[arch-d] [HT-rt] HR-RT Review of draft-iab-marnew-report-01

[Shivan <[e-mail]>]

This is a review done within the framework of the Human Rights Review
Team. It was done by Amelia Andersdotter and Shivan Kaul Sahib. The Human
Rights Review Team aims to implement and improve the guidelines for
human rights considerations provided in RFC8280, and seek to mitigate
potentially adverse human rights impacts that IETF and IRTF documents
might have.

We find the topics addressed during the workshop interesting and look
forward to following future developments.

---

Document: draft-iab-marnew-report-01
<https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-iab-marnew-report/>
https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-iab-marnew-report/

Review:

The Human Rights in Protocols Research Group welcomes the draft report from
the MaRNEW workshop. In particular, we welcome the efforts to continue
advancing an encrypted, secure and human rights enabling environment, as
well as solid assessments of the potential impacts of considered remedies
to mobile network operator difficulties on the right to privacy of an
individual.

In this regard, we wish to remind the drafters and the IAB of the inherent
connection between privacy and freedom of expression. The right to privacy,
or to one's own personhood, reinforces the freedom of expression and
freedom of opinion.

Semantic Suggestions
===========================

The following sections addresses a few semantic problems in the draft
report, that were they solved the draft report would be easier to parse
from both a human rights perspective, and from a business, legal or
technical perspective.

1. Abstract, para 2:

Problem: Draft text contains  value judgements on participants'
presentations that could be avoided.

Solution: Remove the word "honest" in relation to CDN presentations, since
it may cause readers to assume that other presenters were less forthcoming.

The new paragraph would read

   The group discussed the current Internet encryption trends and
   deployment issues identified within the IETF, and the privacy needs
   of users which should be adhered.  Solutions designed around sharing
   data from the network to the endpoints and vice versa were then
   discussed as well as analysing whether the current issues experienced
   on the transport layer are also playing a role here.  Content
   providers and CDNs gave their views of delivering
   content with mobile network operators.  Finally, technical responses
   to regulation was discussed to help the regulated industries relay
   the issues of impossible to implement or bad-for-privacy technologies
   back to regulators.

2. Section 1, Introduction:

Problem: It is unclear whether the "requirements" referred to imply
regulatory requirements enforceable by government authorities, or technical
requirements. Because of the nature of issues discussed during the
workshop, understanding what sorts of "requirements" are being referred to
is imperative.

Solution: Specify the nature of the requirements being referred to, or
remove the reference to requirements.

The new Introduction would read

   Mobile networks have a set of properties which
   places a large emphasis on sophisticated bandwidth optimization.
   Encryption is increasing on the Internet which is positive for
   consumer and business privacy and security.  Many existing mobile
   bandwidth optimization solutions primarily operate on non-encrypted
   communications; this can lead to performance issues being amplified
   on mobile networks.  Encryption on networks will continue to
   increase; and with this understanding the workshop aimed to
   understand how we can solve the issues of bandwidth optimization and
   performance on radio networks in this encrypted world.

3. Section 1.1:

Problem: The first paragraph mixes business models with technical
necessities. The last paragraph in the section Understanding "Bandwidth
Optimization" refers to regulatory requirements (within the meaning of
government enforced requirements or legal requirements, cf above) on mobile
network operators to perform traffic filtering and monitoring.

Solution: It may facilitate understanding of human rights impacts to
separate technical considerations from business considerations and legal
considerations. Paragraph 3 ("Many of these functions can continue...")
could be put as the last paragraph, while Paragraph 1 could be split into a
technical section and a business model section, followed by a legal section.


   For the purposes of this workshop, bandwidth optimization encompasses
   a variety of technical topics related to traffic engineering,
   prioritisation, optimisation and efficiency enhancements. It also
encompasses
   user-related topics such as specific subscription or billing models, and
may touch upon regulatory aspects or other issues relating to regulatory,
within the meaning of government initiated, concerns.

   The first category of bandwidth optimization includes:

   o  Caching

   o  Prioritisation of interactive traffic over background traffic

   o  Per-user bandwidth limit

   The second category of bandwidth optimization may depend on either of
the first category optimization strategies, but may, in particular, also
encompass:

   o  Business-related topics such as content delivery arrangements with
      specific content providers.

