again. Shutting off the routes, removing TLDs (or keeping them because of politics), etc will cause irreparable damage to these organizations. Bowing to governments, politics, etc does not have a path back from future control.
This is a recommendation that will only hurt people (China, North Korea, [even the USA], etc all do this to control their people). Governments will get around whatever the limitations are, it may take them time and resources but they will get around it. Freedom of information is the only way to help people understand the reality of what is going on in the world (galaxy, universe, etc).
Brian
Technological solutions for Sociological problems
Hello,
I don’t hear anyone in the networks field supporting doing it.
It was a yikes that the request was made, but not looking at all likely to happen IMHO.
-george
Not sure how I feel about this. My thoughts have always been to leave government out of Internet operations or otherwise they get comfortable and will want to make decisions that we may not be comfortable with.
During wartime, I would think the desire would be to have them connected in order to have access to information and knowledge as necessary. If the idea is suppress Russia from performing bad actions, disconnecting their tld(s) will not solve this and is just a bad approach all around.
J~
While not happening at scale at this time, we might have to consider
some measures to deter cyberwarfare if it escalates to that. And this
is not done by revoking IP addresses or TLDs, but by shutting down
actual network ports.
As long as the war keeps being kinetic and information/propaganda, the
network is probably a better part of the solution.
Rubens
I concur, this is an extremely dangerous slippery slope that ICANN should refrain. There’s the possibility for misfires, misattribution and miscalculation that could backfire which is extremely concerning.
Again, aside from turning off the ICANN-operated root servers (which would be pointless), the remainder of the requests from the UA Government Advisory Committee member are not something ICANN could/would do unilaterally regardless of the validity of the justification.
Regards,
-drc
China has worried that the root server operators would do such a thing to them, and I have argued that it is contrary to our published principles (RaSSAC055) and or practice. “We have never done so; what would that serve?”
I have the same question here.
Sent using a machine that autocorrects in interesting ways...
"The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it"
- John Gilmore
Regarding the portion of the request to the RIPE NCC to withdraw the relevant Russia registered IP address blocks, it appears that the RIPE NCC has reiterated their position on such disputes -
FYI,
/John
John Curran
President and CEO
American Registry for Internet Numbers
My (unpopular opinion) Russia does not deserve any amenities of the modern world. They have made their bed and now they have to sleep in it.
Information sharing should increase on the ATTACKED side... it should DECREASE and be cut off on the non-provoked attacker's side.
[External Email]
Information sharing should increase on the ATTACKED side... it should
DECREASE and be cut off on the non-provoked attacker's side.
Trouble is, that leads to two deleterious effects in this case:
1) The rest of the world is left with just the Putin Gov't's word on what's going on *in* Russia
2) The Russian people are left with just the Putin Gov't's word on what's going on *elsewhere*
Information sharing should increase during wartime, not decrease.
Restricting information is more often the playbook of authoritarian
regimes, and not something we should generally support.
THIS.