<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN">
<HTML><HEAD>
<META http-equiv=Content-Type content="text/html; charset=US-ASCII">
<META content="MSHTML 6.00.2800.1522" name=GENERATOR></HEAD>
<BODY id=role_body style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; COLOR: #000000; FONT-FAMILY: Arial"
bottomMargin=7 leftMargin=7 topMargin=7 rightMargin=7><FONT id=role_document
face=Arial color=#000000 size=2>
<DIV>Friends:</DIV>
<DIV>Over the last few weeks, you have heard about our upcoming privacy
conference called "Building Bridges on ICANN's Whois Questions." I am
writing to tell you it was a great success. </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>It took place on Tuesday, 11/29. At 2:30 PM as the conference opened,
the room was overflowing. Over 100 people showed up from across the ICANN
spectrum -- Registrars, Registries, Country Code Registries, Intellectual
Property, ALAC, ICANN staff... and a few ICANN Board members even peeked in
between meetings on their crowded schedule. </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>We opened with Stephanie Perrin, Director of Research and Policy for the
Office of Canada's Privacy Commissioner, giving the keynote by phone. She laid
out the principles of data protection laws in Canada, highlighted that they
apply to ICANN's Whois service, and made very clear that ICANN's rules for
Whois, as they currently exist, violate these data protection principles and
laws.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>She was followed by wonderful presentations from CIRA (.CA), Nominet (.UK)
and Japan Registry Services (.JP), with each speaker showing how his/her ccTLD
Whois service has changed to protect personal data in compliance with their own
national data protection laws. Their slides made clear that the personal
data about domain name registrants, while private and protected from abuse, is
still available to law enforcement and others pursuant to due process.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Two experts then discussed how privacy operates in other areas of Internet
and telecommunications. Drew McArthur of Canada's #2 telecommunications
company TELUS gave us a privacy quiz and showed that telephone numbers and ISP
data (including subscribers name/address, email identity, etc) are all protected
by privacy laws and subject to disclosure only under "lawful access," as he
called it. Chris Savage confirmed that even in the US, with no national
data protection legislation, we have unlisted phone numbers and significant
protection of privacy for those who use ISP, telephone and even cable
service.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>The final panel was us -- ICANN constituency views. David Maher of
the Registry Constituency said he wished the personal data was not even
there and supports restricted access to personal data. Marcus Heyder
of the US Federal Trade Commission espoused the Intellectual Property
Constituency view that all the personal data should remain in the Whois service
and be completely accessible. Speaking for NCUC, I argued that we don't
even need to collect a lot of this personal data for Whois. Since
ICANN's mission and scope are narrow and technical -- and we should only
collect and display the technical data relevant to this mission (and thus the
existing technical data such as servers + a technical contact).</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Ross Rader closed the third panel with a very strong statement from
Registrars that ICANN's scope is very narrow and that the purpose of the Whois
service should be narrowly technical -- and specifically involve a very clear
"technical purpose" for the Whois service (a view that strongly supports the
protection of personal data). Overall, we got great reviews:
many people told me how much they liked the Conference and many stayed all the
way through. </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>In closing, I would like to thank Milton, Carlos, the Executive Committee
and our Council representatives for their support of this Conference.
Thank you! Also thanks to all the Conference sponsors: NCUC, Public
Interest Registry (.ORG), Registry Constituency and Cole, Raywid & Braverman
(a Washington DC law firm). Also thanks to Milton and the Internet
Governance Project for sponsoring a wonderful Chinese dinner that brought
together speakers and sponsors (and helped further build bridges among the
different sides).</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Regards, Kathy (Kleiman)</DIV>
<DIV>p.s. press stories and slides to follow.</DIV></FONT></BODY></HTML>