2018-04-08

News Review | How Cloudflare Is Helping Protect Personal Data Online

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Domain Mondo's weekly internet domain news review (NR 2018-04-08) with analysis and opinion: Features •  1) a. How Cloudflare Is Helping Protect Personal Data Online, b. US Data Protection Regulator? c. Facebook Hearing Tuesday, 2) ICANN news: a. Data Protection and Privacy: ICANN WHOIS vs EU GDPR & Article 29 Working Party, and more, 3) Names, Domains & Trademarks, 4) ICYMI, 5) Most Read.

UPDATE 11 April 2018 Reply from EU Article 29 Working Party to ICANN (full embed below): No moratorium given to ICANN, in fact "The WP29 continues to have concerns, however, regarding several aspects of the Proposed and Final Interim Model. Attached to this letter you will find the areas for which the WP29 considers it of utmost importance that ICANN either reconsider or further evaluate its current approach. The concerns highlighted here are without prejudice to additional concerns, further inquiries or findings being made by the WP29 or its members at a later date."

UPDATE 10 Apr 2018: LIVE Video of US Senate Facebook Hearing Tuesday: "Facebook, Social Media Privacy, and the Use and Abuse of Data"--

U.S. Senate Judiciary and Commerce Committees Joint Hearing with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Tuesday, April 10, 2018, 2:15 p.m. EDT. Video courtesy PBS NewsHour. Video also available here.

Original Post:
1) a. How Cloudflare Is Helping Protect Personal Data Online

Bloomberg.com video above published Apr 5, 2018: Michelle Zatlyn, Cloudflare co-founder and chief operating officer, explains how the company is helping to improve the protection of online personal data. She speaks with Bloomberg's Emily Chang on "Bloomberg Technology."

Cloudflare, Inc. (domain: cloudflare.com) is a US-based company, founded in July 2009, providing a content delivery network (CDN), DDoS mitigation, internet security services and distributed domain name server services, as well as acting as a reverse proxy for websites. Cloudflare is headquartered in San Francisco, California, with additional offices in London, Singapore, Champaign, Austin, Boston and Washington, D.C. Cloudflare's founders are Matthew Prince (CEO), Lee Holloway, and Michelle Zatlyn.

Domain Name System (DNS): Cloudflare offers free a Domain Name System (DNS) service. SolveDNS has found Cloudflare to consistently have one of the fastest DNS lookup speeds worldwide, with a reported lookup speed of 8.66ms in April 2016. Cloudflare provides DNS services to 6 million websites, and is adding approximately 20,000 new customers every day.

On April 1, 2018, Cloudflare announced a 'privacy-first' consumer DNS service, hosted at IP addresses "1.1.1.1" and "1.0.0.1". Alternatively, the service can be accessed via IPv6 at "2606:4700:4700::1111" and "2606:4700:4700::1001".

b. U.S. Needs A Data Protection Regulator Like The EU says The Atlantic's Foer

Bloomberg.com video above published Apr 6, 2018: Franklin Foer, staff writer at The Atlantic (domain: theatlantic.com) and author of "World Without Mind,"  discusses possible U.S regulation to secure social-media user data, and Facebook's influence on journalism. He speaks with Bloomberg's Emily Chang on "Bloomberg Technology."

c. US Senate Hearing Tuesday: Facebook, Social Media Privacy, and the Use and Abuse of Data
US Senate Hearing: Facebook, Social Media Privacy, and the Use and Abuse of Data
Senate Judiciary and Commerce Committees Announce Joint Hearing with Facebook CEO | United States Senate Committee on the JudiciaryTuesday, April 10, 2018, 2:15 p.m. EDT; sole witness will be Mark Zuckerberg, Chief Executive Officer, Facebook. LIVE video of the hearing above.

See also Why Mark Zuckerberg’s 14-Year Apology Tour Hasn’t Fixed Facebook | WIRED.com. Despite Mark Zuckerberg's repeated apologies over 14 years, Facebook has continued to violate users' privacy, driven primarily by its business model.

2) ICANN News
a. Data Protection and Privacy: ICANN WHOIS vs EU GDPR & Article 29 Working Party
In contrast to other global US-based corporations like Cloudfare (above) and Salesforce.com, Inc.,  ICANN has resisted and delayed implementing protections for personal data and privacy for domain name registrants (see WHOIS policies), particularly in the context of complying with the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), adopted by the EU on 14 April 2016, and enforceable worldwide effective May 25, 2018. See on Domain Mondo last week's News Review | ICANN's GDPR Train Wreck, A Day Late And A Dollar Short.
 ICANN's GDPR Train Wreck © 2018 DomainMondo.com
ICANN now says it is "hopeful" that the EU's Article 29 Data Protection Working Party (WP29), will come to the rescue of ICANN at the WP29's plenary April  10-11:
Discussion with Article 29 Working Party | ICANN.org 29 Mar 2018: "... we anticipate that ICANN and the WHOIS system will be on the upcoming Article 29 plenary's agenda for 10-11 April 2018 ... We look forward to receiving advice following the plenary, which we may rely on to complete the model [pdf], and are hopeful that we will also be provided with a moratorium on enforcement that would allow sufficient time to implement the model and build the appropriate accreditation system."--Göran Marby, ICANN President and CEO (emphasis and link added).
Article 29 Working Party plenary April 10-11 agenda (highlighting added):

Editor's note: Like everyone else (see Salesforce video), ICANN had two years to prepare for the GDPR prior to 25 May 2018. Perhaps the WP29 will grant ICANN a special extended moratorium on GDPR enforcement (but for how long? the next 2 to 4 years?). We may know more after the Article 29 plenary this week.

