As part of the amendment to the Cybercrime Convention, the Council of Europe in Strasbourg is also advising an additional clause that could regulate cross-border access to domain owner data. Alexander Seger, head of the Cybercrime Convention Contract Office, reported on the plans on 69. ICANN meeting that was moved from the originally planned venue Hamburg to the current “online conference capital” Zoom. Because the Whois data is no longer public since the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) came into force, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is still raging a bitter dispute over future access by law enforcement officers, trademark lawyers and security researchers .

Since 2017 the Council of Europe in Strasbourg has adopted an additional protocol on the 2004 negotiated the Cybercrime Convention that came into force. The declared aim is in particular to accelerate cross-border access to cloud data by the prosecutors of the meanwhile 65 signatory states of the convention.

Direct access for law enforcement officers to domain owner data In these negotiations, the negotiators of the member states of the Cybercrime Convention also took up the subject of Whois. “It is discussed to include an article in the second additional protocol,” confirmed Seger to heise online. As soon as the corresponding article is available, this, like the other articles, will be published for a discussion with the affected groups such as ICANN, he assured.

The cross-border access to the domain owner data is available From the point of view of the Council of Europe experts, this is in line with the cross-border access provided by the Council of Europe to the data of Internet users by law enforcement officers. At the same time, Seger admitted that this access to the names and addresses of domain owners via the cybercrime convention could only be a supplement to the Whois access system that has been hotly debated in ICANN since the old Whois was switched off.

Apart from the scope of the 47 member states of the Council of Europe, the Cybercrime Convention is still not a global agreement. Above all, over 70 percent of requests for domain owner data come from trademark lawyers according to a study by ICANN registrars. However, the Cybercrime Convention would only provide criminal prosecutors with access rights.

US representative for central data access The Trademark lawyers are dissatisfied with the recently jointly developed semi-centralized “System for Standardized Access / Disclosure” (SSAD). At the current ICANN meeting, they again expressed their displeasure that the decision on the disclosure of the domain owner data is made locally, usually by the registrar of the user concerned.

For a more centralized system again recruited an employee of the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and representatives of the US Federal Police FBI. After all, it’s not just about identifying phishers and other DNA criminals based on names and patterns. It is also a concern of the authorities to warn the victims, said FBI agent Gabriel Andrews. Even Mickey Mouse entries, i.e. incorrect domain owner data, are still easier to find than no data at all.

A clear statement from the EU Commission is required A current letter from ICANN Managing Director Göran Marby to the EU Commission illustrates how desperate the ICANN leaders are over the dispute over the access solution. In it he asks the Commission to make a clear statement as to whether the registrars and registries of their responsibility