[db-wg] The DBTF needs your feedback!

HI Ronald

As Shane pointed out, the task force will make recommendations.
Nothing will change without discussion and consensus or through legal
necessity. One of the concerns with the RIPE Database is that it
contains far too much 'personal' data. 'Personal' means 'who' the data
relates to, not the type of data. All email addresses and phone
numbers contained within the RIPE Database can and should be business
related data. They should not be personal related data. There are no
concerns with business data in the database, only unnecessary personal
data. No one is suggesting that either email addresses or phone
numbers (not even fax numbers) are to be deprecated.

cheers
denis
co-chair DB-WG

On Thu, 4 Feb 2021 at 04:43, Ronald F. Guilmette <rfg at tristatelogic.com> wrote:
>
> In message <CAKvLzuHcgqrbZC_1r6_ziJz0NKrSWAVYk4VQJWZ+ut+6Cey8iQ at mail.gmail.com>,
> denis walker <ripedenis at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >Although I have nothing to do with the questionnaire, I am curious
> >what information you believe 'someone' wants to hide, or maybe you
> >think has already been hidden, that has never before been hidden in
> >this traditionally open whois?
>
> It is quite clear and apparent that some people in the RIPE community,
> and perhaps even some people in this WG, want to bend over backwards to
> accomodate -alleged- concerns that -ostensibly- spring from GDPR.
>
> I'm sorry to have to say this, but you Europeans have grossly over-reacted
> to the avarice and greed of what are admittedly mostly American social
> media companies, including but not limited to Facebook, and their
> rapacious and never ending quest for yet more personal data and yet
> more ways to monetize that. Their actions are and were totally egregious,
> but the pendulum has now swung in the entire opposite directly, and by
> so doing is daily hampering legitimate investigations of law enforcement
> and others.
>
> In short the over-compensation for the illness called Facebook had given
> us GDPR, and with the same predictability as night following day, we are
> now in a situation where WHOIS records for -domain names- are by and
> large useless for -any- purpose, because greedy and self-seving domain
> name registrars around the world have used GDPR as a convenient excuse
> to do what they all have wanted to do for a long long time and for their
> own selfish business reasons, i.e. redacting literally EVERYTHING from
> domain name WHOIS records, with total disregard for the dividing line
> between personal information and non-personal information.
>
> Now I see this same sickness and over-compensation starting to influence
> and affect the WHOIS records for IP blocks and ASNs.  I was hoping that
> it would not come to this, but the privacy-at-all-costs maniacs have
> now teamed up with the cyber-criminal interests to try to erase ALL of
> the historical vestiges of WHOIS, even for IP space.
>
> I can and will provide concrete evidence and examples of the erosion of
> the validity of IP block WHOIS records.  I know of plenty such in the
> RIPE region, in the ARIN region, and in the AFRINIC region.  But I'll
> save those examples for subsequent messages.   In the meantime, to
> answer your question more directly, you asked what is it that I fear may
> be hidden that was previously open.  I call your attention to what I had
> already noted about the unambiguously biased way in which the survey
> questions were formulated so as to produce the (apparently desired)
> result of creating a seeming consdensus to discard, delete, and redact
> various parts of what we have historically known to be "WHOIS".  Here
> again is Exhibit A in support of my point:
>
>
> >>     *)  QUESTION:  What would you prefer?
> >>
> >>           1)  To be beaten and strangled to death?
> >>           2)  To die of a horrible communicable infectious disease?
> >>           3)  To be mercifully euthanized in your sleep?
> >>
> >> How about (4) NONE OF THE ABOVE?...
> >>...
> >> Here is a concrete example from the questionaire:
> >>
> >>    * 16. Rank this contact information from most (1) to least (3) important
> >>      to facilitate Internet operations in the RIPE Database:
> >>
> >>       Email address
> >>       Phone number
> >>       Fax number
> >>
> >> Well, hardly anyone ever sends FAXes anymore, so that one is a no-brainer.
> >> But the way the question has been formulated, it is obvious that *someone*
> >> wants to get rid of either phone numbers or email addresses in the contact
> >> data for various assigned resources, and that answers to this carefully
> >> crafted (and methodologically bogus) questionare are going to be used as
> >> a lame excuse to do that.
>
> Clearly if there had been a desire to *maintain* *both* email addresses
> *and* phone numbers (often useful for out-of-band communications) then
> this survey question should *not* have asked the participant to rate
> one over the other.  THEY ARE BOTH ESSENTIAL AND BOTH MUST BE PRESERVED.
>
> The very fact that so many of the survey questions were formulated in this
> same fashion... where the question itself seems to imply some foregone
> conclusion about stuff that will in future be *deleted* from WHOIS...
> makes the motives and intentions of this entire survey enterprise and
> the people who formulated it suspect.
>
> Yes, if forced to make a choice, I would prefer to be mercifully euthanized
> in my sleep, rather that being strangled to death or dying of some
> horrible disease.  But my first choice... just continuing to live and
> be well... doesn't even seem to be offered on the menu of choices in this
> survey!  Nor does the option of just leaving well enough alone when it
> comes to the data that is currently present, and that has historically been
> present, within the RIPE WHOIS data base.
>
>
> Regards,
> rfg
>
>
>
> P.S.  The old saying is "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."  What problem,
> specifically were the people who designed this survey trying to solve?