Hi all,
As we all know, the DNS infrastructure has been built to be
decentralised and resilient, so that its functionality does not depend
on a single continent, country or government. But what if your gTLD
domain name can be wiped out of the DNS by a single government?
This is exactly what happened to Autistici/Inventati (A/I), an Italian
non-profit, volunteer-run service provider that caters to hundreds of
activist groups around the world. They have operated using the
autistici.org domain name for the past 25 years.
On August 26, the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) at the US
Department of the Treasury included them in their list of “Specially
Designated Global Terrorists” (SDGT). On August 28, PIR, the US
headquartered registry operator for the .org TLD, placed autistici.org
on status severHold, effectively wiping it from the DNS.
This all happened without A/I committing any crime, neither in Italy nor
in the US, and without any prosecutor ever indicting them either for
felonies or misdemeanors. Simply the fact they provided services to
certain activist groups that may be labeled as controversial or
extremist by some authorities, was enough to place the whole provider on
the SDGT list.
In this case it was PIR (created by ISOC) that acted on the sanctions
imposed by OFAC, although PIR still hasn't officially released any
statement about this. A lot of organisations with an .org domain name
are now very concerned about the future of their domains, but .org is
not the only large gTLD that is run by a US based registry operator,
both .net and .com are operated by Verisign, which is also headquartered
in the US. So we can not rule out that something similar could happen to
other domains.
As an example: Just over two weeks ago, the US Department of the
Treasury has begun "Operation Economic Outcast: an unprecedented,
whole-of-government, economic campaign against the Islamic Republic of
Iran and its enablers. The Treasury is significantly expanding sanctions
risk for those who continue to choose to do business with Iran."
What if RIPE NCC would be classified as an organisation that provides
services to sanctioned entities, could that mean that ripe.net gets put
on serverHold?
Should we still depend so heavily on US based gTLD registry operators?
For more background on the A/I case, see:
https://www.article19.org/resources/usa-terrorism-designation-has-global-consequences-for-open-internet-and-free-expression/
https://keepitfree.ai/
https://www.inventati.org/
Timo
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