In message <DB7PR06MB5017A8B5895186225DA850AF94D80@DB7PR06MB5017.eurprd06.prod.outlook.com>, Brian Nisbet <brian.nisbet@heanet.ie> wrote:

While obviously I can only make comments for AA-WG (I note there are many WGs in x-post) I need to point out that this is not a suitable email for this working group.

Others may disagree. I most certainly do. The Anti-Abuse Working Group has been repeatedly given ample opportunities to provide a formal definition for the term "abuse" with respect to the Internet, and Internet resources. It has declined all of these opportunities. It logically and inescapably follows from that fact that as far as the entire RIPE community goes, "abuse" remains in the eye of the beholder. I know more than a few people, both on this list and elsewhere, who, like me, are of the opinion that active participation in the fradulent theft of IP address blocks, regadless of which portion of the world's Internet they are stolen from, consititutes "abuse" of a kind that quite properly is and should be a concern of this working group. Also and likewise, I know more than a few people, both in this Working Group, and elsewhere, who, like me, are of the opinion that the act of attempting to fradulently extort IP address assets from the rightful owner of said assets, e.g. the City of Cape Town, South Africa, is "abuse" of a type that is and rightly should be of concern to this Working Group, and further, that these acts are also a repugnant abuse against simple honesty, decency, and humanity generally, and ones that cannot be either excused or dismissed, let alone rewarded with a RIPE NCC executive board seat. You, Brian, along with every other member of this Working Group had your opportunity to codify a definition of "abuse" that would explicitly exclude theft, fraud, and extortion, thuse rendering exactly such gross misdeeds explicitly irrelevant to this Working Group. You declined to do so, as did others. It follows that you cannot now say that such acts have no relevance to the Anti-Abuse Working Group. You are the Chainman of the Working Group. You are not the King... an entirely salient point which our own Mr. Trump has of late needed to be reminded of also. Theft, fraud, and extortion, especially as they relates to IP address allocations, as in this case, may be something that you personally prefer to turn a blind eye to, but your personal preferences in this regard cannot and will not override the conscience of those who prefer to see things as they are, based on abundant evidence, even if those members of this WG who still place some value on simple decency and honesty are in the minority. Regards, rfg

The we are not the internet police crowd for instance And the amazing number of ripe luminiaries, wg chairs etc that just happened to be in the room for an AOB session during a previous wg with the intention of voting Richard Cox out of his co chair position. There just doesn’t seem to be any actual interest in fighting abuse. And much more interest in coming up with interesting reasons as to why action must be taken by an undefined someone else in most every abuse case that is brought up. This wg is not meeting whatever role is defined in its charter I’m afraid --srs ________________________________ From: anti-abuse-wg <anti-abuse-wg-bounces@ripe.net> on behalf of Serge Droz via anti-abuse-wg <anti-abuse-wg@ripe.net> Sent: Friday, April 17, 2020 12:25:51 PM To: anti-abuse-wg@ripe.net <anti-abuse-wg@ripe.net> Subject: Re: [anti-abuse-wg] RIPE NCC Executive Board election Hello List I've been, mostly passive, on this list for quite a while. I must say we really excel in terms of abusing each other. And I agree with Ronald, we seem to fail coming forward with even partial solutions to prevent abuse. I am disappointed by the tone on this list. One can, and should disagree on topics, but one should not loose the common goal, reduce abuse in our case. I fear we are doing just that. Maybe the striving for a perfect solution, that has no side effects is not the right approach. Criminals don't mind side effects, and maybe rather than avoiding them we should try to control and minimize them. While I'm not the right person to determine what topics are appropriate for the list, I don't see any harm in asking people to maybe consider viable candidates for board positions. We can discuss the tone. This group repeatedly pointed out the importance of a bottom up, democratic governance structure for RIPE. I'd argue, that a good selection of candidates for such a position is the basis for this. I would hope for the abuse WG to become a little more pragmatic and positive thinking when trying to come up with solutions to fight abuse. "Divide and conquer" is a concept criminals thrive on too. Having said that, I wish everyone good health and and a hopefully enjoyable weekend. Best Serge -- Dr. Serge Droz Chair of the FIRST Board of Directors https://www.first.org

On 17/04/2020 10:09, Tõnu Tammer via anti-abuse-wg wrote:

Dear friends,

Every member of the community, who is on the receiving end of abuse, feels that something should be done!

I reiterate what I have said before: this is just one example of how todays' approach in handling abuse or designing anti-abuse policy is not really working. I am not the only one who has realised that this community seems not to agree anything. That is perfectly understandable. When once there was just academia who drove the development of internet, now the community has grown encompassing legitimate business but also abusers who have become part of that community. We can always find reasons (justified or not) on why not to do anything or change anything but we have to understand that impact of not doing anything will continue to grow.

