Re: [DNSOP] draft-ietf-dnsop-structured-dns-error: suberr registration policy

[Vittorio Bertola <[e-mail]>]

 

> Il 18/04/2023 15:54 CEST Benjamin Schwartz <[e-mail]> ha scritto:
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> On Tue, Apr 18, 2023 at 7:49 AM Ralf Weber <[e-mail] mailto:[e-mail]> wrote:
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> > Moin!
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> > On 18 Apr 2023, at 13:11, Benjamin Schwartz wrote:
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> > > The draft's opening words are "DNS filtering is widely deployed for network
> > > security".  This is true, but by far the "widest" deployment of DNS
> > > filtering is for authoritarian national censorship, to prevent citizens
> > > from engaging with forbidden ideas.
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> > Do you have any data to back this claim up?
> > 
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> According to Freedom House, 64% of Internet users "live in countries where political, social, or religious content was blocked", and "51% live in countries where access to social media platforms was temporarily or permanently restricted". (https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-net/2022/countering-authoritarian-overhaul-internet)  In my experience, DNS-based censorship is used for a majority of these blocks (often in concert with other methods).
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Ok, so now you just need to prove that that all those countries are "authoritarian" and that all blocking of social media or other content is "censorship". This really depends on the report's definition of "political, social or religious" - if a country blocks nazi or terrorist propaganda or CSAM or social fake news or the unauthorized streaming of movies, is that classified as "censorship of social and political content"? Many here would disagree, or at least find that censorship highly desirable.
 
But, more usefully: there is wide disagreement across the planet and even within the Internet community on what constitutes "censorship". I do not think that it is acceptable for the IETF to withhold standardization that is useful for those who provide filtering systems, and do so on policy grounds. Who ever gave the IETF the authority to decide whether country X or operator Y should be allowed to block certain types of content? Also, in practical terms, the real authoritarian countries won't bother anyway, but not having a way to provide meaningful information in reasonable filtering contexts (e.g. blocking illegal content in a European country) will just damage end users without reducing the extent of filtering in any way.
 
At the same time, your objections on how hard it is to agree on categorizations are valid. Of course any explanation of reasons for filtering that comes from a resolver should be taken at face value and at the same time presented as only worth as the trust one puts in one's resolver. Users are not required to believe or agree with the explanation, but it would still be useful for them to know it, especially in the many cases in which the filtering was actually requested by the user (e.g. parental controls). It may actually help them in evaluating the reliability of the service and choosing whether to continue using it or not.

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Vittorio Bertola | Head of Policy & Innovation, Open-Xchange
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