Originally built by the US military, the internet is now an essential element of the developed world.

The EU Commissioner Viviane Reding, the EU’s Internet chief, called for the severing of links between ICANN and the U.S. government.

Currently ICANN operates under an agreement with the Commerce Department, and the United States is the only government with oversight of ICANN, which assigns Internet addresses used by more than 1.5 billion Internet users around the world.

“I believe that the U.S., so far, has done this in a reasonable manner. However, I also believe that the Clinton administration’s decision to progressively privatize the Internet’s domain name and addressing system is the right one. In the long run, it is not defendable that the government department of only one country has oversight of an Internet function which is used by hundreds of millions of people in countries all over the world.”

This will not only be a test of President Obama‘s foreign policy, but also his belief in roles and responsibilities of the United Nations. Obama must juggle the emerging principles of global democracy with the security interests of the United States, as weapons of mass destruction become ever more digital.

The National Research Council is calling for a open national debate on the technological, policy, legal, and ethical issues of cyberwarfare, said the committee that wrote the report.

Insight into Cyber Attacks

Russia combined cyber attacks with military operations in its invasion of Georgia:

Background on the Internet

Related articles

• US needs ‘digital warfare force’ (news.bbc.co.uk)
• EU urges US to drop ICANN (theregister.co.uk)
• EU to ICANN: ditch the US gov ties and become more global (arstechnica.com)
• Europe looks to wrest control ofthe web away from the US (guardian.co.uk)

Tags: Foreign policy, ICANN, Viviane Reding