[Gnso-ppsai-pdp-wg] Electing a WG chair (or co-chairs)

[ebw at abenaki.wabanaki.net]

Colleagues,

Back in 2001 I took a position at Engage with the responsibility of
contributing to the W3C's Privacy Preferences Platform (P3P) work
on privacy policy. We, the members of the P3P Specification Working
Group, crafted a means for data collectors to announce to the data
sources -- browser users -- their operational practices, consistent
with the Data Protection Directive(s) of the European Union, the
hybrid model of the OEDC member states (e.g., Japan, Canada), and
the private contract model of the United States and several other
common law cultures. It was not child's play to create a viable
synthesis of these three legal regimes, all related to privacy and
proxy.

As you all know very well, California State and/or Federal District
Court for Southern California is not the only controlling jurisdiction
we need to be informed by, nor is a private contract with a California
domiciled 501(c)(3) the complete statement of rights at issue -- as
registrants, registrars and registries, and more recent third parties
involved in rights determination, are domiciled in other jurisdictions.

I prefer that the leadership of this working group include individuals
who's first legal language is not the common law, and who have held
positions of responsibility for data collection under the Directive(s)
of the European Union.

While there are volunteers from Germany, which has an outstanding data
protection regime, and from elsewhere, until none are able to offer
the time necessary to function as a (co-)chair, I prefer that the
role and responsibility go to one (or more) competent individuals
not employed by in Reston. We can be sure that the interests of the
data collecting businesses situated in whole or in part in Reston will
be well represented, along with the interests of intellectual property
managers situated in the nearby District of Columbia. We can avoid, if
we choose, making these interests central and other interests peripheral.

In the course of its existence ICANN has harmed itself several times.

It privileged English (ASCII) over other Latin Script languages which
use diacriticals (e.g., French, German, ..), and over languages that use
other scripts (e.g., Chinese in Han Script), and allowed a vendor to
determin its IDN technology and policy.  This was the direct cause
of CNNIC starting a name server constellation in 2001 (I know, I was
personally involved). This situation was not materially improved until
the Bruxelles meeting, in the MOA space (ccTLDs), and this year, in the
Contract space (gTLDs).

It privileged common law contractual obligations over national law
obligations (as most registrars located outside of the US are well
aware), creating a conflict of rule (ICANN) and law (states) for which
very little benefit can be rationally claimed. It is only recently that
ICANN has made some of its contracts jurisdictionally aware, affecting
some registrant data access rights and responsibilities.

We are not, as a community, or as a collection of self-interested actors,
where we were in 2012. We, and far more than we few ICANN insiders, are
now Snowden-Informed, and any work in the area of privacy and proxies
done today, if it is to last longer than today, must be different from
what was "commercially acceptable" or "best current practice" before we
all became Snowden-Informed.

I don't support Steve's proposal. Don may be a good choice, but I don't
support Steve's selection of a chair, excluding all others, who may be
as good choices.

Eric