ICANN CEO: Wall Off Internet’s Structure from Policy Debates
SAN JOSE -- ICANN’s CEO said defenders of progress have an uphill fight persuading public officials to keep hands off the Internet’s routing and addressing systems as they handle policy questions. The worldwide network will be broken up if nations adopt rules on “content” -- everything from security and e-commerce to political content and healthcare information -- incompatible with the Internet’s underlying principles ensuring interoperability, CEO Paul Twomey said at the RSA Conference on security here. He said Internet policy-makers should think long-term, not have a “knee-jerk reaction to a so-called security incident.”
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The principles the Internet is based on include open participation, meritocracy, protocol layers, a “request for comments” system of adopting and rejecting new technologies and techniques, intelligence at the edge and no barriers to joining the network, Twomey said. But policymakers have no incentive to “keep the key infrastructure operating interoperably” rather than saying, “I need to command and control how the infrastructure works.” When a govt. controls content, its people retain access to much information if interoperability remains, he said; but if the govt. controls the infrastructure within its borders, it has an “on-off switch” for content.
“The Internet emerged bottom up and took the world by surprise,” and “it is now beginning to challenge political systems,” and the economic systems underlying them -- its values colliding with the longstanding “top down command and control” operations even of more democratic national govts. and their uncompetitive communications sectors, Twomey said.
That means “a process of adjustment, and we're going to see that adjustment continue,” Twomey said. Support at the World Summit on the Information Society for ill-conceived Internet governance changes had 2 sources, he said: National govts. mostly concerned about political control at home, and others, including European govts., that wanted to conform the “messy” Internet to their models. Support for an Internet Steering Group under UN auspices to oversee all aspects of the network came from a group of countries motivated by “economic distribution” concerns, Twomey said. He said innovators should contemplate having to get permission to produce technology under such a structure. Jonathan Frenkel, the Homeland Security Dept.’s dir.-law enforcement & information-sharing policy, appeared with Twomey and said his agency “would be less than amused” by Internet administration under the U.N.
With its “multistakeholder” structure, ICANN suits the Internet, Twomey said. “It’s a zoo… and you should all be glad you're not in charge of running that zoo.” Despite ICANN’s ties to the U.S. govt., Twomey said he doesn’t see Washington’s foreign policy reflected in its dealings with the group. “The govt. has a very hands-off relationship with ICANN,” Frenkel said.