by Deep Harm -- Daily Kos
March 31, 2001 -- Slashdot and Cryptome report that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is demanding the master key for the DNS root zone -- a demand that has other nations alarmed. With the master key, DHS would have control over the Internet, as Slashdot describes, quoting an "anonymous reader."
The key will play an important role in the new DNSSec security extension, because it will make spoofing IP-addresses impossible. By forcing the IANA [Internet Assigned Numbers Authority] to hand out a copy of the master key, the US government will be the only institution that is able to spoof IP addresses and be able to break into computers connected to the Internet without much effort.
The issue arose at Friday's meeting of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) in Lisbon, Portugal.
