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

[Andrew Sullivan]

On Mon, Mar 06, 2017 at 04:33:02PM +0100, Volker Greimann wrote:
> the source. If we were to receive a statement from cybercriminals and
> torrent site operators, our reception of the arguments and content of the
> message would be colored by the source as well, wouldn't it?
> 
> I am not asing to discount the message, I am just saying do not seperate the
> message from the sender.

I'm extremely uncomfortable with the above premise, and I think it's
important to make clear why.

One model of ICANN policy making is that it simply balances among
interests.  The interests are (1) those that show up and (2) those
that we somehow decide are "legitimate".  The problem with this model
is that it is deeply political.  The interests who "show up" are the
ones who can get funding, and there is incentive to try to
delegitimize some other interest.  There is a basis for interpreting
ICANN's approach this way, because of the constituency model and the
way that people identify as part of this or that group.  In this
model, there is no reason for a given stakeholder or stakeholder group
should in any way acknowledge or argue for positions outside their
parochial concern, because if someone else wants that issue to be
considered he or she should similarly attempt to participate.  One
advantage of this model is that it is familiar from other kinds of
political environments: it emphasises the "stakeholder" part of
multi-stakeholder.

A second model of ICANN policy making is that it attempts to bring in
as many different kinds of stakeholders as possible, not because these
are somehow representative of a position (the legitimacy of which is
to be determined), but because "more eyeballs make all bugs shallow".
That is, a diversity of views allows maximal exposure of the issues
with respect to a give policy problem, and so it is better to have
multiple kinds of viewpoints.  Under this view, everyone should strive
to ensure that different viewpoints are taken into account, even if it
is only so as to say that a given view was taken into account but the
arguments for it were on balance not as strong as alternatives.
Constituencies under this view are a useful and convenient way to do
some early filtering, so that people with common sets of interests can
explore those common interests in depth without everyone in the world
needing to participate in every discussion.  It is by definition not
possible to delegitimize a particular interest, though it is possible
to show that the arguments for that interest are on balance to be
rejected.  An advantage of this model is that it discourages political
maneuvers in favour of greater discursive policy discussion: it
emphasises the "multi" part of multi-stakeholder.

Now, I don't really think that these are either mutually exclusive
options; neither do I think that we ever get out of either stance
completely.  But the suggestion that we have to take the source into
consideration with the argument bothers me greatly.  If the New
National-Socialist Stalinist Maoist Khmer Rouge and Social Credit
Party of Canada[1] came along and made an argument that certain kinds of
personally-identifying information in the RDS had negative effects, I
would expect us to take that argument seriously regardless of the
odiousness of the political stripe we found in their ideology.

The position of the Chiefs of Police interest group was that the
current prevailing policy regime should remain in place, because it is
convenient for them.  Some of the convenience struck me as possibly
compelling and some of it less so.  There was literally no new
information in their statement, however: every single one of those
arguments is already exposed in the materials we have amassed.  And
no, I do not think that we should take the position more or less
seriously because it comes from a law enforcement lobby group -- any
more than I'd think that if it came from the FBI, the EFF, the
Regiment of Trademark Fencibles, or the Anti-Sony Collective of Evil
Genius File Sharers[2].  I'd prefer instead that we look at the
arguments, not their sources.

Best regards,

A

[1] Not an actual political party in Canada.
[2] Not all of these lobbies are real.
-- 
Andrew Sullivan
ajs at anvilwalrusden.com