Governments Push ICANN to Get Whois Access Issues Resolved
ICANN must ensure that its temporary Whois rules effectively allow reasonable access to nonpublic personal registration data while it tries to comply with the EU general data protection regulation (GDPR), speakers said Tuesday at ICANN's Saturday-Thursday meeting in Montreal. The…
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problem is that, while the first phase of the expedited policy development process (EPDP) developed the temporary specification under which ICANN now operates, there's still no conclusion to the phase 2 work, which involves creating a new model to allow legitimate parties to access nonpublic registrants' data, said Laureen Kapin, FTC counsel-international consumer protection, at a Governmental Advisory Committee meeting. On Monday, EPDP group chair Janis Karklins said his top priority is to find a standardized system of access and disclosure (SSAD) for such data. A draft paper on a hypothetical SSAD model was sent to the European Data Protection Board Oct. 25, said ICANN Government and International Governmental Organizations Engagement Senior Director Elena Plexida. The model proposes a centralized access system to decide whether personal data should be disclosed, but it's not clear whether this idea will fly under the GDPR. The EPDP group is moving toward drafting an initial report that, in the "optimistic scenario," could be published in early December and finalized in May, Karklins said. If that timeline is delayed, the final report might not emerge until June, he said. The question is how to make the policy reality, Kapin said: There's "real concern" among governments that despite the existence of the temporary policy, law enforcement agencies, intellectual property owners, cybersecurity researchers and other stakeholders are having trouble accessing Whois data. Many who no longer see the data in Whois either don't know they can ask for it or are unsure how to do so, she said. Governments should recommend that ICANN do a better job of ensuring that its existing policy is working properly, she said. Another policy in the works is new procedures for subsequent new generic top-level domains. ICANN is reviewing the 2012 round of gTLDs to determine if changes to the procedures are needed, said Jeff Neuman, co-chair of the Generic Names Supporting Organization policy development working group. The panel is preparing draft recommendations for a final report expected to go to the GNSO Council by the end of Q1 2020 and to the board by late Q2, he said. Directors are likely to commission another applicants' guidebook for the next round, with new gTLDs possible by late 2021 or early 2022.