Dear MtFBwU,
Please excuse my weasel words.
My country is apparently about to adopt an internet censorship scheme.
I'm not happy about it, but I'm unlikely to build a system to circumvent the
"protection".
I would actually not encourage IETF to work on such a technology as this,
particularly in the lead-up to IETF Beijing. That would be a serious affront
to our hosts. It is quite important to ensure that the IETF particularly is not
subject to any external party's agenda in the lead-up to the meeting.
In purely technical terms, there is a conflict with IETF's existing
routing practices which are shortest (routing) path oriented, so that
communications between pairs of devices will send most or all channels
of data down the same path.
Any form of communications which sends multiple elements down the same routing
path is subject to collation and correlation by an intermediate agency, assuming
that they use the same correlation mechanisms as the end-nodes.
So that means using diverse data paths, or creating some sort of protected
payload is required to ensure that only the parties to a conversation can
receive the data.
If there is a portion of the data which can be exchanged out-of-band, then a
protection scheme can be negotiated there, or the sensitive content can be sent
with
the remnant providing only innocuous context.
Alternatively, a system which can send data out-of-band which the parties
can use to shuffle the data so that sensitivity is reduced.
In some environments use of such shuffle techniques and out-of-band channels is
not legal, and I wouldn't encourage anyone to act illegally.
Out-of-band communications schemes such as have been mentioned are likely to be
focussed on by authorities. Participation in particular schemes could get
someone in
trouble.
Systems which increase the apparent entropy of a communication path could even
be detected,
and local endpoints (for example within a protected zone) could be identified
based
on the increased entropy.
This would be dangerous for the participants, especially if they thought that
the channel they had was unidentifiable.
IETF's job is to make Standards, which are reliable, stable and widely
available.
Regardless of the focus of a protocol (routing, privacy or reliability), it's
not
sufficient to create a system which is good-enough for today, but could be
dangerously ineffective tomorrow.
I believe this is something which is not something IETF should rush into willy
nilly,
ideology of participants aside.
Sincerely,
Greg Daley
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