[arin-ppml] Reclamation of Number Resources

[Ronald F. Guilmette]

In message <CAEmG1=oUW6yHqeC8OmYu18odWp-+71X+y-V5=YMwQbXma+c3sw at mail.gmail.com>
Matthew Petach <mpetach at netflight.com> wrote:

>What Ronald is doing is accusing ARIN of *not* going after people
>he suspects aren't following the law, without submitting any actual
>evidence to support the accusation.
>
>This is McCarthyism resurrected.

In my own defense, I agree with you that aspersions without evidence is
the essence of McCarthyism.  But I don't believe that is what I have
done.

Rather, I have elaborated a set of facts that, as far as I can tell, are
quite explicitly indicative of -someone- having messed up.  That may be
the member in question, or it could be ARIN.  I would most certainly
like to know which, but I seriously doubt that I ever will.  Not to a
moral certainty anyway.

It -is- true that due to the limited set of facts I have managed to glean
from open public sources, and from paying close attention to the comings
and goings of various Bad Guys in and on different parts of the global
Internet over more than 20 years I have raised the question of whether
or not ARIN has been, shall we just say, "lax" in its enforement of
certain policies.  And it may perhaps have been unfair for me to have
done that, but I don't believe that the jury has come in on that point
just yet.  (But due to other commitments I haven't yet been able to get
through all of my pending emails for the past 24 hours, so we shall see.
Perhaps the answer is already in there!)

I most certainly have *not* been in the least bit unfair towards the member
at issue in this case.  Quiet the opposite!  I have repeatedly been explicit
in noting that I have -zero- evidence to suspect this member of having
engaged in any amount of fraud, deception, or even mere misrepesentation
And in fact, I have gone the other way by suggesting that it appears to
me more likely than not that the "suspicious fact pattern" I have described
may be attributed to a misstep on the part of ARIN.

>We should not stoop to witch hunt allegations without any supporting
>evidence being offered.  Ronald indicated he couldn't find evidence of
>fraud, and thus wasn't willing to file a fraud report.  He simply said he
>couldn't find evidence that the accused networks and individuals *weren't*
>committing fraud

No.  In fact I believe that I have bent over backwards to avoid even using
the word "fraud".  There does seem to have been some deviance from written
ARIN policy in this instance.  That fact, at least, is, I believe, completely
clear.  But a mere deviance from policy need not amount to "fraud", and I
have taken some pains to stress that very point.

>...and that it was up to ARIN to demonstrate they weren't
>complicit in covering up for the entity.  In essence, he's demanding that
>ARIN show the world how they go about determining that every company
>that has ever applied for number resources is *not guilty* of fraud.

Nope.  I have made no such demand.  You infer too much.

I have (implicitly) asked how the fact pattern I have laid out came to be,
and I have asked if ARIN has perhaps been a bit too shy when it comes to
disciplining wayward members who have NOT failed to pay their annual dues
and who have NOT engaged in outright fraud, but whose current and/or
historical operations seems to put them in violation of ARIN policy.

This is not, I think, an altogether unreasonable question to ask, and
John Curran is certainly capable of putting forth evidence to support
the view that ARIN has historically been vigorous in its enforcement of
policy, even if that evidence is only numerical in nature.

I have most certainly *not* asked John to provide *any* details about how
his staff goes about reviewing member compliance with policy, nor would
I have any reason to do so.  NRPM Section 9 lays out quite clearly the
various criteria that ARIN should (must?) use to evaluate whether any
given member does or does not have "a real and substantial connection
with the ARIN region".  You must think very little of me if you think
that I am unable to intuit how ARIN staff might go about the process of
simply verifying a member's "substantial connection with the ARIN region".
I am not sure why you would have such a low opinion of my capability in
this regard, especially given all of the relevant facts that I have found
and documented in relation to this specific case (SL-206).  I guess you
just think I'm a dunce.

>We should *never* put the burden of proving innocence on the victim.

That raises an interesting question:  Who exactly is "the victim" in this
case?

It is my contention that all Internet users on planet earth are the victims
in this case, because we all may perhaps be victimized by some of the
questionable things that are being given DNS service by an entity that
may very well be in violation of ARIN policy.

And if _that_ contention doesn't suit you, how about if we were to say
instead that all of those perfectly policy-abiding entities in the ARIN
region who are nowadays sitting and waiting patiently on the ARIN wait
queue for some fresh new IPv4 /19 block to become available are the victims.

They, the totally innocent and policy-abiding members who need more IPv4
space today, must sit and wait while an entity that may have breached ARIN
policy continues to enjoy the nice ARIN-assigned /19 that it holds, even
though it quite possibly has no legitimate right to do so, under ARIN
policy, as written.

>The burden of proof of guilt should be on the accuser's side to produce.

I have presented a set of facts which can all be independently verified,
and which I assert do undeniably and beyond a reasonable doubt show that
a clear deviance from ARIN policy exists.  No one, not even you, have
denied that this is exactly what I have done, and exactly what I have
demonstrated.  So we have an apparent policy violation.  Now the only
open questions are (a) Whose fault is it that this arose? and (b) What
should be done about it?

>But for Ronald to demand that ARIN reveal the details of how ARIN went
>about deciding that every company that ever applied for number resources
>was *NOT* breaking the law is a witch hunt.  It is a demand to produce
>proof of innocence rather than acting on accusation of guilt with evidence to
>back up the assertion.

I have two responses:

1)  What you claim I have done, and what you claim I have demanded is not in
fact what I have either claimed or denamded.  (See above.)

2)  Would it be correct to infer from your very vocal opinion that you feel
that the UK's registry of the beneficial owners of UK corporations is a witch
hunt, McCarthyism, and an unpardonable villification of totally innocent
companies?  Or would you agree with the premise that in some contexts, at
least, the public interest may be better served by transparency rather than
opacity?

>{... much additional ranting snipped...}
>But to simply claim that ARIN staff are incompentent at finding evidence
>of fraud when Ronald himself cannot find such evidence is unconscionable

I have made no such claim, nor would I.  It has been my privilige to come
to know many ARIN staff members over the years and I have found them to be
consistantly talented and dedicated to service to the community.

What I have done is to raise the possibility that within ARIN, policy
enforcement may perhaps have been de-emphasized, and perhaps even, to
some extent, starved of resources, and that management might very well
have come to the conclusion, even well before the current and ongoing
AFRINIC legal debacle, that policy enforcement, in some instances, may
be more trouble that it is worth.  (And no one who has witnessed first
hand the ongoing struggles of AFRINIC could reasonably downplay what
may be at stake here.)

In any event, even my raising of the question of ARIN priorities does not
in any way demean either the skills or the professionalism of any member
of the ARIN staff, let alone all of them.  At most, we are simply and only
discussing budget priorities and arguably well-founded considerations
relating to the avoidance of costly legal entanglements, and whether such
considerations should outweigh the value of additional transparency when
it comes to the final resolutions of "fishyness" reports submitted to ARIN.


Regards,
rfg