Internet DRAFT - draft-irtf-hrpc-research
draft-irtf-hrpc-research
Human Rights Protocol Considerations Research Group N. ten Oever
Internet-Draft ARTICLE 19
Intended status: Informational C. Cath
Expires: January 17, 2018 Oxford Internet Institute
July 16, 2017
Research into Human Rights Protocol Considerations
draft-irtf-hrpc-research-14
Abstract
This document aims to propose guidelines for human rights
considerations, similar to the work done on the guidelines for
privacy considerations [RFC6973]. If you want to apply this work to
your own, you can directly go to Section 6. The rest of the document
explains the background of the guidelines and how they were
developed.
This document is not an Internet Standards Track specification; it is
published for informational purposes.
This informational document has consensus for publication from the
Internet Research Task Force (IRTF) Human Right Protocol
Considerations Research Group. It is the first milestone in a longer
term research effort and has been reviewed both by the research group
and by individuals from outside the research group. Many of the
topics discussed are still under discussion in the research group and
will be subjects of continuing research.
Status of This Memo
This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the
provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.
Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering
Task Force (IETF). Note that other groups may also distribute
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Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months
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time. It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference
material or to cite them other than as "work in progress."
This Internet-Draft will expire on January 17, 2018.
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Copyright Notice
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document authors. All rights reserved.
This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
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Table of Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
2. Vocabulary used . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
3. Research Questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
4. Literature and Discussion Review . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
5. Methodology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
5.1. Data Sources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
5.1.1. Discourse analysis of RFCs . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
5.1.2. Interviews with members of the IETF community . . . . 16
5.1.3. Participant observation in Working Groups . . . . . . 16
5.2. Data analysis strategies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
5.2.1. Identifying qualities of technical concepts that
relate to human rights . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
5.2.2. Relating human rights to technical concepts . . . . . 18
5.2.3. Map cases of protocols, implementations and
networking paradigms that adversely impact human
rights or are enablers thereof . . . . . . . . . . . 21
6. Model for developing human rights protocol considerations . . 39
6.1. Human rights threats . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
6.2. Guidelines for human rights considerations . . . . . . . 41
6.2.1. Connectivity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
6.2.2. Privacy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
6.2.3. Content agnosticism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
6.2.4. Security . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
6.2.5. Internationalization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
6.2.6. Censorship resistance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
6.2.7. Open Standards . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
6.2.8. Heterogeneity Support . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
6.2.9. Anonymity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
6.2.10. Pseudonymity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
6.2.11. Accessibility . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
6.2.12. Localization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
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6.2.13. Decentralization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
6.2.14. Reliability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
6.2.15. Confidentiality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
6.2.16. Integrity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
6.2.17. Authenticity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
6.2.18. Adaptability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
6.2.19. Outcome Transparency . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
7. Document Status . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
8. Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
9. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
10. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
11. Research Group Information . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
12. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
12.1. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
12.2. URIs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
Authors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
1. Introduction
"There's a freedom about the Internet: As long as we accept the
rules of sending packets around, we can send packets containing
anything to anywhere."
[Berners-Lee]
"The Internet isn't value-neutral, and neither is the IETF."
[RFC3935]
The evergrowing interconnectedness of Internet and society increases
the impact of the Internet on the lives of individuals. Because of
this, the design and development of the Internet infrastructure also
has a growing impact on society. This has led to a broad recognition
that human rights [UDHR] [ICCPR] [ICESCR] have a role in the
development and management of the Internet [HRC2012] [UNGA2013]
[NETmundial]. It has also been argued that the Internet should be
strengthened as a human rights enabling environment [Brown].
This document aims to expose the relation between protocols and human
rights, propose possible guidelines to protect the Internet as a
human-rights-enabling environment in future protocol development, in
a manner similar to the work done for Privacy Considerations in
[RFC6973], and to increase the awareness in both the human rights
community and the technical community on the importance of the
technical workings of the Internet and its impact on human rights.
Open, secure and reliable connectivity is necessary (although not
sufficient) to exercise human rights such as freedom of expression
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and freedom of association [FOC], as defined in the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights [UDHR]. The purpose of the Internet to
be a global network of networks that provides unfettered connectivity
to all users and for any content [RFC1958]. This objective of
stimulating global connectivity contributes to the Internet's role as
an enabler of human rights. The Internet has given people a platform
to exchange opinions, gather information, and it has enabled people
of different backgrounds and genders to participate in the public
debate, it has also allowed people to congregate and organize. Next
to that, the strong commitment to security [RFC1984] [RFC3365] and
privacy [RFC6973] [RFC7258] in the Internet's architectural design
contribute to the strengthening of the Internet as a human rights
enabling environment. One could even argue that the Internet is not
only an enabler of human rights, but that human rights lie at the
basis of, and are ingrained in, the architecture of the networks that
make up the Internet. Internet connectivity increases the capacity
for individuals to exercise their rights, the core of the Internet,
its architectural design is therefore closely intertwined with the
human rights framework [CathFloridi]. The quintessential link
between the Internet's infrastructure and human rights has been
argued by many. [Bless] for instance argues that, 'to a certain
extent, the Internet and its protocols have already facilitated the
realization of human rights, e.g., the freedom of assembly and
expression. In contrast, measures of censorship and pervasive
surveillance violate fundamental human rights.' [Denardis15] argues
that 'Since the first hints of Internet commercialization and
internationalization, the IETF has supported strong security in
protocol design and has sometimes served as a force resisting
protocol-enabled surveillance features.' By doing so, the IETF
enabled the manifestation of the right to privacy, through the
Internet's infrastructure. Additionally, access to freely available
information gives people access to knowledge that enables them to
help satisfy other human rights, as such the Internet increasingly
becomes a pre-condition for human rights rather than a supplement.
Human rights can be in conflict with each other, such as the right to
freedom of expression and the right to privacy. In such cases the
different affected rights need to be balanced. In order to do this
it is crucial that the rights impacts are clearly documented in order
to mitigate the potential harm. Making that process tangible and
practical for protocol developers is what this research aims to
ultimately contribute to. Technology can never be fully equated with
a human right. Whereas a specific technology might be strong enabler
of a specific human right, it might have an adverse impact on another
human right. In this case decisions on design and deployment need to
take this into account.
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The open nature of the initial technical design and its open
standards, as well as developments like open source, fostered freedom
of communication. What emerged was a network of networks that could
enable everyone to connect and to exchange data, information and
code. For many, enabling such connections became a core value.
However as the scale and the commercialization of the Internet grew,
topics like access, rights and connectivity are forced to compete
with other values. Therefore, important human rights enabling
characteristics of the Internet might be degraded if they're not
properly defined, described and protected as such. And, the other
way around, not protecting human right enabling characteristics could
also result in (partial) loss of functionality and connectivity, and
other inherent parts of the Internet's architecture of networks. New
protocols, particularly those that upgrade the core infrastructure of
the network, should be designed to continue to enable fundamental
human rights.
The IETF has produced guidelines and procedures to ensure and
galvanize the privacy of indiduals and security of the network in
protocol development. This document aims to explore the possibility
of the development of similar procedures for guidelines for human
rights considerations to ensure that protocols developed in the IETF
do not have an adverse impact on the realization of human rights on
the Internet. By carefully considering the answers to the questions
posed in the Section 6 part of this document, document authors should
be able to produce a comprehensive analysis that can serve as the
basis for discussion on whether the protocol adequately protects
against specific human rights threats, and potentially stimulate
authors to think about alternative design choices.
2. Vocabulary used
In the discussion of human rights and Internet architecture concepts
developed in computer science, networking, law, policy-making and
advocacy are coming together [Dutton],[Kaye],[Franklin], [RFC1958].
The same concepts might have a very different meaning and
implications in other areas of expertise. In order to foster a
constructive interdisciplinary debate, and minimize differences in
interpretation, the following glossary is provided, building as much
as possible on existing definitions, and where these were not
available definitions have been developed.
Accessibility Full Internet Connectivity as described in [RFC4084]
to provide unfettered access to the Internet
The design of protocols, services or implementation that provide
an enabling environment for people with disabilities.
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The ability to receive information available on the Internet
Anonymity The condition of an identity being unknown or concealed.
[RFC4949]
Anonymous A state of an individual in which an observer or attacker
cannot identify the individual within a set of other individuals
(the anonymity set). [RFC6973]
Authenticity The property of being genuine and able to be verified
and be trusted. [RFC4949]
Blocking the practice of preventing access to resources in the
aggregate [RFC7754]. Both blocking and filtering can be
implemented at the level of "services" (web hosting or video
streaming, for example) or at the level of particular "content."
[RFC7754]
Censorship technical mechanisms, that include both blocking and
filtering, that certain political or private actors around the
world use to block or degrade Internet traffic. For further
details on the various elements of Internet censorship see [hall]
Censorship resistance Methods and measures to mitigate Internet
censorship.
Confidentiality The property that data is not disclosed to system
entities unless they have been authorized to know the data.
[RFC4949].
Connectivity The extent to which a device or network is able to
reach other devices or networks to exchange data. The Internet is
the tool for providing global connectivity [RFC1958]. Different
types of connectivity are further specified in [RFC4084].
The combination of the end-to-end principle, interoperability,
distributed architecture, resilience, reliability and robustness
are the enabling factors that result in connectivity to and on the
Internet.
Content agnosticism Treating network traffic identically regardless
of content.
Decentralized Implementation or deployment of standards, protocols
or systems without one single point of control.
