Re: [OAUTH-WG] Stephen Farrell's Discuss on draft-ietf-oauth-amr-values-05: (with DISCUSS)

[Stephen Farrell <[e-mail]>]

Hi Tony,

On 02/02/17 00:10, Anthony Nadalin wrote:
> NIST asked for the addition of IRIS (as they are seeing more use of
> IRIS over retina due to the accuracy of iris)  as they have been
> doing significant testing on various iris devices and continue to do
> so, here is a report that NIST released
> http://2010-2014.commerce.gov/blog/2012/04/23/nist-iris-recognition-report-evaluates-needle-haystack-search-capability.html
> 

Sorry, but that doesn't help me (at first glance anyway). If
there's a reference that'd garner us interop, then great, just
add it to match the codepoint. If there's not, I don't see why
adding a codepoint is useful. (Esp. if we're at the stage of
testing "various iris devices" that I would guess do not get
us interop.)

Am I missing something?

Cheers,
S.

> 
> -----Original Message----- From: Stephen Farrell
> [mailto:[e-mail]] Sent: Wednesday, February 1, 2017
> 2:26 PM To: Mike Jones <[e-mail]>; joel jaeggli
> <[e-mail]>; The IESG <[e-mail]> Cc:
> [e-mail]; [e-mail];
> [e-mail] Subject: Re: [OAUTH-WG] Stephen Farrell's Discuss on
> draft-ietf-oauth-amr-values-05: (with DISCUSS)
> 
> 
> Hi Mike,
> 
> On 01/02/17 17:00, Mike Jones wrote:
>> Thanks for the discussion, Stephen.
>> 
>> To your point about "otp", the working group discussed this very 
>> point.  They explicitly decided not to introduce "hotp" and "totp" 
>> identifiers because no one had a use case in which the distinction 
>> mattered.
> 
> Then I'm not following why adding "otp" to the registry now is a good
> plan.
> 
> If there's a use-case now, then adding an entry with a good reference
> to the relevant spec seems right.
> 
> If there's no use-case now, then not adding it to the registry seems
> right. (Mentioning it as a possible future entry would be fine.)
> 
> I think the same logic would apply for all the values that this spec
> adds to the registry. Why is that wrong?
> 
>> Others can certainly introduce those identifiers and register them
>> if they do have such a use case, once the registry has been
>> established.  But the working group wanted to be conservative about
>> the identifiers introduced to prime the registry, and this is such
>> a case.
>> 
>> What identifiers to use and register will always be a balancing
>> act. You want to be as specific as necessary to add practical and
>> usable value, but not so specific as to make things unnecessarily
>> brittle.
> 
> Eh... don't we want interop? Isn't that the primary goal here?
> 
>> While some might say there's a difference between serial number 
>> ranges of particular authentication devices, going there is
>> clearly in the weeds.  On the other hand, while there used to be an
>> "eye" identifier, Elaine Newton of NIST pointed out that there are 
>> significant differences between retina and iris matching, so "eye" 
>> was replaced with "retina" and "iris".  Common sense informed by 
>> actual data is the key here.
> 
> That's another good example. There's no reference for "iris." If that
> is used in some protocol, then what format(s) are expected to be
> supported? Where do I find that spec? If we can answer that, then
> great, let's add the details. If not, then I'd suggest we omit "iris"
> and leave it 'till later to add an entry for that. And again,
> including text with "iris" as an example is just fine, all I'm asking
> is that we only add the registry entry if we can meet the same bar
> that we're asking the DE to impose on later additions.
> 
> And the same for all the others...
> 
> Cheers, S.
> 
> 
>> 
>> The point of the registry requiring a specification reference is
>> so people using the registry can tell where the identifier is
>> defined. For all the initial values, that requirement is satisfied,
>> since the reference will be to the new RFC.  I think that aligns
>> with the point that Joel was making.
>> 
>> Your thoughts?
>> 
>> -- Mike
>> 
>> -----Original Message----- From: OAuth 
>> [mailto:[e-mail]] On Behalf Of Stephen Farrell Sent: 
>> Wednesday, February 1, 2017 7:03 AM To: joel jaeggli 
>> <[e-mail]>; The IESG <[e-mail]> Cc: 
>> [e-mail]; [e-mail]; 
>> [e-mail] Subject: Re: [OAUTH-WG] Stephen Farrell's Discuss
>> on draft-ietf-oauth-amr-values-05: (with DISCUSS)
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> On 01/02/17 14:58, joel jaeggli wrote:
>>> On 1/31/17 8:26 AM, Stephen Farrell wrote:
>>>> Stephen Farrell has entered the following ballot position for 
>>>> draft-ietf-oauth-amr-values-05: Discuss
>>>> 
>>>> When responding, please keep the subject line intact and reply
>>>> to all email addresses included in the To and CC lines. (Feel
>>>> free to cut this introductory paragraph, however.)
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> Please refer to 
>>>> https://www.ietf.org/iesg/statement/discuss-criteria.html for 
>>>> more information about IESG DISCUSS and COMMENT positions.
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> The document, along with other ballot positions, can be found 
>>>> here: 
>>>> https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-ietf-oauth-amr-values/
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> ---------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>>
>>>>
>
>>>> 
-
>>>> DISCUSS: 
>>>> ---------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>>
>>>>
>
>>>> 
-
>>>> 
>>>> This specification seems to me to break it's own rules. You
>>>> state that registrations should include a reference to a
>>>> specification to improve interop. And yet, for the strings
>>>> added here (e.g. otp) you don't do that (referring to section 2
>>>> will not improve interop) and there are different ways in which
>>>> many of the methods in section 2 can be done. So I think you
>>>> need to add a bunch more references.
>>> 
>>> Not clear to me that the document creating the registry needs to
>>>  adhere to the rules for further allocations in order to
>>> prepoulate the registry. that is perhaps an appeal to future
>>> consistency.
>> 
>> Sure - I'm all for a smattering of inconsistency:-)
>> 
>> But I think the lack of specs in some of these cases could impact
>> on interop, e.g. in the otp case, they quote two RFCs and yet only
>> have one value. That seems a bit broken to me, so the discuss isn't
>> really about the formalism.
>> 
>> S.
>> 
>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>> 
>