[CWG-Stewardship] .mil and .gov (and maybe .edu)

[Andrew Sullivan]

Hi,

On Thu, May 14, 2015 at 03:49:25PM -0400, Greg Shatan wrote:
> 
>    - the U.S. government will be granted ownership of the ".gov" and ".mil"
>    top-level domains and specified servers will be maintained in the United
>    States;
> 
> A couple of the Representatives raised concerns that .gov and .mil​ would
> be vulnerable to a transfer away from the USG, and asked the witnesses if
> ownership (or perpetual control) of .gov and .mil by the US should be
> ensured in the transition. Several panelists answered in the affirmative
> and I don't believe any opposed.
>
> We have not really discussed this issue.  I think it behooves us to deal
> with it.

I don't understand what there is to deal with.  The domains are
_below_ the root.  They're already delegated.  Nobody seems to think
that the delegations of any other TLDs are going to change during this
transition.  Why should these?

I am not even a little surprised that members of the US Congress don't
understand that the root zone is the invisible zone _beyond_ the TLD
in every domain name.  But it frustrates me enormously that supposed
experts who go and testify about this topic either don't know that
either, or else won't say so because it's tricky to explain and they
have some other axe to grind.  There is no more risk to mil or gov or
edu in this transition than there is to com or ca or cn.  Indeed,
given that the US military controls at least two and arguably three of
the root servers, there is no risk whatever to the USG here.  (There's
substantial reason to believe that USG "golden disc" images have their
own DNSSEC trust anchor, too, so even the DNSSEC arguments don't
apply.  I've never seen such a golden disc, so I don't know this for
sure.)

If there's anything to say about this, it's that there's nothing to say.

Best regards,

A