[gnso-rds-pdp-wg] Principle on Proportionality for "Thin Data"access

Dotzero dotzero at gmail.com
Thu Jun 1 14:33:14 UTC 2017 

Stephanie,

I agree that civility should be maintained but I take exception to your
assertion that your privacy perspective is "the privacy perspective".

It is reasonable to say that you speak on behalf of the privacy perspective
of your employer. If a participant in the group is an official
representative of a government, it is reasonable for them to assert that
they speak on behalf of that government. It is absolutely unreasonable to
represent that there is a single privacy perspective. I would be just as
remiss if I were to claim I represent THE security and anti-abuse
perspective. As with privacy, there are a range of perspectives within the
security and anti-abuse communities.

I have chosen to participate in this group on my own behalf (statement of
interest) rather than on behalf of my employer because I am bringing my
perspective of roughly 40 years of being on the internet, participating in
standards efforts as well as dealing with privacy and abuse issues.

Michael Hammer

On Thu, Jun 1, 2017 at 10:23 AM, Stephanie Perrin <
stephanie.perrin at mail.utoronto.ca> wrote:

> This is not a personal "demand", it is a request that we maintain more
> civility in this discourse. The allegation that those of us who are trying
> to explain the privacy perspective on this matter do not understand your
> work is simply untrue.  Some of us have worked on the issues for years.
> Please, all I am asking for is that we tone the rhetoric down and treat
> each other with respect, as is required by ICANN standards of behaviour on
> working groups.
>
> With respect to your other comments, I have been clarifying in all the
> calls that I attend, that when I raise an objection it is often on
> principle because we need caveats or derogations on some of the agreements
> we reach.  I have clarified several times my position on the technical
> definition of personal information, and the fact that this in no way means
> that because information is personal, it cannot be disclosed (eg thin
> data).  I believe my response to Andrew's latest excellent summary
> yesterday pretty well encapsulates that so I am not going to respond point
> by point to what you have said below.
>
> Thanks.
>
> Stephanie Perrin
>
> On 2017-05-31 19:04, allison nixon wrote:
>
> Your e-mail stated:
> >>Data that is gleaned from a file related to an individual, ie in this
> case their registration data, even if it is nameservers and the like, is
> their personal data.
>
> And it was stated in support of restricting public access to this
> information.
>
> Eliminating the other data elements may make troubleshooting harder, but
> eliminating nameservers on the basis of privacy means the registrars won't
> be able to disseminate it at all, and it will literally break the Internet.
> Were you thinking of the absurd possibilities when you wrote it?
>
> Your references don't change the fact of how DNS resolution works. If
> you're going to object to that characterization, then I formally object to
> this one, which is similar to the sentiment that has underpinned this group
> since the beginning:
>
> >>At a time when increasing imbalance in ‘informational power’, when
> governments and business organizations alike amass hitherto unprecedented
> amounts of data about individuals, and are increasingly in the position to
> compile detailed profiles that will predict their behavior (reinforcing
> informational imbalance and reducing their autonomy), it is ever more
> important to ensure that the interests of the individuals to preserve their
> privacy and autonomy be protected.
>
> In the context of WHOIS, it's ridiculous borderline conspiracy theory. A
> tiny percent of the population owns any domains, and an even smaller
> percent disclose anything in the WHOIS. This isn't intrusive like ad
> tracking or companies selling health data. This is information that people
> enter when they stake a claim in a public space. Blinding defenders from
> being able to judge if we want to interact with inbound traffic reduces our
> autonomy and only empowers the massive problem of abuse. Mischaracterizing
> public WHOIS info, which has been public for decades, as some sort of
> scandalous leak of data is ridiculous. It also falsely shades the
> motivations of the people who are asking for it to remain open. The truth
> is that this data is useless for what is insinuated, and we aren't asking
> to keep the data open so we can snoop on some dissident by knowing what
> their junk email and domain creation date is.
>
> And just because someone in the world is(and they certainly are), it
> doesn't mean we must shut down the whole system.
>
> On top of that, no one is forced to disclose damaging info. If you want to
> use an ICANN domain, fill out the form. If you don't want to, get an
> .onion, get a dynamic domain, go somewhere else. Or use WHOIS privacy. Or
> use junk info.
>
> You can demand respect, but many arguments in this group do not inspire
> respect.
>
>    - When people claim to be concerned about spam as a motivation for
>    eliminating WHOIS, and then don't listen when actual anti-spam people tell
>    them it will destroy a major tool in the fight against spam, that does not
>    inspire respect.
>    - When people propose to put basic functionality on the chopping
>    block, that does not inspire respect.
>    - When theoretical edge cases are dreamed up as rebuttals to real and
>    frequent issues, that does not inspire respect.
>    - When anti-abuse is judged as anathema to privacy and are
>    disrespected, that does not inspire respect.
>
> I along with many other security professionals here are not opposed to