End-to-End The principle that application-specific functions should
not be embedded into the network and thus stay at the end-points:
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in many cases, especially when dealing with failures, the right
decisions can only be made with the corresponding application-
specific knowledge, which is available at the end-points not in
the network.
The end-to-end principle is one of the key architectural
guidelines of the Internet. The argument in favor of the end-to-
end approach to system design is laid out in the fundamental paper
by Saltzer, Reed, and Clark [Saltzer] [Clark]. In it, the authors
argue in favor of radical simplification: systems designers should
only build the essential and shared functions into the network, as
most functions can only be implemented at network end points.
Building features into the network for the benefit of certain
applications, will come at the expense of others. As such, as a
general system designers should attempt to steer clear of building
anything into the network that is not a bare necessity for its
functioning. Following the end-to-end principle is crucial for
innovation, as it makes innovation at the edges possible without
having to make changes to the network, and the robustness of the
network. Various aspects of end-to-end connectivity are further
elaborated on in [RFC2775].
Federation The possibility of connecting autonomous and possibly
centralized systems into single system without a central
authority.
Filtering the practice of preventing access to specific resources
within an aggregate [RFC7754].
Heterogeneity The Internet is characterized by heterogeneity on many
levels: devices and nodes, router scheduling algorithms and queue
management mechanisms, routing protocols, levels of multiplexing,
protocol versions and implementations, underlying link layers
(e.g., point-to-point, multi-access links, wireless, FDDI, etc.),
in the traffic mix and in the levels of congestion at different
times and places. Moreover, as the Internet is composed of
independent organizations and Internet service providers, each
with their own separate policy concerns,there is a large
heterogeneity of administrative domains and pricing structures.
As a result, the heterogeneity principle proposed in [RFC1958]
needs to be supported by design. [FIArch]
Human rights Human rights are principles and norms that are
indivisible, interrelated, unalienable, universal, and mutually
reinforcing that have been codified in national and international
bodies of law. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights [UDHR]
is the most well-known document in the history of human rights.
The apirations from this documents were later codified into
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treaties such as the [ICCPR] and the [ICESCR], after which
signatory countries were obliged to reflect them in their national
bodies of law. There is also a broad recognition that not only
states have an obligations vis a vis human rights, but non-state
actors do so as well.
Integrity The property that data has not been changed, destroyed, or
lost in an unauthorized or accidental manner. [RFC4949].
Interoperable A property of a documented standard or protocol which
allows different independent implementations to work with each
other without any restriction on functionality.
Internationalization (i18n) The practice of making protocols,
standards, and implementations usable in different languages and
scripts (see Localization).
"In the IETF, "internationalization" means to add or improve the
handling of non-ASCII text in a protocol" [RFC6365]. A different
perspective, more appropriate to protocols that are designed for
global use from the beginning, is the definition used by W3C:
"Internationalization is the design and development of a product,
application or document content that enables easy localization for
target audiences that vary in culture, region, or language."
[W3Ci18nDef]
Many protocols that handle text only handle one charset (US-
ASCII), or leave the question of encoding up to local guesswork
(which leads, of course, to interoperability problems) [RFC3536].
If multiple charsets are permitted, they must be explicitly
identified [RFC2277]. Adding non-ASCII text to a protocol allows
the protocol to handle more scripts, hopefully all of the ones
useful in the world. In today's world, that is normally best
accomplished by allowing Unicode encoded in UTF-8 only, thereby
shifting conversion issues away from ad hoc choices.
Localization (l10n) The practice of translating an implementation to
make it functional in a specific language or for users in a
specific locale (see Internationalization).
(cf [RFC6365]): The process of adapting an internationalized
application platform or application to a specific cultural
environment. In localization, the same semantics are preserved
while the syntax may be changed. [FRAMEWORK]
Localization is the act of tailoring an application for a
different language or script or culture. Some internationalized
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applications can handle a wide variety of languages. Typical
users only understand a small number of languages, so the program
must be tailored to interact with users in just the languages they
know. The major work of localization is translating the user
interface and documentation. Localization involves not only
changing the language interaction, but also other relevant changes
such as display of numbers, dates, currency, and so on. The
better internationalized an application is, the easier it is to
localize it for a particular language and character encoding
scheme.
Open standards Conform with [RFC2026]: Various national and
international standards bodies, such as ANSI, ISO, IEEE, and ITU-
T, develop a variety of protocol and service specifications that
are similar to Technical Specifications defined here. National
and international groups also publish "implementors' agreements"
that are analogous to Applicability Statements, capturing a body
of implementation-specific detail concerned with the practical
application of their standards. All of these are considered to be
"open external standards" for the purposes of the Internet
Standards Process.
Openness Absence of centralized points of control - a feature that
is assumed to make it easy for new users to join and new uses to
unfold [Brown].
Permissionless innovation The freedom and ability to freely create
and deploy new protocols on top of the communications constructs
that currently exist.
Privacy The right of an entity (normally a person), acting in its
own behalf, to determine the degree to which it will interact with
its environment, including the degree to which the entity is
willing to share its personal information with others. [RFC4949]
The right of individuals to control or influence what information
related to them may be collected and stored and by whom and to
whom that information may be disclosed.
Privacy is a broad concept relating to the protection of
individual or group autonomy and the relationship between an
individual or group and society, including government, companies
and private individuals. It is often summarized as "the right to
be left alone" but it encompasses a wide range of rights including
protections from intrusions into family and home life, control of
sexual and reproductive rights, and communications secrecy. It is
commonly recognized as a core right that underpins human dignity
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and other values such as freedom of association and freedom of
speech.
The right to privacy is also recognized in nearly every national
constitution and in most international human rights treaties. It
has been adjudicated upon both by international and regional
bodies. The right to privacy is also legally protected at the
national level through provisions in civil and/or criminal codes.
Reliability Reliability ensures that a protocol will execute its
function consistently as described and function without unexpected
result. A system that is reliable degenerates gracefully and will
have a documented way to announce degradation. It also has
mechanisms to recover from failure gracefully, and if applicable,
allow for partial healing [dict].
Resilience The maintaining of dependability and performance in the
face of unanticipated changes and circumstances [Meyer].
Robustness The resistance of protocols and their implementations to
errors, and to involuntary, legal or malicious attempts to disrupt
its mode of operations. [RFC0760] [RFC0791] [RFC0793] [RFC1122].
Or framed more positively, a system can provide functionality
consistently and without errors despite involuntary, legal or
malicious attempts to disrupt its mode of operations.
Scalability The ability to handle increased or decreased system
parameters (e.g., number of end-systems, users, data flows,
routing entries. etc.) predictably within defined expectations.
There should be a clear definition of its scope and applicability.
The limits of a system's scalability should be defined. Growth or
shrinkage of these parameters is typically considered by orders of
magnitude.
Strong encryption / cryptography Used to describe a cryptographic
algorithm that would require a large amount of computational power to
defeat it. [RFC4949]. In the modern usage of the definition 'strong
encryption' this refers to an amount of computing power current not
available, not even to major state-level actors.
Transparency In this context transparency is linked to the
comprehensibility of a protocol in relation to the choices it
makes for both user and protocol developers and implementers and
to its outcome.
outcome transparency, is linked to the comprehensibility of the
effects of a protocol in relation to the choices it makes for both
user and protocol developers and implementers, including the
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comprehensibility of possible unintended consequences of protocol
choices (e.g. lack of authenticity may lead to lack of integrity
and negative externalities)
3. Research Questions
The Human Rights Protocol Considerations Research Group (hrpc) in the
Internet Research Taskforce (IRTF) embarked on its mission to answer
the following two questions which are also the main two questions
which this documents seeks to answer:
1. How can Internet protocols and standards impact human rights,
either by enabling them or by creating a restrictive environment?
2. Can guidelines be developed to improve informed and transparent
decision making about potential human rights impact of protocols?
4. Literature and Discussion Review
Protocols and standards are regularly seen as merely performing
technical functions. However, these protocols and standards do not
exist outside of their technical context nor outside of their
political, historical, economic, legal or cultural context. This is
best exemplified by the way in which some Internet processes and
protocols have become part and parcel of political processes and
public policies: one only has to look at the IANA transition, the RFC
on pervasive monitoring or global innovation policy for concrete
examples [Denardis15]. According to [Abbate]: "protocols are
politics by other means". This statement would probably not garner
IETF consensus, but it nonetheless confers that protocols are based
on decision making, most often by humans. In this process the values
and ideas about the role that a particular technology should perform
in society is embedded into the design. Often these design decisions
are part pure-technical, and part inspired by certain world view of
how technology should function that is inspired by personal,
corporate and political views. Within the community of IETF
participants there is a strong desire to solve technical problems and
minimize engagement with political processes and non-protocol related
political issues.
Since the late 1990's a burgeoning group of academics and
practitioners researched questions surrounding the societal impact of
protocols, and the politics of protocols. These studies vary in
focus and scope: some focus on specific standards [Davidsonetal]
[Musiani], others look into the political, legal, commercial or
social impact of protocols [BrownMarsden] [Lessig], [Mueller] and yet
others look at how the engineers' personal set of values get
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translated into technology [Abbate] [CathFloridi] [Denardis15]
[WynsbergheMoura].
Commercial and political influences on the management of the
Internet's infrastructure are well-documented in the academic
literature and will thus not be discussed here [Benkler] [Brownetal]
[Denardis15] [Lessig] [Mueller] [Zittrain]. It is sufficient to
say that the IETF community consistently tries to push back against
the standardization of surveillance and certain other issues that
negatively influence end-users' experience of and trust in the
Internet [Denardis14]. The role human rights play in engineering,
infrastructure maintenance and protocol design is much less clear.
