[anti-abuse-wg] personal data in the RIPE Database

In message <c7b0643d-54db-6a97-999a-fbb9ce0980b7 at heeg.de>, 
Hans-Martin Mosner <hmm at heeg.de> wrote:

>For resources allocated to legal entities (companies, organizations, etc.)
>an identification of the organization should be mandatory.

Would you agree also that such identification of non-person legal entities
that are the registrants of number resources should be:

    a)  public, and

    b)  accurate and consistant with the bona fides that were submitted to
        RIPE NCC at the time the member was made a member, and at any & all
        times thereafter when the non-person member requested or was granted
        number resources?

If you say yes to both, then I am compelled to point out there there is,
as far as I understand it, *no* requirement, within the RIPE region, at
present for there to be *any* correlation between what appears in any
public RIPE WHOIS record and the actual bona fides of the corresponding
member, the -actual- identity o which remain secret & hidden behind an
opaque wall of stony silence, backed up by RIPE's legal counsel.

In short, everything you see in any and all public RIPE WHOIS records is
subject to the whims of the corresponding member, whose true identity
may be well and truly hidden, and thus, the WHOIS data often is nothing
more than totally made-up bovine excrement.

I hasten to add that this is due not to any single mistake or specific
deliberate policy choice on the part of RIPE or its members or its legal
counsel.  Rather it is due entirely to the fundamental nature of RIPE
which is a -private- member-based corporation, the membership of which
is composed almost entirely of -private- corporate entities whose most
sincere and fervent wish is to be accountable to, answerable to, and
transparent to absolutely no one, and often times not even to their own
shareholders[1] and/or Boards of Directors[2].

In short, I have some time ago given up entirely in the idea that RIPE
could be gradually "refomed" to be more accountable, e.g. to the billion+
ordinary people who now rely on the number resources that it distributes.
Reform isn't possible for an organization that has stealthy secrecy and
deliberate opacity baked in, as a guiding principal, from its very inception.



Regards,
rfg


[1] The mere existance of "activist" investors like Carl Icahn illustrates
the point that corporate entities many times do not even feel any special
obligations to be honest, open, and transparent with their own shareholders,
let alone the "unwashed masses" of the public at large.

[2]  The now well-known story of the rise and fall of the U.S. corporation
known as "Theranos" and its all-too-clever former CEO, Elizabeth Holmes,
vividly demonstrates that management sometimes (often?) has incentives to
keep even a company's own Board of Directors in the dark.  And if management
isn't telling the truth to its own Board, then they quite certainly are not
likely to be truthful, open, honest or transparent with the public at large.