US plans to turn over Internet Address System control to an NGO

According to the US government, it will be relinquishing the control it has over the system for assigning website addresses. Bloomberg said the move will mark the government's final phase in privatizing and globalizing the management of the Web's backbone.

It has been said that the US has asked the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers to convene interested groups from all over the world to draft a proposal as a guide for the system's transition to a non-government entity. Bloomberg said ICANN is scheduled to conduct a consultation process at a meeting in Singapore on March 24.

President and chief executive officer Fadi Chehade of Los Angeles-based ICANN has told reporters on a conference call held yesterday, "We thank the U.S. government for its stewardship, for its guidance over the years. And we thank them today for trusting the global community to replace their stewardship with appropriate oversight mechanisms. The world wants to participate increasingly in how we shape it together. That's why now."

Chehade clarified that the decision to transition the system to a private entity is not influenced by any way Edward Snowden's leaks that revealed the US' surveillance programs.

Bloomberg said the system transition came amid pressures the US government has received internationally on giving up control over the system that gives websites identifiers unique enough for users to find them online. Member-nations in the European Union had been advocating for a global supervision of such system following the increase in cyber-attacks, government spying and censorship in some countries.

The news agency said that the move has also allowed the US government to fulfill a promise it made in 1998. Administrator Lawrence Strickling of the US Commerce Department's National Telecommunications and Information Administration said that the US government will allow the expiration of the contract it has with the ICANN-affiliated Internet Assigned Numbers Authority, which is on September 30 next year.

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Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, US Commerce Department's National Telecommunications and Information Administration

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