[arin-discuss] Status of Investigations

[Dean Anderson]

[ARIN agrees that discussion to recall Board members, to conduct
investigations of ARIN expenditures, and to stop certain ARIN
expenditures does not violate the ARIN AUP.]

The topics above are mutually agreed by ARIN to be "on topic".

I have received a letter from ARIN attorney Michael Socarras asserting a
large number of things. The letter increases the scope greatly. My
attorneys are still analyzing the letter, its claims, and the issues
raised--there are a lot of issues.  I cannot yet comment on the entire
letter.  However, provisionally, my attorney can assure me of the
following:

1. The character of a Board member is a relevant and proper business
issue.

2. Truth is an absolute defense to claims of libel.

3. Regardless of whether a member can compel a corporation to produce
requested information, it is still a proper business purpose to ask
business questions and to post that no responses have been made.

My attorney has also advised, provisionally, that the first sentence
above be placed on all messages relating to efforts to recall ARIN board
members and to investigate ARIN, or to dispute the propriety of
expenditures, until we analyze the the letter and respond to it.

With the above in mind, the status of the six issues follows:

Issue I.   Legacy RSA 
Issue II.  $50,000 Transfer to NANOG 
Issue III. Unusual amount of ARIN employee attendence at NANOG 
Issue IV.  Familiarity and conflict of interest of ARIN employees with 
NANOG attendees 
Issue V.   Waste of money on Conferences such as VON 
Issue VI.  Character of Board Members



Issue I. Legacy RSA

Update: I have discovered that Kremen v. Cohen (9th Cir. 2003), citing
other cases that establish that domain names are intangible property
subject to conversion if they are wrongly transferred.  Kremen also
argued, but failed to establish that NSI had a third party beneficial
contract with the government. It seems this is an evidentiary issue that
could be cured by more complete evidence in the case of IP Address
Blocks.

ARIN has not obtained a formal legal opinion justifying the (improper)
threats of denial of whois and in-addr.arpa services to Legacy holders
who do not sign the Legacy RSA and transfer their rights to ARIN.



Issue II. $50,000 Transfer to NANOG

I have discovered through analyzing NANOG records that 6 Board members 
are participant beneficiaries of NANOG, possibly all 7.

The only person to even potentially disclose their conflict of interest
was Bill Woodcock, when he "abstained" from voting on this matter. He
noted that he did not "recuse", by which I understand that he
participated in the decision but did not vote.  None of the other Board
members disclosed a conflict of interest even though all have, at least,
the appearance of a conflict of interest.

Board Member     Meetings attended   Mtgs Affil ARIN   ARIN Speaker
Scott Bradner       3                  0                  0
John Curran        16                  9                  0
Lee Howard          3                  0                  0
Bill Manning       20                  2                  0
Ray Plzak          15                 13                  4+2 unknown 
Paul Vixie         17                  0                  0
Bill Woodcock      29                  0                  0

Note: This is just from the records available. Early Nanog Attendence
records are spotty or non-existant.  Attendence status of as "Paid", "No
Charge", "Speaker" is sometimes omitted or unreported.

Note: All of Scott Bradner's attendence was reported as a speaker
affiliated with Harvard University.


Question: Did ARIN compensate Board member John Curran's attendence at
NANOG?

Question: Did ARIN compensate Board member Bill Manning's attendence at 
NANOG?

Question: Did ARIN compensate Board member Ray Plzak's attendence at
NANOG?

Question: Was Board member Scott Bradner compensated for his NANOG
speaking engagements where he asserted affiliation with Harvard
University? 

(compensation includes reimbursing, paying, or waiving costs for travel,
meals, hotels, meeting fees, and stipends)


Issue III. Unusual amount of ARIN employee attendence at NANOG

So far, I've found 104 Meeting attendences (estimated $45000 to NANOG,
probably represents $135000 expense to ARIN with hotel, travel, meals.  
More considering lost work.

