NEW YORK - The U.S. government will indefinitely retain oversight of the main computers that control traffic on the Internet, ignoring calls by some countries to turn the function over to an international body, a senior official said Thursday.
The announcement marked a departure from previously stated U.S. policy.
Michael D. Gallagher, assistant secretary for communications and information at the Commerce Department, shied away from terming the declaration a reversal, calling it instead "the foundation of U.S. policy going forward."
"The signals and words and intentions and policies need to be clear, so all of us benefiting in the world from the Internet and in the U.S. economy can have confidence there will be continued stewardship," Gallagher said in an interview with The Associated Press.
He said the declaration, officially made in a four-paragraph statement posted online, was in response to growing security threats and increased reliance on the Internet globally for communications and commerce.
The computers in question serve as the Internet's master directories and tell Web browsers and e-mail programs how to direct traffic. Internet users around the world interact with them every day, likely without knowing it. Policy decisions could - at a stroke - make all Web sites ending in a specific suffix essentially unreachable.
Though the computers themselves - 13 in all, known as "root" servers - are in private hands, they contain government-approved lists of the 260 or so Internet suffixes, such as ".com."
In 1998, the Commerce Department selected a private organization with international board members, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, to decide what goes on those lists. Commerce kept veto power, but indicated it would let go once ICANN met a number of conditions.
Thursday's declaration means Commerce would keep that control, regardless of whether and when those conditions are met.
"It's completely an about-face, if you consider the original commitment made when ICANN was created," said Milton Mueller, a Syracuse University professor who has written about policies surrounding the Internet's root servers.
ICANN officials said they were still reviewing Commerce's statement, which also expressed continued support of ICANN for day-to-day operations.
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