In line..
On 10/31/17, 8:20 AM, "ietf on behalf of Phillip Hallam-Baker" <ietf-bounces@xxxxxxxx on behalf of phill@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Sun, Oct 29, 2017 at 1:19 PM, Richard Shockey <richard@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> Good point. My personal bugaboo is the resurgence of walled gardens. A
> platform that connected us is now dividing us.
>
> Which suggests: NO WALLED GARDENS.
>
> RS> Game, Set, Match. Sorry that argument is over.
I don't think it is, the question has just changed.
We don't have the walled gardens that the carriers hoped for with WAP
but we still have the consequences of AOL Messenger long after AOL has
ceased to be a significant force. Instant messaging is still
Balkanized:
https://xkcd.com/1810/
https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/chat_systems.png
RS> Agreed. And its not getting any better. SMS is almost walled garden but totally insecure. At least mobile RCS is undergoing a well deserved stay at the protocol hospice.
The only apps we have that are not walled gardens are mail and Web.
And mail is currently under threat from alternatives which offer
usable end-to-end security which implementations of S/MIME do not
while OpenPGP implementations are actively hostile to the user.
RS> My examples are highly structured closed user groups that are dominating several industries that literally insist on Walled Gardens since our protocol suites do not address their needs, technically or legally. Financial services and health care being the most obvious use case. In addition, there are the use cases where actual Identity actually needs to be declared to the counter party whether it be messaging or increasingly voice and certainly transactions. Anonymous calling or messaging, is under increasing threat and may end up going away.
It isn't just a few left wing agitators worrying about 'big tech' or
the 'fearful five' at the moment. I have been talking to Republican
Senators and House members with the same concerns. It is not merely
the concentration of market power that is worrying people, it is the
casual negligence many of the technologists show when it comes to
security risks.
RS> Welcome to my world.
The question I see is who is going to be in control. Will it be the
user or someone else.
RS> Users have enough problems with day to day life. “Simplify my life.” Or “Do you deliver?” has made more Billionaires than any other concept.
Zuckerberg didn't want his 'community' to think bad thoughts so there
is no way to disagree with people. And so there is no way to say that
'this post is a lie', 'this poster is a sockpuppet'. And the results
of those decisions are two national security disasters.
There is a natural tendency for technology people to assume that what
people want is more 'freedom'. Which invariably turns out to be more
freedom to perform the type of actions that the technologist wants
them to engage in. 'Internet Security' is seen exclusively in terms of
preventing censorship and protecting personal confidentiality. While
those are important, they are not the only things that are important.
RS> See above.. Our security protocols are the precise opposite of what people need or want.
Policy makers worry about a much broader range of concerns. They worry
about headline grabbing issues such as child abuse. But they also
worry about cyberbullying, stalking, bank fraud, advance fee frauds
and much more.
At the moment, there is only one member of the fearful five that is
considered to 'get them' at the policy level. Two more do not get in
the way but don't help very much either and two are considered to be
actively harmful.
We have to have a plan to make the Internet safe for users, yes. But
what we also need at this point is a plan to protect society from the
Internet itself. The Internet is the greatest productive engine in
history, it magnifies human capital exponentially. And it does that
for criminals as well as the law abiding.
