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Re: Request for community guidance on issue concerning a future meeting of the IETF

2009-09-18 17:27:45


--On Friday, September 18, 2009 15:46 -0400 "Steven M. Bellovin"
<smb(_at_)cs(_dot_)columbia(_dot_)edu> wrote:

...
Speaking of Danvers -- what is the situation -- theory and
practice -- regarding encrypted transmissions to/from such a
meeting?  I think that a high percentage of IETF attendees are
using various sorts of VPNs and/or encrypted tunnels for email
retrieval, remote login, etc.  Note that I'm assuming they
don't care much if we discuss cryptographic technology (i.e.,
they're happy for the Security Area to meet).  I'm just
talking ordinary, day-to-day activities for many participants.

I obviously cannot speak for the meeting or venue, but I've
routinely used encrypted tunnels from various facilities and
hotels in Beijing and have not encountered a problem for many
years (and the problems then were not clearly different from
problems I used to routinely encounter in hotels in the US and
Western Europe).

Commitments and clarity would definitely be good, especially
given that someone feels a need for the sort of provision
Marshall quoted, but my impression from some experience is that,
if we confine our networking efforts and technical (and even
technical policy) discussions to the meeting and meeting
participants, we would be extremely unlikely to have any
problems.  Now, if some IETF participant decided to wander into
a far-away neighborhood of Beijing, find a random Internet cafe,
wander in, and offer to teach everyone there how to set up an
encrypted tunnel to web proxies in some problematic country (or
other entity)... well, I haven't had any first-hand experiences
that let me guess what would happen, although I assume it would
be treated as bad judgment or worse.

      john


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