Call for Support: RIPE response to the US NTIA's NoI

Hello Peter,

> As a follow up to our earlier efforts (see below), the DNS WG  
> suggests that
> the response to the NTIA come from the broader RIPE community. So,  
> this is
> the DNS WG's request for your support and endorsement of the proposal.

I fully support this text:

> #
> #	$Id: ntia-draft,v 1.9 2008/11/13 20:20:41 jim Exp $
> #
>
> The RIPE community thanks the NTIA for its consultation on proposals
> to sign the root and is pleased to offer the following response to
> that consultation. We urge the adoption of a solution that leads to
> the prompt introduction of a signed root zone. Our community considers
> the introduction of a signed root zone to be an essential enabling
> step towards widespread deployment of Secure DNS, DNSSEC. This view
> is supported by the letter from the RIPE community to ICANN as an
> outcome of discussions at the May 2007 RIPE meeting in Tallinn:
> http://www.ripe.net/ripe/wg/dns/icann-root-signing.pdf.
>
> It is to be expected that a community as diverse as RIPE cannot have a
> unified set of detailed answers to the NTIA questionnaire. However
> several members of the RIPE community will be individually responding
> to that questionnaire. We present the following statement as the
> consensus view of our community about the principles that should form
> the basis of the introduction of a signed DNS root.
>
> 1. Secure DNS, DNSSEC, is about data authenticity and integrity and
> not about control.
>
> 2. The introduction of DNSSEC to the root zone must be made in such a
> way that it is accepted as a global initiative.
>
> 3. Addition of DNSSEC to the root zone must be done in a way that does
> not compromise the security and stability of the Domain Name System.
>
> 4. When balancing the various concerns about signing the root zone,
> the approach must provide an appropriate level of trust and confidence
> by offering an optimally secure solution.
>
> 5. Deployment of a signed root should be done in a timely but not
> hasty manner.
>
> 6. Updates from TLD operators relating to DNSSEC should be aligned
> with the operational mechanisms for co-ordinating changes to the root
> zone.
>
> 7. If any procedural changes are introduced by the deployment of
> DNSSEC they should provide sufficient flexibility to allow for the
> roles and processes as well as the entities holding those roles to be
> changed after suitable consultations have taken place.
>
> 8. Policies and processes for signing the root zone must be
> transparent and trustworthy, making it straightforward for TLDs to
> supply keys and credentials so the delegations for those TLDs can
> benefit from a common DNSSEC trust anchor, the signed root.
>
> 9. There is no technical justification to create a new organisation to
> oversee the process of signing of the root.
>
> 10. No data should be moved between organisations without appropriate
> authenticity and integrity checking, particularly the flow of keying
> material between a TLD operator and the entity that signs the root.
>
> 11. The public part of the key signing key must be distributed as
> widely as possible.
>
> 12. The organisation that generates the root zone file must sign the
> file and therefore hold the private part of the zone signing key.
>
> 13. Changes to the entities and roles in the signing process must not
> necessarily require a change of keys.
>
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------------

- Sander