In the security field we are seldom privy to the data upon which world changing decisions are made in advance of the actual decisions.  This month, with the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), we are in such a position and I cannot pass up the opportunity to point out, very graphically, the overwhelming power imbalance between multi-national corporations and the collection of dis-empowered individuals known collectively as “World Citizens”.

ICANN is seriously considering a proposal that will change its privacy policy so that “domains used for online financial transactions for commercial purpose will be ineligible for “WHOIS” privacy and proxy registrations”.

About Privacy Services

If you’re not familiar with privacy services for domains, it is a service that is available when registering for a new website. It is designed to keep your personal details confidential and on record with your domain company. It is designed so that only under extraordinary circumstances would that information ever be shared with anyone – namely a warrant or subpoena. It’s a fair system that works and has worked for many years.  Approximately 20 percent of the domains on the internet use these services to guard personal information.

The first question that comes up with this new proposal is: What does the term “commercial purposes” mean?  ICANN is not very helpful.  Do they mean home businesses that sell T-Shirts?  Crowd funded community support? Political action committees?  School fund raising projects?  Animal rescue operations?  Tip jars?  As written it could mean anything whatsoever.  But this is beside the point.

Industry Influences and Persecution

The impetus for this change in ICANN policy comes directly from the massive, aggressive and litigious recording and films industry.  ICANN has been under pressure from this group for years and finally seems ready cave in, no matter the cost to individual privacy and freedoms.  In all fairness to ICANN, it is this group that has sued thousands of individuals and scores of fledgling technology companies to prevent any technology from existing that could be remotely be used to illegally download music or videos.

According to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), this war against consumers and industry began in 2008 when the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) announced the first 261 lawsuits against individuals that it had identified as downloading music using Napster. Among those sued was Brianna Lahara, a twelve-year-old girl living with her single mother in public housing in New York City. In order to settle the case, Brianna was forced to apologize publicly and pay $2,000.

In another individual case, the RIAA sued Tammy Lafky, a 41-year-old sugar mill worker and single mother in Minnesota because her teenage daughter downloaded some music—an activity both mother and daughter believed to be legal. Lafky faced over $500,000 in penalties. The RIAA offered to settle for $4,000, but even that sum was well beyond Lafky’s means—she earned just $21,000 per year and received no child support.

The RIAA also went after the technology developers.  Prior to 1988, it sent its lawyers after the innovators, hoping to smother the technology in its infancy. Beginning with the December 1999 lawsuit against Napster, the recording industry sued major P2P technology companies one after the other: Scour, Aimster, AudioGalaxy, Morpheus, Grokster, Kazaa, iMesh, and LimeWire.

Backlash

In the past five years there have been thousands of other suits. It is no wonder ICANN seems ready to cave in to their demands.  But now we have a problem.  While we are unable to read the U.S. mail or listen to the phone calls ICANN might have received from the public regarding the public’s opinion of ICANN’s considerations, ICANN for some reason made all of the emails that it received over this issue a matter of public record.

I asked my colleague and Future Tense associate John Casaretto to scour these emails and determine what the public mood might be.  There turned out to be nearly 12,000 emails in that record.  A programmed analysis of these emails indicated that only 0.13 percent of the responses agreed with the proposed changes.  99.87 percent disagreed with the proposed changes.  No clearer indication of public will could possibly exist.

An Open Book

Let’s fully understand the implications of the proposed change and why the public is so adamantly opposed to it:

RIAA has architected a priority ticket to the front of the proverbial information disclosure line so that they can get access to anyone’s private information. They can do this without any sort of due process. Without a warrant. Without a court order. Without anything.  Just a hunch – if that.

Presumed guilt is the order of the day, until someone is proven innocent. It will not stop here.  This opens the door to other interested parties, the sharing of information and more intrusions that will impact people in ways we cannot begin to estimate.

Losing Your Rights

This is one of the problems we will face as ICANN slips away from the influence of the United States.  The U.S., in spite of its bureaucratic slip ups, its naïveté and its rampant paranoia, recognizes rights. We have rights that protect the individual, to some extent, corporate tyranny.  With ICANN shifting towards a more global entity, we will be subjected to government attitudes and behaviors such as those in developing nations and oppressive countries that do not respect the individual. Some would argue that is already happening right here in some ways, and I cannot disagree.

This is about your right to privacy, it is about your right to free speech. If you are the person that thinks you have nothing to hide, then good for you. Some people do.

There are millions who need and deserve domain anonymity.There are government protestors that deserve a voice. There are people that want a quiet life and do not want attention from strangers or people from the past. There are many whistle blowers and religious protestors in this same situation.

But the real question here is: What will ICANN do? Will it succumb to the pressure from an international lobby or will it listen to the will of the public?  Watch and see.

Picture Credit: Daniel Oines