[arin-ppml] private whois record

[patrick at klos.com]

> I doubt you can find the street address of BoA's or CIA network 
> security department in public.  Their customer facing department 
> info is public, but their network org may be considered sensitive.

Please provide an example of how a legitimate business's WHOIS data may
be considered "sensitive"?

> The point is some business and gov entities may consider their 
> network records to be sensitive info, and want to keep them away 
> from general public.  As an ISP, it is not my job to question whether 
> they are just hyper-sensitive or not.

I can't think of any legitimate reason why a legitimate business or
government entity should have a reason to hide their contact information?!?
(I HATE the fact that our "transparent" government has the balls to say
that we don't have any legitimate reason to contact them!)

The only people I know of that NEED to hide are scammers, spammers, phishers,
and other fraudulent entities.
 
And who is to decide who falls under "General Public" and who should be
so priviliged to have access to these "private" WHOIS records?  I am often
(daily) using WHOIS records to report spam, phishing and hacking activities
to ISPs and owners of compromised servers.  There is nothing more frustrating
than looking up someone's contact information only to find that it's missing
or incorrect (although spam filters on abuse mailboxes are a close second!!).

> Those reassignments are leaf records, only one hop away from their 
> upstream's LIR records.  Hence if an ISP make a particular leaf 
> network record private, you can always find the immediate upstream 
> ISP and go take up your network problem from there.

Why have a WHOIS record if the information is "hidden" or "private"?  Any
business or entity who does not want their actual contact info published
can hire their ISP or some other company to handle the contact requests,
but SOMEONE HAS TO BE THERE to answer the call or email.

Patrick Klos
Klos Technologies, Inc.