Re: Bruce Schneier's Proposal to dedicate November meeting to saving the Internet from the NSA

[Dave Crocker <[e-mail]>]

On 9/5/2013 8:08 PM, Ted Lemon wrote:
>   they convinced us we'd won

We've done quite a sales job on ourselves, also.

Remember the IAB tech plenary that declared protocols dead, because the 
client is downloaded from the server?  Think about that, in the light of 
recent revelations about compromised service providers.

That is, contrast it with truly distributed and independent clients, 
where the protocol defines a controlled and publicly vetted interface 
between the client and the server.  The former makes the client a 
semantic slave to the server.  The latter makes clients semantically 
independent and easily able to layer things on top of the services 
provided by the server.  Such things as, ummm, encryption.

Clients downloaded from the server, during a session, are extremely 
convenient.  But they can represent an interesting violation of the 
end-to-end "principle", by placing too much into the infrastructure.

d/

-- 
Dave Crocker
Brandenburg InternetWorking
bbiw.net