[address-policy-wg] 2008-08 (Initial Certification Policy in the RIPE NCC Service Region) going to Last Call

On 04/05/2011 16:57, Sascha Luck wrote:
> On Wed, May 04, 2011 at 05:50:06PM +0200, Erik Bais wrote:
>> It's not that RIPE NCC is owned by a government or that ROA's or
>> certificates are something that the Dutch government could seize or
>> that an evil government would/could do so (under Dutch law), in order
>> to shutdown the internet or an ISP.. There are far better
>> (more effective) ways of doing so, if you remember what happened in
>> Egypt / Libya etc.. Power down datacenter (y/n) ...
>
> The egyptian ex-government had to ring each SP and tell them to pull
> their advertisements. At least one of whom (for a while) appears to have
> told them to go shite.
>
> Having a central authority (especially one that's beholden to 20+
> governments via the EU) makes that *much* easier.

I really don't think it does. You seem to be imagining a scenario where 
a national governement would just ring up the NCC and say, "revoke these 
certs." I have seen no evidence to suggest this risk is anything close 
to real. I suspect that a for profit global megacorp running such a 
certification system would be far more vulnerable to such measures, but 
even then, I don't see this as a large risk.

Brian.