It is very important to understand how protocols and standards impact
human rights. In particular because Standard Developing
Organizations (SDOs) are increasingly becoming venues where social
values (like human rights) are discussed, although often from a
technological point of view. These SDOs are becoming a new focal
point for discussions about values-by-design, and the role of
technical engineers in protecting or enabling human rights
[Brownetal] [Clarketal] [Denardis14] [CathFloridi] [Lessig]
[Rachovitsa].
In the academic literature five clear positions can be discerned, in
relation to the role of human rights in protocol design and how to
account for these human rights in protocol development: Clark et al.
argue that there is a need to 'design for variation in outcome, so
that the outcome can be different in different places, and the tussle
takes place within the design (...) [as] Rigid designs will be
broken; designs that permit variation will flex under pressure and
survive [Clarketal].' They hold that human rights should not be
hard-coded into protocols because of three reasons: first, the rights
in the UDHR are not absolute. Second, technology is not the only
tool in the tussle over human rights. And last but not least, it is
dangerous to make promises that can't be kept. The open nature of
the Internet will never, they argue, be enough to fully protect
individuals' human rights.
Conversely, Brown et al. [Brownetal] state that 'some key, universal
values - of which the UDHR is the most legitimate expression - should
be baked into the architecture at design time.' They argue that
design choices have offline consequences, and are able to shape the
power positions of groups or individuals in society. As such, the
individuals making these technical decisions have a moral obligation
to take into account the impact of their decisions on society, and by
extension human rights. Brown et al recognise that values and the
implementation of human rights vary across the globe. Yet they argue
that all members of the United Nations have found 'common agreement
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on the values proclaimed in the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights. In looking for the most legitimate set of global values to
embed in the future Internet architectures, the UDHR has the
democratic assent of a significant fraction of the planet's
population, through their elected representatives."
The main disagreement between these two academic positions lies
mostly in the question on whether a particular value system should be
embedded into the Internet's architectures or whether the
architectures need to account for a varying set of values.
A third position that is similar to that of Brown et al., is taken by
[Broeders] who argues that 'we must find ways to continue
guaranteeing the overall integrity and functionality of the public
core of the Internet.' He argues that the best way to do this is by
declaring the backbone of the Internet - which includes the TCP/IP
protocol suite, numerous standards, the Domain Name System (DNS), and
routing protocols - a common public good. This is a different
approach than that of [Clarketal] and [Brownetal] because Broeders
does not suggest that social values should (or should not) be
explicitly coded into the Internet, but rather that the existing
infrastructure should be seen as an entity of public value.
Bless and Orwat [Bless] represent a fourth position. They argue that
it is too early to make any definitive claims, but that there is a
need for more careful analysis of the impact of protocol design
choices on human rights. They also argue that it is important to
search for solutions that 'create awareness in the technical
community about impact of design choices on social values. And work
towards a methodology for co-design of technical and institutional
systems.'
Berners-Lee and Halpin argue that the Internet could lead to even new
capacities, and these capacities may over time be viewed as new kinds
of rights. For example, Internet access may be viewed as a human
right in of itself if it is taken to be a pre-condition for other
rights, even if it could not have been predicted at the declaration
of the UNHDR after the end of World War 2.[BernersLeeHalpin].
It is important to contextualize the technical discussion with the
academic discussions on this issue. The academic discussions also
are important to document as they inform the position of the authors
of this document. The Research Groups position is that hard-coding
human rights into protocols is complicated and changes with the
context. At this point is difficult to say whether hard-coding human
rights into protocols is wise or feasible. Additionally, there are
many human rights, but that not all are relevant for ICTs. A partial
catalog, with references to sources, of human rights related to ICTs
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can be found here [Hill2014]. It is however important to make
conscious and explicit design decisions that take into account the
human rights protocol considerations guidelines developed below.
This will contribute to the understanding of the impact protocols can
have on human rights, both for developers and for users. In
addition, it contributes to the careful consideration of the impact
that a specific protocol might have on human rights and that concrete
design decisions are documented in the protocol.
Pursuant to the principle of constant change, since the function and
scope of the Internet evolves, so does the role of the IETF in
developing standards. Internet standards are adopted on the basis of
a series of criteria, including high technical quality, support by
community consensus, and their overall benefit to the Internet. The
latter calls for an assessment of the interests of all affected
parties and the specifications' impact on the Internet's users. In
this respect, the effective exercise of the human rights of the
Internet users is a relevant consideration that needs to be
appreciated in the standardization process insofar as it is directly
linked to the reliability and core values of the Internet. [RFC1958]
[RFC0226] [RFC3724]
This document details the steps taken in the research into human
rights protocol considerations by the hrpc research group to clarify
the relation between technical concepts used in the IETF and human
rights. This document sets out some preliminary steps and
considerations for engineers to take into account when developing
standards and protocols.
5. Methodology
Mapping the relation between human rights, protocols and
architectures is a new research challenge, which requires a good
amount of interdisciplinary and cross organizational cooperation to
develop a consistent methodology.
The methodological choices made in this document are based on the
political science-based method of discourse analysis and ethnographic
research methods [Cath]. This work departs from the assumption that
language reflects the understanding of concepts. Or as [Jabri]
holds, policy documents are 'social relations represented in texts
where language is used to construct meaning and representation'.
This process happens in 'the social space of society' [Schroeder] and
manifests itself in institutions and organizations [King], exposed
using the ethnographic methods of semi-structured interviews and
participant observation. Or in non-academic language, the way the
language in IETF/IRTF documents describes and approaches the issues
they are trying to address is an indicator for the underlying social
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assumptions and relations of the engineers to their engineering. By
reading and analyzing these documents, as well as interviewing
engineers and participating in the IETF/IRTF working groups, it is
possible to distill the relation between human rights, protocols and
the Internet's infrastructure as it pertains to the work of the IETF.
The discourse analysis was operationalized using qualitative and
quantitative means. The first step taken by the authors and
contributors was reading RFCs and other official IETF documents. The
second step was the use of a python-based analyzer, using the tool
Big Bang, adapted by Nick Doty [Doty] to scan for the concepts that
were identified as important architectural principles (distilled on
the initial reading and supplemented by the interviews and
participant observation). Such a quantitative method is very precise
and speeds up the research process [Richie]. But this tool is unable
to understand 'latent meaning' [Denzin]. In order to mitigate these
issues of automated word-frequency based approaches, and to get a
sense of the 'thick meaning' [Geertz] of the data, a second
qualitative analysis of the data set was performed. These various
rounds of discourse analysis were used to inform the interviews and
further data analysis. As such the initial rounds of quantitative
discourse analysis were used to inform the second rounds of
qualitative analysis. The results from the qualitative interviews
were again used to feed new concepts into the quantitative discourse
analysis. As such the two methods continued to support and enrich
each other.
The ethnographic methods of the data collection and processing
allowed the research group to acquire the data necessary to 'provide
a holistic understanding of research participants' views and actions'
[Denzin] that highlighted ongoing issues and case studies where
protocols impact human rights. The interview participants were
selected through purposive sampling [Babbie], as the research group
was interested in getting a wide variety of opinions on the role of
human rights in guiding protocol development. This sampling method
also ensured that individuals with extensive experience working at
the IETF in various roles were targeted. The interviewees included
individuals in leadership positions (Working Group (WG) chairs, Area
Directors (ADs)), 'regular participants', individuals working for
specific entities (corporate, civil society, political, academic) and
represented various backgrounds, nationalities and genders.
5.1. Data Sources
In order to map the potential relation between human rights and
protocols, the HRPC research group gathered data from three specific
sources:
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5.1.1. Discourse analysis of RFCs
To start addressing the issue, a mapping exercise analyzing Internet
infrastructure and protocols features, vis-a-vis their possible
impact on human rights was undertaken. Therefore, research on the
language used in current and historic RFCs and mailing list
discussions was undertaken to expose core architectural principles,
language and deliberations on human rights of those affected by the
network.
5.1.2. Interviews with members of the IETF community
Over 30 interviews with the current and past members of the Internet
Architecture Board (IAB), current and past members of the Internet
Engineering Steering Group (IESG) and chairs of selected working
groups and RFC authors were done at the IETF92 Dallas meeting in
March 2015. To get an insider understanding of how they view the
relationship (if any) between human rights and protocols to play out
in their work. Several of the participants opted to remain
anonymous, if you are interested in this data set please contact the
authors.
5.1.3. Participant observation in Working Groups
By participating in various working groups, in person at IETF
meetings and on mailinglists, information was gathered about the
IETFs day-to-day workings. From which general themes, technical
concepts, and use-cases about human rights and protocols were
extracted. This process started at the IETF91 meeting and continues
today.
5.2. Data analysis strategies
The data above was processed using three consecutive strategies:
mapping protocols related to human rights, extracting concepts from
these protocols, and creation of a common glossary (detailed under
Section 2). Before going over these strategies some elaboration on
the process of identifying technical concepts as they relate to human
rights needs to be given:
5.2.1. Identifying qualities of technical concepts that relate to human
rights
5.2.1.1. Mapping protocols and standards to human rights
By combining data from the three data sources named above, an
extensive list of protocols and standards that potentially enable the
Internet as a tool for freedom of expression and association was
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created. In order to determine the enabling (or inhibiting) features
we relied on direct references of such impact in the RFCs, as well as
input from the community. On the basis of this analysis a list of
RFCs that describe standards and protocols that are potentially
closely related to human rights was compiled.