   Finally, while not strictly speaking traffic management, some
   networks employ policy-based filtering (e.g., requested parental
   controls) and many networks support some form of legal interception
   functionality per applicable laws.

   Many of these functions can continue as they're performed today, even
   with more encryption.  Others are using methods which inspect parts
   of the communication that are encrypted, and these will have to be
   done differently in an encrypted Internet.


4. Section 4:

Problem: QUIC is an active area of work for the IETF in the transport layer
- this section barely mentions it, and even then does so vaguely. What
problems are solved by QUIC that are general problems rather than TCP
problems? What was the nature of the disagreement around this?

Solution: More detail about how QUIC fits into transport-layer work would
make this section more relevant. In addition, there has been discussion
involving network operators around technical details that have potential
privacy impacts within the QUIC working group (SPIN bit); this section
would benefit greatly from an examination of that.



Human Rights Considerations
===========================

Upon consideration of the draft report, no implications for
internationalization ([RFC8280], sec. 6.2.5), heterogeneity support
([RFC8280], sec. 6.2.8), accessibility ([RFC8280], sec. 6.2.11) or
localization ([RFC8280], sec. 6.2.12) have been found. We will further
suppose that issues relating to Anonymity ([RFC8280], sec. 6.2.9),
Pseudonymity ([RFC8280], sec. 6.2.10) and Confidentiality ([RFC8280], sec.
6.2.16) have been sufficiently addressed in the draft as is.

In the below text, Security ([RFC8280], sec. 6.2.4), Integrity ([RFC8280],
sec. 6.2.16) and Authenticity ([RFC8280], sec. 6.2.17) are further
considered to have been addressed, or as in progress of being addressed by
the specific endeavours pointed out in the report. As such, this assessment
hopes to serve as a complement to remaining Human Rights Considerations
Guidelines which were not addressed by the MaRNEW draft.

## Privacy ([RFC8280], sec. 6.2.2)

We laud the general emphasis on considering user privacy concerns paramount
[Section 2.1.1, 2.3 etc].

In Section 3.1.1, para 1, it would be useful to emphasize that middleboxes
that are "authenticated and invoked explicitly" might not be very effective
at conserving user privacy if they lead to auto-click through. In practice,
"opted-in" middleboxes might not be much better than transparent
middleboxes. Additionally, this poses the danger of making matters worse if
users assume that because they haven't been asked for middlebox permission,
they are not going through a middlebox. For users accessing the Internet on
a browser client: if the connection is MITMed by a middlebox, the browser
would somehow need to convey this effectively and actionably to the user.
Whatever effort is expended on this should involve browser vendors.

## Connectivity ([RFC8280], sec. 6.2.1)

It is a priori obvious that a discussion with mobile network operators
would touch upon connectivity. As a general comment, the HRPC RG is not
concerned that encrypted internet traffic could create topological problems
in network deployment with respect to density of base stations. It is more
sensible to imagine that the density of base stations is kept low by
deployers to save money on infrastructure roll-out.

In the MarNEW draft report, middleboxes are brought up frequently as an
example of infrastructure rendered less useful by the ubiquitous adoption
of encryption. Middleboxes may enhance access to content for individuals,
and may also interfere with their ability to enjoy content free of
surveillance, censorship or content manipulation. The focus of the workshop
of exploring ways in which encrypted materials can benefit from the same
speed of deliverance as un-encrypted materials is therefore welcome.

## Content Agnosticism

Traffic prioritisation, whether based on technical or commercial grounds,
risks interfering with an individual's right to freedom of expression or
opinion, by restricting access or enjoy content of their own choosing. As
such, prioritisation should be made explicit and obvious, and subject to
consent from the individual, whether the motivations for deployment are
commercial or technical.

It is clear that internet filtering and blocking of content of specific
types, whether motivated by network management or regulatory concerns, does
not fulfill a content agnosticism criterion. It is the observation of HRPC
that [RFC7725] (An HTTP Status Code to Report Legal Obstacles) may assist
communication of specific filtering and blocking operations in action.

It the the impetus of the Human Rights Guidelines in RFC8280 that content
agnosticism be respected by protocols developed in the IETF, and in general
an accepted view in the global human rights community that content
agnosticism is desirable at all levels of technical infrastructure. As
such, the HRPC RG is concerned about ideas that traffic be classified
through additional headers or metadata, identifying traffic via 5-tuples,
trust models and frameworks, or heuristics.