United States to Cede Its Oversight of Addresses on Internet

The United States will hand over its responsibility of overseeing the system of Web addresses and domain names that form the basis of internet, to an international group in 2015. The structure and administration of the body will be determined over the next year, the government officials said on Friday.

Since the dawn of the Internet, the United States has been responsible for assigning the numbers that form Internet addresses, the .com, .gov and .org labels that correspond to those numbers, and for the vast database that links the two and makes sure Internet traffic goes to the right place. The function has been subcontracted since 1998 to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or Icann, an international non-profit organization, expecting United States to step back from its role.

Since Snowden’s revelations of mass spying of internet data by the National Security Agency (NSA), the international community had called for the removal of United States from the responsibility. Apprehensions are also building up regarding the new organization that would be handling the function.

Infoeditor