5.2.1.2. Extracting concepts from selected RFCs
Identifying the protocols and standards that are related to human
rights and create a human rights enabeling environment was the first
step. For that we needed to focus on specific technical concepts
that underlie these protocols and standards. On the basis of this
list a number of technical concepts that appeared frequently was
extracted, and used to create a second list of technical terms that,
when combined and applied in different circumstances, create an
enabling environment for excercising human rights on the Internet.
5.2.1.3. Building a common vocabulary of technical concepts that impact
human rights
While interviewing experts, investigating RFCs and compiling
technical definitions several concepts of convergence and divergence
were identified. To ensure that the discussion was based on a common
understanding of terms and vocabulary, a list of definitions was
created. The definitions are based on the wording found in various
IETF documents, and if these were unavailable definitions were taken
from definitions from other Standards Developing Organizations or
academic literature, as indicated in the vocabulary section.
5.2.1.4. Translating Human Rights Concepts into Technical Definitions
The previous steps allowed for the clarification of relations between
human rights and technical concepts. The steps taken show how the
research process zoomed in, from compiling a broad lists of protocols
and standards that relate to human rights to extracting the precise
technical concepts that make up these protocols and standards, in
order to understand the relationship between the two. This sub-
section presents the next step: translating human rights to technical
concepts by matching the individuals components of the rights to the
accompanying technical concepts, allowing for the creation of a list
of technical concepts that when partially combined can create an
enabling environment for human rights.
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5.2.1.5. List technical terms that when partially combined can create
an enabling environment for human rights
On the basis of the prior steps the following list of technical
terms, that when partially combined can create an enabling
environment for human rights, such a freedom of expression and
freedom of association, was drafted.
Architectural principles Enabling features
and system properties for user rights
/------------------------------------------------\
| |
+=================|=============================+ |
= | = |
= | End to end = |
= | Reliability = |
= | Resilience = Access as |
= | Interoperability = Human Right |
= Good enough | Transparency = |
= principle | Data minimization = |
= | Permissionless innovation = |
= Simplicity | Graceful degradation = |
= | Connectivity = |
= | Heterogeneity support = |
= | = |
= | = |
= \------------------------------------------------/
= =
+===============================================+
figure 1 - relation between architectural principles and enabling
features for user rights.
5.2.2. Relating human rights to technical concepts
The combination of the technical concepts that have been gathered the
steps above have been grouped according to their impact on specific
rights as they have been mentioned in the interviews done at IETF92
as well as study of literature (see literature and discussion review
above).
This analysis aims to assist protocol developers in better
understanding the roles specific technical concepts have with regards
to their contribution to an enabeling environment for people to
excise their human rights.
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This analysis does not claim to be a complete or exhaustive mapping
of all possible ways in which a protocols could potentially impact
human rights, but it presents an initial concept mapping based on
interviews and literature and discussion review.
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+-----------------------+-----------------------------------------+
| Technical Concepts | Rights potentially impacted |
+-----------------------+-----------------------------------------+
| Connectivity | |
| Privacy | |
| Security | |
| Content agnosticism | Right to freedom of expression |
| Internationalization | |
| Censorship resistance | |
| Open Standards | |
| Heterogeneity support | |
+-----------------------+-----------------------------------------+
| Anonymity | |
| Privacy | |
| Pseudonymity | Right to non-discrimination |
| Accessibility | |
+-----------------------+-----------------------------------------+
| Content agnosticism | |
| Security | Right to equal protection |
+-----------------------+-----------------------------------------+
| Accessibility | |
| Internationalization | Right to political participation |
| Censorship resistance | |
| Connectivity | |
+-----------------------+-----------------------------------------+
| Open standards | |
| Localization | Right to participate in cultural life, |
| Internationalization | arts and science & |
| Censorship resistance | Right to education |
| Accessibility | |
+-----------------------+-----------------------------------------+
| Connectivity | |
| Decentralization | |
| Censorship resistance | Right to freedom of assembly |
| Pseudonymity | and association |
| Anonymity | |
| Security | |
+-----------------------+-----------------------------------------+
| Reliability | |
| Confidentiality | |
| Integrity | Right to security |
| Authenticity | |
| Anonymity | |
| | |
+-----------------------+-----------------------------------------+
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figure 2 - relation between specific technical concepts with regards
to their contribution to an enabeling environment for people to
exercise their human rights
5.2.3. Map cases of protocols, implementations and networking paradigms
that adversely impact human rights or are enablers thereof
Given the information above, the following list of cases of
protocols, implenentations and networking paradigms that adversely
impact or enable human rights was formed.
It is important to note that the assessment here is not a general
judgment on these protocols, nor an exhaustive listing of all the
potential negative or positive impacts on human rights they might
have. When they were conceived, there were many criteria to take
into account. For instance, relying on an centralized service can be
bad for freedom of speech (it creates one more control point, where
censorship could be applied) but it may be a necessity if the
endpoints are not connected and reachable permanently. So, when we
say "protocol X has feature Y, which may endanger the freedom of
speech", it does not mean that protocol X is bad and even less that
its authors were evil. The goal here is to show, with actual
examples, that the design of protocols have practical consequences
for some human rights and these consequences have to be considered in
the design phase.
5.2.3.1. IPv4
The Internet Protocol version 4 (IPv4), also known as 'layer 3' of
the Internet, and specified as a common encapsulation and protocol
header, is defined in [RFC0791]. The evolution of Internet
communications led to continued development in this area,
encapsulated in the development of version 6 (IPv6) of the protocol
in [RFC2460]. In spite of this updated protocol, we find that 25
years after the specification of version 6 of the protocol, the older
v4 standard continues to account for a sizeable majority of Internet
traffic, and most of the issues discussed here (with the big
exception of NAT, see Address Translation) are valid for IPv4 as well
as IPv6.
The Internet was designed as a platform for free and open
communication, most notably encoded in the end-to-end principle, and
that philosophy is also present in the technical implementation of
the Internet Protocol. [RFC3724] While the protocol was designed to
exist in an environment where intelligence is at the end hosts, it
has proven to provide sufficient information that a more intelligent
network core can make policy decisions and enforce policy-based
traffic shaping and restricting the communications of end hosts.
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These capabilities for network control and limitations of the freedom
of expression by end hosts can be traced back to the IPv4 design,
helping us to understand which technical protocol decisions have led
to harm of this human rights. A feature that can harm freedom of
expression as well as the right to privacy through misuse of the
Internet Protocol is the exploitation of the public visibility of the
host pairs for all communications, and the corresponding ability to
discriminate and block traffic as a result of that metadata.
5.2.3.1.1. Network visibility of Source and Destination
The IPv4 protocol header contains fixed location fields for both the
source and destination IP addresses [RFC0791]. These addresses
identify both the host sending and receiving each message, and allow
the core network to understand who is talking to whom, and to
practically limit communication selectively between pairs of hosts.
Blocking of communication based on the pair of source and destination
is one of the most common limitations on the ability for people to
communicate today, [caida] and can be seen as a restriction of the
ability for people to assemble or to consensually express themselves.
Inclusion of an Internet-wide identified source in the IP header is
not the only possible design, especially since the protocol is most
commonly implemented over Ethernet networks exposing only link-local
identifiers [RFC0894].
A variety of alternative designs do exist, such as the Accountable
and Private Internet Protocol [APIP] and Hornet [Hornet] as well as
source routing. The latter would allow for the sender to choose a
pre-defined (safe) route and spoofing of the source IP address, which
are technically supported by the IPv4 protocol, but neither are
considered good practice on the Internet [Farrow]. While projects
like [torproject] provide an alternative implementation of anonymity
in connections, they have been developed in spite of the IPv4
protocol design.
5.2.3.1.2. Address Translation and Mobility
A major structural shift in the Internet which undermined the
protocol design of IPv4, and significantly reduced the freedom of end
users to communicate and assemble is the introduction of network
address translation. [RFC3022] Network address translation is a
process whereby organizations and autonomous systems connect two
networks by translating the IPv4 source and destination addresses
between the two. This process puts the router performing the
translation into a privileged position, where it can decide which
subset of communications are worthy of translation, and whether an
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unknown request for communication will be correctly forwarded to a
host on the other network.
This process of translation has widespread adoption despite promoting
a process that goes against the stated end-to-end process of the
underlying protocol [natusage]. In contrast, the proposed mechanism
to provide support for mobility and forwarding to clients which may
move, encoded instead as an option in the IP protocol in [RFC5944],
has failed to gain traction. In this situation the compromise made
in the design of the protocol resulted in a technology that is not
coherent with the end-to-end principles and thus creates an extra
possible hurdle for freedom of expression in its design, even though
a viable alternative exists. There is a particular problem
surrounding NATs and VPN (as well as other connections used for
privacy purposes) as NATs sometimes cause VPNs not to work.
5.2.3.2. DNS
The Domain Name System (DNS) [RFC1035], provides service discovery
capabilities, and provides a mechanism to associate human readable
names with services. The DNS system is organized around a set of
independently operated 'Root Servers' run by organizations which
function in line with ICANN's policy by answering queries for which
organizations have been delegated to manage registration under each
Top Level Domain (TLD). The DNS is organized as a rooted tree, and
this brings up political and social concerns over control. Top Level
domains are maintained and determined by ICANN. These namespaces
encompass several classes of services. The initial name spaces
including '.Com' and '.Net', provide common spaces for expression of
ideas, though their policies are enacted through US based companies.
