> On Jul 14, 2026, at 13:57, Ken Kubota <[email protected]> wrote: > > I am highlighting an evident conflict of interest, not attacking the > individuals themselves. > > This is part of a technical debate, particularly if such a massive presence > of SIGINT operatives is active within this working group [1] and if their > behavior is suspect, e.g., openly accepting or ignoring violations of > standard cryptographic practices already described in earlier RFCs, other > governmental standards (e.g., Germany's BSI, the NIST equivalent), and > protocols (OpenSSH). I had cited the RFC, the BSI standard, and OpenSSH > announcements in my public response to the NSA official [2]. Neither he nor > anyone else on this mailing list has provided a plausible rationale. > > The larger the conflict of interest, the larger, unfortunately, the > proportion of the debate devoted to analyzing this. There is already a > double-digit number of SIGINT operatives present here (NSA, GCHQ, CSE), and > these are only those identified so far. All of them vote only and do not > engage in any debate, except for one [2], who also subsequently fell silent > as the contradictions became too glaring. It is concerning that some > individuals fail to address this issue. This might also indicate additional > conflicts of interest. > > So please do not conflate a discussion regarding conflicts of interest with a > personal attack. The focus is clearly on the conflict of interest (and > including related aspects, e.g., obvious bias or actions that may be > interpreted as such). > Please always post publicly to the mailing list in line with IETF standards. > You were reminded yesterday in an offlist email by a leading cryptographer > not to allow the debate to shift from the public forum to private channels. > Often, such attempts are part of a broader strategy to manipulate discourse. > Framing a conflict-of-interest debate as an ad hominem attack is also > inappropriate.
You (and others) are directly attacking the opinions of community members because they work for particular organisations, which seems to me to fall outside of the IETF's code of conduct. And it seems unlikely that the people you are targeting can ever provide a satisfactory response because of this openly stated distrust, which some posts to this mailing list suggest is part of a multi-year conspiracy. Asserting that this is not a personal or ad hominem attack does not make it so. Phrases like "a massive presence of SIGINT operatives", "if their behavior is suspect", "these are only those identified so far", "obvious bias" and "broader strategy to manipulate discourse" certainly suggest otherwise. Such behaviour seems likely to deter people from expressing dissenting opinions to those that you and others espouse, closing down debate, because of concerns that they will also be targeted. There would be a lot less traffic on the mailing list, and a lot less time wasted, if people could stay on topic, in this case, the WGLC! Andrew _______________________________________________ TLS mailing list -- [email protected] To unsubscribe send an email to [email protected]
