Re: [iucg] Last Call: Modern Global Standards Paradigm

[ALAIN AINA <[e-mail]>]

I will say "there are potential uses of the  ITU for good".

--Alain

On Aug 14, 2012, at 6:26 AM, Eric Burger wrote:

> +1. The ITU is not evil. It just is not the right place for Internet standards development. As John points out, there are potential uses of the ITU-T for good.
> 
> On Aug 13, 2012, at 10:50 AM, John C Klensin wrote:
> 
>> 
>> 
>> --On Monday, August 13, 2012 11:11 +0200 Alessandro Vesely
>> <[e-mail]> wrote:
>> 
>>> ...
>>> FWIW, I'd like to recall that several governments endorse IETF
>>> protocols by establishing Internet based procedures for
>>> official communications with the relevant PA, possibly giving
>>> them legal standing.  Francesco Gennai presented a brief
>>> review of such procedures[*] at the APPSAWG meeting in Paris.
>>> At the time, John Klensin suggested that, while a more
>>> in-depth review of existing practices would be appreciated,
>>> the ITU is a more suitable body for the standardization of a
>>> unified, compatible protocol for certified email, because of
>>> those governmental involvements.
>>> 
>>> [*]
>>> 
>> http://www.ietf.org/proceedings/83/slides/slides-83-appsawg-1.pdf
>> 
>> Alessandro,
>> 
>> Please be a little careful about context, as your sequence of
>> comments above could easily be misleading.  
>> 
>> For the very specific case of email certified by third parties,
>> especially where there is a requirement for worldwide
>> recognition (the topic of the talk and slides you cited), the
>> biggest problem has, historically, been an administrative and
>> policy one, not a technical standards issue.  We know how to
>> digitally sign email in several different ways -- there is
>> actually no shortage of standards.   While additional standards
>> are certainly possible, more options in the absence of
>> compelling need almost always reduces practical
>> interoperability.  Perhaps the key question in the certified
>> mail matter is who does the certifying and why anyone else
>> should pay attention.  The thing that makes that question
>> complicated was famously described by Jeff Schiller (I believe
>> while he was still IETF Security AD) when he suggested that
>> someone would need to be insane to issue general-purpose
>> certificates that actually certified identity unless they were
>> an entity able to invoke sovereign immunity, i.e., a government.
>> 
>> For certified email (or certified postal mail), your ability to
>> rely on the certification in, e.g., legal matters ultimately
>> depends on your government being willing to say something to you
>> like "if you rely on this in the following ways, we will protect
>> you from bad consequences if it wasn't reliable or accurate".
>> If you want the same relationship with "foreign" mail, you still
>> have to rely on your government's assertions since a foreign
>> government can't do a thing for you if you get into trouble.
>> That, in turn, requires treaties or some sort of bilateral
>> agreements between the governments (for postal mail, some of
>> that is built into the postal treaties).  
>> 
>> International organizations, particularly UN-based ones, can
>> serve an important role in arranging such agreements and
>> possibly even in being the repository organization for the
>> treaties.  In the particular case of certified email, the ITU
>> could reasonably play that role (although it seems to me that a
>> very strong case could be made for having the UPU do it instead
>> by building on existing foundations).
>> 
>> But that has nothing to do with the development of technical
>> protocol standards.  Historical experience with development of
>> technical standards by governmental/legislative bodies that then
>> try to mandate their use has been almost universally poor and
>> has often included ludicrous results.
>> 
>> A similar example arises with the spam problem.  There are many
>> technical approaches to protecting the end user from spam
>> (especially malicious spam) and for facilitating the efforts of
>> mail delivery service providers and devices to apply those
>> protective mechanisms.  Some of them justify technical standards
>> that should be worked out in open forums that make their
>> decisions on open and technical bases.  But, if one wants to
>> prevent spam from imposing costs on intended recipients or third
>> parties, that becomes largely a law-making and law enforcement
>> problem, not a technical one.  If countries decide that they
>> want to prevent spam from being sent, or to punish the senders,
>> a certain amount of international cooperation (bilateral or
>> multilaterial) is obviously going to be necessary.   As with the
>> UPU and email certification, there might be better agencies or
>> forums for discussion than the ITU or there might not.  But it
>> isn't a technical protocol problem that the IETF is going to be
>> able to solve or should even try to address, at least without a
>> clear and actionable problem statement from those bodies.
>> 
>> I do believe that the ITU can, and should, serve a useful role
>> in the modern world.  The discussion above (and some of the work
>> of the Development and Radio Sectors) are good illustrations.
>> But those cases have, as far as I can tell, nothing to do with
>> the proposed statement, which is about the development and
>> deployment of technical protocol standards.
>> 
>> regards,
>>   john
>> 
>