hi Alissa,

On 23 Sep 2013, at 16:32 , Alissa Cooper <[email protected]> wrote:

> Hi Brian,
> 
> Thanks for your comments.
> 
> On Sep 23, 2013, at 3:40 AM, Brian Trammell <[email protected]> wrote:
> 
>> hi Stephen, all,
>> 
>> (copying ietf-privacy as requested in the draft)
>> 
>> I've read the draft; it's a very good and welcome start at extending 6973 to 
>> a set of concrete recommendations for protocol design. I've got one comment 
>> on opportunistic encryption, though:
>> 
>> In section 3, halfway down the page: "...at minimum, opportunistic 
>> encryption needs to be well-defined for almost all new IETF standards track 
>> protocols." 
>> 
>> I understand the rationale behind that "almost", but the lines around it 
>> will need to be very clearly drawn. On brief consideration, I cannot think 
>> of a single _new_ protocol for which opportunistic encryption shouldn't be 
>> the default, for reasons other than interoperability with an existing 
>> protocol that has a significant installed base. Even in such cases, I think 
>> it would be useful to be very clear that communication in the clear for 
>> interoperability is an exception, a "legacy" mode, "to be deprecated", or 
>> other not-very-happy-sounding words that mean "we realize we're stuck with 
>> it in this case but that's really no excuse."
> 
> I have not been super comfortable with the "almost" either. I've been 
> thinking instead of something like:
> 
> "As a consequence, at minimum, opportunistic encryption needs to be 
> well-defined for new IETF standards track protocols. This requirement may be 
> waved only in exceptional circumstances where the protocol's utility would be 
> eliminated or severely diminished if opportunistic encryption were defined."

This is a better version of what I've been trying to come up with. (Nit: 
s/waved/waived/)

>> The information radiated even from protocols which have no obvious 
>> connection with personal data can be correlated with other information which 
>> can paint a very rich behavioral picture, that only takes one unprotected 
>> link in the chain to associate with an identity. Opportunistic encryption 
>> everywhere reduces the content of this radiated information, as well as 
>> reducing the risk of unprotected links holding some associable identifier. 
>> So exceptions will have to be very well justified if an aim of this work is 
>> protection of privacy against pervasive surveillance.
> 
> I'm not ready to ink this on my skin, but it does seem like good text to add 
> to the document, with minimal tweaks. :)

Now that I've seen the direction this draft is going in, I'm hoping to get back 
to -perpass-ppa soon, to move it more in the direction of a catalog of 
information radiation to look for.

Cheers,

Brian

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