Re: [Add] draft-arkko-abcd-distributed-resolver-selection

[Vittorio Bertola <[e-mail]>]

>     Il 25/02/2020 19:00 Ted Hardie <[e-mail]> ha scritto:
> 
> 
>     Howdy,
> 
>     Jari, Martin, and I put together draft-arkko-abcd-distributed-resolver-selection https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-arkko-abcd-distributed-resolver-selection/?include_text=1 to start a discussion on whether DNS clients can improve their privacy through the use of a set of multiple recursive resolver services.  We think it might be in scope for ADD, since the charter says the group "will focus on discovery and selection of DNS resolvers" and this discusses the impact of selecting more than one. 
> 
This is another idea that looks great from a purely technical standpoint but a total nightmare in terms of policy, both public and local, both legal and technical (e.g. network security). Also, it only increases privacy if by privacy you mean spreading your data as much as possible among many parties, but not if (as per the GDPR's data minimization principle) by privacy you mean minimizing the amount of data you give away and the number of parties who know something about you - let alone the discussion on whether this model in the end would lead to more or less centralization in terms of DNS providers.

For example, if the client, rather than using a single resolver in its own country that offers reasonable privacy guarantees, spreads its queries among N resolvers that are all or almost all run under a single foreign jurisdiction, this creates an additional risk for surveillance by that country's national security agencies that did not exist before, and that might outweigh any advantage gained by spreading the queries across multiple resolvers.

This said, of course I'm fine with a presentation, but I challenge the draft's conclusion that these strategies are "generally beneficial in the common cases". If this ever becomes a working item, the analysis should cover all the pros and cons and the discussion should go well beyond the IETF to understand the conditions for doing this that would make all stakeholders happy (like it should have been done with DoH).

--

Vittorio Bertola | Head of Policy & Innovation, Open-Xchange
[e-mail] mailto:[e-mail] 
Office @ Via Treviso 12, 10144 Torino, Italy