[hrpc] "DNS Privacy Vs" Re: Working group last call for draft-irtf-hrpc-guidelines

[Mallory Knodel <[e-mail]>]

Hi Farzaneh,

On 7/1/21 9:12 AM, farzaneh badii wrote:
>
> I have now gotten to read your paper. It sets the scene for a discussion
Yes, that's actually the only goal of the paper.
> but there are some very generalized and broad hypotheses in the paper 
> that have not been supported and there are many disagreements over 
> them.  The trade-off between privacy and security of the DNS users is 
> unclear and needs much more in-depth research, especially when we 
> relate it to public interest.
We hope that the paper sparks lots and lots of additional research.
> Moreover, the trade off you are mentioning in the paper is itself an 
> argument for both centralized and decentralized systems
Indeed, it is pointing this out and hopefully helping advocates 
recognise this confusion situation-- that centralisation can be 
leveraged for good, but ultimately the tradeoff of the effects of 
long-term centralised markets/internet/etc is probably bad.
> (there is an actual research group about  decentralized 
> infrastructure, I don't know how useful it is: 
> https://datatracker.ietf.org/rg/dinrg/about/)
This is a related use of the word "decentralised" but it is not the 
same. DINRG is concerned with "distributed ledger technologies", eg 
blockchain. It's not what we're talking about.
> Also decentralized as explained in the document is very vague. 
> Decentralization of what aspects of the infrastructure, used by whom etc?
As an architecture and a market.
> It is surprising but the Web itself technically has a very centralized 
> governance.  I can't suggest a change because the text asserts the 
> arguments with too much conviction but we should identify these issues 
> as areas of research.

Glad we're exactly on the same page!

Thanks so much for the review,

-Mallory

>
>
> On Mon, Jun 28, 2021 at 3:14 PM Mallory Knodel <[e-mail]> wrote:
>
>
>
>     On Monday, June 28, 2021, Gurshabad Grover
>     <[e-mail]> wrote:
>
>
>         > Section 2.3.13
>         >
>         > I don't know that we have *any* real success stories for
>         > decentralization.  HTTP certainly isn't one.  Certainly
>         designing
>         > *toward* centralization might be best, but I don't think we
>         have very
>         > many examples of that *either.*  Moreover, I have argued,
>         and continue
>         > to argue, that some centralization may *facilitate* human
>         rights.  If
>         > you take into account the combination of DOH + cloud, an
>         observer must
>         > go to far greater lengths to discern even so much as the
>         nature of the
>         > traffic, much less content and actual endpoint.
>         >
>         > And this raises another issue: the point of much of cloud
>         services is to
>         > improve individual service reliability.  And yet those same
>         cloud
>         > services are a form of centralization.  If you consider that
>         perhaps a
>         > handful of players might force DNS traffic to a limited
>         number of
>         > resolver services, we might also say that DoH itself presents
>         > centralization risks.
>         >
>         > These sorts of conflicts are of course to be expected. The
>         question is
>         > whether it is worth providing guidance relating to
>         centralization.  I
>         > will claim that nobody yet has a real handle in this area,
>         and so better
>         > to say nothing in the form of guidance.  Instead, it seems
>         to me to be
>         > good fodder for future work.
>         >
>
>         I don't think I have a strong opinion about this. Before
>         making any
>         changes in this section, however, I'd love to hear what others
>         think.
>
>
>     I do think that while centralisation can be leveraged for good
>     that it’s well established that an interoperable, resilient
>     decentralised internet architecture is ideal for the public
>     interest. So there may be trade offs. I would point to the section
>     on consolidation in the paper Shivan and I wrote on DNS Privacy Vs
>     (the public interest).
>
>     It’s important to keep in mind the tensions so that we aren’t
>     dogmatically accepting either scenario.
>
>     Here’s that text: https://github.com/mallory/DNS-Privacy.
>
>     Great work getting this new version out!
>
>     -M
>
>
>
>     -- 
>     Mallory Knodel
>     CTO, Center for Democracy and Technology
>     gpg fingerprint :: E3EB 63E0 65A3 B240 BCD9 B071 0C32 A271 BD3C C780
>
>
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-- 
Mallory Knodel
CTO, Center for Democracy and Technology
gpg fingerprint :: E3EB 63E0 65A3 B240 BCD9 B071 0C32 A271 BD3C C780