Internet DRAFT - draft-hardie-perpass-touchstone
draft-hardie-perpass-touchstone
Network Working Group T. Hardie
Internet-Draft
Intended status: Informational October 19, 2013
Expires: April 22, 2014
A personal touchstone for discussions of pervasive passive monitoring
draft-hardie-perpass-touchstone-00
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Abstract
This document contains the author's personal statement regarding
pervasive monitoring and it suggests a touchstone for the Internet
engineering community to consider in protocol and system design.
Status of This Memo
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Copyright Notice
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Internet-Draft Personal Touchstone October 2013
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Table of Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
2. Motivation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
3. What is to be done? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
4. A personal touchstone . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
5. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
6. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
7. Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
8. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
Author's Address . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
1. Introduction
It has become public knowledge that multiple national governments
have severally and together engaged in pervasive monitoring of
Internet communications. By reducing expectations of privacy for
Internet-based communication, this surveillance circumscribes the
conditions under which users will feel it is safe or appropriate to
use the network. This state surveillance thus amounts to an attack
on the value of the Internet, as it reduces the network effect of
each user's participation. This document argues that it is the
responsibility of the Internet engineering community to restore that
trust and proposes a touchstone or litmus test for protocols and
systems intended for Internet scale.
2. Motivation
Surveillance gives rise to self-censorship. Because the Internet is
one of a very few global communication technologies, the impact of
pervasive surveillance on it is self-censorship on a scale that harms
humanity as a whole. Individuals who would use the network to speak
may remain mute. Both within and among nations, communities which
would otherwise form or grow may be retarded in their emergence or
completely silenced. The scope of human interconnection is being
damaged by these actions, and it must be restored.
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3. What is to be done?
The Internet must change to respond to pervasive monitoring. Where
protocols have traditionally mandated the implementation of integrity
protection and confidentiality but not mandated their use, the use of
techniques to achieve these must become a baseline expectation.
Mechanisms to detect forgery of credentials must be improved and
deployed. We must consider more carefully and more consistently the
effects of information leakage by DNS and other infrastructure.
Review and re-review of the components and systems which enable
confidentiality and integrity protection must become a norm.
4. A personal touchstone
Beyond these thoughts of the Internet infrastructure changes required
to restore trust in the network, I believe Internet engineers need to
have a focus on the users of their systems and protocols in order to
see the impact of the tradeoffs they are making. An example for me
is this:
"Can a gay kid in Uganda use this safely?"
If the answer to that is "yes", chances are it meets a reasonable set
of confidentiality and integrity requirements. If the answer is
"no", the default response for me will be to take it back to the
forge for a bit more fire and shaping. In extraordinary
circumstances, another response would be a very strong statement of
the limits on when this tool could be used.
Obviously, there are many possible litmus tests which could be
applied. I have chosen this one in part because Uganda has a
challenging network environment where it would be tempting to
optimize network capacity or locality in ways which risk privacy. I
have chosen it in part because gay people are a target of state
suspicion or action in multiple countries. Mostly, though, I have
chosen it because gay kids who find no community kill themselves in
shocking numbers. There can be for me no better call to action to
restore the human communication that this monitoring costs.
As noted above, this is a personal touchstone, and it may not be
appropriate for all readers, all circumstances, or the community
as whole. I believe, however, that considering the impact of
pervasive surveillance is difficult in part because its effects
are diffused across the whole network. Focusing on a touchstone
user or class of users can help focus consideration of the impact
of protocol choices or system design decisions. I encourage
readers making such choices to choose their own.
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5. Security Considerations
This document asserts that mandatory to implement security is too
weak a response to pervasive surveillance, and it proposes that
confidentiality and integrity protection become the norm. It also
suggests that the balance between confidentiality and other
optimizations needs to be seriously reconsidered by the Internet
community as a whole.
6. IANA Considerations
This document makes no requests of IANA
7. Acknowledgments
The author thanks those folks kind enough to review early versions
of this document.
8. References
Author's Address
Ted Hardie
Email: Ted.ietf@gmail.com
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