I* Newsletter: Domain name seizures, moving election websites to .gov

“I*: Navigating Internet Governance and Standards” was a monthly newsletter distributed by the Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT), and compiled by the Public Interest Technology Group (PITG), a group of expert technologists who work across a complex landscape of internet standards development (“I”) organizations that convene in the public interest.

The newsletter highlighted emerging internet infrastructure issues that affect privacy, free expression, and more, clearly explaining their technical underpinnings.

# Domain seizures by the U.S. government are more common than you think: The United States government says it has the right to seize any .com, .net, or .org domain name because the companies that have the contracts to administer them are based on U.S. soil, according to Nicole Navas, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokesperson.

Independent internet infrastructure expert Amelia Andersdotter says, “It’s not an issue unique to domain registries, but only goes to show that U.S.-based businesses are not reliable partners for non-U.S. based entities. Being at the mercy of the U.S. government is undesirable not just because of the spying, but also in general.”

• For more information: https://www.wired.com/2012/03/feds-seize-foreign-sites/
• Contact: Amelia Andersdotter

# 67 Pennsylvania counties urged to switch to .gov: In April, CDT Senior Technologist William T. Adler testified before the Pennsylvania State House Government Committee about how to ensure the security of the commonwealth’s election infrastructure. One of his recommendations was that Pennsylvania counties move their elections websites to verified .gov domains, since over 80% of Pennsylvania’s 67 counties use easily-faked .com or .org domains. Lawmakers introduced an elections reform bill this month, and one of the provisions is a requirement that counties move to .gov websites.

• For more information: https://twitter.com/wtadler/status/1405154558570110978
• Contact: Will Adler, CDT

# Quantum emergence, personal computing, and cryptography: Powerful quantum computing, which can easily break the types of encryption that are ubiquitous in the applications people use daily, is getting cheaper and more compact. Quantum computers are now less than $5,000 and can fit on a desktop, and several parts of the U.S. government are racing to keep up.

While the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is developing cryptographic techniques that can stand up to the power of quantum computing, another U.S. agency, the Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS), is creating controls that limit the proliferation of quantum computing.

The stage is set for a cat-and-mouse game in which strong cryptography is thwarted by stronger computing, which itself could be used to create ever-stronger encryption. But until there is a clear path for quantum computing to avoid overly restrictive BIS controls and make it into end-user products, ubiquitous cryptographic applications meant to protect end users will be at risk.

• For more information: https://www.theverge.com/22523067/nist-challenge-quantum-safe-cryptography-computer-lattice
• Contact: Mallory Knodel, CDT

# QUIC protocol and human rights: QUIC, a new transport protocol for internet traffic that might replace TCP, the Transmission Control Protocol, as one of the most popular protocols on the internet, was just standardized in a proposal by the Internet Engineering Task Force.

In 2018, a group of public interest technologists analyzed the potential impact of QUIC on human rights and found that, while QUIC probably has significant positive impact on users’ rights, it can also significantly change the power relations on the internet, resulting in further consolidation of internet infrastructure and negative impacts on human rights.

• For more information: https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-martini-hrpc-quichr-00
• Contact: Niels ten Oever

# Fastly outage and the fragility of content delivery networks: In early June, millions of websites were inaccessible due to an outage in the Content Delivery Network (CDN) of cloud provider Fastly. These outages happen with some regularity, and the next one could be bigger, last longer, and impact more websites, including key government resources.

This outage reveals the fragility of our current content delivery ecosystem, where a handful of companies service many websites. This means that an outage in a single company can have disproportionate ramifications on our collective experience online. There is a need to address the power consolidation in the edge computing market, and rethink the political economy that hinders websites from taking out contracts with multiple CDN companies.

• For more information: https://www.wired.co.uk/article/fastly-internet-outage
• Contact: Corinne Cath