Privacy Concerns

[Amanpreet Singh <amansomething@xxxxxxxxx>]

Dear ICANN –

Regarding the proposed rules governing companies that provide WHOIS privacy
services (as set forth in the Privacy and Policy Services Accreditation
Issues Policy document):

I urge you to respect internet users' rights to privacy and due process.
- Everyone deserves the right to privacy.
- No one’s personal information should be revealed without a court order,
regardless of whether the request comes from a private individual or law
enforcement agency.

Private information should be kept private. I personally work with many
small, family-owned businesses. The people in charge of these businesses
take many risks in order to provide for their families. They also
contribute greatly to their local economies. Why should the place where
their families live be required to be public information in order to simply
have a website that shows their business contact info? Most of these
business owners have enough to worry about without this additional burden.
If the personal details are required after a court order is issued, it's
available anyways, so there is no harm in masking the private residence and
contact info online. It can be easily obtained with the proper
authorization. To have a business, you have to register your personal
information with the local municipalities, but that's not made available
everywhere online for malicious botnets to harvest and spam with. It
shouldn't be thrown all over the web for websites either.

Thank you for your consideration.