EU Privacy Watchdog To ICANN: Law Enforcement WHOIS Demands "Unlawful"

First time accepted submitter benyacrick writes "WHOIS was invented as an address book for sysadmins. These days, it's more likely to be used by Law Enforcement to identify a perpetrator or victim of an online crime. With ICANN's own study showing that 29% of WHOIS data is junk, it's no surprise that Law Enforcement have been lobbying ICANN hard to improve WHOIS accuracy. The EU's privacy watchdog, the Article 29 Data Protection Working Party, has stepped into the fray with a letter claiming that two of Law Enforcement's twelve asks are "unlawful" (PDF). The problem proposals are data retention — where registrant details will be kept for up to two years after a domain has expired — and re-verification, where a registrant's phone number and e-mail will be checked annually and published in the WHOIS database. The community consultation takes place at ICANN 45 in Toronto on October 15th."

Comments

Re:Who's job is it?

[cavreader]

I just wish the EU would actually start contributing anything that even comes close to being innovative in the IT world instead of using lawsuits and bureaucratic non-sense to generate their revenue stream needed to support the unelected gas bags currently running the EU bureaucracy. They actually make the US Congress look good which is no small feat. I know everyone on this site hates to say anything positive about MS but I really wish MS would tell the EU to fuck off and then close every single office and facility and let the former workers find other jobs while the US stops issuing Visas to people from that regional block without overwhelming proof that they actually have something positive to contribute.