----- Original Message -----
From: "Dean Willis" <dean(_dot_)willis(_at_)softarmor(_dot_)com>
To: "Health" <healthyao(_at_)gmail(_dot_)com>
Cc: "Ole Jacobsen" <ole(_at_)cisco(_dot_)com>; "IETF-Discussion list"
<ietf(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org>
Sent: Monday, September 28, 2009 12:11 PM
Subject: Re: Request for community guidance on issue concerning afuturemeeting
of the IETF
On Sep 27, 2009, at 9:17 PM, Health wrote:
----- Original Message -----
From: "Dean Willis" <dean(_dot_)willis(_at_)softarmor(_dot_)com>
To: "Ole Jacobsen" <ole(_at_)cisco(_dot_)com>
Cc: "IETF-Discussion list" <ietf(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org>
Sent: Monday, September 28, 2009 2:05 AM
Subject: Re: Request for community guidance on issue concerning a
futuremeeting of the IETF
Ole Jacobsen wrote:
On Sat, 26 Sep 2009, Dean Willis wrote:
Because China's policy on censoring the Internet sucks, and we have
a moral and ethical responsibility to make the Internet available
despite that policy. If this requires technology changes, then that
technology is within our purview. If it requires operational
changes, then those operational changes are within our purview. If
it requires political changes, then those changes are within our
purview. Governments with policies like the PRC's are the enemy, to
be defeated by all means technical, operational, and political.
This
can lead to some heated statements.
Dave beat me to it but:
"We have a moral and ethical responsibility" ? Who is "we" here.
Does
it include the several hundred folks from China who regularly
participate either in our meetings or online?
The IETF, ISOC, and supporters thereof bear this responsibility. And
yes, our associates from any nation share in this responsibility if
they're participating earnestly and honestly in our work. If not, I
suggest they leave now.
Since IETF includes Chinese, why can you say that " if they're
participating earnestly and honestly in our work"?
Our work means your work?
The IETF's work is the IETF's work. Some people are working hard to
further it. I suspect some people are just there to take notes. I
suspect others are there to find pieces of IPR that can be patented,
and are patenting it just ahead of our standardization efforts. I
suspect others are government agents, some charged with just reporting
back, some with influencing technical directions towards national
priorities.
you just suspect, you suspect everything,
do you know the principle of IETF?
IETF believes the "running code". suspecting everything is a deduction, is
not a kind of "running code".
There are several of those groups that we could probably do without,
and the note takers don't worry me much.
Why can you say that "If not, I suggest they leave now."
Chinese contributing to IETF is a power. you want to deprive it?
Many of our colleagues from China, just like those from other
locations, are hard-working, serious contributors to the IETF.
+1.
Others,
just like from other countries, probably fall into the groups I think
we can do without. It is unfortunate that some of those who are
contributing to the IETF's work are arguably opposed by governmental
priorities in their home countries. They are, I believe, true heroes
in every sense of the word.
is every technology supported by every comany?
does every technology have same priorities in every comany?
IETF is intending to include every contributor.
Exactly. But is it intended to "include" those who are working within
the IETF framework against the IETF's goals?
I have no such example.
even there is one, why not say "this is a freee speech".
it seems that
what you saying is a representation of "free speech"; other saying is not a
representation of "free speech";
my question is :
Who is IETF? you?
who gives you the right to do "If not, I suggest they leave now."?
IETF is of course all of us who contribute to the IETF, and to the
Internet Society that sponsors the IETF.
+1
As for who gives me the right to say anything, it's called Free
Speech.
yes, you can say it. but at least, it is not a symbol of gentleman.
That's something some localities have, and others do not.
you can say it in China. no problem.
This
is a centerpoint of the discussion we are having about which venues
are aligned with the IETF's goals, and which are opposed to it.
Many
of the conversations we might have at IETF are against the law in some
locations, and not against the law in others. Getting clarity on this
massive legal complexity and its implications to the IETF is something
we need to do before we have an IETF meeting in any location in which
we might find ourselves in violation of local laws.
I have enjoy many IETF meetings, I have no discussion viloations of Chinese law.
many IETFers from China are from some government related comanies.
do you think that Chinese government will allow the chinese participants to
join the IETF meeing which often has the violation of Chinese law?
if your answer is yes, that means that Chinese government is kind, has a free
speech. (even in USA, the government will not allow someone to have a violation
of the law)
if your answer is no, that means that IETF has not serious political
discussion, so that chinese government does not care for it.
Does the IETF charter require us to do this? Are we supposed to
overthrow governments as part of this? If so, do we have a ranked
list, or should we just do it alphabetically?
The IETF charter says "Mission Statement: The mission of the IETF is
(sic) make the Internet work better by producing high quality,
relevant
technical documents that influence the way people design, use, and
manage the Internet."
Government interference of the sort endorsed by the PRC does not make
the Internet work better. Its impact is the opposite; it makes the
Internet work worse.
how do you know that? how do you prove that?
Censorship, massive national firewalls, route restriction, web site
blocking, deep packet inspection with filtering,
massive national firewalls, route restriction, web site blocking are
technologies, some are also discussed in IETF.
