Alex Bligh's blog

You may remember that around this time last year, Nominet announced a misguided proposal for a cosy relationship with law enforcement agencies. I’ve blogged several times before about this (here, here, here and here), but last week their issue group has come up with yet another revised set of draft recommendations that they will be proposing to the board for adoption.

Nominet unfortunately did not provide a version with tracked changes. I’ve highlighted the main differences in the document (and in my comments) in my response.

It won’t come as any great surprise to observers of this process that the same misguided principles remain. The changes from last time are mostly small incremental improvements. The main problem – and I find this somewhat difficult to believe given the number of iterations this document has been through now – is that it is not obvious how ‘connected’ your domain name has to be to an alleged criminal, in order to be subject to the policy; in simple terms there is nothing to stop an alleged criminal using a demon.co.uk address causing the suspension of demon.co.uk, or an employer having its domain suspended because of the unauthorised actions of an employee. On the positive side, the clause which apparently widened the process to include any crime at all has now gone, and they’ve made some further minor improvements to the process.

So, once again, they’ve improved the process and some of the safeguards, but have yet to address at least one key issue, together of course with the overarching point: why on earth should Nominet be doing this at all?

My full response is here.

This time we get eight days to reply (by 18 November) which I suppose is an improvement over three. I encourage you to submit your own response, by writing to policy@nominet.org.uk. I know some people have in the past just written ‘I agree with Alex’, which whilst better than nothing and mildly flattering, is probably not as effective as explaining why (at least in relation to the primary concerns). If, for instance, you were to state in your own words that you think the whole policy is a bad idea, but that you are particularly concerned that innocent registrants might be hit as the policy makes no express provision for minimising collateral damage (as in the demon.co.uk example above) , that would probably be useful.
 

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A brief epilogue for those few people interested in the minutiae of Nominet governance rather than the substance of the issue at hand:

In my original blog post I said: “I think the paper is written by SOCA rather by than Nominet, though that’s not clear.” The issue group page now says “The policy process was started with a proposal submitted by Serious and Organised Crime Agency (SOCA) regarding domain names used in connection with criminal activity”. I’m pretty sure that wasn’t on the issue group page from the beginning, and it’s a welcome clarification. However, you have to wonder why:

• the paper has no mention of SOCA as an author at all, cryptically referring to “we” which is easily read to mean Nominet, especially as it mentions SOCA as a potential interested party along with others who did not author the paper; and
• the paper is written in Nominet’s house font, with an author attribute of “Tania” (who might just be Nominet’s ever helpful Tania Baumann, who is no doubt very bored of me by now).

Nominet got a bit of a hysterical pasting when the proposals first came out (e.g. here), because (quite reasonably) the proposals were attributed to Nominet rather than to SOCA. It looked like Nominet were recommending them in their original form, rather than SOCA recommending them. And Nominet were not exactly quick to deny this. As I wrote elsewhere at the time, I put this down to a rather bumpy introduction of the new policy development process, rather than any particular evil doing at Nominet Towers (is that link right? – Ed). A learning point here is that if you do not want your consultation to look like a fait-accompli (and, to be fair to Nominet, it wasn’t – a fair amount has changed since the original set of recommendations even though I remain opposed to the principle) then make it quite clear who authored the original proposals, and that you do not (yet) have a view on them.

I’ve blogged several times before (here, here and here) about Nominet’s misguided proposal for a cosy relationship with law enforcement agencies. Their issue group has come up with a revised set of draft recommendations that they will be proposing to the board for adoption.

As per last time, the same misguided principles remain. There has, however, been a fair amount of improvement, particularly in respect of transparency, process, and an appeals process. However, it’s still (rather startlingly) not obvious how ‘connected’ your domain name has to be to an alleged criminal, in order to be subject to the policy; in simple terms there is nothing to stop an alleged criminal using a demon.co.uk address causing the suspension of demon.co.uk, or an employer having its domain suspended because of the unauthorised actions of an employee. And the Issue Group seems still undecided as to what alleged crimes should be covered, wavering from those that create ‘a clear risk of imminent serious harm to individuals’ to any crime at all (beware your employee who sends an email when driving).

In short, they’ve improved the process and some of the safeguards, but not addressed at least two key issues, and the overarching point: why on earth should Nominet be doing this at all?

My full response is here.

The email to tell you all about this came out this afternoon (17 October) describing a meeting held on 21 September. They want responses by 20 October, which I have to say is not up to Nominet’s normal standards in terms of reasonable consultation periods, but if you want to submit your own response, write to policy@nominet.org.uk. You’ll need to type quickly.

Forgive the attention-seeking title. I’ve blogged before (here and here) about Nominet’s misguided proposal for a rather too cosy relationship with law enforcement agencies (I say “Nominet’s” proposal, though it’s never been entirely clear whether the proposal emanated from SOCA, Nominet or both). Now their issue group has come up with a set of principles that they will be proposing to the board for adoption. As feared, this principles remain misguided, though to be fair to the authors there has been an attempt (albeit very limited) to address some of the concerns raised. My full response is here, but for those not wanting to read a five page PDF, I have summarized below how my four main arguments that Nominet should not suspend domain names allegedly associated with criminal activity have been addressed.

Firstly, that there are already more effective ways of dealing with this, such as going to registrars and use of the ‘investigation lock’. The proposed principles do not set out why existing mechanisms are inadequate. There is some attempt at limiting the ambit of the proposals to situations where other routes have been exhausted, but bizarrely this is only proposed where no serious harm is being caused. Why Nominet should even consider suspending domain names where no serious harm is being caused is beyond me.

Secondly, collateral damage. The proposals appear not to address this point at all. There is no proposed linkage between registrant, alleged criminal and domain name, so nothing to stop an alleged criminal using a demon.co.uk address causing the suspension of demon.co.uk, or an employer having its domain suspended because of the unauthorised actions of an employee.

Thirdly, civil liberties and due process. I accept that civil liberties need to be balanced against protection of the public from serious crime, and that some attempt has been made to address this balance. However, protection ‘of the public’ from counterfeit Ugg Boots (for instance) does not seem to me a particularly significant altar on which to sacrifice civil liberties. The policy should concentrate on crimes more serious than these.

Fourthly, mission creep. The proposals do not address this. Indeed, disappointingly, the mission creep has already started, with an issue group tasked to look at criminal activity already recommending to the board that it look at ‘civil and third party’ complaints too.

Conspicuously absent from the proposals is any cogent explanation of why Nominet should be doing this in the first place.

Nominet is in general quite good at listening to feedback, so I encourage you to submit some, as detailed here. Thankfully, not every romance ends in marriage.