Phillip Hallam-Baker wrote:
From time to time, people in this forum make statements of the form
'we cannot do X because it would enable censorship' and go on to
describe a use case that really has no connection to how the Internet
is used against repressive regimes.
At the same time, we have the "Green Dam" experiment launching in China:
http://www.reuters.com/article/technologyNews/idUSTRE55L0YD20090622
However, we are still letting people with the backing of the Chinese
government participate in the development and oversight of Internet
protocols. While I wish to cast no aspersions against any particular
contributor who just happens to be from the nation in question, there's
definitely a potential conflict of interest. It's hard to say "no" when
your government demands support. The history of US telcos assisting with
illegal interception (and no, the US government can't retroactively
legalize it with an ex-post-facto law no matter what the court says)
should prove this assertion.
While other governments have their own forms of Internet oppression,
probably their own technical agendae, and may well subsidize IETF
participants towards questionable ends, Green Dam is a particularly
horrifying spectacle. It therefore serves as a reference example for
bringing this particular conflict of interest up for examination.
Green Dam also serves as a reminder: even end-to-end security isn't good
enough when the attacker can mandate an integrity compromize in at least
one end.
Further, I worry that with the economic decline, only people backed by
the financial reserves of oppressive governments will be able to
participate in the IETF at the level required for non-com, IESG, etc. It
would be a great disappointment to cede control of the Internet to the
world's tyrants just because they're the only ones who can be bothered
to show up at meetings.
Perhaps there is a principle here that should be coded into noncom
procedures, althoug I'm not sure how to state it explicitly.
--
Dean Willis
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