[gnso-rds-pdp-wg] international law enforcement association resolution regarding domain registration data

Wed Apr 26 15:01:18 UTC 2017

More likely scenario it would be that "1st party" selling access to the
data instead.

On Apr 26, 2017 10:53 AM, "Volker Greimann" <vgreimann at key-systems.net>
wrote:

> I may be out on a limb here (although I doubt it) but it seems to me that
> installing gated access to private registration data and then turning
> around and allowing third parties access to harvest, repackage and
> republish that data somehow defeats the purpose of what we are trying to
> achieve here.
>
> If that is the ultimate result, we may as well stop right here.
>
> Best,
>
> Volker
>
> Am 26.04.2017 um 16:27 schrieb allison nixon:
>
> Thank you for your email Tim.
>
> Full disclosure(because I believe in being transparent about this sort of
> thing), we do business with Domaintools and use their tools to consume
> whois data.
>
> "i'll close by saying I think Allison's point about economic value has
> merit.  yes, the point of the WG is not to protect anyone's economic
> interest.  I agree 100% with that statement and will disagree with anyone
> who thinks the future of DomainTools or other commercial service should
> have one iota of impact on this discussion."
>
> I will however disagree vehemently with you on this point. It is obvious
> that many of the arguments to cut off anonymous querying to WHOIS data are
> economically motivated. Financial concerns are cited numerous times in
> approved documents. I also believe the "vetting" process is likely to
> become a new revenue stream for someone as well. A revenue stream with
> HIGHLY questionable privacy value-add.
>
> Every dollar of income for the Domaintools company and others like it come
> from their clients, who see a multiplier of value from it. That means for
> every dollar spent on the entire whois aggregator industry means that a
> much larger amount of money is saved through prevented harms like fraud,
> abuse, and even fake medications which kill people.
>
> I think it is extremely important to identify what critical systems rely
> on whois (either directly or downstream), and determine if we are ready to
> give up the utility of these systems.
>
> We also need to identify the value of the ability to anonymously query
> whois and what that loss of privacy will mean as well. While I obviously do
> not make many queries anonymously(although our vendor has their own privacy
> policy), I understand this is important especially to those researching
> more dangerous actors. Why would $_COUNTRY dissidents want to query domains
> when their opponents would surely be hacking into the audit logs for this?
>
>
> On Apr 25, 2017 11:41 PM, "Chen, Tim" <tim at domaintools.com> wrote:
>
>> "And I hope more stakeholders in this multi-stakeholder process will come
>> forward with their own perspectives, as they will differ from mine."
>>
>> happy to do so.  DomainTools is clearly a stakeholder in this debate.
>>  and we have a fair amount of experience around the challenges, benefits
>> and risks of whois data aggregation at scale.
>>
>> from the beginning of this EWG/RDS idea we've stood down bc i didn't
>> believe our opinion would be seen as objective-enough given our line of
>> business.  but it is apparent to me having followed this debate for many
>> weeks now, that this is a working group of individuals who all bring their
>> own biases into the debate.  whether they care to admit that to themselves
>> or not.  so we might as well wade in too.  bc I think our experience is
>> very relevant to the discussion.
>>
>> i'll do my best to be as objective as I can, as a domain registrant
>> myself and as an informed industry participant.
>>
>> since our experience is working with security minded organizations, that
>> is the context with which I will comment.
>>
>> since this is an ICANN working group, I start with the ICANN mission
>> statement around the security and stability of the DNS.  I find myself
>> wanting to fit this debate to that as the north star.  i do not see the RDS
>> as purpose driven to fit the GDPR or any region-specific legal resolution.
>>  but I do see those as important inputs to our discussion.
>>
>> from a security perspective, my experience is that the benefits of the
>> current Whois model, taken with this lens, far outweigh the costs.  again,
>> I can only speak from my experience here at DomainTools, and obviously
>> under the current Whois regime.  This is not to say it cannot be improved.
>> From a data accuracy perspective alone there is enormous room for
>> improvement as I think we can all agree.  every day I see the tangible
>> benefits to security interests, which for the most part are "doing good",
>> from the work that we do.  when I compare that to the complaints that we
>> get bc "my PII is visible in your data", it's not even close by my value
>> barometer (which my differ from others').  this is relevant bc any future
>> solution will be imperfect as I have mentioned before.  as Allison and
>> others point out we need to measure the harm done by any new system that
>> may seek to solve one problem (privacy?) and inadvertently create many
>> more. since this group is fond of analogies I'll contribute one from the
>> medical oath (not sure if this is just U.S.) "first, do no harm".
>>
>> i'll close by saying I think Allison's point about economic value has
>> merit.  yes, the point of the WG is not to protect anyone's economic
>> interest.  I agree 100% with that statement and will disagree with anyone
>> who thinks the future of DomainTools or other commercial service should
>> have one iota of impact on this discussion.  but I also think "it's too
>> expensive" or "it's too hard" are weak and dangerous excuses when dealing
>> with an issue like this which has enormous and far reaching consequences
>> for the very mission of ICANN around the security and stability of our
>> internet.
