Hi Martin, Bruce, Stephane,
At 02:07 04-12-2013, Martin Millnert wrote:
For the other, mostly technical, arguments put forth by you:

  p3. A sovereign entity may outlaw technical protocol X:
  It wouldn't be a sovereign entity if it couldn't.  It could outlaw Pi
= 3.1459... for all I care.  Point is we should not let a single
Sovereign Entity outlaw the correct definition of Pi, for the rest of
us. It is precisely within IETF's jurisdiction to define our global
common Internet communication protocols.  If a single backwards
Sovereign Entity held veto power over this we would be much poorer
today. Instead the backwards sovereign entities will have to live
without these protocols, which is what they in their sovereignty decided
anyway, so everybody would be happy...

Someone mentioned in a non-IETF discussion that there was a precedent about a technical question which might fit the above (3.146) argument. It was recently mentioned in a news article that there is a public misconception about the Internet. In my opinion it would be politically inappropriate for the IETF to state that some country would have to live without a protocol.

On page 1 of the document, it is mentioned that it is a:

"deliberate attempt to defeat the correct technical operation of the Internet.
   In this case, the feature of communications privacy"

I would use "confidentiality" instead of "communications privacy" [1]. I agree that, as it is argued in the document, "attack" has a different meaning.

It is difficult to ignore the context. I posted a draft (see http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-moonesamy-traffic-peeking-00 ). I'll be candid; the objective of a spying organization is to spy. An in-depth discussion of that will alienate some IETF participants. Not saying anything about [I don't know what word to choose] is an alternative. Another alternative is to look at how the political problem affects the technical one.

The document argues that there is "no technical solution to this conundrum". I agree to that. An interesting point (in the document) is that "universal encryption of HTTP connections proposed on the working group mailing lists would hinder the technical operation of the internet". I'd say yes. In my opinion there are reasons why a person would consider having encrypted access to "static content". For example, the "in the clear" access might disclose information which the user might be uncomfortable about. One alternative is to provide the user and the other parties involved in the communication session with choices. As Martin Millnert pointed out, providing those choices is not straight-forward.

I'll adapt a comment from Stephane Bortzmeyer:

Is it okay to ask Mr Smith to decide based on the information [being provided]?

Or to put it differently, should a technical specification provide some guidance about that.

Regards,
S. Moonesamy

1. Credits to the Stephen Farrell and I'll take the blame if it is incorrect. :-)

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