[db-wg] 2022-01 Resource holders identity

> On 31 May 2022, at 15:31, Ángel González Berdasco via db-wg <db-wg at ripe.net> wrote:
> 
> 30-05-2022 a las 13:17 +0200, denis walker writes:
>> If no one is able to present the public interest case for publishing
>> the name and address of natural persons holding resources then the
>> privacy case takes priority. If we cannot justify publishing this
>> personal information based on the purposes, then the GDPR says very
>> clearly that we must not publish it. All personal details of natural
>> persons holding resources will have to be removed from the database
>> or hidden from public view. This will also apply to assignments as
>> well.
>> There are many assignments with name and full address details of
>> natural persons in the "descr:" attributes. We will have to remove
>> the "descr:" attributes where the assignee is a natural person or
>> hide them from public view.
> 
> Please note that GDPR has the concept of processing based on consent.
> It might not be necessary to remove them. And some of those affected,
> may want them to stay published.
> 
> I agree, however, that *not* publishing the home address of those that
> hold a resource as a natural person is probably a good idea.


Consent is the key bit indeed. But people can also chose to not use the RIPE DB.


Personally, I don't mind having my name + email address in there, whois is for my purposes primarily a assignment DB ("is it an eyeball, is it a VPS network, it is a bunch of evil VPNs") but most importantly a "who is" database and thus contact: who to contact for a given resource, when one sees bad things coming out of it, when they have MTU issues, etc etc etc.

As such, I personally would love to see the options:

 A) Publish name + email
 B) Publish name + email + phone
 C) Publish name + email + phone + address ('all')


Personally B would be my option, the internet does not need to know where I physically am, but mail forwarding exists for that, making it an option though makes it clear one does not want to share that data and that it is just a forwarding place.


But the problem is that some (not me) people want is:
 D) Hide all details

Which would make whois for a person (they cannot have roles, otherwise they are not people) look like:

person:         Anonymous Person 172784394902
remarks:        RIPE anonymized person -- https://www.ripe.net/contact/hiddenperson
remarks:        Responsible LIR: xx.lirhandle -- <handle>-RIPE -- https://www.website.com   # autopopulated from LIR
email:          person-172784394902 at anon.ripe.net                                           # forwarded mail
nic-hdl:        PERSON-172784394902-RIPE
mnt-by:         RIPE-NCC-ANON-MNT                                                           # Can't have own maintainer then either
created:        2002-03-19T12:20:34Z
last-modified:  2021-05-12T15:05:51Z
source:         RIPE # Filtered

Thus email forwarding to not expose that data but still allowing contact and still allowing statistics/associations to be made based on the handle, but not private details to be released. (note that people can still drop all mail in /dev/null and chose to remain ignorant independent if the address is valid or goes anywhere at all; bad folks do not fix things)


But I think it is a really bad idea; people who don't want to be named on the Internet already have options by hiding at a cloud provider or a VPS where they can borrow address space, they do not need to have their name in the RIPE DB.

Note that such a policy would cause address space for the rest of the lifetime of IPv6 to be handled that way too; then just do not get your own prefix in the database.

The above A/B/C ... yeah kinda makes sense; but option D, big nope from me.

Greets,
 Jeroen