Friends:
Over the last few weeks, you have heard about our upcoming privacy  
conference called "Building Bridges on ICANN's Whois Questions."  I am  writing to tell 
you it was a great success.  
 
It took place on Tuesday, 11/29.  At 2:30 PM as the conference opened,  the 
room was overflowing.  Over 100 people showed up from across the ICANN  
spectrum -- Registrars, Registries, Country Code Registries, Intellectual  Property, 
ALAC, ICANN staff... and a few ICANN Board members even peeked in  between 
meetings on their crowded schedule. 
 
We opened with Stephanie Perrin, Director of Research and Policy for the  
Office of Canada's Privacy Commissioner, giving the keynote by phone. She laid  
out the principles of data protection laws in Canada, highlighted that they  
apply to ICANN's Whois service, and made very clear that ICANN's rules for  
Whois, as they currently exist, violate these data protection principles and  laws.
 
She was followed by wonderful presentations from CIRA (.CA), Nominet (.UK)  
and Japan Registry Services (.JP), with each speaker showing how his/her ccTLD  
Whois service has changed to protect personal data in compliance with their 
own  national data protection laws.  Their slides made clear that the personal  
data about domain name registrants, while private and protected from abuse, 
is  still available to law enforcement and others pursuant to due process.
 
Two experts then discussed how privacy operates in other areas of Internet  
and telecommunications.  Drew McArthur of Canada's #2 telecommunications  
company TELUS gave us a privacy quiz and showed that telephone numbers and ISP  
data (including subscribers name/address, email identity, etc) are all protected  
by privacy laws and subject to disclosure only under "lawful access," as he  
called it.  Chris Savage confirmed that even in the US, with no national  data 
protection legislation, we have unlisted phone numbers and significant  
protection of privacy for those who use ISP, telephone and even cable  service.
 
The final panel was us -- ICANN constituency views.  David Maher of  the 
Registry Constituency said he wished the personal data was not even  there and 
supports restricted access to personal data.  Marcus Heyder  of the US Federal 
Trade Commission espoused the Intellectual Property  Constituency view that all 
the personal data should remain in the Whois service  and be completely 
accessible.  Speaking for NCUC, I argued that we don't  even need to collect a lot 
of this personal data for Whois.  Since  ICANN's mission and scope are narrow 
and technical  -- and we should only  collect and display the technical data 
relevant to this mission (and thus the  existing technical data such as servers 
+ a technical contact).
 
Ross Rader closed the third panel with a very strong statement from  
Registrars that ICANN's scope is very narrow and that the purpose of the Whois  
service should be narrowly technical -- and specifically involve a very clear  
"technical purpose" for the Whois service (a view that strongly supports the  
protection of personal data).  Overall, we got great reviews:   many people told me 
how much they liked the Conference and many stayed all the  way through. 
 
In closing, I would like to thank Milton, Carlos, the Executive Committee  
and our Council representatives for their support of this Conference.   Thank 
you!  Also thanks to all the Conference sponsors: NCUC, Public  Interest 
Registry (.ORG), Registry Constituency and Cole, Raywid & Braverman  (a Washington DC 
law firm).  Also thanks to Milton and the Internet  Governance Project for 
sponsoring a wonderful Chinese dinner that brought  together speakers and 
sponsors (and helped further build bridges among the  different sides).
 
Regards, Kathy (Kleiman)
p.s. press stories and slides to follow.