RIPE NCC Report: Law Enforcement Agency Requests 2023

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

In 2023, the RIPE NCC received 200 information requests from LEAs. None of them were binding requests for confidential or non-publicly available information from Dutch law enforcement authorities.

Overall, the RIPE NCC has been receiving 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. This number was 186 in 2022, and this year, the RIPE NCC received the highest number of LEA requests ever.

Similarly to 2022, a particularly high number of requests 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 were 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 seemed 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 2023:

For public information:

• 1 request by Dutch law enforcement authorities on information related to specific IP address blocks. The RIPE NCC explained how to use publicly available information in the RIPE Database to find the member responsible for a particular IP address block.
• 1 request by Dutch law enforcement authorities to identify the previous holder of the IP address block containing an IP address that was under investigation. The RIPE NCC provided information on how to access its publicly available data (specifically the ones showing transfer statistics).
• 1 request by non-Dutch law enforcement authorities on whether we would comply with a foreign (non-Dutch) court-ordered search warrant to provide information about specific IP addresses. The RIPE NCC provided information on how to access its publicly available data and referred to the RIPE NCC procedure 'Handling Requests for Information, Orders and Investigations from Law Enforcement Agencies’.
• 5 requests by non-Dutch law enforcement authorities on how to send an official request to the RIPE NCC to obtain 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 'Handling Requests for Information, Orders and Investigations from Law Enforcement Agencies’.

For information the RIPE NCC does not have:

189 requests for the identification of Internet users of particular IP addresses. 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 member responsible for a particular IP address block.

For information not related to the RIPE NCC:

3 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.