ICANN - Respect Our Privacy

[Dan Bunker <dbunked@xxxxxxxxx>]

Dear ICANN –

I am a recent graduate of Brigham Young University, a private, church-owned
and operated university. I felt the need to create a website that exercised
my free speech and object to certain church practices, but I was under
pressure of possible church discipline for providing the resource. WHOIS
privacy is very important to me, because it allowed me to publish the
website while keeping unique identifiers privately recorded with my
registrar. Were this privacy mechanism not in place, I could have been
discovered, disciplined, kicked out of university-contracted housing, fired
from my two on-campus jobs, had a freeze placed on my academic record, and
my degree could have been withheld. Some of my friends have had some of
these things happen because of their association with the LGBT community.
Needless to say, WHOIS privacy was vital to my free speech.

My official comment is as follows:

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. Thank you.

Dan Bunker
gpg --keyserver pgp.mit.edu --recv-keys 44625E438589D4B0