I just faxed the following protest to: Gordon Cook COOK Network Consultants 431 Greenway Avenue Ewing, NJ 08618 (609) 882-2572 Electronic Mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] David M. Walker February 24, 1999 Comptroller General, General Accounting Office Room 7100, 441 G Street NW Washington, DC 20548 Dear Mr. Walker As Editor and Publisher of the COOK Report on Internet I wish to protest NIST's Submission No. 296704 dated February 9 and posted to the NIST web pages on February 10. NIST's Amendment of SOLICITATION 52SBNB9C1020 is defective for the following reasons. If NTIA wants to bridge the gap between the "anticipated expiration of the DARPA/USC contract and the anticipated completion date for the transition" it looks like what NTIA wants is the maintenance of the status quo - namely the continuation of the current authority where USC is the legal employer of the IANA people but where ICANN is paying the bill presented to it by USC each month. Someone needs to ask NIST to identify in straight forward terms what this solicitation is actually trying to accomplish. Your auditors should ask how the "DARPA USC contract" could have only an anticipated rather than a firm date of completion? It must be a firm date and in the case of this contract (a temporary extension of the one that ended April 1, 1997) the date was October 1, 1998. Moving IANA informally to the DARPA/USC/TNT contract was a fig leaf designed to cover up the fact that ICANN has been since Oct 1 asking USC to remain the legal employer of the IANA staff, since it (ICANN) could not pay benefits and since USC could not legally pay their salaries from the DARPA TNT grant. Since the contract is to be no cost, ICANN will have to continue to do what it is already doing - that is to pay the salaries regardless. What the solicitation actually does is put, retroactively, a legal face on the current status quo. The current status quo raises not only the issue of ISI's relation ship with ICANN but also the issue of what statutory authority the NTIA is using to make these decisions in the first place. NTIA is talking about the need for a contract to bridge from date A (the anticipated end of the DARPA USC contract) to date B (the anticipated beginning of full authority rule by ICANN). Unfortunately: (1) it can name NEITHER date; (2) the IANA salaries are being paid right now by the same entity that will pay them if the contract is awarded; (3) while NTIA alleges that achieving security and reliability in DNS management is critical to the stability of the internet, the fig leaf solution that it seeks by this sole source award (giving de jure validation to a de facto status quo) has only one value: - justification some months down the road of an NTIA decision to hand the root servers over to ICANN since ICANN then would already be successfully managing IANA on behalf of the US government. Indeed the only argument having any potential bearing on the stability of the Internet is the argument about the management of root servers for which NTIA has contracted already with Network solutions until October 1, 2000. If the stability of security and reliability of the Internet were in anyway dependent on ICANN, the major service providers would be taking pains to contribute to ICANN's funding. In point of fact they are doing nothing. Despite Vint Cerf's recent call for money on behalf of ICANN, roughly four months after ICANN's establishment, only just over $200,000 has been contributed. This is roughly 20% of what NTIA said itself last November ICANN would need by June. Why should NTIA care more about the fate of ICANN that does the Internet industry? NTIA's arguments about the critical role of the IANA staff are spurious because the only person who was doing serious IANA functions was Jon Postel who, unfortunately, is now deceased. The RFC editor (Joyce Reynolds) is being paid for by ISOC. Bill Manning was the only other IANA technical staffer with any visibility. But ICANN Interim President Mike Roberts told Manning back in September that ICANN would not pay his salary. The other staffers primarily provide administrative support for the computers and possess no unique knowledge. All significant decisions involving names, numbers and port assignments were made by Jon Postel. "dot US" (sometime s considered to be a part of IANA) is currently being paid for by the Postal Service there is nothing in the current situation that can justify NIST intervention. The GAO, in carrying out it's budgetary oversight responsibilities on behalf on Congress, needs to get specific identification of the IANA staff for which NTIA is seeking to transfer payment and supervisory authority to ICANN. In nearly every case those staffers either do not possess unique skills or are already being paid by ISOC. The dot US operation was merely a clerical operation inside the IANA offices that ran a registry. Absent Postel, it has no discretionary authority attached to it. It is a book keeping function. Nothing more. Furthermore since DARPA announced the termination of the IANA contract on April 1, 1997 the question of whether there was ever any legal basis for the continuation of the IANA function at ISI or elsewhere has been in doubt. NTIA is trying to use NIST contracting authority to deliver a legal home to a package of functions currently being done and paid for by organizations as diverse as ISOC and the Postal Service. The only qualifications possessed by ICANN to become this legal home is the assertion of NTIA that ICANN does, in fact, possesses them. I am unaware that circular arguments have legal authority. When GAO demands that NTIA prove its assertions of ICANN's "unique" qualifications, it will find that ICANN is composed of a Board without expertise in the Internet, using bylaws written by an attorney without expertise in the Internet, and run from the bedroom of a retired "president" who has 25 years internet experience as an officer of an IBM founded organization of Internet using University chief information officers. Without Jon Postel, there is nothing whatsoever that is unique about ICANN or its qualifications. Therefore I am confident that you will find that the issuance by NIST of a sole source solicitation to ICANN is neither defensible nor legal. Sincerely, Gordon Cook *************************************************************************** The COOK Report on Internet 431 Greenway Ave, Ewing, NJ 08618 USA (609) 882-2572 (phone & fax) [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.cookreport.com NOTE: Contempt in which ICANN PRES. MIKE ROBERTS holds rest of Internet: "Some of those people think the management [ICANN] should check with the public [the Communities of the Internet] every time they make a decision, which is crazy," Roberts said. "That's flat-out crazy." WIRED NEWS 2/4/99 ***************************************************************************