>>
>> Tim
>>
>> On Mon, Apr 24, 2017 at 3:50 PM, allison nixon <elsakoo at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Thanks for the documentation in your earlier email. While I understand
>>> that's how things are supposed to work in theory, it's not implemented very
>>> widely, and unless there is enforcement, then it's unlikely to be useful at
>>> all.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> "as a given, we put ourselves in a certain position in terms of the
>>> actions we can and cannot recommend. We can make similar statements focused
>>> on registry operators, registrars, or any other stakeholder in this space.
>>> If we all approach this WG's task with the goal of not changing anything,
>>> we're all just wasting our time."
>>>
>>> There are things that people would be willing to change about WHOIS.
>>> Changes purely relating to the data format would not be as controversial.
>>> Changing to that RDAP json format would probably be an agreeable point to
>>> most here.
>>>
>>> There are two different major points of contention here. The first is
>>> the data format, second is the creation of a new monopoly and ceding power
>>> to it. By monopoly I mean- who are the gatekeepers of "gated" access? Will
>>> it avoid all of the problems that monopolies are historically prone to? Who
>>> will pay them? It seems like a massive leap of faith to commit to this
>>> without knowing who we are making the commitment to.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> "I do not believe it is this WG's responsibility to protect anyone's
>>> commercial services if those things are basically in response to
>>> deficiencies in the existing Whois protocol. "
>>>
>>> From my understanding of past ICANN working groups, registrars have
>>> fought against issues that would have increased their costs. And the
>>> destruction of useful WHOIS results(or becoming beholden to some new
>>> monopoly) stand to incur far more costs for far larger industries.  So
>>> this shouldn't surprise you. If those economic concerns are not valid then
>>> I question why the economic concerns of registrars are valid.
>>>
>>> If entire industries are built around a feature you would consider a
>>> "deficiency", then your opinion may solely be your own. And I hope more
>>> stakeholders in this multi-stakeholder process will come forward with their
>>> own perspectives, as they will differ from mine.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> "Not trying to hamstring the WG.  Just asking if this is not something
>>> that has already been solved.."
>>> Hi Paul,
>>>
>>> It's an interesting thought. This document was recommended to me as one
>>> that was approved in the past by the working group that outlined what the
>>> resulting system might look like. I'm still learning and reading about
>>> these working groups and what they do, and this document is massive.
>>>
>>> https://www.icann.org/en/system/files/files/final-report-06jun14-en.pdf
>>>
>>> In the document, it says: *"Central to the remit of the EWG is the
>>> question of how to design a system that increases **the accuracy of the
>>> data collected while also offering protections for those
>>> Registrants seeking to guard and maintain their privacy."*
>>>
>>> One of the things I notice is that any talk about actually increasing
>>> accuracy of whois info- via enforcement- is vigorously opposed in this
>>> group, and it's merely assumed that people will supply better quality data
>>> under the new system.
>>>
>>> Throughout the document it talks about use-cases and features (whois
>>> history, reverse query, etc), which are indeed identical to the features of
>>> the whois aggregators of current day. Such a system would replace them.
>>> Will the service quality be as good?
>>>
>>> On page 63 it gets into thoughts on who would be "accredited" to access
>>> the gated whois data. Every proposed scenario seems to recognize the
>>> resulting system will need to handle a large query volume from a large
>>> number of people, and one proposes accrediting bodies which may accredit
>>> organizations which may accredit individuals. It even proposes an abuse
>>> handling system which is also reminiscent in structure to how abuse is
>>> handled currently in our domain name system. Many of these proposed schemes
>>> appear to mimic the ways that the hosting industry and registrar industry
>>> operate, so we can expect that the patterns of abuse will be equally
>>> frequent, especially if higher quality data is supplied.
>>>
>>> The proposed scenarios all paint a picture of "gated" access with very
>>> wide gates, while simultaneously representing to domain purchasers that
>>> their data is safe and privacy protected. And this is supposed to *reduce*
>>> the total number of privacy violations? This doesn't even appeal to me as a
>>> consumer of this data.
>>>
>>> Whoever sets up this system also stands to inherit a lot of money from
>>> the soon-to-be-defunct whois aggregation industry. They would certainly win
>>> our contract, because we would have no choice. All domain reputation
>>> services, anti-spam, security research, etc, efforts will all need to pay
>>> up.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> After being supplied with the above document, I also saw a copy of a
>>> rebuttal written by a company that monitors abusive domains. I strongly
>>> agree with the sentiments in this document and I do not see evidence that
>>> those concerns have received fair consideration. While I do not see this
>>> new gatekeeper as an existential threat, I do see it as a likely
>>> degradation in the utility i do see from whois. To be clear, we do not do
>>> any business with this company.
