[hrpc] Fwd: [] New paper from IGP on Standards and Human Rights

[avri doria <[e-mail]>]

Hi,

Possibly interesting to some.

avri



-------- Forwarded Message --------

IGP releases a new research paper on the politics of the new Transport
Layer Security standard: Standardizing Security: Surveillance, Human
Rights, and TLS 1.3.

 

Standardizing Security develops a conceptual framework for understanding
the relationship between technical standards and political/social
effects. We identify three distinct ways of understanding this
relationship: 1) by examining the interest groups who shaped the
standard, which we call the Political Economy of Standardization (PES);
2) by focusing on the Societal Effects of Standards (SES) which refers
to cumulative effects of adoption and implementation decisions over
time; and 3) the idea that politics and rights are embedded in the
standard; i.e., that Protocols Have Politics (PHP). We then perform a
detailed analysis of the controversies around the design, adoption and
implementation of TLS 1.3.

 

We find that the PHP approach had limited explanatory value compared to
the PES and SES approaches. TLS 1.3 does in fact strengthen privacy –
and technical efficiency – if adopted and implemented as intended. But
the design of TLS 1.3’s stronger confidentiality measures met with
resistance from corporate network operators who wanted more visibility
into their internal networks and some governmental interests, leading to
the development of an alternate standard by ETSI. There are also
technical measures that can be deployed to undermine perfect forward
secrecy. Additionally, authoritarian governments are now taking measures
to block use of the new protocol. TLS 1.3 was an improvement, but its
effects were limited.

 

By conveying the idea that political, economic and social effects can be
hard coded into protocol designs, the protocols-have-politics view
short-circuits careful analysis of the way standards contribute to
governance. It also drastically overstates the role of protocol design
in internet governance. Rights advocates and internet governance
participants need to have more realistic ideas about what measures
advance human rights on the internet.

 

Download the paper here:
https://www.internetgovernance.org/wp-content/uploads/StandardizingSecurity-TLS.pdf
<https://www.internetgovernance.org/wp-content/uploads/StandardizingSecurity-TLS.pdf>


 

Dr. Milton L Mueller

Georgia Institute of Technology

School of Public Policy

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