> following the law. Collectively much of our work involves ensuring
> compliance with the law, including privacy laws, HIPAA, data breach laws,
> et cetera. Despite frequently being mischaracterized as wannabe cops by
> list members, we are not cops. We actually implement the protection of
> privacy, including the need to prevent data breaches- which can incur
> massive fines thanks to some privacy laws. Yet here we are, butting heads
> with "privacy experts", who by and large don't want to hear about
> operational issues or the wider impact of their narrow agenda.
>
> This observation isn't solely about you personally, and your work history
> is irrelevant here. It is an observation about the group as a whole since I
> became active. This isn't privacy versus security. This is quite literally,
> privacy versus privacy. And one side of the argument has operational
> experience. Security in the Internet sense involves- confidentiality,
> integrity, and availability. And most efforts are focused on the first
> item. We are not the NSA hunting terrorists or tapping phones or whatever
> youall imagine we are. We are trying to prevent data breaches and identity
> theft and phishing and quite literally everything that privacy laws are
> written to address. That's why these arguments are so ridiculous.
>
>
> On Wed, May 31, 2017 at 3:42 PM, Stephanie Perrin <stephanie.perrin at mail.
> utoronto.ca> wrote:
>
>> I would like to formally object to this kind of characterization of the
>> people who are working in good faith on this working group:
>> "self-proclaimed privacy advocates".  I can only speak for myself, so I
>> will do only that.....I am not a self-proclaimed privacy advocate.  I have
>> been working as a privacy professional since 1984, when I became one of the
>> first privacy coordinators for the Department of Communications of Canada.
>> I was the first president in 1986 of CAPA, the privacy professionals
>> association which we formed and which collaborated for many years with
>> ASAP, the US equivalent.  I could go on and on and if you require
>> references as to whether or not our views should be accepted as having
>> merit, regardless of whether you agree with them or not, I am happy to
>> provide them.  But please, let us treat one another with a bit more respect.
>>
>> Stephanie Perrin
>>
>> On 2017-05-31 13:39, allison nixon wrote:
>>
>> Good faith does not excuse ignorance. Such a mistake reveals the extreme
>> tunnel vision by many self proclaimed privacy advocates here. It shows why
>> they butt heads with people who work every day in the trenches to actually
>> protect privacy of real- not theoretical- victims.
>>
>> On Wed, May 31, 2017 at 1:30 PM, Jeremy Malcolm <jmalcolm at eff.org> wrote:
>>
>>> Again, I really think we need to dial down the level of sarcasm here.
>>> The proportionality proposal was made in good faith.
>>>
>>> However, I'm from a privacy advocacy organization and even I have agreed
>>> that there are operational problems with any proposal to limit
>>> unauthenticated access to thin WHOIS data.  I agree that while privacy is
>>> an absolutely key principle to be upheld, so is the generativity of the
>>> Internet, and that unauthenticated access to thin WHOIS data, much of which
>>> just replicates the information that end users make available through their
>>> own nameservers, is part of the permissionless innovation that underpins
>>> many real world Internet applications.
>>>
>>>
>>> On 31/5/17 10:14 am, allison nixon wrote:
>>>
>>> Which includes nameservers, which are collected and propagated by the
>>> registrars. If this is deemed sensitive information, then the registrars
>>> should be careful sharing that data via other outlets without tight
>>> restrictions!
>>>
>>> On Wed, May 31, 2017 at 1:09 PM, Michael Peddemors <
>>> michael at linuxmagic.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> On 17-05-31 10:07 AM, allison nixon wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> the rest of it can't be. You can't put a DNS query behind a EULA. We
>>>>> can't pretend there are restrictions on this data.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>> We aren't discussing DNS or any other places that data is available as
>>>> part of this working group. Only the informed consent of data held in whois
>>>> thin data.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> "Catch the Magic of Linux..."
>>>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>>>> ------------
>>>> Michael Peddemors, President/CEO LinuxMagic Inc.
>>>> Visit us at http://www.linuxmagic.com @linuxmagic
>>>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>>>> ------------
>>>> A Wizard IT Company - For More Info http://www.wizard.ca
>>>> "LinuxMagic" a Registered TradeMark of Wizard Tower TechnoServices Ltd.
>>>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>>>> ------------
>>>> 604-682-0300 Beautiful British Columbia, Canada
>>>>
>>>> This email and any electronic data contained are confidential and
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>>>> Please note that any views or opinions presented in this email are
>>>> solely
>>>> those of the author and are not intended to represent those of the
>>>> company.
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> _________________________________
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>>>
>>>
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>>>
>>> --
>>> Jeremy Malcolm
>>> Senior Global Policy Analyst
>>> Electronic Frontier Foundationhttps://eff.orgjmalcolm@eff.org
>>>
>>> Tel: 415.436.9333 ext 161 <%28415%29%20436-9333>
>>>
>>> :: Defending Your Rights in the Digital World ::
>>>
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>>
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