Re: U.S. Homeland Security dept, ICANN, and the root servers

[Mark Handley <mjh@icir.org>]

>fwiw, what I have been told is that no change to the root zone is ever done 
>without the change request having been signed by a PGP key that is held by 
>the US DoC; they, in turn, don't sign off on anything unless it arrives 
>there signed with an ICANN-held PGP key.
>
>And it's been that way (or equivalents thereof) every single day since Jon 
>Postel stopped being solely responsible.
>
>My understanding.
>
>And no, I don't think the IAB-as-IAB needs to wade into this swamp; this is 
>most definitely a political issue - the technical issue is that there needs 
>to be one authoritative root zone file, and that everyone needs to be clear 
>about which one that is, and they *are* doing that.

Personally I'd rather stay out of this political swamp too.  But if we
were asked to comment on this, it might be worth mentioning that the
limitations of DoC's validation role here should be documented properly.

 - Mark