Other name spaces are delegated to specific nationalities, and may
impose limits designed to focus speech in those forums both to
promote speech from that nationality, and to comply with local limits
on expression and social norms. Finally, the system has recently
been expanded with additional generic and sponsored name spaces, for
instance '.travel' and '.ninja', which are operated by a range of
organizations which may independently determine their registration
policies. This new development has both positive and negative
implications in terms of enabling human rights. Some individuals
argue that it undermines the right to freedom of expression because
some of these new gtlds have restricted policies on registration and
particular rules on hate speech content. Others argue that precisely
these properties are positive because they enable certain (mostly
minority) communities to build safer spaces for association, thereby
enabling their right to freedom of association. An often mentioned
example is an application like .gay [CoE].
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DNS has significant privacy issues per [RFC7626]. Most notable the
lack of encryption to limit the visibility of requests for domain
resolution from intermediary parties, and a limited deployment of
DNSSEC to provide authentication, allowing the client to know that
they received a correct, "authoritative", answer to a query. In
response to the privacy issues, the IETF DNS PRIVate Exchange
(DPRIVE) Working Group is developing mechanisms to provide
confidentiality to DNS transactions, to address concerns surrounding
pervasive monitoring [RFC7258].
Authentication through DNSSEC creates a validation path for records.
This authentication protects against forged or manipulated DNS data.
As such DNSSEC protects the directory look-up and makes hijacking of
a session harder. This is important because currently interference
with the operation of the DNS is becoming one of the central
mechanisms used to block access to websites. This interference
limits both the freedom of expression of the publisher to offer their
content, and the freedom of assembly for clients to congregate in a
shared virtual space. Even though DNSSEC doesn't prevent censorship,
it makes it clear that the returned information is not the
information that was requested, which contributes to the right to
security and increases trust in the network. It is however important
to note that DNSSEC is currently not widely supported or deployed by
domain name registrars, making it difficult to authenticate and use
correctly.
5.2.3.2.1. Removal of records
There have been a number of cases where the records for a domain are
removed from the name system due to political events. Examples of
this removal includes the 'seizure' of wikileaks [bbc-wikileaks] and
the names of illegally operating gambling operations by the United
States Immigrations and Customs Enforcement unit (ICE). In the first
case, a US court ordered the registrar to take down the domain. In
the second, ICE compelled the US-based registry in charge of the .com
TLD to hand ownership of those domains over to the US government.
The same technique has been used in Libya to remove sites in
violation of "our Country's Law and Morality (which) do not allow any
kind of pornography or its promotion." [techyum]
At a protocol level, there is no technical auditing for name
ownership, as in alternate systems like [namecoin]. As a result,
there is no ability for users to differentiate seizure from the
legitimate transfer of name ownership, which is purely a policy
decision of registrars. While DNSSEC addresses network distortion
events described below, it does not tackle this problem.
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(While mentioning alternative techniques, this is not a comparison of
DNS with Namecoin: the latter has its own problems and limitations.
The idea here is to show that there are several possible choices, and
they have consequences for human rights.)
5.2.3.2.2. Distortion of records
The most common mechanism by which the DNS system is abused to limit
freedom of expression is through manipulation of protocol messages by
the network. One form occurs at an organizational level, where
client computers are instructed to use a local DNS resolver
controlled by the organization. The DNS resolver will then
selectively distort responses rather than request the authoritative
lookup from the upstream system. The second form occurs through the
use of deep packet inspection, where all DNS protocol messages are
inspected by the network, and objectionable content is distorted, as
can be observed in Chinese network.
A notable instance of distortion occurred in Greece [ververis], where
a study found evidence of both of deep packet inspection to distort
DNS replies, and more excessive blocking of content than was legally
required or requested (also known as overblocking). ISPs prevented
clients from resolving the names of domains which they were
instructed to do through a governmental order, prompting this
particular blocking systems there.
At a protocol level, the effectiveness of these attacks is made
possible by a lack of authentication in the DNS protocol. DNSSEC
provides the ability to determine authenticity of responses when
used, but it is not regularly checked by resolvers. DNSSEC is not
effective when the local resolver for a network is complicit in the
distortion, for instance when the resolver assigned for use by an ISP
is the source of injection. Selective distortion of records is also
been made possible by the predictable structure of DNS messages,
which make it computationally easy for a network device to watch all
passing messages even at high speeds, and the lack of encryption,
which allows the network to distort only an objectionable subset of
protocol messages. Specific distortion mechanisms are discussed
further in [hall].
Users can switch to another resolver, for instance a public one. The
distorter can then try to block or hijack the connection to this
resolver. This may start an arm's race, the user switching to
secured connections to this alternative resolver ([RFC7858]), the
disruptor then trying to find more sophisticated ways to block or
hijack. In some cases, this search for an alternative, non-
disrupting resolver, may lead to more centralisation, many people
going to a few big commercial public resolvers.
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5.2.3.2.3. Injection of records
Responding incorrectly to requests for name lookups is the most
common mechanism that in-network devices use to limit the ability of
end users to discover services. A deviation, which accomplishes a
similar objective may be seen as different from a freedom of
expression perspective, is the injection of incorrect responses to
queries. The most prominent example of this behavior occurs in
China, where requests for lookups of sites deemed inappropriate will
trigger the network to respond with a false response, causing the
client to ignore the real response when it subsequently arrives.
[greatfirewall] Unlike the other forms of discussion mentioned above,
injection does not stifle the ability of a server to announce it's
name, it instead provides another voice which answers sooner. This
is effective because without DNSSEC, the protocol will respond to
whichever answer is received first, without listening for subsequent
answers.
5.2.3.3. HTTP
The Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), described in its version 1.1
in RFC 7230 to 7237, is a request-response application protocol
developed throughout the 1990s, and factually contributed to the
exponential growth of the Internet and the inter-connection of
populations around the world. Its simple design strongly contributed
to the fact that HTTP has become the foundation of most modern
Internet platforms and communication systems, from websites, to chat
systems, and computer-to-computer applications. In its manifestation
with the World Wide Web, HTTP radically revolutionized the course of
technological development and the ways people interact with online
content and with each other.
However, HTTP is also a fundamentally insecure protocol, that doesn't
natively provide encryption properties. While the definition of the
Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) [RFC6101], and later of Transport Layer
Security (TLS)[RFC5246], also happened during the 1990s, the fact
that HTTP doesn't mandate the use of such encryption layers to
developers and service providers, was one of the reasons for a very
late adoption of encryption. Only in the middle of the 2000s did we
observe big Internet service providers, such as Google, starting to
provide encrypted access to their web services.
The lack of sensitivity and understanding of the critical importance
of securing web traffic incentivized certain (offensive) actors to
develop, deploy and utilize at large interception systems and later
active injection attacks, in order to swipe large amounts of data,
compromise Internet-enabled devices. The commercial availability of
systems and tools to perform these types of attacks also led to a
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number of human rights abuses that have been discovered and reported
over the years.
Generally we can identify in Traffic Interception and Traffic
Manipulation the two most problematic attacks that can be performed
against applications employing a clear-text HTTP transport layer.
That being said, the IETF is taking steady steps to move to the
encrypted version of HTTP, HTTPSecure (HTTPS).
While this is commendable, we must not lose track of the fact that
different protocols, implementations, configurations and networking
paradigms can intersect such that they (can be used to) adversely
impact human rights. For instance, certain countries will throttle
HTTPS connections forcing users to switch to the (unthrottled) HTTP
to facilitate surveillance [Aryanetall].
5.2.3.3.1. Traffic Interception
While we are seeing an increasing trend in the last couple of years
to employ SSL/TLS as a secure traffic layer for HTTP-based
applications, we are still far from seeing an ubiquitous use of
encryption on the World Wide Web. It is important to consider that
the adoption of SSL/TLS is also a relatively recent phenomena.
E-mail providers such as riseup.net were the first ones to enable SSL
by default. Google introduced an option for its GMail users to
navigate with SSL only in 2008 [Rideout], and turned TLS on by
default later in 2010 [Schillace]. It took an increasing amount of
security breaches and revelations on global surveillance from Edward
Snowden to have other mail service providers to follow suit. For
example, Yahoo enabled SSL/TLS by default on its webmail services
only towards the end of 2013 [Peterson].
TLS itself has been subject to many attacks and bugs which can be
attributed to some fundamental design weaknesses such as lack of a
state machine, which opens a vulnerability for a Triple Handshake
Attack, and flaws caused by early U.S. government restrictions on
cryptography, leading to cipher-suite downgrade attacks (Logjam
attack). These vulnerabilities are being corrected in TLS1.3.
[Bhargavan] [Adrian]
HTTP upgrading to HTTPS is also vulnerable to having an attacker
remove the "S" in any links to HTTPS URIs from a web-page transferred
in cleartext over HTTP, an attack called "SSL Stripping" [sslstrip].
Thus, for high security use of HTTPS IETF standards such as HSTS
[RFC6797], certificate pinning [RFC7469] and/or DANE [RFC6698] should
be used.
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As we learned through the Snowden's revelations, intelligence
agencies have been intercepting and collecting unencrypted traffic at
large for many years. There are documented examples of such mass
surveillance programs with GCHQ's TEMPORA [WP-Tempora] and NSA's
XKEYSCORE [Greenwald]. Through these programs NSA/GCHQ have been
able to swipe large amounts of data including email and instant
messaging communications which have been transported by the
respective providers in clear for years, unsuspecting of the
pervasiveness and scale of governments' efforts and investment into
global mass surveillance capabilities.
