November 2015

The National Telecommunications and Information Administration provides quarterly reports on all aspects of the proposed transition of the US government’s stewardship role over the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) functions. This fourth report covers activities from July 1, 2015 to September 30, 2015.

The multistakeholder community continues its efforts to develop a plan for the transition of NTIA’s stewardship of the IANA functions. The IANA Stewardship Transition Coordination Group (ICG), established to compile and ultimately submit a consolidated transition plan to NTIA, received the protocol parameters and Internet numbering related proposals in January 2015. The Cross Community Working Group (CWG) on naming-related functions released its third draft proposal in June 2015. The proposal was approved by the CWG chartering organizations (ccNSO, gNSO, SSAC, and GAC) during ICANN’s June meeting in Buenos Aires. The ICG has since drafted a consolidated proposal incorporating input from the three primary functions working groups and conducted a public consultation on the draft, which concluded on September 8. Approximately 150 comments were submitted on the draft consolidated proposal, reflecting a wide cross section of the broad, global, multistakeholder community. The ICG met face to face in Los Angeles on September 18 and 19 to review and discuss the comments received, and posed questions and/or requests for clarifications from the operational communities. The ICG requested responses from the community by mid-October to allow the ICG time to prepare for the ICANN 54 meeting in Dublin scheduled for October 18-22.

US District Court of the District of Columbia Judge Richard Leon called for the Obama Administration to immediately halt its controversial collection of Americans’ phone records, mere days before the contested program is set to end. In his ruling, Judge Leon doubled down on his assertion that the National Security Agency (NSA) program likely violates the Constitution and warned that “the loss of constitutional freedoms for even one day is a significant harm.”

Nov 9’s ruling comes nearly two years after he initially called the NSA program “almost Orwellian,” and slightly less than three weeks before it is scheduled to end. As such, the decision “is perhaps the last chapter in the judiciary’s evaluation of this particular program’s compatibility with the Constitution,” he wrote. “It will not, however, be the last chapter in the ongoing struggle to balance privacy rights and national security interests under our Constitution in an age of evolving technological wizardry.” Ultimately, the legal process makes it unlikely that the NSA will have to reverse course before the program is set to end later in Nov. But civil liberties advocates nonetheless greeted the decision as a major victory that could be used to spur additional legal takedowns of US spying programs.

Since Nov 2014 there have been 16 so-called fiber cuts in the San Francisco (CA) Bay Area. According to the FBI, someone or some group has been going through manholes to sever fiber optic cables that supply telecommunications to large sections of the region, which is home to technology companies, academic institutions and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, overseer of the nation’s nuclear weapons. Following each incident (usually occurring late at night and involving two or three separate fiber cuts) residents couldn’t make land or mobile calls, not even to 911, or send texts or e-mails. Hospital records in some instances were inaccessible. Credit cards and ATMs didn’t work. And forget about Googling, watching Netflix or remotely turning on a coffee maker.

When we talk about the Internet, we talk about clouds and ether. But the Internet is not amorphous. You may access it wirelessly, but ultimately you’re relying on a bunch of physical cables that are vulnerable to attack. It’s something that’s been largely forgotten in the lather over cybersecurity. The threat is not only malicious code flowing through the pipes but also, and perhaps more critically, the pipes themselves. Most worrisome are the throughways and junctures that handle enormous amounts of Internet traffic. It would be as if a major interstate highway or crucial interchange were closed and all the traffic was forced onto side streets. There would be gridlock, and some of those side streets might collapse under the weight.

Pay-TV set-top market critics Sens Ed Markey (D-MA) and Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) have brought in the reinforcements, including presidential candidate Sen Bernie Sanders (I-VT). Sens Markey and Blumenthal asked for, and got, set-top box info from Comcast, DirecTV, Dish Network, Time Warner Cable, Charter Communications, AT&T U-Verse, Verizon FiOS Video, Cox Communications, Cablevision Systems and Bright House Networks, then said the results showed that there continued to be a lack of competition in the set-top market. That comes as the Federal Communications Commission works on a downloadable set-top security successor to the CableCARD after its integration ban was legislated away by Congress in the STELAR satellite reauthorization legislation.

In the letter Nov 9 to FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler, Sens Markey and Blumenthal were joined by five other Democratic Senators and Sen Sanders. They cited the $20 billion per year in set-top rental fees and, while they did not come out and say "all-vid," which is the proposal by computer companies for the FCC to require a universal box that weds video from various sources, they did say the time had come "for the FCC to enable millions of Americans to access an enormous amount of content in innovative, new, and less costly ways." They said they wanted an answer from the Chairman by Dec. 4 on his plans to boost set-top competition and choice.