[gnso-rds-pdp-wg] Use Case - Dissident Group Using the Internet to Communicate Information

[Nick Shorey]

Are we keeping these source cases based on fact, or are hypothetical use
cases permitted?

*Nick Shorey BA(Hons) MSc.*
Senior Policy Advisor | Global Internet Governance
Department for Culture, Media & Sport
HM Government | United Kingdom

Email: nick.shorey at culture.gov.uk
Tel: +44 (0)7741 256 320
Skype: nick.shorey
Twitter: @nickshorey
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/nicklinkedin

On 25 July 2016 at 23:41, Ayden Férdeline <icann at ferdeline.com> wrote:

> Hello all,
>
> I would like to introduce an additional use case. This is just a rough
> draft for now, and I welcome your feedback on how this use case can be
> strengthened.
>
> The scenario is: a dissident group launches a website to bring important
> news and information to the public. They register their domain name in a
> foreign nation and do not want law enforcement, or other parties, to be
> able to identify the website’s administrators, management, and/or sources
> of information. If this information was made known, their publishing could
> be silenced and their sources and contributors could suffer harm. The
> registrant is not aware of the existence of privacy proxy services at the
> time they register their domain name.
>
> *Misuse Case:* The RDS could be used by State actors or other parties to
> identify members of or contributors to the dissident group, and this could
> result in their voices being silenced through legal, political, or physical
> means.
>
> *Main Misuse Case: *An actor is unhappy that a website in a country is
> publishing material that speaks unfavourably about a given topic. They wish
> to launch political and legal attacks to silence the website’s publishers
> and to alter the narrative of the historical record on this topic. They
> thus utilise the RDS to identify a contact of someone involved in the
> administration of this website, with the view of torturing or otherwise
> extracting from this contact the names and contact details of contributors
> to the dissenting website. As the registrant does not subscribe to a
> privacy proxy service (possibly because of limited financial resources, or
> lack of awareness that such a service exists), their contact details have
> been permanently published into the public record and their privacy is thus
> permanently breached. As a result the RDS threatens the ability of
> dissenting voices to exercise their inalienable rights in an online
> environment.
>
> *Primary Actor: *Government or other entity wanting to censor a dissident
> group.
>
> *Other stakeholders:* Domain name registrant.
>
> *Scope:*
>
> *Level:*
>
> *Data Elements:* In order to prevent misuse by another actor, no
> personally identifiable information should be stored in the RDS whatsoever.
> The only data elements that the RDS requires to operate on a technical
> level are: the domain name itself, the registrar, the domain name’s expiry
> date, and its status (registered / not registered). For it to be of
> functional use, there are two optional fields: name servers, and the
> auth-code.
>
> *Story: *
>
>    - A requestor accesses the RDS to obtain information about a
>    registered domain name. The RDS immediately returns the registration data
>    associated with the domain name, which may include a name and physical
>    address of the registrant.
>    - The requestor passes the extracted information on to a third party
>    who visits the physical address of the contact. The registrant suffers
>    physical harm as a result of the RDS and no longer feels comfortable using
>    the Internet to convey to the public important information.
>
> *Privacy implications: *Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human
> Rights states that everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and
> expression; this right includes the freedom to hold opinions without
> interference and to seek, receive, and impart information and ideas through
> any media and regardless of frontiers. These principles must be upheld in
> the RDS. An RDS that contains any personally-identifiable information would
> threaten these very freedoms. Accordingly, the RDS must only collect and
> store data for limited, lawful, and appropriate purposes.
>
> *Who has control of and access to the data: *
>
> *Conditions under which the data are accessible: *
>
> *How data can be accessed: *At this time, personally identifiable
> information can be accessed by any party in the world, for any reason. This
> is not consistent with best practices in privacy protection.
>
> *Other?*
>
> As you can see, I have left a few of the fields in Lisa's template for use
> cases blank. I do not have all the answers, so I would very much welcome
> your suggestions on how this use case could be strengthened. I'm still a
> little uncertain as to whether we are designing use cases for what the
> WHOIS protocol is like today (this is an assumption I have gone by in this
> first draft) or if this is meant to be more like a use case in a dream
> system instead. I'll revise this use case once I understand this exercise a
> bit better.
>
> Thank you for your time, consideration, and feedback.
>
> Best wishes,
>
> Ayden Férdeline
>
> _______________________________________________
> gnso-rds-pdp-wg mailing list
> gnso-rds-pdp-wg at icann.org
> https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/gnso-rds-pdp-wg
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/gnso-rds-pdp-wg/attachments/20160726/434a725e/attachment.html>