A Great Privacy Conference

[Frannie Wellings]

Kathy, this sounds great! Congratulations and thank you for pulling it
all together.

Best,

Frannie

KathrynKL at AOL.COM wrote:

> Friends:
> 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.
>
> 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.
>
> 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.
>
> 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.
>
> 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.
>
> 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).
>
> 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.
>
> 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).
>
> Regards, Kathy (Kleiman)
> p.s. press stories and slides to follow.

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