The following employees are known to have attended NANOG, along with
their department and job title: Only one person on this list seems
appropriate to attend NANOG: The network administrator, Michael O'Neill

1|Ray Stark             Engineering Windows System Administrator
2|Erika Goedrich        Member Services Membership Coordinator
1|Abram Thielke         Engineering Software Engineer
3|Tim Christensen       Engineering System Architect
1|Jon Worley            Registration Services Senior Resource Analyst
1|Matt Rowley           Engineering Unix Systems Administrator
2|Ming Yan              Engineering Database Administrator
4|Jason Byrne           Member Services Membership Operations Manager
13|Ray Plzak            Executive President & CEO
6|Susan Hamlin          Member Services Director of Member Services
7|Michael O'Neill       Engineering Network Administrator
1|Therese Colosi        Human Resources Executive Assistant
20|Leslie Nobile        Registration Services Director of Registration Services
17|Richard Jimmerson    Executive Chief Information Officer
2|Nate Davis            Executive Chief Operations Officer
4|Cathy Clements        Registration Services Principal Resource Analyst
2|Cathy Murphy          Engineering Principal Software Engineer
1|Darren Kara           Engineering Database Administrator
4|Einar Bohlin          Member Services Policy Analyst
6|Matt Ryanczak         Engineering Systems Operations Manager
4|David Huberman        Registration Services Technical Specialist
2|Erin Centanni         Member Services Meeting Planner

I have a list of 47 more people who may be either AC members, Board 
members, or previous employees.  If anyone has a list of past employees, 
please let me know.

Question: Why is ARIN paying to have the rest of these people learn to
configure BGP and configure spam filters, and other technical network
operation tasks? This seems to be recoverable.

Question: Why did the auditor not question this expense?

Question: How much has been spend sending ARIN employees to NANOG?

Question: What ARIN employees have been sent to NANOG?




Issue IV. Familiarity, conflict of interest of ARIN employees with 
NANOG attendees

Relating to Issue II and Issue III;

I have a message from a frequent NANOG attendee (13 meetings) who says
that a recent IP Address Allocation was done in a few hours, start to
finish. This seems quite odd, and contrary to what most people
experience. Furthermore, it seems impossible to fully and properly
evaluate an IP Address Block request in so short a time.

Question: What is the average time to respond to an IP Address 
Allocation?

Question: Is there too much familiarity with NANOG attendees interacting
socially with some many ARIN employees.

Question: What ethics standards are stated to ARIN employees about
personal relationships and conflicts of interest?


Issue V. Waste of money on Conferences such as VON

ARIN has not reported how much money it spends on each conference.

Question: Does ARIN have a marketing plan and is ARIN collecting 
reasonable marketing metrics on the effectiveness of its marketing 
activities.


Issue VI. Character of Board Members

Facts have been posted which raise questions about the character of
Board member Paul Vixie, particularly the issues raised in Exactis v.  
MAPS, which cited charges of Tortious Interference with Contract,
Tortious Interference with Prospective Business Relations, violation of
the Colorado Consumer Protection Act, Intentional and Negligent
Misrepresentation and Extortion, violation of the Colorado
Communications Privacy Act, violation of the Colorado Organized Crime
Control Act, violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act, violation of the
Colorado Antitrust act. A Temporary Restraining Order (TRO) was
obtained.  Vixie and MAPS attempts to have the case dismissed failed,
and MAPS settled. MAPS no longer blocks Exactis.

Update: More information may be found regarding activities relating to
the suit Exactis v. MAPS in the "Motion and Memorandum in Support of
Temporary Restraining Order and Preliminary Injunction" at
http://www.dotcomeon.com/exactis1.html

Question: When did Board members first learn of these facts about other 
Board members?

Question: When did ARIN management first learn of these facts?

Question: What actions did management take to ensure that the Board 
member qualification questionaire reflected these facts?




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