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Cc: HTTP Working Group <ietf-http-wg@w3.org>
From: Stephen Farrell <stephen.farrell@cs.tcd.ie>
Date: Sat, 13 Jul 2013 11:47:25 +0100
To: Poul-Henning Kamp <phk@phk.freebsd.dk>
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Subject: Re: PRISM and HTTP/2.0
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On 13 Jul 2013, at 11:08, Poul-Henning Kamp <phk@phk.freebsd.dk> wrote:

>=20
> I would like to advocate that everybody spends a little bit of time
> reconsidering how we design protocols after the PRISM disclosures.
>=20
> We don't need to have a long discussion about the actual legality
> of the US spy operation, the sheer scale and the kind of efforts
> that went in to it is the relevant message to us.
>=20
> The take-home message is that encryption will be broken, disabled,
> circumvented og watered down, if it gets in the way of political
> objectives.
>=20
> We can do three things in light of this:
>=20
> 1) We can try to add more encryption to fight back.

Sounds good. We probably need better implementation and more deployment as w=
ell.

>=20
> 2) We can recognize that there needs to be hooks for duly authorized acces=
s.

That's not for this WG IMO. RFC 2804 is a BCP that says that.

>=20
> 3) We can change or at least influence the political objectives

Not for the IETF IMO.

S


>=20
> I think PRISM is ample evidence that #1 will have the 100% certain
> result is that all encryption will be circumvented, with bogus CA
> certs all the way up to PRISM and designed-in backdoors, and the
> net result is less or even no privacy for anybody everywhere.
>=20
> In my view, that would be very counterproductive.
>=20
> #2 is not without challenges, but at least there are plausible paths
> from there to a state of affairs where innocent people might still
> have access to private communications, and it might seem to be a
> necessary precondition for any hope on #3
>=20
> #3 is clearly not inside HTTPbis scope, but it may be time for
> all good nerds to come to the aid of their country and humanity.
>=20
> A "market based" argument can be made under #3, that if we design
> protocols with the necessary access (#2), programs like PRISM will
> not be cost effective, but that will take some serious effort
> of education and politics.
>=20
> Anyway:  Edward Snowden has moved the rug under the HTTP/2.0
> standardization process, and we should not ignore that.
>=20
> Think about it.
>=20
> --=20
> Poul-Henning Kamp       | UNIX since Zilog Zeus 3.20
> phk@FreeBSD.ORG         | TCP/IP since RFC 956
> FreeBSD committer       | BSD since 4.3-tahoe
> Never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by incompetence=
.
>=20