[db-wg] 2022-01 New Version Policy Proposal (Personal Data in the RIPE Database)

In message <YrLp+ZTtuw+93KR/@jima.tpb.net>, 
Niels Bakker <niels=dbwg at bakker.net> wrote:

>The current proposal is also a solution to people entering wrong 
>information, as denis has clearly stated. Bad information in the 
>database should be avoided, it's worse than no data.

Wow!  I confess that I didn'rt read sections 4.0, 5.0, and 6.0 of this
proposal (2022-01) till now.

This is REALLY astonishing!  For a proposal that is initially billed as
one for which the need "arises from the need for the RIPE Database to
avoid the publishing of unnecessary personal data" this proposal veers 
quite dramatically and vastly off-course in sections 4.0, 5.0, and 6.0
as it attempts to contstruct a whole new and never-before-seen regime
to "verify" *all* WHOIS data... presumably for some value of "verify".

Who exactly is going to be tasked with verifying 100% of the names, email
addresses, phone numbers, and street addresses already present in the data
base and what procedures and criteria will be used for this process?  Will
NCC be tasked to do this huge amount of work?  Is there a a target completion
date?  2029 perhaps?

Even above and beyond the huge amount of work this proposal would create
for -somebody-, the practical challenges all seem to be left as an exercise
for the reader.

How exactly does one "verify" a voice phone number?

How exactly does one "verify" a mailing address?

As should already be apparent I am 100% in favor of *all* of this kind of
"verification", and indeed, I am very much looking forward to it all being
done.  But as noted above, there are a LOT of unanswered questions regarding
how, when, and by whom this will all be done.  And that is -before- we even
get into the question of what the plan is to -force- existing members... not
even to mention legacy holders... to have accurate WHOIS info if they just
don't much feel like it.  How can existing members be forced into this if
their existing contracts do not already require it?  And what will be the
penality imposed upon any member who refuses to go along?  Expulsion from
RIPE and/or termination of their membership??  That is sure to be wildly
popular among the membership... NOT!

None of these questions are answered by the proposal.  Again, all of these
questions are left as an exercise for the reader.  I don't see how this
propsal can fly, given that it fails to even try to answer any of the
obvious questions it raises.

Furthermore, as I've said, sections  4.0, 5.0, and 6.0 of this proposal are
quite clearly entirely unrelated to the goal of *removing* personal data
from the data base.  So really, what we have here is two entirely unrelated
proposals... one for removal of some data and another for the verification
of other data... glued together to make them superficially appear to be
just a single proposal.

I'm frankly not sure that it is even worth further discussion of this proposal
until such time as it is broken into two propsals by its author... one for
removal of personal data from WHOIS, which I remain adamantly opposed to,
and a separate one for verification of WHOIS data, which I vigorously support.


Regards,
rfg