Re: [Model-t] Review of draft-thomson-tmi

[Vittorio Bertola <[e-mail]>]

> Il 09/12/2021 06:31 Martin Thomson <[e-mail]> ha scritto:
>  
> On Wed, Dec 8, 2021, at 18:14, Vittorio Bertola wrote:
> > Then, abruptly, recommendations start and they are all about avoiding intermediation at all costs. 
> 
> I can't see that as anything other than a straight up mischaracterization.

That was really not my intention, but the above is indeed how the document sounded to me.

> > "A protocol intermediary is an element that participates in 
> > communications. An intermediary is not the primary initiator or 
> > recipient of communications, but instead acts to facilitate 
> > communications." 
> 
> This definition is, I think, not really the right one.  I've been struggling with this for some time, but didn't have a good handle on it. 

I think that we need to do more work on mapping, conceptualizing and classifying all parties that take part in an online exchange of data "human-to-human", with "human-to-server" being an alternative case too. Once we have that clear, it could become easier to discuss the threats that each class of intermediaries may pose, and understand what could be done about it in terms of protocol design.

Also, I agree with what you were saying elsewhere, that in the end you need to let users trust some of these intermediaries, as users will naturally do so. My basic point is just that there are use cases in which people trust the network more than the protocol endpoints.

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Vittorio Bertola | Head of Policy & Innovation, Open-Xchange
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