[CCWG-ACCT] Fwd: US Senate Committee Hearing on 2016 Budget for Dept of Commerce: Testimony on IANA Transition

Sun Mar 1 00:09:06 UTC 2015

I agree with the 2 remarks of Chris: The risk of capture comes from any
government or intergovernmental organization, as well as any other group.

CCWG is about defining mechanisms of accountability of ICANN to its
community, and we have defined 4 accountability purposes:

·         Comply with its own rules and processes 

·         Comply with applicable legislation, in jurisdictions where it
operates  

·         Achieve certain levels of performance as well as security 

·         Ensure decisions are for benefit of the public, not just for a
particular set of stakeholders 

The 4th purpose is to avoid any capture from any party.

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Tijani BEN JEMAA

Executive Director

Mediterranean Federation of Internet Associations (FMAI)

Phone:  + 216 41 649 605

Mobile: + 216 98 330 114

Fax:       + 216 70 853 376

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De : accountability-cross-community-bounces at icann.org
[mailto:accountability-cross-community-bounces at icann.org] De la part de
Chris Disspain
Envoyé : dimanche 1 mars 2015 00:20
À : Greg Shatan
Cc : accountability-cross-community at icann.org
Objet : Re: [CCWG-ACCT] Fwd: US Senate Committee Hearing on 2016 Budget for
Dept of Commerce: Testimony on IANA Transition

Hi Greg,

I believe this issue falls into the remit of CCWG, and needs to be in Work
Stream 1 so that it is part of the package ultimately considered by the
NTIA.

Can we first get clear what the issue actually is. 

I assume it is NOT ‘capture of ICANN by foreign governments in the long
term’ is it? 

Is it capture by governments generally? Or is it capture by any group? 

Cheers,

Chris

On 1 Mar 2015, at 09:37 , Greg Shatan <gregshatanipc at gmail.com> wrote:

All:

Here's an email that I recently sent to the CWG.  In response, Seun Ojedeji
noted the Senator's concern with the possible capture of ICANN by foreign
governments in the long term, and that a key goal of the transition must be
protecting ICANN from any possible capture as it continue to operate IANA.I
believe this issue falls into the remit of CCWG, and needs to be in Work
Stream 1 so that it is part of the package ultimately considered by the
NTIA.

Greg

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Greg Shatan <gregshatanipc at gmail.com>
Date: Sat, Feb 28, 2015 at 12:23 PM
Subject: US Senate Committee Hearing on 2016 Budget for Dept of Commerce:
Testimony on IANA Transition
To: "cwg-stewardship at icann.org" <cwg-stewardship at icann.org>

All:

The US Senate held a hearing on the Department of Commerce's 2016 Budget
(2016 commences October 1, 2015). A transcription was just published, and
I've excerpted (as is) the Senators' questions and Secy. Pritzker's answers
relevant to the IANA Transition -- see below.  The full transcript may be
found at: 
http://www6.lexisnexis.com/publisher/EndUser?Action=UserDisplayFullDocument
<http://www6.lexisnexis.com/publisher/EndUser?Action=UserDisplayFullDocument
&orgId=102898&topicId=235950016&docId=l:2311907759&isRss=true&Em=4&md5=&send
Date=20150228>
&orgId=102898&topicId=235950016&docId=l:2311907759&isRss=true&Em=4&md5=&send
Date=20150228

(FYI, much more time was spent on fishing, the paper industry and weather
forecasting than on IANA)

Greg

SEN. RICHARD C. SHELBY HOLDS A HEARING ON THE FY2016 FUNDING REQUEST AND
BUDGET JUSTIFICATION FOR THE COMMERCE DEPARTMENT

 February 26, 2015 Thursday

 EVENT DATE: February 26, 2015

 TYPE: COMMITTEE HEARING

 LOCATION: WASHINGTON, D.C.

 COMMITTEE: SENATE COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS, SUBCOMMITTEE ON COMMERCE,
JUSTICE, SCIENCE, AND RELATED AGENCIES

 SPEAKER: SEN. RICHARD C. SHELBY, CHAIRMAN

 WITNESSES:

SEN. RICHARD C. SHELBY, R-ALA. CHAIRMAN

WITNESSES: PENNY PRITZKER, SECRETARY, THE DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE

SHELBY: Senator Langford.

LANGFORD: Thank you. Thanks for being here as well.

PRITZKER: Thank you.

LANGFORD: I'm grateful to be able to have the conversation. I want to talk a
little bit about where we stand with ICAN (inaudible) conversation and DNA.
So my questions--I'm sorry, DNS, not DNA. DNA would be fun to talk about as
well, by the way, if you want to talk about that.