However, similar mass interception of unencrypted HTTP communications
is also often employed at a nation-level by some democratic countries
by exercising control over state-owned Internet Service Providers
(ISP) and through the use of commercially available monitoring,
collection, and censorship equipment. Over the last few years a lot
of information has come to public attention on the role and scale of
a surveillance industry dedicated to develop interception gear of
different types, making use of known and unknown weaknesses in
existing protocols [RFC7258]. We have several records of such
equipment being sold and utilized by some regimes in order to monitor
entire segments of population especially at times of social and
political distress, uncovering massive human rights abuses. For
example, in 2013 the group Telecomix revealed that the Syrian regime
was making use of BlueCoat products in order to intercept clear-text
traffic as well as to enforce censorship of unwanted content [RSF].
Similarly in 2012 it was found that the French Amesys provided the
Gaddafi's government with equipment able to intercept emails,
Facebook traffic, and chat messages at a country level [WSJ]. The
use of such systems, especially in the context of the Arab Spring and
of civil uprisings against the dictatorships, has caused serious
concerns of significant human rights abuses in Libya.
5.2.3.3.2. Traffic Manipulation
The lack of a secure transport layer under HTTP connections not only
exposes the users to interception of the content of their
communications, but is more and more commonly abused as a vehicle for
actively compromising computers and mobile devices. If an HTTP
session travels in the clear over the network, any node positioned at
any point in the network is able to perform man-in-the-middle attacks
and observe, manipulate, and hijack the session and modify the
content of the communication in order to trigger unexpected behavior
by the application generating the traffic. For example, in the case
of a browser the attacker would be able to inject malicious code in
order to exploit vulnerabilities in the browser or any of its
plugins. Similarly, the attacker would be able to intercept, add
malware, and repackage binary software updates that are very commonly
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downloaded in clear by applications such as word processors and media
players. If the HTTP session would be encrypted, the tampering of
the content would not be possible, and these network injection
attacks would not be successful.
While traffic manipulation attacks have been long known, documented,
and prototyped especially in the context of WiFi and LAN networks, in
the last few years we observed an increasing investment into the
production and sale of network injection equipment both available
commercially as well as deployed at scale by intelligence agencies.
For example, we learned from some of the documents provided by Edward
Snowden to the press, that the NSA has constructed a global network
injection infrastructure, called QUANTUM, able to leverage mass
surveillance in order to identify targets of interests and
subsequently task man-on-the-side attacks to ultimately compromise a
selected device. Among other attacks, NSA makes use of an attack
called QUANTUMINSERT [Haagsma] which intercepts and hijacks an
unencrypted HTTP communication and forces the requesting browser to
redirect to a host controlled by NSA instead of the intended website.
Normally, the new destination would be an exploitation service,
referred in Snowden documents as FOXACID, which would attempt at
executing malicious code in the context of the target's browser. The
Guardian reported in 2013 that NSA has for example been using these
techniques to target users of the popular anonymity service Tor
[Schneier]. The German NDR reported in 2014 that NSA has also been
using its mass surveillance capabilities to identify Tor users at
large [Appelbaum].
Recently similar capabilities of Chinese authorities have been
reported as well in what has been informally called the "Great
Cannon" [Marcak], which raised numerous concerns on the potential
curb on human rights and freedom of speech due to the increasing
tighter control of Chinese Internet communications and access to
information.
Network injection attacks are also made widely available to state
actors around the world through the commercialization of similar,
smaller scale equipment that can be easily acquired and deployed at a
country-wide level. Certain companies are known to have network
injection gear within their products portfolio [Marquis-Boire]. The
technology devised and produced by some of them to perform network
traffic manipulation attacks on HTTP communications is even the
subject of a patent application in the United States [Googlepatent].
Access to offensive technologies available on the commercial lawful
interception market has led to human rights abuses and illegitimate
surveillance of journalists, human rights defenders, and political
activists in many countries around the world [Collins]. While
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network injection attacks haven't been the subject of much attention,
they do enable even unskilled attackers to perform silent and very
resilient compromises, and unencrypted HTTP remains one of the main
vehicles.
There is a new version of HTTP, called HTTP/2, which was published as
[RFC7540] and which aimed to be largely backwards compatible but also
offer new option such as data compression of HTTP headers and
pipelining of request and multiplexing multiple requests over a
single TCP connection. In addition to decreasing latency to improve
page loading speeds it also facilitates more efficient use of
connectivity in low-bandwith environments, which is an enabler for
freedom of expression, the right to assembly, right to political
participation and the right to participate in cultural life, art and
science. [RFC7540] does not mandate Transport Layer Security or any
other form of encryption, also does not support opportunistic
encryption, eventhough that is now addressed in [RFC8164].
5.2.3.4. XMPP
The Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP), specified in
[RFC6120], provides a standard for interactive chat messaging, and
has evolved to encompass interoperable text, voice, and video chat.
The protocol is structured as a federated network of servers, similar
to email, where users register with a local server which acts one
their behalf to cache and relay messages. This protocol design has
many advantages, allowing servers to shield clients from denial of
service and other forms of retribution for their expression, and
designed to avoid central entities which could control the ability to
communicate or assemble using the protocol.
None-the-less, there are plenty of aspects of the protocol design of
XMPP which shape the ability for users to communicate freely, and to
assembly through the protocol.
5.2.3.4.1. User Identification
The XMPP specification dictates that clients are identified with a
resource (node@domain/home [1] / node@domain/work [2]) to distinguish
the conversations to specific devices. While the protocol does not
specify that the resource must be exposed by the client's server to
remote users, in practice this has become the default behavior. In
doing so, users can be tracked by remote friends and their servers,
who are able to monitor presence not just of the user, but of each
individual device the user logs in with. This has proven to be
misleading to many users [pidgin], since many clients only expose
user level rather than device level presence. Likewise, user
invisibility so that communication can occur while users don't notify
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all buddies and other servers of their availability is not part of
the formal protocol, and has only been added as an extension within
the XML stream rather than enforced by the protocol.
5.2.3.4.2. Surveillance of Communication
The XMPP protocol specifies the standard by which communication of
channels may be encrypted, but it does not provide visibility to
clients of whether their communications are encrypted on each link.
In particular, even when both clients ensure that they have an
encrypted connection to their XMPP server to ensure that their local
network is unable to read or disrupt the messages they send, the
protocol does not provide visibility into the encryption status
between the two servers. As such, clients may be subject to
selective disruption of communications by an intermediate network
which disrupts communications based on keywords found through Deep
Packet Inspection. While many operators have commited to only
establishing encrypted links from their servers in recognition of
this vulnerability, it remains impossible for users to audit this
behavior and encrypted connections are not required by the protocol
itself [xmppmanifesto].
In particular, section 13.14 of the protocol specification [RFC6120]
explicitly acknowledges the existence of a downgrade attack where an
adversary controlling an intermediate network can force the inter
domain federation between servers to revert to a non-encrypted
protocol were selective messages can then be disrupted.
5.2.3.4.3. Group Chat Limitations
Group chat in the XMPP protocol is defined as an extension within the
XML specification of the XMPP protocol (https://xmpp.org/extensions/
xep-0045.html). However, it is not encoded or required at a protocol
level, and not uniformly implemented by clients.
The design of multi-user chat in the XMPP protocol suffers from
extending a protocol that was not designed with assembly of many
users in mind. In particular, in the federated protocol provided by
XMPP, multi-user communities are implemented with a distinguished
'owner', who is granted control over the participants and structure
of the conversation.
Multi-user chat rooms are identified by a name specified on a
specific server, so that while the overall protocol may be federated,
the ability for users to assemble in a given community is moderated
by a single server. That server may block the room and prevent
assembly unilaterally, even between two users neither of whom trust
or use that server directly.
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5.2.3.5. Peer to Peer
Peer-to-Peer (P2P) is a distributed network architecture [RFC5694] in
which all the participant nodes can be responsible for the storage
and dissemination of information from any other node (defined in
[RFC7574], an IETF standard that used a P2P architecture). A P2P
network is a logical overlay that lives on top of the physical
network, and allows nodes (or "peers") participating to it to
establish contact and exchange information directly from one to each
other. The implementation of a P2P network may very widely: it may
be structured or unstructured, and it may implement stronger or
weaker cryptographic and anonymity properties. While its most common
application has traditionally been file-sharing (and other types of
content delivery systems), P2P is a popular architecture for networks
and applications that require (or encourage) decentralization. A
prime example is Bitcoin (and similar cryptocurrencies), as well as
Bitcoin and proprietary multimedia applications.
In a time of heavily centralized online services, peer-to-peer is
regularly described as an alternative, more democratic, and resistant
option that displaces structures of control over data and
communications and delegates all peers equally to be responsible for
the functioning, integrity, and security of the data. While in
principle peer-to-peer remains imporant to the design and development
of future content distribution, messaging, and publishing systems, it
poses numerous security and privacy challenges which are mostly
delegated to individual developers to recognize, analyze, and solve
in each implementation of a given P2P network.
5.2.3.5.1. Network Poisoning
Since content, and in some occasions peer lists, are safeguarded and
distributed by its members, P2P networks are prone to what are
generally defined as "poisoning attacks". Poisoning attacks might be
aimed directly at the data that is being distributed, for example by
intentionally corrupting it, or at the index tables used to instruct
the peers where to fetch the data, or at routing tables, with the
attempt of providing connecting peers with lists of rogue or non-
existing peers, with the intention to effectively cause a Denial of
Service on the network.