Already number of countries argue rightly that the multi-stakeholder approach is not working. And that is all too true. The reasons why they want to change are likely not driven by the fact current approach is not working but something more serious. We have to stop fuelling the arguments that decentralised model is not delivering. If we continue as we have, we will have changes forced upon us (thing we have turned down so far) but its likely that more will come and things, we would not be happy to see at all.

Tõnu nailed it.  Print it and frame it. -Hank

I'm sorry to hear that you have given up the fight Hank to point to quotes for inspiration I personally prefer something from the classics “The penalty good men pay for indifference to public affairs, is to be ruled by evil men.” It sounds as though you have admitted defeat which is ok, but to endorse it as the norm isn't helping anyone and only furthers the problem. For those looking to "Turn on, tune in, drop out" please don't discourage others, one can point to Ron's tone or verbose delivery and make comment, but he is trying. Are you? As members of the anti-abuse working group, we shouldn't promote telling others to quit, rather ask what can anti-abuse being doing to make better use of the insights that Ron and others are discovering? To the responder from Europol can you help provide some insight into what is needed to enact change? Is there a framing issue? Audience issue? ... etc To Tõnu's point we need a way for this community to take action or a subset of the community that does agree that action is needed. We could work with CIRCL to push for wider use or coverage from existing projects like https://bgpranking.circl.lu/ or work to develop a similar function within RIPE. To those who will respond we aren't the internet police, if there are no "Internet Police" then we are all the internet police and need to start taking creating community mechanisms to identify bad neighborhoods and work with our peers to deal with them. Take it easy On Fri, Apr 17, 2020 at 10:49 AM Hank Nussbacher <hank@efes.iucc.ac.il> wrote:

On 17/04/2020 09:55, Serge Droz via anti-abuse-wg wrote:

Serge,

Your post brought a smile to my face.

When bank robber Willie Sutton was asked "why do you rob banks?" he answered "because that is where the money is". So too with the Internet. Criminals and miscreants (a term coined and favored by Team Cymru), have long ago realized that Internet resources are worth money and where else can you be close to these resources than inside any RIR. Some events make it to the news and probably many others will never see the light of day.

Ronald's overly long tomes with a tone I disapprove of yet the content I do approve of, are scoffed at by many and yet I am reminded of Danish author Hans Christian Andersen tale "The Emperor's New Clothes". And we are the emperor.

I have long ago stopped trying to make the Internet a safer place. Not gonna happen. I protect my resources as best I can. I protect my little pond as best I can.

A smile appears on my face when I realize there are still naive and idealistic people out there who still think they can make a difference. Not gonna happen.

Regards, Hank

...

Hello List

I've been, mostly passive, on this list for quite a while. I must say we really excel in terms of abusing each other. And I agree with Ronald, we seem to fail coming forward with even partial solutions to prevent abuse. I am disappointed by the tone on this list. One can, and should disagree on topics, but one should not loose the common goal, reduce abuse in our case. I fear we are doing just that.

Maybe the striving for a perfect solution, that has no side effects is not the right approach. Criminals don't mind side effects, and maybe rather than avoiding them we should try to control and minimize them.

While I'm not the right person to determine what topics are appropriate for the list, I don't see any harm in asking people to maybe consider viable candidates for board positions. We can discuss the tone. This group repeatedly pointed out the importance of a bottom up, democratic governance structure for RIPE. I'd argue, that a good selection of candidates for such a position is the basis for this.

I would hope for the abuse WG to become a little more pragmatic and positive thinking when trying to come up with solutions to fight abuse. "Divide and conquer" is a concept criminals thrive on too.

Having said that, I wish everyone good health and and a hopefully enjoyable weekend.

