RIPE NCC Report: Law Enforcement Agency Requests 2022

The RIPE NCC receives information requests from Law Enforcement Agencies (LEAs) and tries to facilitate the provision of any required publicly available information. The RIPE NCC does not provide any confidential or private information to LEAs without a court order or other legally enforceable order or request under Dutch law.

In 2022, the RIPE NCC received 186 information requests from LEAs, 2 of which were binding requests from Dutch law enforcement authorities. Overall, the RIPE NCC received a significantly higher number of LEA requests compared to previous years – during the period 2016-2021, the highest number of LEA requests received in a year was 60.

A particularly high number of requests this year came from a party in France, which repeatedly asked for information not available to the RIPE NCC. Despite the fact that the role of the RIPE NCC and the procedure it applies on receiving LEA requests was explained, the RIPE NCC still received further requests for the same type of information from this party.

In general, despite the number of LEA requests from several different jurisdictions, LEAs seem to acknowledge the RIPE NCC’s procedures when the RIPE NCC advised that it either did not have the information or required a Dutch court order for non-public information.

The RIPE NCC received the following requests in 2022:

For non-public information:

• 2 legally binding requests from Dutch law-enforcement authorities for non-public information. More specifically, one request concerned historical information related to a former Member of the RIPE NCC, whereas the other request concerned historical information related to a current Member of the RIPE NCC. The RIPE NCC complied with these requests as they were legally binding.

For public information:

• 2 requests from non-Dutch law-enforcement authorities on whether we would comply with foreign (non-Dutch) courts’ order/search warrant to provide information about the holders of specific IP addresses. The RIPE NCC provided information on how to access its publicly available data and referred to the RIPE NCC procedure ‘Handing Requests for Information, Orders and Investigations from Law Enforcement Agencies’ where we note how an LEA may contact us.
• 3 requests on how to send an official request to RIPE NCC to inquire for information about an IP address. The RIPE NCC provided information on how to access its publicly available data and referred to the RIPE NCC procedure ‘Handing Requests for Information, Orders and Investigations from Law Enforcement Agencies’ where we note how an LEA may contact us.

For information the RIPE NCC does not have:

• 177 requests for the identification of Internet users of particular IP address(es). The RIPE NCC provided information on its role as a Regional Internet Registry (RIR) and explained how to use publicly available information in the RIPE Database to find the party responsible for a particular resource.

For information not related to the RIPE NCC:

• 2 requests for information not related to the RIPE NCC. The RIPE NCC explained its role as a Regional Internet Registry (RIR) and confirmed it is not responsible for the matters under question in the relevant requests.

LEA Requests Received by Type of Request per Year

LEA Requests Received by Country per Year