back to article Privacy warning as cops lean on domain registrars

Internet policy experts have warned about possible threats to privacy and an increased risk of police domain name seizures after domain firms were pressured into overhauling how they do business. Intense criticism from governments including the US and UK, prompted by their respective cybercrime agencies, this week forced …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Another nail in the coffin for free speech

    Whilst the intentions of this policy are no doubt honourable in terms of trying to combat cyber-crime, it would also have the side-effect of making it much more difficult for people to run web sites supporting political dissidents or ideas not popular with certain groups.

    1. Sir Runcible Spoon

      Sir

      If we look at this from a 'how did the internet get going' point of view, it would be possible for someone to set up their own root servers and run whatever tld's they want to. They could forward requests on to the main root servers for regularly registered domains, but hold their own data regarding registration of other domains.

      Now, I don't believe it would be that easy, most people don't even know what DNS is and what it does, but for people who do know, it is a possible way round the obstacle - which is, after all, what the internet does best.

  2. NoneSuch Silver badge
    Black Helicopters

    ...and this is only the thin end of the wedge.

    Governments are going to get more and more invasive over time. They want to control what you and I see and see what you and I do on the Internet. Lord help you if they disagree with your choices. Per the YouTube takedown requests published a few days ago to not show Police brutality, this will only get worse until we are left with a Vanilla Internet where dissenting opinion will be erased. If this trend continues we are heading toward a very dark place indeed.

    Joseph Goebbels and Lavrentiy Beria would have loved this system.

    "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." - Edmund Burke

  3. mark l 2 Silver badge

    It still won't stop people just using false details in whois records and you can even pay for your domains with pre-paid credit cards which don't require ID to purchase. Even if they require ID before purchasing you can buy fake ID in the far east for a few quid that looks to the untrained eye like a real UK driving license. All in the name of combating terrorism and protecting the children of course.

  4. Ken Hagan Gold badge

    Astounded

    "We're not talking about rocket science here," said the Australian GAC rep. "We're talking about publishing an address to be served legal notice, or putting and email address on a website... I continue to be astounded that they [registrars] have known about this for two years and nothing has happened."

    I continue to be astounded that the Australian GAC rep thinks that will make a blind bit of difference if the address lies outside his legal jurisdiction. (Within that jurisdiction, of course, his government is already able to simply pass a law making it a legal requirement for Aussie registrars.)

    1. Mark 65

      I continue to be astounded that they don't seem to understand that people use proxy registrations so they don't get spammed or abused at their home address or place of business. As for the idiocy of forcing an email address on the website - they mean the dumping ground and spam-fest that is admin@thewebsiteconcerned.com?

      The idiocy of these people knows no bounds. Don't even get me started on law enforcement who seem to want people to just hand themselves in rather than have to do any traditional investigatory work. Man, the World has gone to shit over the last decade or two.

    2. Jim Morrow

      the law enforcement and gac people are not as stupid as you seem to think they are.

      you've completely missed the point too. it's not about getting visible contact details for serving legal notices. that's just a symptom. it's not the actual disease.

      the point is the authorities have been asking for *years* to get this info published and have got nowhere. some registrars have co-operated. others told them to fuck off. another lot manipulated icann's snails-on-modagon-paced policy development process to make sure nothing got done.

      this was too stupid for words. telling the cops and governments that their opinions don't matter tends not to have a happy ending. it's a million times worse when you do that and then rub their noses in it.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Just because ICANN...

    ... doesn't mean THEY SHOULD.

    (Guy Fawkes, for obvious reasons.)

  6. Eduard Coli
    Gimp

    ICANN't stand it anymore

    The public paid for the Internet.

    Why should this group of special interests and less than privacy friendly government get to act like they do?

    Ban ICANN

    1. Jim Morrow
      FAIL

      > Ban ICANN

      next time, think before you say something this stupid.

      icann is of course a deeply flawed institution which needs radical reform. banning it is not the answer. look at what the alternatives would be. governments would step in and take complete control if there was a vacuum in internet governance.

  7. Old Handle

    I've been thinking more and more that there needs to be an alternative to ICANN-controlled DNS. To start with, maybe just a public DNS server that serves all the normal domains, but it would keep a database of seized domains and keep them linked to their rightful owners, regardless of what the "autoritative" DNS says.

  8. JaitcH
    WTF?

    Check out Chinese web sites

    China, and several other countries require web sites be licenced, which I disagree with, but the owner and their address and contact info have to be shown

    Countries internal laws are quite adequate to address these complaints which makes me think there is another reason for these privacy invading tupes to get steamed up.

  9. Field Marshal Von Krakenfart
    WTF?

    The grubby hands of the copyright mafiaa

    "US GAC representative Suzanne Radell led a barrage of criticism, accusing registrars of dragging their feet and offering up "paltry" and "silly" self-regulation proposals.

    She was supported by the UK rep, Mark Carvell of the Department of Culture, Media and Sport."

    I sense a disturbance in the force caused by the grubby hands of vested interest…

    Why? What's wrong with paltry and silly self-regulation, that what the grubberment allow the financial institutions to do?

    "We're talking about publishing an address to be served legal notice”…. Blah blah blah Cybercrime blah blah blah.

    Oh god, won’t somebody think of the children. if you make owning a gun a criminal offence then only criminals will own guns, FFS, the only criminal these feckers are interested in convicting are the people running download sites and wikileaks type sites, does some idiot think they will solve cyber crime by forcing site owners to register their email addresses?????

    “Good news superintendent, we’ve cracked the phising crimes, we got the owners of www.phishingforbankaccounts.com to register their email addresses and now we know they are”

    FFS, does ANYBODY think that this is really going to achieve something????????

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