What if we created a rule that gave everyone—good or bad—the right to hide their license plate, where they live, who they are, and just go incognito? What if we made it a right to walk into any building in the world, and simply say “No, thank you” when the security guards asked for one’s identification? The criminals would celebrate, and we’d all be utterly alarmed. We would immediately be afraid for our personal safety.

And that’s why I am utterly alarmed. This is exactly what is about to happen as the conflict between the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (EU GDPR) and the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers’ (ICANN) WHOIS policies escalates. In short, the EU GDPR requires that any business that touches European citizens provide a right to privacy. ICANN has long established rules for the WHOIS database that emphasize transparency over privacy. Anyone who registers for a domain name (your virtual address on the Internet) must provide their name, physical address, email address, and telephone numbers for all of us to know who is the owner of the website connected to that domain name. All of this information is publicly available in the WHOIS database—kind of like the white pages for the Internet.

Well, the EU GDPR regulators think that violates their data privacy rules, and so ICANN is looking at limiting access to that data.

As a former federal prosecutor, this data was critical to my work in identifying criminals behind websites posting videos of children getting brutally abused or raped. It was also a critical starting point to build cases against online stalkers promoting stranger rape against their victims. In addition, WHOIS data helped us find movie pirates who were selling illegal online copies of movies that were still in-theater. As the head of internet enforcement for the Motion Picture Association of America, we would build cases using this data and often refer them to law enforcement for action. At Microsoft, we used WHOIS information to investigate cases globally involving hackers, fraudsters, and spammers attacking our customers. At MySpace, we stopped predators, spammers, identity thieves, and gangsters by unmasking criminals and civil no-gooders through the use of this data.

Yes, our online safety is clearly at risk. But, let me be clear, what happens online happens offline—these are not separate worlds. A predator finds their prey online to rape them offline. A thief gets access to life savings safely kept in bank accounts of seniors by setting up fraudulent online websites. A teen dies because she bought illegal drugs from an online drugstore.

Over the past eight years, I have helped real world people with issues that have started online, all through the use of WHOIS data. For example, I helped a revenge porn victim by unearthing the person behind the online postings. Just recently, the WHOIS database helped me identify who was behind multiple online attacks against a prominent actor and his children.

These are the stories that demonstrate the real need for transparency and accountability to help ensure personal safety in the online environment. Of course, respect for data privacy is important, but a myopic focus on privacy that elevates it above public safety and even protection of life itself is utterly unbalanced and dangerous. Unfortunately, the recent guidance issued to ICANN on April 11 by the Article 29 Working Party of European Data Protection Authorities adopts such an unbalanced approach. There are literally hundreds of thousands of people, adults and children, whose personal safety will be directly impacted when we let criminals put on hoodies and hide in the alley by creating a regulatory environment that essentially shuts off the well-lit neighborhoods that the WHOIS database provides. Just ask the over fifty national and international entities that signed a letter to ICANN raising awareness around these issues. These are groups and people from every aspect of our lives—these are people who care about the safety and security of our society.

It’s easy to make rules protecting our desire to be private. It’s much more challenging to write and properly apply regulations to achieve the correct and proportional balance that also recognizes and protects our global and fundamental right to be safe anywhere, anytime, anyplace. It’s a challenge we can’t ignore. Now is the time for the EU Data Protection Authorities to broaden their vision, lean forward and help solve this problem before May 25, 2018, instead of trying to pass the euro to ICANN.