RIPE NCC Report: Law Enforcement Agency Requests 2020

The RIPE NCC receives information requests from Law Enforcement Agencies (LEAs) and tries to facilitate the provision of any required publicly available information. The RIPE NCC does not provide any confidential or private information to LEAs without a court order or other legally enforceable order or request under Dutch law.

In 2020, the RIPE NCC received 59 information requests from LEAs, two of which were binding orders from a Dutch law enforcement authority. The RIPE NCC received a similar number of LEA requests as previous years. However, this year the requests were more evenly distributed across the RIPE NCC’s service region. Despite the number of LEA requests from several different jurisdictions, LEAs seemed to acknowledge the RIPE NCC’s procedures when the RIPE NCC advised that it either did not have the information or required a Dutch court order for non-public information.

In previous years, the RIPE NCC has included a category for requests “On whether the RIPE NCC can share non-public information”. As the RIPE NCC has not received questions of this type since 2016, this category was removed. In 2020, a new category was added regarding “Order for a Specific Action” requests.

The RIPE NCC received the following requests in 2020:

• Order for a Specific Action:
• One case comprising three orders from a Dutch law-enforcement authority to seize specific IP addresses. While these were legally binding orders, the actionable request within said orders was not clearly defined. As the RIPE NCC could not fulfil the request in a meaningful way, the LEA was advised of certain technical limitations that stood in the way of full compliance. As of end of year 2020, the RIPE NCC did not receive any follow up from the authorities.
• For non-public information:
• One request for non-public information.This request was from a Dutch law-enforcement authority ordering the RIPE NCC to provide non-public information it holds about organisations responsible for Internet number resources. The RIPE NCC complied with this request as it was legally binding.
• For public information:
• A request for publicly available information relating to the activity of the RIPE NCC, the holdership and the transfer of a particular block of IP addresses related to a criminal investigation. The RIPE NCC responded to the questions pointing to the publicly available information.
• A request on how to obtain information about IP addresses held by a particular entity. The RIPE NCC explained to the requester how to use the publicly available information in the RIPE Database to find all the IP addresses listed under the company’s name. Additionally, the RIPE NCC clarified that non-public information could only be provided with a Dutch court order.
• A request on how to obtain information from the RIPE NCC. The RIPE NCC provided information on how to access publicly available data. The RIPE NCC also referred to the RIPE NCC procedure ‘Handing Requests for Information, Orders and Investigations from Law Enforcement Agencies’.  
• A request for generic information on the RIPE Database and how to use the database in order to obtain the requested information. The RIPE NCC responded to the question and provided sources for further reading.
• For information the RIPE NCC does not have:
• 45 requests for the identification of Internet users of a particular IP address. The RIPE NCC provided information on its role as a Regional Internet Registry (RIR) and explained how to use publicly available information in the RIPE Database to find the party responsible for a particular resource.
• For information not related to the RIPE NCC:
• 8 requests for information not related to the RIPE NCC. The RIPE NCC explained its role as a Regional Internet Registry (RIR) and confirmed it is not responsible for the Internet-related areas under question in the relevant requests.

LEA Requests Received by Type of Request per Year

LEA Requests Received by Country per Year