[At-Large] Privacy and domain abuse vs the IP constituency

John R. Levine johnl at iecc.com
Mon May 9 00:31:49 UTC 2011


>> Now, the fact that LEAs may not be efficient in fighting crime,
>> especially in an international context, is no reason to build a
>> parallel enforcement system run entirely by the private sector with
>> no accountability to the rest of the society.

I get the impression you aren't very familiar with the way that law 
enforcement works.

For Internet stuff, they are constantly working in tandem with non-LE 
people in industry and academia.  I work with them in mailing lists, 
occasionally on the phone, and face to face at conferences.  Now and then 
I testify in court.  For obvious reasons I can't discuss the details, but 
the idea that there is a Chinese wall between LE and non-LE, and that 
non-LE don't use WHOIS info to assist LE is laughable.

I think we all agree that natural people have privacy rights.  But about 
99% of domains are not registered by natural people, which makes it 
obvious that the right way to hande the ones that are registered by 
natural people is as exception cases.

Regards,
John Levine, johnl at iecc.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies",
Please consider the environment before reading this e-mail. http://jl.ly



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