Looking at this paragraph and the comments on it, maybe
the thing to do is to make the text talk more about
functions and try avoid tricky terminology.
So how'd a change along these lines be:
OLD:
More limited-scope monitoring to assist with network management that
is required in order to operate the network or an application is not
considered pervasive monitoring. There is though a clear potential
for such limited monitoring mechanisms to be abused as part of
pervasive monitoring, so this tension needs careful consideration in
protocol design. Making networks unmanageable in order to mitigate
pervasive monitoring would not be an acceptable outcome. But
equally, ignoring pervasive monitoring in designing network
management mechanisms would go against the consensus documented in
this BCP. An appropriate balance will likely emerge over time as
real instances of this tension are considered.
NEW:
Monitoring in itself can be a good thing and need not be part of
a pervasive monitoring attack. For example, network management
functions often require monitoring packets or flows, anti-spam
mechanisms may need to see mail message content and some kinds
of monitoring can be part of mitigating the pervasive monitoring
attack, e.g. with Certificate Transparency logs. [RFC6962]
There is though a clear potential
for such monitoring mechanisms to be abused as part of
pervasive monitoring, so this tension needs careful consideration in
protocol design. Making networks unmanageable in order to mitigate
pervasive monitoring would not be an acceptable outcome. But
equally, ignoring pervasive monitoring
would go against the consensus documented in
this BCP. An appropriate balance will likely emerge over time as
real instances of this tension are considered.
Feedback appreciated. Probably better if that's more like "good
direction" or "bad direction" rather than immediate wordsmithing,
e.g. tweaking the examples is probably not the most important
for now.
S.