[ppml] Privacy of Reassignment Information

[william(at)elan.net]

On Mon, 23 Aug 2004 Michael.Dillon at radianz.com wrote:

> > This is really bad policy proposal. It disallows ability to do proper 
> > research on the ip allocations, including geographical mapping of ip usage, 
> > mapping of activity by organization type, etc. It significantly helps 
> > bad guys avoid responsibility and makes tracking them down much more 
> > difficult. It disallows ability to do public audits of arin and that
> > it is  making proper size allocations and assignments. It disallows 
> > ability for ISPs to confirm who customer is when request for BGP route
> > from new customer comes in and this may result is improper routing
> > decisions. Also disallows ability for ISP to know when customer should be 
> > referred to ARIN because of large space that they may have with different 
> > ISP already and thus may increase segmentation of ip space.
> 
> It doesn't really disallow most of these things. It just requires
> people to contact the upstream ISP and ask for the information. If
> there is a legitimate use for the information then it will still
> be available. 

No, that just means the information is not going to be available for those 
who need it. 

I wonder how UUNET is going to act if I ask it to be a pal and open its 
database so I could find how many users it has and in what locations. And 
anyway, asking 1000+ ISPs things like that is no way to gather statistical 
data, the system must be automated and allow for data to be collected 
quickly (not waiting for so many humans to answer) and to allow step to be 
repeated in the future when necessary or confirmed by independent researcher.

Nor do I think UUNET is going to confirm that their new assignment and customer
is Scott Ritcher or answer how luch the assignment block is. But whois data
would have most likely shown that with OptIn Yada Yada name and tell others
to be concerned.

And these are just two of the problems I mention and others are also
impossible if being dependent on ISPs (i.e. like for audits, it defeats its
purpose to ask ISP that got new ip block to tell me what allocations it 
had before so I could confirm that had used enough space to qualify for it).

P.S. Apologies to UUNET/MCI people on this list if you see using your 
company name as anything but an example.

-- 
William Leibzon
Elan Networks
william at elan.net