5.2.3.5.2. Throttling
Peer-to-Peer traffic (and BitTorrent in particular) represents a
significant percentage of global Internet traffic [Sandvine] and it
has become increasingly popular for Internet Service Providers to
perform throttling of customers lines in order to limit bandwidth
usage [torrentfreak1] and sometimes probably as an effect of the
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ongoing conflict between copyright holders and file-sharing
communities [wikileaks]. Such throttling undermines the end-to-end
principle.
Throttling the peer-to-peer traffic makes some uses of P2P networks
ineffective and it might be coupled with stricter inspection of
users' Internet traffic through Deep Packet Inspection techniques
which might pose additional security and privacy risks.
5.2.3.5.3. Tracking and Identification
One of the fundamental and most problematic issues with traditional
peer-to-peer networks is a complete lack of anonymization of its
users. For example, in the case of BitTorrent, all peers' IP
addresses are openly available to the other peers. This has lead to
an ever-increasing tracking of peer-to-peer and file-sharing users
[ars]. As the geographical location of the user is directly exposed,
and so could be his identity, the user might become target of
additional harassment and attacks, being of physical or legal nature.
For example, it is known that in Germany law firms have made
extensive use of peer-to-peer and file-sharing tracking systems in
order to identify downloaders and initiate legal actions looking for
compensations [torrentfreak2].
It is worth noting that there are varieties of P2P networks that
implement cryptographic practices and that introduce anonymization of
its users. Such implementations may be proved to be successful in
resisting censorship of content, and tracking of the network peers.
A primary example is FreeNet [freenet1], a free software application
designed to significantly increase the difficulty of users and
content identification, and dedicated to foster freedom of speech
online [freenet2].
5.2.3.5.4. Sybil Attacks
In open-membership P2P networks, a single attacker can pretend to be
many participants, typically by creating multiple fake identities of
whatever kind the P2P network uses [Douceur]. Attackers can use
Sybil attacks to bias choices the P2P network makes collectively
toward the attacker's advantage, e.g., by making it more likely that
a particular data item (or some threshold of the replicas or shares
of a data item) are assigned to attacker-controlled participants. If
the P2P network implements any voting, moderation, or peer review-
like functionality, Sybil attacks may be used to "stuff the ballots"
toward the attacker's benefit. Companies and governments can use
Sybil attacks on discussion-oriented P2P systems for "astroturfing"
or creating the appearance of mass grassroots support for some
position where there is none in reality. It is important to know
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that there are no known complete, environmentally sustainable, and
fully distributed solutions to Sybil attacks, and routing via
'friends' allows users to be de-anonymized via their social graph.
It is important to note that Sybil attacks in this context (e.f.
astroturfing) are relevant to more than P2P protocols. And are also
common on web based systems, and exploited by governments and
commercial entitities.
Encrypted P2P and Anonymous P2P networks already emerged and provided
viable platforms for sharing material [tribler], publish content
anonymously, and communicate securely [bitmessage]. These platforms
are not perfect, and more research needs to be done. If adopted at
large, well-designed and resistant P2P networks might represent a
critical component of a future secure and distributed Internet,
enabling freedom of speech and freedom of information at scale.
5.2.3.6. Virtual Private Network
The Virtual Private Networks (VPN) that are being discussed here are
point-to-point connections that enables two computers to communicate
over an encrypted tunnel. There are multiple implementations and
protocols used in the deployment of VPNs, and they generally
diversify by encryption protocol or particular requirements, most
commonly in proprietary and enterprise solutions. VPNs are used
commonly either to enable some devices to communicate through
peculiar network configurations, or in order to use some privacy and
security properties in order to protect the traffic generated by the
end user; or both. VPNs have also become a very popular technology
among human rights defenders, dissidents, and journalists worldwide
to avoid local monitoring and eventually also to circumvent
censorship. Among human rights defenders VPNs are often debated as a
potential alternative to Tor or other anonymous networks. Such
comparison is misleading, as some of the privacy and security
properties of VPNs are often misunderstood by less tech-savvy users,
which could ultimately lead to unintended problems.
As VPNs increased in popularity, commercial VPN providers have
started growing in business and are very commonly picked by human
rights defenders and people at risk, as they are normally provided
with an easy-to-use service and sometimes even custom applications to
establish the VPN tunnel. Not being able to control the
configuration of the network, and even less so the security of the
application, assessing the general privacy and security state of
common VPNs is very hard. Often such services have been discovered
leaking information, and their custom applications have been found
flawed. While Tor and similar networks receive a lot of scrutiny
from the public and the academic community, commercial or non-
commercial VPN networks are way less analyzed and understood
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[Insinuator] [Alshalanetal] , and it might be valuable to establish
some standards to guarantee a minimal level of privacy and security
to those who need them the most.
5.2.3.6.1. No anonymity against VPN provider
One of the common misconceptions among users of VPNs is the level of
anonymity VPN can provide. This sense of anonymity can be betrayed
by a number of attacks or misconfigurations of the VPN provider. It
is important to remember that, in contrast to Tor and similar
systems, VPN was not designed to provide anonymity properties. From
a technical point of view, the VPN might leak identifiable
information, or might be subject of correlation attacks that could
expose the originating address of the connecting user. Most
importantly, it is vital to understand that commercial and non-
commercial VPN providers are bound by the law of the jurisdiction
they reside in or in which their infrastructure is located, and they
might be legally forced to turn over data of specific users if legal
investigations or intelligence requirements dictate so. In such
cases, if the VPN providers retain logs, it is possible that the
information of the user is provided to the user's adversary and leads
to his or her identification.
5.2.3.6.2. Logging
With VPN being point-to-point connections, the service providers are
in fact able to observe the original location of the connecting users
and they are able to track at what time they started their session
and eventually also to which destinations they're trying to connect
to. If the VPN providers retain logs for long enough, they might be
forced to turn over the relevant data or they might be otherwise
compromised, leading to the same data getting exposed. A clear log
retaining policy could be enforced, but considerig that countries
enforce different levels of data retention policies, VPN providers
should at least be transparent on what information do they store and
for how long is being kept.
5.2.3.6.3. 3rd Party Hosting
VPN providers very commonly rely on 3rd parties to provision the
infrastructure that is later going to be used to run VPN endpoints.
For example, they might rely on external dedicated server hosting
providers, or on uplink providers. In those cases, even if the VPN
provider itself isn't retaining any significant logs, the information
on the connecting users might be retained by those 3rd parties
instead, introducing an additional collection point for the
adversary.
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5.2.3.6.4. IPv6 Leakage
Some studies proved that several commercial VPN providers and
applications suffer of critical leakage of information through IPv6
due to improper support and configuration [PETS2015VPN]. This is
generally caused by a lack of proper configuration of the client's
IPv6 routing tables. Considering that most popular browsers and
similar applications have been supporting IPv6 by default, if the
host is provided with a functional IPv6 configuration, the traffic
that is generated might be leaked if the VPN application isn't
designed to manipulate such traffic properly.
5.2.3.6.5. DNS Leakage
Similarly, VPN services that aren't handling DNS requests and are not
running DNS servers of their own, might be prone to DNS leaking which
might not only expose sensitive information on the activity of the
user, but could also potentially lead to DNS hijacking attacks and
following compromises.
5.2.3.6.6. Traffic Correlation
Some implementations of VPN appear to be particularly vulnerable to
identification and collection of key exchanges which, some Snowden
documents revealed, are systematically collected and stored for
future reference. The ability of an adversary to monitor network
connections at many different points over the Internet, can allow
them to perform traffic correlation attacks and identify the origin
of certain VPN traffic by cross referencing the connection time of
the user to the endpoint and the connection time of the endpoint to
the final destination. These types of attacks, although very
expensive and normally only performed by very resourceful
adversaries, have been documented [spiegel] to be already in practice
and could completely nullify the use of a VPN and ultimately expose
the activity and the identity of a user at risk.
5.2.3.7. HTTP Status Code 451
Every Internet user has run into the '404 Not Found' Hypertext
Transfer Protocol (HTTP) status code when trying, and failing, to
access a particular website [Cath]. It is a response status that the
server sends to the browser, when the server cannot locate the URL.
'403 Forbidden' is another example of this class of code signals that
gives users information about what is going on. In the '403' case
the server can be reached, but is blocking the request because the
user is trying to access content forbidden to them. This typically
because some content is only for identified users, based on a
payment, or on a special status in the organisation. 403 is most of
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the time sent by the origin server, not by an intermediary. If a
firewall prevents a government employee to access pornography on a
work-computer, it does not use 403.
As surveillance and censorship of the Internet is becoming more
commonplace, voices were raised at the IETF to introduce a new status
code that indicates when something is not available for 'legal
reasons' (like censorship):
The 451 status code would allow server operators to operate with
greater transparency in circumstances where issues of law or public
policy affect their operation. This transparency may be beneficial
both to these operators and to end-users [RFC7725].
The status code is named '451', a reference to Bradbury's famous
novel on censorship, and the temperature (in Fahrenheit) at which
bookpaper autoignites.
During the IETF92 meeting in Dallas, there was discussion about the
usefulness of '451'. The main tension revolved around the lack of an
apparent machine-readable technical use of the information. The
extent to which '451' is just 'political theatre' or whether it has a
concrete technical use was heatedly debated. Some argued that 'the
451 status code is just a status code with a response body' others
said it was problematic because 'it brings law into the picture'.
Again others argued that it would be useful for individuals, or
organizations like the 'Chilling Effects' project, crawling the web
to get an indication of censorship (IETF discussion on '451' -
author's field notes March 2015). There was no outright objection
during the Dallas meeting against moving forward on status code
'451', and on December 18, 2015 the Internet Engineering Steering
Group approved publication of 'An HTTP Status Code to Report Legal
Obstacles'. It is now an IETF approved HTTP status code to signal
when resource access is denied as a consequence of legal demands
[RFC7725].