Prior correspondence from the EU's Article 29 Data Protection Working Party to ICANN:

See also 29 March 2018 Letter from Lena Lindgren Shelin to Göran Marby (pdf).

There are basically three different approaches to data protection and privacy in the world right now:
1. EU: The European Union stands firmly for the interests of the individual as reflected in the GDPR which requires any company, anywhere, respect the data rights of EU citizens, or face stiff penalties.
2. US: In the United States, corporations are allowed to trade in personal data for profit, and those practices have expanded largely unchecked.
3. China: The third approach is state control of data, emerging as China’s social credit system, presently an internal policy.
The EU policy puts control of personal data in the hands of the individual, while the U.S. approach grants control to corporations.
"... Now, weeks before the GDPR goes into effect, the evidence is mounting that the EU’s approach will dominate. One good measure of this dominance is the speed with which countries around the world are recognizing the supremacy of the EU data protection standard by adopting models that align closely with the GDPR ..."--The Next Cold War Is Here, and It's All About Data | WIRED.com 28 Mar 2018 (emphasis added).
b. In a related ICANN GDPR matter, I attended the online meeting Friday, April 6, of the ad hoc  group trying to draft an "Accreditation and Access Model for Non-Public WHOIS Data." On a technical level, I found the ICANN-provided WebEx conferencing inferior to Adobe Connect (I received pop-ups that said I had "messages" but could not see or access the "messages," which may have been because I was using the browser version of WebEx in lieu of downloading and installing java). Info on the Intellectual Property and Business Constituencies drafts are on this ICANN webpage and also here. Without getting into all of the details, I will note I found the group's latest draft deficient, and I doubt any responsible data controller subject to the GDPR would rely on it or adopt it as a "model" for accreditation and access.

c. Afilias press release re EU’s GDPR 5 Apr 2018: "Afilias today announced that it is temporarily suspending plans to limit the display of WHOIS data to comply with the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) currently scheduled to take effect on 25 MAY 2018. Afilias has received a number of questions about its plans, and anticipates that they may be affected by guidance from data protection authorities that has been requested by ICANN ..."

d. ICANN Webinar on the Draft Final Report of the NomCom2 Review | ICANN.org: 10 April 2018,  20:00 – 21:00 UTC [local time]. To participate, request a calendar invitation by email to mssi-secretariat@icann.org. More details here including dial-in instructions and webinar slide deck.

3) Names, Domains & Trademarks
graphic "Names, Domains & Trademarks" ©2017 DomainMondo.com
a. GDPR Impact on Domain Name Transfers and Registrant Contact Changes (pdf)

b. Domainer Scammed For $26k On A Stolen Domain! | NamePros.com

c. Where did the domain name investors go? | OnlineDomain.com

4) ICYMI Internet Domain News 
graphic "ICYMI Internet Domain News" ©2017 DomainMondo.com
a. Facebook's Ideological Imperialism | TheAtlantic.com: It’s mostly forgotten now, but for a time, expanding the reach of social networks—making Facebook, Twitter, and others like it as large as possible—was an avowed foreign-policy goal of the United States. That is, at least, what the Secretary of State [Hillary Clinton] said in the early days of this decade ... Facebook is sometimes accused of a kind of corporate imperialism, but Bosworth’s memo speaks more of an ideological imperialism. We will do these ugly things, because our cause is just—this is the cry of imperial ideologues throughout time (link added).

b. Turkey: Crackdown on Social Media Posts | Human Rights Watch | hrw.org: Detention, Prosecutions Over Criticisms of Turkish Army Actions in Syria.

c. China’s New Cyber Rules Add to Cost of Doing Business There | WSJ.com: Effective March 31, 2018, businesses can use only government-approved virtual private networks to bypass the country’s internet restrictions. See also Websites blocked in mainland China | Wikipedia.org.

d. Uruguayan journalist and TeleSUR news network founder Aram Aharonian: It's Time to Review 'Fairy Tale of Absolute Internet Freedom'.

e. Chomsky, Brian Eno Demand Ecuador #Reconnect Julian Assange | teleSURtv.net

5) Most read posts (# of pageviews Sun-Sat) this past week on DomainMondo.com: 
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-- John Poole, Editor, Domain Mondo 

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