[lac-discuss-en] Fwd: US Senate Committee Hearing on 2016 Budget for Dept of Commerce: Testimony on IANA Transition

[Carlton Samuels]

This conversation was in another thread  but bears some interest, if only
for the nuanced political views expressed.

==============================
Carlton A Samuels
Mobile: 876-818-1799
*Strategy, Planning, Governance, Assessment & Turnaround*
=============================

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Greg Shatan <gregshatanipc at gmail.com>
Date: Sat, Feb 28, 2015 at 12:23 PM
Subject: [CWG-Stewardship] 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.

(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.



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