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

[Pete Resnick <[e-mail]>]

On 9/6/13 8:23 AM, John C Klensin wrote:

> I think that one of the more important things we
> can do is to rethink UIs to give casual users more information
> about what it going on and to enable them to take intelligent
> action on decisions that should be under their control.  There
> are good reasons why the IETF has generally stayed out of the UI
> area but, for the security and privacy areas discussed in this
> thread, there may be no practical way to design protocols that
> solve real problems without starting from what information a UI
> needs to inform the user and what actions the user should be
> able to take and then working backwards.
> [...]
> And the fact that those are 75% of more UI issues is probably no
> longer an excuse.
>    

Absolutely. There is clearly a good motivation: A particular UI choice 
should not *constrain* a protocol, so it is essential that we make sure 
that the protocol is not *dependent* on the UI. But that doesn't mean 
that UI issues should not *inform* protocol design. If we design a 
protocol such that it makes assumptions about what the UI will be able 
to provide without verifying those assumptions are realistic, we're in 
serious trouble. I think we've done that quite a bit in the 
security/application protocol space.

> one of my personal peeves is the range of unsatisfactory
> conditions --from an older version of certificate format or
> minor error to a verified revoked certificate -- that can
> produce a message that essentially says "continuing may cause
> unspeakable evil to happen to you" with an "ok" button (and only
> an "ok" button).
>    

OK, one last nostalgic anecdote about Eudora before I go back to 
finishing my spfbis Last Call writeup:

MacTCP (the TCP/IP stack for the original MacOS) required a handler 
routine for ICMP messages for some dumb reason; you couldn't just set it 
to null in your code. So Steve implemented one. Whenever an ICMP message 
came in for a current connection (e.g., Destination Unreachable), Eudora 
would put up a dialog box. It read "Eudora has received an ICMP 
Destination Unreachable message." The box had a single button. It read, 
"So What?"

Working for Steve was a hoot.

pr

-- 
Pete Resnick<http://www.qualcomm.com/~presnick/>
Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. - [phone]