On Friday we filed comments with the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) regarding the future of Internet governance. NTIA has weighty issues to consider as it lays a course that will affect the future of the Internet.

Under the current governance structure, the California-based Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) oversees the global Domain Name System (DNS) under a contract with the US Government. That contract expires in September, and NTIA took the opportunity to ask the public how ICANN is doing, and how close the organization is to being able to stand on its own. When ICANN was created in 1998, the idea was that it would operate under US Government oversight for two years while it established itself on the global stage, and then would become completely autonomous.

That transition has yet to happen, and NTIA asked the public to discuss what steps ICANN still has to take to be able to stand without ties to the US Government. The stakes in the discussion are high. On one hand, the international community is increasingly dissatisfied with the United States playing a special role in Internet management, and that dissatisfaction poses a potentially destabilizing threat. On the other hand, cutting ICANN loose before it is ready could cause major problems.

In our comments, we urge the NTIA to examine what safeguards may need to be put in place to ensure that if and when ICANN does cut its tethers, it is not inadvertently exposed to new dangers in the evolving global environment.

Last week I had the privilege to attend the National Association of Attorneys General (NAAG) Summer Meeting in beautiful Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. NAAG invites all of the states’ attorneys general and their staffs to gather several times per year to exchange ideas, learn about pressing issues in other states, and review the successes of state law enforcement. Washington Attorney General Rob McKenna moderated a panel on which I participated, the goal of which was to highlight the spyware enforcement work going on at the state level. The other panelists were Katherine Tassi and Aaron Munn from General McKenna’s office and Justin Brookman from the New York AG’s office.

Before beginning the panel, General McKenna urged us to make a “sales pitch” for state spyware enforcement. Thus far, only three states (Washington, New York, and Texas) have filed spyware lawsuits, and our goal was to convince the other attorneys general in the audience that they should join the fight. CDT is strong supporter of growing the pool of spyware litigants by getting more states involved. In our experience, getting started with spyware forensics does not require a huge amount of technical skill or a large budget, and in speaking to the attorneys general I sought to convince them that they too could get started with only minimal resources. New York’s experiences reaffirmed this idea – they received one of the largest spyware settlements to date ($7.5 million from Intermix) using a fairly low-tech setup. We published a recent report on this very subject.

While it was clear to me from attending the meeting that the states’ attorneys general have a lot on their plates, it was nice to see a few of them show interest in spyware litigation. The more we can get the word out by participating in educational events like the NAAG panel, the better off we will be in terms of ridding the Internet of this electronic scourge.