The budget request has a note in it that I thought was interesting. It says
FY 2016 NTIA will continue to develop, implement and advocate policies
positioned in the U.S. to meet growing complexities and political challenges
related to internet governance and the domain-named system. Tell me the
status of where you are headed on this. And obviously Congress has spoken
back on it and is a little hesitant. So specifically, while you're talking
about the status on it, how are you balancing the foreign policy objectives
with United States commerce? And I mean commerce as a whole of our business
world and how dependent we really are on this internet.

PRITZKER: Well, let me start by saying our NTIA role is stewardship of the
internet. And so moving--our goal has been to continue to move ICAN to a
multi-stakeholder model. And, in fact, we deal directly with ICAN and the
leadership of ICAN and their CEO is coming in tomorrow.

LANGFORD: Can I interrupt for just a second? The question there is the why?
And I think it's the foreign policy question.

PRITZKER: Why?

LANGFORD: Why try to move that outside of our stewardship? Has it been a
problem that we've been the steward with it? Why remove American stewardship
from the internet?

PRITZKER: Well, the challenge and we--we're not giving up our stewardship of
the internet. But the challenge that we face with the ICAN-IANA transition
is this is--and, first of all, we're not going to give up our position of
overseeing the IANA domain name situation unless we can ourselves there's a
multi-stakeholder process and it's not going to be jeopardized, that there's
going to stability and resiliency and security in the domain name system and
that it meets the needs of global customers, and it remains that the
internet will remain free and open.

The challenge we face in our role is the perception of our goal in the
global environment. There is a lot of pressure, as you said, from foreign
governments to, in essence, take over control of the internet and try and
create places where governments are in control of what's happening with the
internet. We think that is the wrong direction to go, and therefore we feel
we're really an oversight. ICAN is actually performing the IANA functions.
And so our goal is that ICAN continue to perform those functions, but the
appearance of our engagement creates this notion that the U.S. is a
government in control and that's against where we ultimately--we want to be
able to argue with the rest of the world. That's not what we want to see for
the internet.

LANGFORD: Right. I understand. And the skepticism is when we release the
first generation, there may be some good oversight of that. And then what
happens five years from now, etc.? So what happens with China and Russia? I
just want to be able to express some continuing skepticism.

PRITZKER: Senator, I share your concern about that. And one of the criteria
that I've said is we've asked for ICAN to explain to us how they're going to
be accountable to a multi-stakeholder process and there cannot be what I
call a hostile takeover of ICAN.

LANGFORD: Correct, and I would affirm that. 

KUNTZ: Let me ask about a very different field for a moment, if I might,
which is ICAN. When I was in the private sector, I did some work around web
domains and website acquisition and control. We had a trademark, the company
I was in, that had been inappropriately taken over as a web domain by a
company with no relationship to it, and I got involved in this.

This was a long time ago and I was struck at how at that point NTIA was
playing a critical role in oversight of ICAN, the Internet Corporation for
Assigned Names and Numbers, which I think is widely known to the small
community of people who pay a lot of attention to this. And I'm frankly very
concerned that there is a proposal to transition ICAN completely away from
the Commerce Department oversight and management, and I just want to make
sure that ICAN is really prepared to make that transition and will have
adopted some core key principles about protection from government capture,
budgetary restraint and a separation of functions, and this is something I
wrote to you about back in December and co-sponsored a resolution that
passed in the Senate calling for these reforms before there is any
transition. I just wanted to make sure that I had your sense of whether you
thought these reforms were important to complete before there was any
movement towards it.

PRITZKER: Well, Senator, I share your concern. I think the transition at the
IANA transition is one that's important because there are down sides for our
engagement there. Having said that, making sure that we don't--that ICAN can
responsibly continue to carry out that function, making sure that it is
multi-stakeholder managed and driven, making sure it meets the needs of
customers and in a timely and efficient manner, and that we remain a free
and open internet. All of those are priorities.

We are awaiting proposals. We're not in any rush. We're working very
carefully with ICAN, but we're waiting for proposals as to how they can make
sure they would satisfy all those performance requirements and also
proposals for how they will improve the accountability of ICAN so that there
cannot be what I call a hostile takeover of the board of ICAN.

Copyright 2015 CQ Transcriptions, LLC
All Rights Reserved 
CQ Transcriptions

-- 

Gregory S. Shatan ï Abelman Frayne & Schwab

Partner | IP | Technology | Media | Internet

666 Third Avenue | New York, NY 10017-5621

Direct  212-885-9253 | Main 212-949-9022

Fax  212-949-9190 | Cell 917-816-6428

gsshatan at lawabel.com

ICANN-related: gregshatanipc at gmail.com

www.lawabel.com <http://www.lawabel.com/> 

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