Re: Proposed Proposed Statement on e-mail encryption at the IETF

["Joe Abley" <[e-mail]>]

On 2 Jun 2015, at 18:48, Nico Williams wrote:

> On Tue, Jun 02, 2015 at 10:15:54AM -0700, Paul Hoffman wrote:
>> On Jun 2, 2015, at 6:44 AM, Joe Abley <[e-mail]> wrote:
>>> If the argument that we should use HTTPS everywhere (which I do not
>>> disagree with) is reasonable, it feels like an argument about
>>> sending encrypted e-mail whenever possible ought to be similarly
>>> reasonable. Given that so much of the work of the IETF happens over
>>> e-mail, a focus on HTTP seems a bit weird.
>
> There's no point to encrypting (to subscribers) posts to *public*
> mailing lists!

Yes, I know. Hence "wherever possible". If you have an expectation that 
the contents of e-mail conversations are public (e.g. in archives) then 
that's not possible. So that's not what I am talking about.

> There's also no point to doing anything more than DKIM as far as the
> mailing list processor goes.

Sure.

> Users should be (and are) able to sign their posts if they like, but I
> don't think there's much point to requiring them to.

All agreed.

Perhaps you didn't read my original e-mail, and are just responding to 
quoted fragments of it; I was talking about all the e-mail that doesn't 
involve public lists. The example I gave was based on an imagined desire 
of someone to say something to the IAB as a closed group, not on a 
public list, and desiring some privacy in their communications. There 
are surely other examples.


Joe