On Fri, Nov 8, 2013 at 6:35 PM, Yoav Nir <ynir@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Nov 8, 2013, at 3:03 PM, SM <sm@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> From the Economist [1]:
>
> "On November 6th a meeting in Vancouver of the Internet Engineering
> Task Force (IETF), an organisation which brings together the
> scientists, technicians and programmers who built the internet in
> the first place and whose behind-the-scenes efforts keep it running,
> debated what to do about all this. A strong streak of West Coast
> libertarianism still runs through the IETF, and the tone was mostly
> hostile to the idea of omnipresent surveillance. Some of its members
> were involved in creating the parts of the internet that spooks are
> now exploiting. "I think we should treat this as an attack," said
> Stephen Farrell, a computer scientist from Trinity College, Dublin,
> in his presentation to the delegates. Discussion then moved on to
> what should be done to thwart it.
>
> As a sort of council of elders for the internet, the IETF has plenty
> of soft power. But it has no formal authority. Because its standards
> must be acceptable to users and engineers all over the world, it works
> through a slow process of consensus-building. New standards, guidelines
> and advice take months or years to produce."
>
> There is a sort of council of elders of the internet around here. :-)
And we are apparently delegates.
Yoav