I am sure that these technolgy is not only used by China.
arrest and
prosecution of people who use the Internet for political speech,
capricious policy changes, Green Dam Youth Escort and other
politically-driven challenges to the function of the Internet are
quite obviously NOT making the Internet work better. Unless of course
you see them as valuable evolutionary pressures that force us to make
the Internet better in order to make these sorts of governmentally-
sponsored denial of service attacks less and less effective. If you
take the latter view, then learning to defeat them is obviously within
the scope of the IETF.
you seems to care more about politicas than technolgy.
one IETF meeting can change everything?
every country has a different situation, every culture has a different thing;
you want them to be same to yours?
political issue and technical issues are totally different.
Political issues often drive technical issues. It's an unfortunate fact.
China's internet implements most RFC protocols.
This requires a technical response from the IETF to
counter. Yet these technical discussions are against the law of the
PRC
why, I never seeing such thing?
example?
Ok, so let's say my P2PSIP slides talk about the requirement of end-to-
end encryption for bypassing hostile nodes operated by the PRC's
Ministry of State Security or the USA's National Security
Administration. We might also discuss means for detecting such hostile
proxies and dynamically rerouting to avoid them. I've been led to
believe that in the PRC, public discourse on how to defeat the state's
invasive interception mechanisms is frowned on and probably illegal.
Are you telling me this isn't true? Will you be leading the discussion
as a local expert? Or are you afraid of what the PRC government might
do? Or are you secretly an agent of the PRC government tasked with
breaking the Internet so that it works the way the government wants it
to, and you want to keep your job? If so, don't take it personally --
we've been known to ask the same questions about agents of other
governments that are or have been involved in IETF work. All
governments meddle, it's their nature. Our nature is to detect and
analyze that meddling and its impact on our operation and decide
whether it is beneficial or detrimental to our goals.
because they are in direct opposition to the intent of the PRC's
government. Therefore, we should not be meeting there, or if we are
meeting there, we should be focusing on the problem at hand, which is
driven by PRC policy.
do you hear any statement about "China against some technology"?
Actually, Chinse government sees the technology power as the first
pust to improving the living standard of all Chinese.
Oddly enough, I agree with that. Like any national government, the
PRC's government is complicated. There are forward-looking leaders,
and there are reactionary leaders. There are leaders who understand
the benefits of technology, and leaders who see technology as a threat.
Many of us outside the PRC are thrilled by the increasing reach of the
Internet within the PRC, and hope that it will lead to ever-broader
cultural and personal understanding and plenty of opportunity for
mutually profitable business. We also hope that it will lead to
agreements on environmental management (preventing pollution, species
loss, thermal shift, and all that stuff), and benefit the human rights
spectrum. Note that we haven't talked about things like
"environment"here; although they're big political footballs, they are
outside the scope of the IETF, as far as I know.
Unfortunately, there are also leaders who understand the technology,
see how it can be a benefit to their people but also understand the
threat to their leadership position and want to change the technology
so that it is less of a threat to them. It is NOT within the IETF's
mandate to adapt our technology to supporting a political regime's
continued self-preservation, especially where such goals conflict with
the proper operation of the Internet.
Specifically, the proper operation of the Internet includes the end-to-
end principle and the concept of strong operational security as seen
by the Internet hosts themselves (the end points), not as seen by a
political security apparatus that has control of the network fabric
itself. In particular, things like filtering firewalls, politically-
driven route filtering, enablement of deep-packet inspection and
"lawful intercept" run counter to the end-to-end and strong endpoint
security principles. And the policies of the PRC, as seen from
outside, seem clearly inclined towards this direction. Some elements
of the PRC leadership seem to be working as hard as they can to keep
the Internet from working the way it should.
some love icecream; some do hate it.
We don't have to support
their game by showing up to play in their yard.
you can not say "we", you are just one of IETFers.
you'd better say "I".
Look, I am not in any way trying to defend the policy in question as
something I agree with, but I cannot agree that we as a GROUP should
be engaged in the politcal actions you suggest. Should we take a
stance on universal health care while we're at it?
If we were the Universal Health Care Engineering Group, then that
would
be in our scope. We aren't, and it isn't. So PRC's other human rights
violations, whatever they may or may not be (and I enjoy many fine
products manufactured by political prisoners putatively subjected to
slave labor in the work camps), are completely out of scope for the
IETF. However, the relationship of the policies of PRC relative to
the
workings of the Internet are clearly directly within our scope and
mission.
you try to re-charter IETF from technolgy body to political body?
As we have often said, politics influence technology. It is only fair
that technology pushes back where necessary to preserve its own
integrity.
in IETF history, which technolgy is pushed back by Chinse governement?
I have seen none.
you forget the "running code" again.
But I'm very much afraid that such "pushing back" would be
seen (at least by some parties) to violate PRC law and consequently
the terms of the host's contract, thereby putting the IETF in an
untenable financial position.
if you are truly IETFer and focus on technolgy, I do not believe that you will
have a violation of any chinese law.
seeing is beliving. China is totally different to China 20 years ago.
if your idea origins from "COLD WAR", you need downloade the new information
to update it.
--
Dean
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