[governance] US's oversight role

[McTim]

Hi All,

On Fri, Sep 6, 2013 at 2:02 AM, parminder <parminder at itforchange.net> wrote:
> Cryptographers have long suspected that the agency (NSA) planted
> vulnerabilities in a standard adopted in 2006 by the National Institute of
> Standards and Technology and later by the International Organization for
> Standardization, which has 163 countries as members.
>
> Classified N.S.A. memos appear to confirm that the fatal weakness,
> discovered by two Microsoft cryptographers in 2007, was engineered by the
> agency. The N.S.A. wrote the standard and aggressively pushed it on the
> international group, privately calling the effort “a challenge in finesse.”
>
> “Eventually, N.S.A. became the sole editor,” the memo says.
>
> http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/06/us/nsa-foils-much-internet-encryption.html?_r=2&pagewanted=all&
>
> This is the government to which we have entrusted the oversight of some
> essential infrastructural features of the Internet.

This is the government which has given a contract to a CS body that is
the Secretariat for a policy making community.  The government in
question checks to see if the contract provisions are being fulfilled.
 They do not have oversight of "essential infrastructural features"
themselves (with the ex exception of a few root servers NASA and DOD
operate).

>
> Continuing on the subject of 'time to get real....'.


in that vein, it may be a good idea to change the misleading subject
line if this thread!


-- 
Cheers,

McTim
"A name indicates what we seek. An address indicates where it is. A
route indicates how we get there."  Jon Postel

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