[gnso-rds-pdp-wg] An important technical consideration about nature of the service (was Re: The overflowing list )

Sat Jul 16 08:05:36 UTC 2016

Dear Stephanie Perrin and Andrew,

(inline)

On Sat, Jul 16, 2016 at 10:42 AM, Stephanie Perrin <
stephanie.perrin at mail.utoronto.ca> wrote:

> I think these are really important questions Andrew.  Unfortunately when
> we talk about privacy and data control, we often use idioms that are
> technologically out of date (eg video surveillance, which conjures up
> mental images of video tapes that have not been used in 15 years).  To be
> clear, we need to talk about control of data elements.  Fortunately,
> despite a lot of FUD to the contrary, the EU data protection authorities
> have focused on data controllers and data processors, and we have good
> documents with summaries for those concepts.  They have not changed with
> the new regulation, so they are still valid.
>
> If I understand RDAP correctly, it would permit duly authorized data
> access from anywhere, to elements that could be scattered.  This would
> match current data mining techniques.  The problem, as I see it, and I beg
> to be corrected if I am wrong, is how do we manage a remote authorization
> scheme to individual data elements, if indeed
>

> some data is held by the registrar, some by the registry, and some
> (outside ICANN's remit, but an answer to LEA demands) by the ISP?
>

I will start with the disclaimer that I am writing this WITHOUT a good
understanding of the technical operations concerning the present RDAP nor
about the advances in data mining technology.

The question "where data resides" and if the design of RDAP is to make it
easier to answer that question, and on a superficial level "data" here
means Registration Data, this is very much becomes a whois design question.

If some data is held by Registrar, some by Registry and some by the ISP,
there may be a way of streamlining this by modifying the manner in which
Registrant data is gathered and stored at the time of registration. Some
attention to the VISA/MASTERCARD method of collecting and handling credit
card information could help ICANN come up with a streamlined design for
handling Registrant data.

If such a model is to be emulated, a Registrant going to a sub-Reseller
going through a Reseller going through a Registrar under a Registry would
gather the Registrant data on a secure form interjected by an operator like
Verisign, -verisign here is not to be confused with Verisign the Registry,
or Verisign the RZM operator, but that division of Verisign which serves
the secure form-, independent of and regardless of the insecurity of the
Sub-Reseller's webspace. This could be verisign or even an IAB designed
secure form. This verisign form ( I will call it the Verisign form, for
illustration) could then be used to collect:

a) all Registrant data and then automatically distribute the basic data
back to the Sub-Reseller and Reseller, basic + quasi-sensitive data to the
Registrar under whom the Reseller operates and retain a copy of the above +
Sensitive data with the Registry, while ultra-sensitive data, if any so
categorised by any name, together with all of the above would stay only
with ICANN.  (the categorization of data as basic etc is arbitrary.  This
is a generalized description of how it would work, there may be existing
classes and sub-classes or ICANN may come up with suitable sub-classes of
Registrant data)

b) The Sensitive and Ultra-sensitive user data alone could be gathered by
the Verisign form after the basic data is collected by the Reseller in his
own form that may be shared with the Registrar.

This would prevent Registrant data abuse in a situation where there are a
multitude of Resellers. The Resellers would retain the basic contact
information for them the opportunity to maintain contact with their
customers,  Registrars would get a copy of whatever commercial data that
they require from the Resellers or from their direct customers, the
Registry would still retain most of the data with a copy for the ICANN in a
database, and only ICANN retain the ultra-sensitive data, if there is any
part of Registrant data is ultra-sensitive by any other name.

This would require assurances from ICANN that it would enforce a well
designed process involving a highly ethical team of community members to
screen requests from Law and Order authorities anywhere to access data, and
to determine what portion of data they would access.

The caution needed here is that such a system may have to be well thought
of, the privacy and security concerns to be examined in extensive detail,
the commercial privileges concerning Registrant data prevailing among
Resellers, Registrars and Registries have be examined, the ability of ICANN
/ Internet Community to judge the validity of Law and Order requests and
the strength of ICANN to deny some requests if deemed necessary - all these
aspects have to be examined in detail.

If the question "where does data reside" extends beyond Registrant data,
the answer would be far more complicated. That would draw the Internet
Community's attention to questions concerning content in a very interesting
way.

Sivasubramanian M

> Cheers Stephanie
>
> On 2016-07-16 1:00, Andrew Sullivan wrote:
>
> Thanks, Stephanie, for the quick issue list.  There's one thing that I
> want to draw out here so that we can keep it foremost when thinking of
> issues:
>
> On Sat, Jul 16, 2016 at 12:05:10AM -0400, Stephanie Perrin wrote:
>
>
>  * Where the RDS (whether a central database or federated or completely
>    disaggregated) resides becomes important for law enforcement access.
>
> This "where data resides" issue is bound to vex us, no matter what
> kind of policy we come up with.  But it's really important to keep in
> mind that the different styles of system design will yield very
> different properties.
>
> In the taxonomy I offered before
> (http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/gnso-rds-pdp-wg/2016-June/000951.html),
> models I and V have a clear since answer to, "Where does the data
> reside?" because they have a single database backing them up.  In
> models II-IV, however, the answer to, "Where does the data reside?" is
> actually not entirely meaningful.  There are multiple places where the
> data are, and for data with respect to any given domain name each
> datum might be in a different place.  (Indeed, part of the design of
> RDAP is precisely to make such arrangements easier to deal with.)
>
> It is therefore better to try to find a way, consistent with all of
> the various requirements documents, to answer some other questions.
> I think these might be helpful in building use cases:
>
>     1.  For any given datum, who has control of and access to the datum?
>
>     2.  For any given datum, what are the conditions under which the
>     datum ought to be accessible?
>
>     3.  For any given set of related data, how can it be accessed?
>
> Notice that answering (3) will provides use cases for data access,
> whereas (1) and (2) provide for limit conditions on how and when use
> cases might be apply.
>
> I hope these framing questions are helpful in figuring out which use
> cases we can bring to bear on requirements.
>
> Best regards,
>
> A
>
>
>
>
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