SECRECY THROUGH OBSCURITY

So far, neither ICANN or its Registries have taken responsibility for this critical infrastructure -- or so we thought, because on November 8th, ICANN suddenly announced a Data Escrow Program.

No one knew of the program because even though maillist committee activity was apparently completed last April, it was conducted in secret. No calls for participation, no open task force deliberations, typical of ICANN's "transparent, open, bottoms-up" processes.

Politically, its important to note the difference between designs that intend to promote control, and designs that intend to promote interoperability. Especially when the control promoters do their own technical work, without exposure to technical talent.

Technically, an internet engineer who asked to remain anonymous told ICB, "It was the secrecy-through-obscurity of the committees that was appalling, and their work product suffered to the point where ICANN has adopted escrow standards that are almost certainly going to be inadequate. That inadequacy may remain undiscovered or uncorrected until disaster or business failure occurs and it is found that the backup escrow data can not be reloaded."

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