DHS Wants Master Key for DNS

An anonymous reader writes "At an ICANN meeting in Lisbon, the US Department of Homeland Security made it clear that it has requested the master key for the DNS root zone. The key will play an important role in the new DNSSec security extension, because it will make spoofing IP-addresses impossible. By forcing the IANA to hand out a copy of the master key, the US government will be the only institution that is able to spoof IP addresses and be able to break into computers connected to the Internet without much effort. There's a further complication, of course, because even 'if the IANA retains the key ... the US government still reserves the right to oversee ICANN/IANA. If the keys are then handed over to ICANN/IANA, there would be even less of an incentive [for the U.S.] to give up this role as a monitor. As a result, the DHS's demands will probably only heat up the debate about US dominance of the control of Internet resources.'"

Comments

Should U.S. DHS be trusted?

[Anonymous Coward]

Should U.S. DHS be trusted?

• Election staff convicted in recount rig in Ohio 2004 presidential election that gave President Bush the electoral votes he needed to defeat Democratic Sen. John Kerry
  
  
• Bush signs landmark executive order increasing White House power over federal agencies
  
  
• Bush's Signing Statement Dictatorship
  
  
• Senator asks Bush to explain signing statement that gives President authority to open mail without warrant
  
  
• Bush Moves Toward Martial Law
  
  
• US Attorney General Questions the Right to a Fair Trial
  
  
• The White House is replacing U.S. Attorneys throughout the country
  
  
• Attorneys for the District of Columbia argue that the Second Amendment right to bear arms applies only to militias, not individuals
  
  
• U.S. citizens to be required "clearance" to leave the United States
  
  
• plenty more, regretfully...
  
  

You know...

[FunWithKnives]

When the story first broke about other nations wanting an independent international body to oversee the root servers and such, I was completely against it. It sounded to me like another pointless stance by the U.N., compounded by the fact that the ARPANet was invented and fleshed out here in the U.S. Not to mention the few unsavory members of the U.N. that would end up with some say as to the future of the Internet.

Now, though, I'm starting to see where I went wrong. I was assuming that the government of the United States could never be as fucked up as the one in, say, China. I was being horribly short-sighted. I should have known that this kind of shit was only a matter of time.

So how much worse could letting the U.N. have control of ICANN be than something like this? I say fuck it. Let them have it, and give it some independent oversight. For the life of me, I cannot believe that I am actually looking to foreign nations to ensure the neutrality and openness of the Internet, but there you have it.