On Tue, Mar 25, 2014 at 1:09 PM, Trevor Perrin <[email protected]> wrote:

> On Mon, Mar 24, 2014 at 9:51 AM, Daniel Kahn Gillmor
> <[email protected]> wrote:
> > On 03/24/2014 12:36 PM, Keith Moore wrote:
> >
> >> So, what's the incentive for either clients or servers to support OE if
> >> clients just silently accept it without any indication to the user?
> >> Just for the good of mankind?
> >
> > I'd say "to increase the cost of pervasive monitoring" and "to resist
> > surveillance by passive attackers"
>
> I'd go further - OE for HTTP could have strong auth added to it in the
> future, such as pinning or DANE, which *could* be indicated to the
> user.
>

Please be cautious about suggesting user indications. UI is complicated and
all that. More specifically in the browser case, even if you could strongly
authenticate a connection over which you request a http:// page, I wouldn't
want to give that page the https lock treatment. Note that https:// has
different semantics (referer semantics, mixed content, etc). If you are
loading http:// subresources like scripts over insecure connections, then
even though the page may have been loaded over a secure connection, it's
still insecure. I assume that OE for HTTP wouldn't opportunistically
upgrade a http:// page to https:// page semantics, as that would introduce
lots of web compatibility issues.


>
> So encryption-without-WebPKI is not just a step away from strong auth,
> it's also a step towards
> encryption-without-WebPKI-BUT-WITH-EASIER-STRONG-AUTH.
>
> I think a lot of the concern around OE is about the "second-order"
> effect of discouraging strong-auth ("it's encrypted, why do more?"),
> but I think this a different second-order effect ("I can do pinning
> without needing a cert!") which should be considered.
>
>
> Trevor
>
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