----- Original Message ----- From: "Andrew Sullivan" <ajs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> To: <ietf@xxxxxxxx> Sent: Monday, December 16, 2013 9:50 PM > On Mon, Dec 16, 2013 at 09:32:29PM +0000, Stephen Farrell wrote: > > > And don't forget that we are not here saying that all IETF > > protocols MUST be proof against pervasive monitoring - email > > for example isn't and we're not going to stop sending mail. > > Right, but the very same technical acts against an email stream are > either an attack or a service, depending on the stuation from the POV > of the users. > > For instance, many businesses scan all mail that comes and goes > through the corporate servers in order to ensure certain legal > compliance requirements are satisfied. > > The same style of scanning can be applied in an effort to look for > "terrorists" or whatever. > > I claim that the first of these is not one of the forms of "attack", > as long as the users affected know that this is happening (because, > for example, the existence of the tool is disclosed as part of the > corporate policies). When governments or $bigprovider or whoever does > it without the user knowing, then it's an attack. But as written, the > draft currently classifies the first of these cases as an attack also. > I think that strains even the constrained meaning of "attack" as used > in this draft. (I could equally be persuaded that the document just > needs to embrace this odd consequence of the definition, and call it > out.) Spot on. A sea change with websites over the past year or two, probably the result of an EU directive, is that many if not most websites are now most informative about Cookies, what they are, how they are used and so on, before inviting their use. Cookies are of course a form of pervasive monitoring and without such information, they are an attack; with it, they are not (us technicians may have known that for years but not acted upon it). What we need is a similar statement about all the other information that websites upload from us. Google has been mentioned, but when looking at an airline website yesterday, I was surprised to find that connections were set up to another 10 or so sites, most of which I had never heard of and whose names had no resemblance to that of the airline or any of its partners. And no, I had not clicked any buttons (Like, Twitter, Facebook etc) anywhere, just entered From, To and Date. That is an attack. That is what we should be calling out (although perhaps not in this I-D). Tom Petch > Best regards, > > A > -- > Andrew Sullivan > ajs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx