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Data Protection and Privacy: Progress Update and Next Steps

11 September 2017
By Akram Atallah

Akram Atallah

Former President, Global Domains Division
and
Theresa Swinehart

Theresa Swinehart

SVP, Global Domains & Strategy

Theresa Swinehart is the Senior Vice President of Global Domains and Strategy. In this role, she works with the community, contracted parties, stakeholders, and policymakers to ensure broad and inclusive engagement, consensus-based policymaking through ICANN’s multistakeholder model, and effective, accountable policy implementation. Her responsibilities include policy implementation, review operation, and cross-functional strategic initiatives such as ICANN’s compliance with the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation. An expert in global Internet governance, Theresa also serves as co-deputy to the President and CEO. Her extensive industry experience, including nearly 20 years as a key contributor to ICANN’s growth and development, gives her a valuable perspective on how ICANN organization can work efficiently and collaboratively to better serve the global Internet community.

Theresa rejoined ICANN after three years as Executive Director of Global Internet Policy at Verizon Communications, where she specialized in emerging issues as well as stakeholder and policy engagement. Prior to this, she served as ICANN’s Vice President of Global and Strategic Partnerships, leading a team responsible for partnership reform, global engagement and outreach, and the participation in international forums. Before ICANN, Theresa was Director of Global E-Commerce at MCI, where she was responsible for such issues as Internet service provider liability, data protection, and participation in Internet-related forums, including the formation of ICANN. 

Theresa has a bachelor’s degree in international relations from the University of California, Davis, a graduate degree in international studies from the University of Vienna, Austria, and a juris doctorate from American University. She served on the Internet Society’s Board of Trustees and Internet Governance Forum’s Multistakeholder Advisory Committee. Theresa began her career in international human rights. She is fluent in German and is conversant in French.

In addition to the U.N. six languages, this content is also available in

In this blog, we want to provide you with an update on our data protection and privacy work as it relates to the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

In late July, we published the first draft of a matrix of user stories related to registrants' data that registries and registrars collect, display, and process, pursuant to ICANN contracts. We thank everyone who contributed to the initial matrix, and provided feedback during the 30-day public review period.

We have now consolidated the information that was collected into a more easily readable format [PDF, 686 KB]. A high-level summary is also included in the document. We encourage you to review the submissions, and the summary.

As a reminder, the intent of this exercise is to inform discussions on the possible effect of the GDPR, on ICANN's contracts with registries, and registrars. The information in the matrix, is intended to explain the multiple uses of the data to the appropriate legal entities, such as the Data Protection Authorities, to help them understand their uses in regards to the registries' and registrars' legal obligations, related to GDPR.

We also want to reiterate, that this effort is not intended to replace existing policies, policy work that is underway, or ICANN's Procedure for Handling WHOIS Conflicts with Privacy Law.

Next Steps

With the data collection stage completed, we will now move on to the following activities:

  • We have engaged a specialist European law firm, Hamilton Advokatbyrå, to assist us with the legal analysis of the data in the matrix. A draft of the initial phase of the analysis from Hamilton, is expected to be ready to be shared for feedback from the community, prior to the ICANN meetings in Abu Dhabi, beginning in October 2017.
  • Engagement Information: During the past few months, we have had several discussions with stakeholders, including data protection authorities (DPAs), to inform them of ICANN's work in this area. We look forward to continuing to engage with the DPA community and other stakeholders, including the ICANN ecosystem, as our work and analysis progress over the coming weeks and months.

We also expect to participate in discussions on GDPR at ICANN60 in Abu Dhabi. The meetings schedule will be posted soon. Please check back regularly for pertinent sessions, and information on remote participation, if you won't be there in person.

We will keep you updated on our progress, and hope that your organization's efforts to comply with GDPR are going well.

Authors

Akram Atallah

Former President, Global Domains Division

Akram Atallah

Former President, Global Domains Division
Theresa Swinehart

Theresa Swinehart

SVP, Global Domains & Strategy
Theresa Swinehart

Theresa Swinehart

SVP, Global Domains & Strategy

Theresa Swinehart is the Senior Vice President of Global Domains and Strategy. In this role, she works with the community, contracted parties, stakeholders, and policymakers to ensure broad and inclusive engagement, consensus-based policymaking through ICANN’s multistakeholder model, and effective, accountable policy implementation. Her responsibilities include policy implementation, review operation, and cross-functional strategic initiatives such as ICANN’s compliance with the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation. An expert in global Internet governance, Theresa also serves as co-deputy to the President and CEO. Her extensive industry experience, including nearly 20 years as a key contributor to ICANN’s growth and development, gives her a valuable perspective on how ICANN organization can work efficiently and collaboratively to better serve the global Internet community.

Theresa rejoined ICANN after three years as Executive Director of Global Internet Policy at Verizon Communications, where she specialized in emerging issues as well as stakeholder and policy engagement. Prior to this, she served as ICANN’s Vice President of Global and Strategic Partnerships, leading a team responsible for partnership reform, global engagement and outreach, and the participation in international forums. Before ICANN, Theresa was Director of Global E-Commerce at MCI, where she was responsible for such issues as Internet service provider liability, data protection, and participation in Internet-related forums, including the formation of ICANN. 

Theresa has a bachelor’s degree in international relations from the University of California, Davis, a graduate degree in international studies from the University of Vienna, Austria, and a juris doctorate from American University. She served on the Internet Society’s Board of Trustees and Internet Governance Forum’s Multistakeholder Advisory Committee. Theresa began her career in international human rights. She is fluent in German and is conversant in French.

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