Re: An open letter to PFIR on DNS WHOIS
I haven't thought through this topic as much as I would like. But my first inclination is to agree with you about Whois. Following is an excerpt from a column I wrote in February. -Declan http://news.com.com/Privacy+reduction's+next+act/2010-1028_3-5155054.html The origins of today's domain name system can be found in standards RFC 1034 and RFC 1035, published in November 1987, when the Internet was still young and commercial traffic would not officially be encouraged for another five years. Back then, before individuals started to buy their own domain names, a public Whois database was necessary to permit network administrators to fix problems and maintain the stability of the Internet. Today, however, the open nature of the Whois database is no longer a boon to people who own domain names. If you buy a domain name, current regulations created by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) say you must make public "accurate and reliable contact details and promptly correct and update them during the term of the...registration, including: the full name, postal address, e-mail address, voice telephone number, and fax number." Who wants to make that kind of personal information public for the benefit of spammers, direct marketers and snoops? You shouldn't have to publish your home address--and other personal details--to everyone in the world just to own a domain name. And if you decide to lie by typing in "1 Nowhere Road," I don't see why you should be punished for attempting to protect your and your family's privacy. There are plenty of legitimate reasons why domain name holders might leave their address blank. As an international coalition of civil liberties groups said in letter to ICANN in October: "Anyone with Internet access can now have access to Whois data, and that includes stalkers, governments that restrict dissidents' activities, law enforcement agents without legal authority, and spammers...Many domain name registrants--and particularly noncommercial users--do not wish to make public the information that they furnished to registrars. Some of them may have legitimate reasons to conceal their actual identities or to register domain names anonymously." (The coalition also suggested ways for ICANN to fix Whois.) These rights to anonymity are enshrined in the Bill of Rights, both in the First Amendment, which guarantees freedom of speech, and in the Ninth Amendment, which was intended to curb government's power. The U.S. Supreme Court upheld Americans' right to be anonymous in a landmark 1995 decision, McIntyre v. Ohio Elections Commission, in which the majority said anonymity "is not a pernicious, fraudulent practice, but an honorable tradition of advocacy and of dissent. Anonymity is a shield from the tyranny of the majority." If you think about it, that makes sense. Not only were the Federalist Papers published anonymously under the pseudonym of "Publius," but anonymous pamphleteering was commonplace at the time, from the famous 1735 John Peter Zenger trial to the attempts of the Continental Congress in 1779 to learn the identity of a critical article in the Pennsylvania Packet that was cryptically signed "Leonidas."
|