I don't believe anything Stephen has written debates a nation state's right to make a law about surveillance. Due process of law may enable wiretap or pervasive monitoring. It may require companies operating in a nation to hand over keys, to not enable encryption as a service, or to deny transmission of encrypted traffic. What Stephen has described is how a malicious third party may collect bulk information about users by parsing a "tap" on a trunk connection within the Internet. The traffic in this case may be transiting infrastructure under the control of a company under the influence of a nation state. Furthermore (and perhaps more significantly) the traffic may be obtained through a "tap" placed on the infrastructure without the knowledge of the company controlling the infrastructure. Stephen points out that there is no way to distinguish between a nation state inspecting traffic between its citizens or that transits the nation (under due process of law), and traffic that is inspected and collected for criminal (or less illegal, money-making) purposes. Should we take Tom's reasoning to the extreme we would argue that a nation state should have the right to disrupt the operation of the Internet within their borders and that right should be made available to them through interference with routing protocols. Therefore, we should not allow secure operation of OSPF. Hmmm, maybe governments need to be able to see all on-line bank transactions in order to spot drug dealers moving money around. So all on-line banking should be in the clear. It is my belief that all governments have available to them mechanisms through due process of law to obtain the information that they believe they need. What Stephen's document is about is preventing snooping/surveillance attacks on Internet traffic by parties that do not have support of the law. Cheers, Adrian From: ietf [mailto:ietf-bounces@xxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Phillip Hallam-Baker On Fri, Dec 6, 2013 at 4:31 AM, t.p. <daedulus@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: I oppose publication of this I-D by the IETF. We have had riots in Broadwater Farm three out of the last four periods of Conservative government. Should we ban Conservative governments then? The 1985 riots predate general UK internet availability and cellular phone service. So there is an existence proof for the possibility of London riots before the Internet. The battle of Cable Street in 1936 was instrumental in suppressing fascism in the UK and led to the forced abdication of the King. Moreover, the fatality rate suggests that the risk of being murdered in London during a riot is actually less than the risk of being murdered in most US cities under normal circumstances. In contrast the proponents of mass surveillance were recently responsible for starting a war that caused the death of over half a million people. If the US bans all firearms then we can talk about encryption control. Until that happens they have no credibility on the subject of public order. -- |