>>>
>>> http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/input-to-ewg/attachments/20130
>>> 823/410038bb/LegitScriptCommentsonICANNEWGWhoisReplacementSt
>>> ructure-0001.pdf
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> I also found John Bambenek's point in a later thread to be interesting-
>>> concentrating WHOIS knowledge solely to one organization allows the country
>>> it resides in to use it to support its intelligence apparatus, for example
>>> monitoring when its espionage domains are queried for, and targeting
>>> researchers that query them (since anonymous querying will be revoked).
>>> Nation states already use domains in operations so this monopoly is a
>>> perfect strategic data reserve. The fact that this system is pushed by
>>> privacy advocates is indeed ironic.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> None of those concerns appear to have been addressed by this group in
>>> any serious capacity. Before the addition of new members, I don't think
>>> many people had the backgrounds or skillsets to even understand why they
>>> are a concern. But I think this is a discussion worth having at this point
>>> in time for this group.
>>>
>>> On Mon, Apr 24, 2017 at 1:50 PM, Andrew Sullivan <ajs at anvilwalrusden.com
>>> > wrote:
>>>
>>>> Hi,
>>>>
>>>> On Mon, Apr 24, 2017 at 07:25:47PM +0200, Paul Keating wrote:
>>>> > Andrew,
>>>> >
>>>> > Thank you.  That was helpful.
>>>> >
>>>> > ""Given this registrant, what other
>>>> > domains are registered?" is a solved problem, and has been since the
>>>> > early 2000s.²
>>>> >
>>>> > This is also traceable via alternative means such as consistencies in
>>>> > various WHOIS fields such as email, address, name, etc.
>>>>
>>>> Well, sort of.  The email, address, and name fields are _user_
>>>> supplied.  So they come from the other party to the transaction.  The
>>>> ROID is assigned by the registry itself.  So once you have a match,
>>>> you know that you are looking at the same object, only the same
>>>> object, and all the same object(s).
>>>>
>>>> Email addresses in particular are guaranteed unique in the world at
>>>> any given time (though not guaranteed as unique identifiers over
>>>> time), so they may be useful for these purposes.  Take it from someone
>>>> named "Andrew Sullivan", however, that names are pretty useless as
>>>> context-free identifiers :)
>>>>
>>>> > In reality finding out answers to questions such as
>>>> > yours (above) requires investigation using a plethora of data.
>>>>
>>>> To be clear, finding out the answer to what I (meant to) pose(d)
>>>> requires no plethora of data: it requires a single query and access to
>>>> the right repository (the registry).  In some theoretical system, the
>>>> correct underlying database query would be something like this:
>>>>
>>>>     SELECT domain_roid, domain_name FROM domains WHERE registrant_roid
>>>> = ?;
>>>>
>>>> and you put the correct ROID in where the question mark is, and off
>>>> you go.  That will give you the list of all the domain names, and
>>>> their relevant ROIDs, registered by a given registrant contact.  At
>>>> least one registry with which I am familiar once had a WHOIS feature
>>>> that allowed something close to the above, only it would stop after
>>>> some number of domains so as not to return too much data.  I think the
>>>> default was therefore LIMIT 50, but I also think the feature was
>>>> eventually eliminated about the time that the ICANN community rejected
>>>> IRIS as an answer to "the whois problem".
>>>>
>>>> What the above will of course not do is help you in the event Bob The
>>>> Scammer has created dozens of different contacts for himself by (say)
>>>> registering names through many different registrars.  I do not believe
>>>> that any registry is going to support such a use at least without
>>>> access controls, because it can be expensive to answer such things.
>>>> So, what you understood me to be asking, I think, is the question I
>>>> did _not_ ask: given this human being or organization, what other
>>>> domains are registered?"  That does require a lot of different data,
>>>> and it requires cross-organizational searches, and it requires sussing
>>>> out when someone has lied also.  Such research is, I agree, completely
>>>> outside the scope of what any technical system will ever be able to
>>>> offer reliably.
>>>>
>>>> > An entire
>>>> > industry exists for this purpose and I don¹t think we should be
>>>> > considering replacing what has already been existing in the cyber
>>>> security
>>>> > marketplace.
>>>>
>>>> I do not believe it is this WG's responsibility to protect anyone's
>>>> commercial services if those things are basically in response to
>>>> deficiencies in the existing Whois protocol.  In this case, however,
>>>> that's not the problem.  Linking data in multiple databases to a given
>>>> real-world human being is hard even in systems without competition and
>>>> multiple points of access.  It's always going to require researchers
>>>> for the domain name system.
>>>>
>>>> Best regards.
>>>>
>>>> A
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> Andrew Sullivan
>>>> ajs at anvilwalrusden.com
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> gnso-rds-pdp-wg mailing list
>>>> gnso-rds-pdp-wg at icann.org
>>>> https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/gnso-rds-pdp-wg
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> _________________________________
>>> Note to self: Pillage BEFORE burning.
>>>
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>>>
>>
>>
>
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> --
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> Mit freundlichen Grüßen,
>
> Volker A. Greimann
> - Rechtsabteilung -
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