Tom: The fundamental task for the IETF is not to force privacy on everyone, but to make sure that they have the choice. Even where the IETF thinks something should be mandatory to deploy, that doesn't have to mean crypto. Scott On Fri, Dec 6, 2013 at 4:31 AM, t.p. <daedulus@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > I oppose publication of this I-D by the IETF. > > The point has already been that better defences against monitoring > likely means greater use of encryption and encryption is at times > harmful. Two examples come immediately to mind. > > Not long ago, a capital city was subject to riots which were more > extensive, and went on for longer, than might have been expected. > Afterwards, the police explained that they had lacked the intelligence > that they usually had, that the organisers of the riots had been using > encryption to communicate and that the police had been unable to crack > their messages. (I understand that the manufacturers of the devices in > question had declined to help the civil power). And yes, that capital > city is where the IETF will meet next March. (The probabliity of you > being caught up in a riot then is very small but if you are, recall that > encryption has made it worse). > > Secondly, a few days ago, there was a report of the user of a well-known > brand of TV finding that the TV set was monitoring his behaviour, not > just what he watched but anything else that he did with the TV, such as > loading pen drives and viewing pictures, and passing that data back to > the manufacturer. The report said that the user was Internet aware, > realised that the traffic patterns did not correspond to his usage and > could intercept the traffic and see what was happening (passive > monitoring? MITM attack?). I do not know whether the data was in the > clear or whether the encryption was weak enough to be cracked but if it > had been strong, then the user could not have found out what he did; and > the manufacturer might be fobbing us off with a story about gathering > environmental data, such as the rate of wear of the silicon, in order to > reduce the set's contribution to global warming. > > One future posited for IPv6 is that every device with power - cars, > washing machines, hair dryers etc - will be Internet connected and so, > potentially, will act as that TV did; and when they use strong > encryption, we will unable to tell what they are doing. > > Encryption has its dangers and the IETF should not be encouraging its > widespread adoption. > > Tom Petch > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Jari Arkko" <jari.arkko@xxxxxxxxx> > To: <ietf@xxxxxxxx> > Sent: Wednesday, December 04, 2013 4:45 AM > Subject: Re: Last Call: <draft-farrell-perpass-attack-02.txt> (Pervasive > Monitoring is an Attack) to Best Current Practice > > > I wanted to draw your attention on this last call: > >> The IESG has received a request from an individual submitter to > consider >> the following document: >> - 'Pervasive Monitoring is an Attack' >> <draft-farrell-perpass-attack-02.txt> as Best Current Practice >> >> http://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-farrell-perpass-attack/ > > > It is a short read and important, so please comment. The last call ends > in four weeks and covers holiday time, but we'll deal with this document > on the January 9th telechat in the IESG, so in practice there should be > enough time to comment. > > I would like to see this document as a high-level policy we have on > dealing with this particular type of vulnerabilities in the Internet. A > little bit like RFC 3365 "Danvers Doctrine" was on weak vs. strong > security. Please remember that the details and tradeoffs for specific > solutions are for our WGs to consider and not spelled out here. The > draft does say "where possible" - I do not want to give the impression > that our technology can either fully prevent all vulnerabilities or do > it in all situations. There are obviously aspects that do not relate to > communications security (like access to content by your peer) and there > are many practical considerations that may not make it possible to > provide additional privacy protection even when we are talking about the > communications part. But I do believe we need to consider these > vulnerabilities and do our best. > > Jari > > > >