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

[Eric Burger <[e-mail]>]

+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
>