A Great Privacy Conference

[KathrynKL at AOL.COM]

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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