In response to my comments of the ICANN scope of remit within DNS and the RDS Volker Greimann wrote:
/I disagree that the problem of how to authenticate law enforcement requests should be dumped at the doorstep of contracted parties. The policy must be complete and give structure to this issue./ I agree with the sense of Volker's position and did not mean that ICANN should or can wash it hands clean of the process of defining how to authenticate law enforcement requests, but it should not try to go it alone on just DNS data. Here, I would separate out the "how to authenticate" from the rest of the RDS discussion. I would suggest that it be carried out in a wider multistakeholder discussion where ICANN is an interested stakeholder working with interested constituencies (human rights, etc.) governments and law enforcement officials, working to fashion a policy that probably results in multilateral agreements.
There will not be a authentication process for DNS data that is separate from the authentication process for data elsewhere in the Internet and digital ecosystem. As current case after case demonstrates, law enforcement access to DNS related data is only a small slice of the data now being requested. The trans-border nature of data means that multilateral agreements are inevitable and the only path to a sustainable (and hopefully sane) policy. Sam Lanfranco, NPOC/CSIH