[anti-abuse-wg] GDPR - positive effects on email abuse

In message <9d061c1e-2d17-48b1-fc72-3c08026bbf2c at key-systems.net>, 
Volker Greimann <vgreimann at key-systems.net> wrote:

>Even in those cases, whois is but one tool that helps identify bad 
>actors by means of violating privacy rights of millions.

I am compelled to point out, once again, the fundamentally demented
nature of this new-fangled "entitlement" insanity that has been invented,
literally out of whole cloth, and within just the past few years by
various self-appointed "privacy advocates" in Europe and elsewhere.

When exactly did it become a part of the UN's Universal Declaration of
Human Rights that everyone on planet earth is entitled to -both- utter
annonymity (and thus also utter un-accountability) -and- their own
Internet domain nanmes?  I guess that I wasn't paying attention that
day.  I didn't get the memo.

I say again that the possession and use of an Internet domain name is
-not- (and never has been) a "right" but rather a privilege... one
that has been, traditionally, and for more than 35 years now, afforded
only to those who were willing to contractually, and of their own free
will, exchange a tiny bit of their anonymity for the distinct and clear
privilege of registering a domain name.

Now however, the brilliant bureaucrats of Brussels... who nobody, even 
in the EU voted for, and certainly no one in all of Asia and/or the
entire Western Hemisphere... have unilaterally decided, in their infinite
wisdom, to upend a system of accountability that was working reasonbly
well for over 35 years just so that they could claim that they are
"protecting" a miniscule population of shy transvestites from some
imaginary modern day Stasi.  No proof is or can be offered that this
is either a sensible thing to do, or that it will protect these new,
alleged, and entirely made up "rights" of anyone.

Throwing out bits and pieces of longstanding and reasonable social
contracts, based on nothing at all, leads to clearly ludicrous outcomes.
You Europeans who are not yet beyond being educated may perhaps benefit
from googling for "Michael Rotondo" and then start reading.  This man's
story illustrates, vividly, the final endpoint of the exact same "entitlement"
insanity that has now apparently come to infect the entire global Internet.

It must be stated also that nobody in their right mind would have ever
even entertained the idea of killing off WHOIS, wholesale, except for
the fact that these new GDPR edicts coming out of Brussels played right
into the hands of the greedy oligarchs who these days run the Internet.
The registries, the registrars, and their paid lackeys at ICANN had long
wished to rid themselves of what they view as an unnecessary and unprofitable
business expense, i.e. running the open WHOIS system.  They were thus only
too happy to bend over for Brussels and give up without even putting up a
struggle at all, because they hoped to save themselves the expense of running
WHOIS servers and/or, at the very least, making it more difficult for their
competitors to identify and then poach their respective client bases (as
actually happened, btw, in a notorious case several years ago involving
Register.com).

The arogant idiocy of Brussels, working in tandem with the greed of the
registrars and registries has set back the causes of transparency and
accountability on the Internet not merely by years but literally by decades.
I, for one, sure do hope that there are in fact at least one or two shy
transvestites out there somewhere who are celebrating this outcome,
because for the rest of the planet it is tragedy of epic proportions,
one which shall be recognized by all in the coming years.

>And maybe it is time to ensure law enforcement is better equipped to 
>deal with such issues earlier and faster. Up to now, governments have 
>been afforded the luxury of being able to underfund such efforts as 
>others were doing their jobs for them. Maybe this will lead to better 
>law enforcement and international cooperation.

I cannot help but wonder which pharmaceutical substances, in particular,
are capable of inducing this level of utopian daydreams.  I would very
much like to get ahold of some of that, so that I too could, at least
on the weekends, also inhabit a world where police forces the world over
are so well endowed that cybercrime as we have known it simply ceases to
exist and fades into humankind's collective memory.

It would certainly be enjoyable to be able to take a break from -this-
reality, where police forces the world over, often even by their own
admissions, are increasingly out-matched, out-funded, and out-thought by
the ever increasing plethora of newly invented forms of both online crime
and online political subterfuge.


Regards,
rfg


P.S.  The essential idiocy of applying GDPR to the gobal WHOIS system can
most simply and elegantly be demonstrated by pointing out the non-existance
of answers to the following simple question:

   Other than greedy registrars and registries, cybercriminals, and a select
   handful of Russian state-backed disinformation operatives, who exactly
   either has benefited or will benefit from the application of GDPR to the
   global domain name WHOIS system?

For all of the hoopla and shouting about privacy "rights", none of the
advocates of this insanity have, to date, identified even a single real
beneficiary of this introduction of unaccountability into the global
Internet ecosystem, nor are they able to do so, because there are none...
except of course for the aformentioned greedy registrars, registries,
cybercriminals, and state-sponsored purveyors of disinformation.

The application of GDPR to the global WHOIS is, was, and always has been
a solution in search of a problem, and I challenge any of its supporters
to convincingly demonstrate otherwise.