Re: [Cfrg] NSA sabotaging crypto standards

[Watson Ladd <[e-mail]>]

On Thu, Feb 6, 2014 at 8:20 AM, Eggert, Lars <[e-mail]> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I want to respond to a few of your points. I won't get into a prolonged debate here.
>
> On 2014-2-6, at 16:00, Manger, James <[e-mail]> wrote:
>>> The CFRG is not a standards group. It does not produce standards.
>>
>> These look and smell like standards to me, and this is where they are worked on.
>
> <snip>
>
> but they aren't. By definition, the IRTF does not produce standards, and the first sentence of the boilerplate of any IRTF RFC says
>
>    This document is not an Internet Standards Track specification; it is
>    published for examination, experimental implementation, and
>    evaluation.
>
> and then goes on to state even more caveats. That's about as clear as we can be.

Just because a document says this, doesn't mean it's actually true.
And when it comes to the CFRG, it largely isn't.
IETF working groups will follow suit if they see that some new
protocol is documented by the CFRG. That's the role
the CFRG exists to play: supporting IETF WGs when they have to
evaluate crypto. Furthermore, if we aren't actually
producing documents meant to say "This is X, and X is good" for some
definition of good, what are we doing here?

Sincerely,
Watson Ladd