Re: Complaint to ADs regarding censorship of dissent

[Andrew Lee <[e-mail]>]

I am simply alarmed that the e-mail addresses and each individual
membership status thereof to various e-mail lists, was sent, ever so
nonchalantly, to a public mailing list. As someone who respects others'
privacy, I find it to be very distasteful and inappropriate.

Separately, I remember when the NSA allegedly asked Qwest and Joseph
Nacchio to perform mass surveillance on the common citizen. He refused.
Since there were no direct repercussions to his refusal, some reports
indicate they allegedly found a way to accuse him of, and serve prison for,
insider trading.

Even if djb's non-disruptive behavior was to be deemed, by wild standards,
to be disruptive, exercising the ban hammer during an important and
revealing discussion regarding decisions on cryptographic safety (using an
unrelated matter) was, perhaps, the finest display of poor form.

I do understand that djb's obviously non-AI mail filter system was,
however, described as AI. It's safe to conclude that, to the detriment of
the common citizen, wild standards are absolutely present herein.

Finally across this and other lists relating to the subjects of discussion,
I have seen clear disruptive behavior (trolling & harassment) from quite a
few participants to which no moderator actions have been applied. I've read
messages from moderators who said they didn't wish to be moderators. I saw
a long-time contributor indicating openness to being a moderator, to which
he was publicly shot down in an attempt to humiliate him for revealing this
signal. I was baffled when reading "serious" discussions regarding the use
of AI as a moderator for the IETF.

Is this the state of IETF and its moderation? We encourage bullies while
discouraging logic, evidence, and curious discourse? We enable moderators
who don't want to moderate, but we slap down long-time contributors that do?

Or was getting a solely PQ vs. a PQ+ECC hybrid across the finish line
important enough to lose credibility while exercising poor judgement in
public?

Has the IETF simply been captured by agencies with an interest in
surveillance?

Or perhaps this was just another case of wild standards.


On Mon, Nov 24, 2025 at 8:13 AM Paul Wouters <paul.wouters=
[e-mail]> wrote:

>
> On Mon, Nov 24, 2025 at 9:59 AM Paul Wouters <[e-mail]>
> wrote:
>
> Following up on myself. We had the tools team respond to your questions,
> and a few things got clarified. We no longer needed the email to remain in
> the queue for analyses, so it has been released.
>
> The complication arose from Dan using the following email addresses
> (ephemeral markers X'ed out) in a mix of mailing list memberships and
> Froms, resulting on moderation flags needing to be set in various places
> (on members and non-members to the TLS list):
>
> [e-mail]  - not in the global allow list, not a member of TLS
> [e-mail] - in the global allow list, a member of
> TLS
> [e-mail] - a member, not sure about the global allow
> list
> [e-mail] - not a member, not in the global allow list.
>
> Note that additionally, the mail infrastructure also had a change applied
> to it on Nov 21. I am not sure if or how this might effect Dan's
> complicated email situation:
> https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/tools-discuss/XTL7ED21Gow_BnwcgnMpNhCbdzs/
>
>
> To avoid the many interactions of mail software, member addresses,
> non-member addresses, and addresses in or not in the global allow list, the
> recommendations of my previous email for Dan still apply.
>
> Paul Wouters
> Security Area Director for TLS
>
>
>
>
>> On Mon, Nov 24, 2025 at 6:22 AM D. J. Bernstein <[e-mail]> wrote:
>>
>> [ message not quoted as it contains as a derivative clause  ]
>>
>> Dan,
>>
>> The TLS WG Chairs had cleared your moderation flag at the 30 day mark on
>> Nov 17 as per RFC 3934.
>> Your recent message to the tls list was not "censored" (nor moderated).
>>
>> What happened is that your message was held by mailman for "posting by a
>> non-list member". This means that the email
>> address you attempted to use is not subscribed to ANY ietf mailing list,
>> including the [e-mail] list. The ietf mailman
>> daemon sent you a message stating this. Based on your long email, you did
>> not read that message our system sent you,
>> or your AI auto-responder opt-out handler prevented you from seeing the
>> message.
>>
>> It will take a few days due to the Thanksgiving period to figure out the
>> exact details of what happened, but I assume this
>> is similar to past messages where you seem to use ephemeral email
>> addresses to subscribe to different IETF lists, thus not
>> getting the advantage of the IETF global accept list that allows posting
>> to all lists even if you are only subscribed to one list.
>> Somehow, your ephemeral address used for the tls list got unsubscribed -
>> possibly because it no longer exists on your end,
>> or because it generated excessive bounces, or perhaps because of a mail
>> loop with your AI auto responder. I hope to find out
>> more next week. I have instructed the TLS WG Chairs not to approve the
>> pending email, so that we do not disturb the current
>> state for that mail connectivity investigation.
>>
>> If you wish to post in the meanwhile, you can do what everyone else who
>> uses the IETF mailing lists does, and properly subscribe
>> your email address to any list and then post, without using intermediate
>> ephemeral addresses. You should also disable your
>> QRsecretary auto-responder if you want to receive informative
>> mailer-daemon / mailman messages from the IETF lists.
>>
>> With the continued use of your derivative clause - your issues might
>> spread to more mailing lists for you as you get moderated
>> there too. Again, all of this can simply be avoided by ceasing to use the
>> misleading and incorrect derivative clause in your emails,
>> as indicated in the IESG Statement:
>> https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/statement-iesg-statement-on-clarifying-derivative-works-rights/
>>
>>
>> Paul Wouters
>> Security Area Director for TLS
>>
>