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EU plays down “unlawful” Whois data worries

Kevin Murphy, October 17, 2012, 20:26:16 (UTC), Domain Policy

The European Commission yesterday gave short shrift to recent claims that ICANN’s proposed Whois data retention requirements would be “unlawful” in the EU.
A recent letter from the Article 29 Working Party — an EU data protection watchdog — had said that the next version of the Registrar Accreditation Agreement may force EU registrars to break the law.
The concerns were later echoed by the Council of Europe.
But the EC stressed at a session between the ICANN board of directors and Governmental Advisory Committee yesterday that Article 29 does not represent the official EU position.
That’s despite the fact that the Article 29 group is made up of privacy commissioners from each EU state.
Asked about the letter, the EC’s GAC representative said:

Just to put everyone at ease, this is a formal advisory group concerning EU data privacy protection.
…
They’re there to give advice and they themselves, and we as well, are very clear that they are independent of the European Union. That gives you an idea that this is not an EU position as such but the position of the advisory committee.

The session then quickly moved on to other matters, dismaying privacy advocates in the room.
Milton Mueller of the Internet Governance Project tweeted:

By telling ICANN that it can ignore Art 29 WG opinion on privacy, European commission is telling ICANN it can ignore their national DP [data privacy] laws

Registrars hopeful that the Article 29 letter would put another nail into the coffin of some of ICANN’s more unpalatable and costly RAA demands also expressed dismay.
ICANN’s current position, based on input from law enforcement and the GAC, is that the RAA should contain new more stringent requirements on Whois data retention and verification.
It proposes an opt-out process for registrars that believe these requirements would put them in violation of local law.
But registrars from outside the EU say this would create a two-tier RAA, which they find unacceptable.
With apparently no easy compromise in sight the RAA negotiations, originally slated to be wrapped up in the first half of this year, look set to continue for many weeks or months to come.

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Comments (2)

  1. Maksim says:
    October 18, 2012 at 5:31 am

    Thanks for sharing, quite interesting.

    Reply
  2. Peter says:
    October 18, 2012 at 9:55 am

    I don’t know the full context of that statement but I believe that the conclusion drawn from this is wrong. It just states that the group of data protection advisors does not have any authority in this matter. It does not mean that the concerns expressed (and echoed by EU officials and many registrars in Europe for that matter) are not relevant.

    Reply

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