Best Serge

(Yes, I'm still X-Posting, folks, this will be my last email to all the copied WGs) Ronald, I have no issue with this group fighting abuse, I never have. In fact I would warmly welcome more policies, documentation and actions that can do that. That isn't to say there haven't been some put forward, albeit not all of those have reached consensus. That is the nature of our system, but I will say again that we are further along than we were and I hope that progress, even if it's slower than some may like, continues. What I do not think is suitable is a mail to this and other lists putting out vague comments, with the most specific (ie the position on a list) referring to the wrong person, about an election that is specific to members of the RIPE NCC. The crossover is significant, but far from total and I do not feel this is the proper place for electioneering. But you are right, I am not the king. Nor would I ever want to be. I am a co-chair of the AA-WG and as such am a facilitator, a coordinator and a go-between between this group and other groups. Part of that role is to facilitate discussion on this list, including the kind of email I sent yesterday. However I was appointed by this Working Group and it is entirely up to the Working Group if they wish me to continue in the job. The process, for those who are curious, is contained within this document: https://www.ripe.net/participate/ripe/wg/anti-abuse/anti-abuse-wg-chair-sele... This is not done to garner support, nor check in on how I'm doing, albeit feedback is always welcome, rather I want to be as transparent as possible. There is a lot of inertia in our community, as there is in others, and sometimes people assume that those in what we shall loosely refer to as "leadership positions" are immovable. Anyway, to return to your point and that of others. Is this Working Group, as a single entity, doing enough to fight abuse on the Internet? Almost certainly not. Are many, many members, including people such as yourself Ronald, working very hard in a lot of places? Absolutely. How do we do more? Well, to my mind, we go back to the charter (which can, of course, be changed by the Working Group at any point in time) and ask why we have never done the documentation work that's in there? Also, we continue with incremental policy changes, which is a long, hard, slow road, but gets results. I would also be mindful of what Tõnu said in regards to outside regulation, something I have mentioned at times. But as with any WG, the power and action is in the hands of the members, not *just* the Co-Chairs, who are members too. As a final point, if you have a preference as to who you would like to see elected in May and you don't have a vote yourself, then I encourage you to reach out to your friends and colleagues who are members of the RIPE NCC to discuss it with them, broadcast it to suitable fora, hire planes to write messages in the sky, but please, don't do it here. Thank you, Brian Co-Chair, RIPE AA-WG Brian Nisbet Service Operations Manager HEAnet CLG, Ireland's National Education and Research Network 1st Floor, 5 George's Dock, IFSC, Dublin D01 X8N7, Ireland +35316609040 brian.nisbet@heanet.ie www.heanet.ie Registered in Ireland, No. 275301. CRA No. 20036270 ________________________________________ From: db-wg <db-wg-bounces@ripe.net> on behalf of Ronald F. Guilmette via db-wg <db-wg@ripe.net> Sent: Friday 17 April 2020 06:57 Cc: db-wg@ripe.net; routing-wg@ripe.net; address-policy-wg@ripe.net; anti-abuse-wg@ripe.net Subject: Re: [db-wg] [anti-abuse-wg] RIPE NCC Executive Board election CAUTION[External]: This email originated from outside of the organisation. Do not click on links or open the attachments unless you recognise the sender and know the content is safe. In message <DB7PR06MB5017A8B5895186225DA850AF94D80@DB7PR06MB5017.eurprd06.prod.outlook.com>, Brian Nisbet <brian.nisbet@heanet.ie> wrote:

While obviously I can only make comments for AA-WG (I note there are many WGs in x-post) I need to point out that this is not a suitable email for this working group.

Others may disagree. I most certainly do. The Anti-Abuse Working Group has been repeatedly given ample opportunities to provide a formal definition for the term "abuse" with respect to the Internet, and Internet resources. It has declined all of these opportunities. It logically and inescapably follows from that fact that as far as the entire RIPE community goes, "abuse" remains in the eye of the beholder. I know more than a few people, both on this list and elsewhere, who, like me, are of the opinion that active participation in the fradulent theft of IP address blocks, regadless of which portion of the world's Internet they are stolen from, consititutes "abuse" of a kind that quite properly is and should be a concern of this working group. Also and likewise, I know more than a few people, both in this Working Group, and elsewhere, who, like me, are of the opinion that the act of attempting to fradulently extort IP address assets from the rightful owner of said assets, e.g. the City of Cape Town, South Africa, is "abuse" of a type that is and rightly should be of concern to this Working Group, and further, that these acts are also a repugnant abuse against simple honesty, decency, and humanity generally, and ones that cannot be either excused or dismissed, let alone rewarded with a RIPE NCC executive board seat. You, Brian, along with every other member of this Working Group had your opportunity to codify a definition of "abuse" that would explicitly exclude theft, fraud, and extortion, thuse rendering exactly such gross misdeeds explicitly irrelevant to this Working Group. You declined to do so, as did others. It follows that you cannot now say that such acts have no relevance to the Anti-Abuse Working Group. You are the Chainman of the Working Group. You are not the King... an entirely salient point which our own Mr. Trump has of late needed to be reminded of also. Theft, fraud, and extortion, especially as they relates to IP address allocations, as in this case, may be something that you personally prefer to turn a blind eye to, but your personal preferences in this regard cannot and will not override the conscience of those who prefer to see things as they are, based on abundant evidence, even if those members of this WG who still place some value on simple decency and honesty are in the minority. Regards, rfg