Preserve domain registration privacy

[Patrick Finnigan <patrick.k.finnigan@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hello,

I'm writing to encourage you to NOT expose WHOIS data for domain
registration. While I can understand some motivations to want to
de-anonymize this data, perhaps to expose the identity of criminals or
extremists who post offensive sites, I see this as an affront to privacy. I
think it's important to keep the internet open and private without
censorship since it is a vast library of information and communication
channels. As a software engineer (formerly at Microsoft), I worry about
making the internet de-anonymized because I think it aids oversight bodies
(e.g. the NS A) in surveillance and threatens the openness and anonymity of
people using the internet. Please consider the harm to privacy by exposing
this data.

-Patrick