Many people have written about a U.S. decision ordering Google to disclose a massive amount of personal information about their users. Many U.S. experts expect the decision to be overturned on appeal.
Wiertz Sebastien - Privacy by Sebastien Wiertz (CC BY 2.0) https://flic.kr/p/ahk6nh
Privacy
CIRA’s Backdoor Access in New WHOIS Policy
My weekly technology law column (Toronto Star version, Ottawa Citizen version, homepage version) revisits the disappointment with CIRA's implementation of its new whois policy. While dot-ca registrants across the country were being advised of the new policy last April, special interests representing law enforcement and trademark holders were quietly pressuring […]
CIRA Creates Backdoor to Domain Name Information
Appeared in the Toronto Star on June 30, 2008 as CIRA's 'whois' Policy a Stunning Setback for Privacy Two months ago, I wrote a glowing review of the Canadian Internet Registration Authority's new "whois" policy that was supposed to better protect the privacy of hundreds of thousands of Canadians. The […]
Privacy Commissioner of Canada Blogging on C-61
The Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada has posted two entries on the C-61, noting the privacy implications of the bill.
CIRA Creates Backdoor WHOIS Exceptions for Police and IP Owners
Earlier this year, I wrote glowingly about the new CIRA whois policy, which took effect today and which I described as striking the right balance between access and privacy. The policy was to have provided new privacy protection to individual registrants – hundreds of thousands of Canadians – by removing the public disclosure of their personal contact information (though the information is collected and stored by domain name registrars).
Apparently I spoke too soon. Faced with the prospect of a privacy balance, special interests representing law enforcement and trademark holders quietly pressured CIRA to create a backdoor that will enable these two groups (and these two groups alone) to have special access to registrant information. In the case of law enforcement, police can bring cases to CIRA involving immediate risk to children or the Internet (ie. denial-of-service attacks) and CIRA will hand over registrant information without court oversight. In the case of trademark holders (as well as copyright and patent owners), claims that a domain name infringes their rights will be enough to allow CIRA to again disclose registrant information.
This represents a stunning about-face after years of public consultation on the whois policy.
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