Comments to the ICANN-CCNSO-DRDWG Public Consultation On Potential Issues and their Classificiation

[Eric Brunner-Williams <ebw@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Thank you for the opportunity to comment on this issue.

The objective of the paper is to seek input and comment from the 
community, accordingly, I offer the following.
While the destruction of the network infrastructure interior to Iraq 
via aerial bombardment was taking place, discussion of the reduction 
of reachibility and resolvability took place in the North American 
Network Operators Group mailing list.
At the time, for my personal use and as a guide to an eventual 
resumption of nameservice for the .iq zone, I operated a .iq namespace 
as a public 3rd-level domain.
I participated in this discussion, and followed with interest the 
process by which the destruction of the .iq namespace, then operated 
from Richardson, TX, was accomplished, and its delegee taken into US 
custody.
Eventually I was contacted by an individual who sought my assistance 
in obtaining a re-delegation of .iq for the purposes of monitizing the 
association of "intelligence quotient" and the two letter string "iq". 
I politely declined, but point out that the repurposing by iso3166 
code points to private parties is widely practiced and absurdly 
defended under the principle of subsidiarity.
At a later point in time I was contacted by a representative of the 
Occupation Forces who sought my assistance in obtaining the 
re-delegation of .iq to an agency of the "government" created by the 
Occupation Forces. The request was to locate the authoritative .iq 
servers in a building with only a few hours of electricity servers per 
day, and little or no external to the building connectivity, and also 
without the consent of the current delegee, in custody.
I declined the request for assistance, for two reasons. First, no 
delegation should be made without the consent of the current delegee, 
and second, the proposal was technically indistinguishable from 
leaving .iq with no functioning authoritative nameserver.
As some subsequent point in time .iq was redelegated, without the 
consent of the current delegee.
To the best of my knowledge, this is the first time that the DNS has 
been the military target of a belligerent state.
The seizure and/or destruction of ccTLD operator assets, and the 
persons of the delegee, has been without response, other than 
approval, by the body entrusted with the independent custodial care 
and coordination of addressing and naming resources.
This is probably not something that should ever occur again.

Redelegation requests supported by arms alone should not be granted, 
whether made by the United States, consequent to illegal belligerency 
or any other State, or non-State militarized actor.
I fully appreciate that even now it is not easy to comment on the 
conduct of the United States in 2003. At the time these events 
occurred, only one member of the United States Congress was on record 
opposed to the use of armed force. Then, and now, there is little 
opposition to the prosecuting of Palestinian-Americans making 
donations to charitable and religious institutions in the Occupied 
West Bank and Gaza on terrorism charges.
However, the Delegation and Redelegation Working Group does not have 
to pass in silence over an unfortunate redelegation, and it can take 
note that a redelegation was accomplished by means that should not be 
used again. Addressing and naming registries are not legitimate 
military targets.
The methodology developed and employed by the DRD WG was not adequate 
to inform the DRD WG of a redelegation made consequent to an act of war.
The policy statements in rfc1591 do provide adequate baseline to 
evaluate the actual practices of the IANA and ICANN Board relative to 
most delegation, redelegation and retirement of ccTLDs, except the 
one, and potentially others, arising from an act of war.
There are other policy statements which are applicable to the work of 
the DRD WG, specifically those dealing with the relationship of 
civilian infrastructure and the Geneva Conventions concerning the 
conduct of States engaged in belligerency.
The documentation identified did not provide an adequate 
representation of the actual practices of the IANA function and the 
ICANN Board, as the redelegation of .iq (and the earlier nearly redel 
of .pn) are absent from the report.
Clearly, the .iq case should be included for analysis.

Documentation of the .pn redelegation, and the .sh non-delegation, are 
applicable to the work of the DRD WG and should be analyzed.
Until nonconsenting redelegations are included in the study, the 
methodology is not properly applied.
Thank you for the opportunity to place in the record something which 
has been troubling me since March 2003, and more so since July 2005.
Eric Brunner-Williams