Re: [Add] meeting hum: should the IETF take up this work?

[Vittorio Bertola <[e-mail]>]

Il 27 luglio 2019 17:55 Eric Rescorla <[e-mail]> ha scritto:

On Sat, Jul 27, 2019 at 7:52 AM Michael Richardson < [e-mail]> wrote:

If the extension said what the privacy was, rather than just that Mozilla had
vetted it, then perhaps there could be other levels of privacy.

It's not quite clear to me what you have in mind here, but one thing I would like to emphasize is that the Mozilla TRR program is more than just a self-assertion about privacy policy, in that we actively manage the list, rather than just trusting people's self-assertions. If people were interested in some other set of privacy policies, then it's not clear to me who would be responsible for running such a program.

I understand your viewpoint, but from the opposite one - the resolver operator's one - having to apply for membership to multiple lists of trusted resolvers, possibly with different or even contrasting requirements, just to be usable on any browser and any application, looks like a nightmare. Also, this would definitely be a push towards a smaller number of bigger and more centralized resolver operators, as smaller operators would have a harder time managing multiple accreditations.

So there would be merit in thinking of a joint industry program to evaluate and accredit resolvers, which could even foresee different levels of accreditation or different policies, so that applications could still pick different requirements, but at least the resolver could apply once and, if meeting all the requirements, be validated for all clients. All in all, it would not be too different from the CA machinery.

But your point on who would run it, and "is there actually anyone willing to work on this?", is also valid; and also, even the simplest resolver certification program would still be more restrictive, and thus more prone to centralization, than the current situation in which people can just deploy a DNS resolver without having to ask for permission and it becomes immediately available to everyone.

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