What is interesting about this particular case is that not only
technical arguments but also the status code's outright potential
political use for civil society played a substantial role in shaping
the discussion, and the decision to move forward with this
technology.
It is nonetheless important to note that HTTP status code 451 is not
a solution to detect all occasions of censorship. A large swath of
Internet filtering occurs in the network, at a lower level than HTTP,
rather than the server itself. For these forms of censorship 451
plays a limited role, as typical censoring intermediaries won't
generate it. Besides technical reasons, such filtering regimes are
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unlikely to voluntarily inject a 451 status code. The use of 451 is
most likely to apply in the case of cooperative, legal versions of
content removal resulting from requests to providers. One can think
of content that is removed or blocked for legal reasons, like
copyright infringement, gambling laws, child abuse, et cetera. Large
Internet companies and search engines are constantly asked to censor
content in various jurisdictions. 451 allows this to be easily
discovered, for instance by initiatives like the Lumen Database.
Overall, the strength of 451 lies in its ability to provide
transparency by giving the reason for blocking, and giving the end-
user the ability to file a complaint. It allows organizations to
easily measure censorship in an automated way, and prompts the user
to access the content via another path (e.g. TOR, VPNs) when (s)he
encounters the 451 status code.
Status code 451 impact human rights by making censorship more
transparent and measurable. The status code increases transparency
both by signaling the existence of censorship (instead of a much more
broad HTTP error message like HTTP status code 404) as well as
providing details of the legal restriction, which legal authority is
imposing it, and what class of resources it applies to. This
empowers the user to seek redress.
5.2.3.8. DDoS attacks
Many individuals, not excluding IETF engineers, have argued that DDoS
attacks are fundamentally against freedom of expression. Technically
DDoS attacks are when one or multiple host overload the bandwidth or
resources of another host by flooding it with traffic or making
resource intensive requests, causing it to temporarily stop being
available to users. One can roughly differentiate three types of
DDoS attacks: Volume Based Attacked (This attack aims to make the
host unreachable by using up all it's bandwith, often used techniques
are: UDP floods and ICMP floods), Protocol Attacks (This attacks aims
to use up actual server resources, often used techniques are SYN
floods, fragmented packet attacks, and Ping of Death [RFC4949]) and
Application Layer Attacks (this attack aims to bring down a server,
such as the webserver).
DDoS attacks can thus stifle freedom of expression, complicate the
ability of independent media and human rights organizations to
exercise their right to (online) freedom of association, while
facilitating the ability of governments to censor dissent. When it
comes to comparing DDoS attacks to protests in offline life, it is
important to remember that only a limited number of DDoS attacks
involved solely willing participants. In the overwhelming majority
of cases, the clients are hacked hosts of unrelated parties that have
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not consented to being part of a DDoS (for exceptions see Operation
Abibil [Abibil] or the Iranian Green Movement DDoS [GreenMovement]).
In addition, DDoS attacks are increasingly used as an extortion
tactic.
All of these issues seem to suggest that the IETF should try to
ensure that their protocols cannot be used for DDoS attacks, which is
consistent with the long-standing IETF consensus that DDoS is an
attack that protocols should mitigate them to the extent they can
[BCP72]. Decreasing the number of vulnerabilities in protocols and
(outside of IETF) the number of bugs in the network stacks of routers
or computers could address this issue. The IETF can clearly play a
role in bringing about some of these changes but the IETF cannot be
expected to take a positive stance on (specific) DDoS attacks, or
create protocols to enable some attacks and inhibit others. What the
IETF can do is critically reflect on its role in the development of
the Internet, and how this impacts the ability of people to excercise
their human rights, such as freedom of expression.
6. Model for developing human rights protocol considerations
This section outlines a set of human rights protocol considerations
for protocol developers. It provides questions engineers should ask
themselves when developing or improving protocols if they want to
understand their human rights impact. It should however be noted
that the impact of a protocol cannot solely be deduced from its
design, but its usage and implementation should also be studied to
form a full protocol human rights impact assessment.
The questions are based on the research performed by the hrpc
research group which has been documented before these considerations.
The research establishes that human rights relate to standards and
protocols and offers a common vocabulary of technical concepts that
impact human rights and how these technical concept can be combined
to ensure that the Internet remains an enabling environment for human
rights. With this the contours of a model for developing human
rights protocol considerations has taken shape.
6.1. Human rights threats
Human rights threats on the Internet come in a myriad of forms.
Protocols and standards can harm or enable the right to freedom of
expression, right to non-discrimination, right to equal protection,
right to participate in cultural life, arts and science, right to
freedom of assembly and association, and the right to security. An
end-user who is denied access to certain services, data or websites
may be unable to disclose vital information about the malpractices of
a government or other authority. A person whose communications are
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monitored may be prevented from exercising their right to freedom of
association or participate in political processes [Penney]. In a
worst-case scenario, protocols that leak information can lead to
physical danger. A realistic example to consider is when individuals
perceived as threats to the state are subjected to torture or
extrajudicial killing or detention on the basis of information
gathered by state agencies through information leakage in protocols.
This section details several 'common' threats to human rights,
indicating how each of these can lead to human rights violations/
harms and present several examples of how these threats to human
rights materialize on the Internet. This threat modeling is inspired
by [RFC6973] Privacy Considerations for Internet Protocols, which is
based on the security threat analysis. This method is by no means a
perfect solution for assessing human rights risks in Internet
protocols and systems; it is however the best approach currently
available. Certain specific human rights threats are indirectly
considered in Internet protocols as part of the security
considerations [BCP72], but privacy guidelines [RFC6973] or reviews,
let alone human rights impact assessments of protocols are not
standardized or implemented.
Many threats, enablers and risks are linked to different rights.
This is not unsurprising if one takes into account that human rights
are interrelated, interdependent and indivisible. Here however we're
not discussing all human rights because not all human rights are
relevant to ICTs in general and protocols and standards in particular
[Bless]: "The main source of the values of human rights is the
International Bill of Human Rights that is composed of the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights [UDHR] along with the International
Covenant on Civil and Political Rights [ICCPR] and the International
Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights [ICESCR]. In the
light of several cases of Internet censorship, the Human Rights
Council Resolution 20/8 was adopted in 2012 [UNHRC2016], affirming ".
. . that the same rights that people have offline must also be
protected online. . . " . In 2015, the Charter of Human Rights and
Principles for the Internet [IRP] was developed and released.
According to these documents, some examples of human rights relevant
for ICT systems are human dignity (Art. 1 UDHR), non-discrimination
(Art. 2), rights to life, liberty and security (Art. 3), freedom of
opinion and expression (Art. 19), freedom of assembly and association
(Art. 20), rights to equal protection, legal remedy, fair trial, due
process, presumed innocent (Art. 7-11), appropriate social and
international order (Art. 28), participation in public affairs (Art.
21), participation in cultural life, protection of intellectual
property (Art. 27), and privacy (Art. 12)." A partial catalog of
human rights related to ICTs, including economic rights, can be found
in [Hill2014].
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This is by no means an attempt to exclude specific rights or
prioritize some rights over others. If other rights seem relevant,
please contact the authors.
6.2. Guidelines for human rights considerations
This section provides guidance for document authors in the form of a
questionnaire about protocols and their (potential) impact. The
questionnaire may be useful at any point in the design process,
particularly after document authors have developed a high-level
protocol model as described in [RFC4101]. These guidelines do not
seek to replace any existing referenced specifications, but rather
contribute to them and look at the design process from a human rights
perspective.
Protocols and Internet Standard might benefit from a documented
discussion of potential human rights risks arising from potential
misapplications of the protocol or technology described in the RFC.
This might be coupled with an Applicability Statement for that RFC.
Note that the guidance provided in this section does not recommend
specific practices. The range of protocols developed in the IETF is
too broad to make recommendations about particular uses of data or
how human rights might be balanced against other design goals.
However, by carefully considering the answers to the following
questions, document authors should be able to produce a comprehensive
analysis that can serve as the basis for discussion on whether the
protocol adequately takes specific human rights threats into account.
This guidance is meant to help the thought process of a human rights
analysis; it does not provide specific directions for how to write a
human rights protocol considerations section (following the example
set in [RFC6973]), and the addition of a human rights protocol
considerations section has also not yet been proposed. In
considering these questions, authors will need to be aware of the
potential of technical advances or the passage of time to undermine
protections. In general, considerations of rights are likely to be
more effective if they are considered given a purpose and specific
use cases, rather than as abstract absolute goals.
6.2.1. Connectivity
Question(s): Does your protocol add application-specific functions to
intermediary nodes? Could this functionality be added to end nodes
instead of intermediary nodes? Is your protocol optimized for low
bandwidth and high latency connections? Could your protocol also be
developed in a stateless manner?
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Explanation: The end-to-end principle [Saltzer] holds that 'the
intelligence is end to end rather than hidden in the network'
[RFC1958]. The end-to-end principle is important for the robustness
of the network and innovation. Such robustness of the network is
crucial to enabling human rights like freedom of expression.
Example: Middleboxes (which can be Content Delivery Networks,
Firewalls, NATs or other intermediary nodes that provide other
'services' than routing) serve many legitimate purposes. But the
protocols guiding them, can influence individuals' ability to
communicate online freely and privately. The potential for abuse and
intentional and unintentional censoring and limiting permissionless
innovation, and thus ultimately the impact of middleboxes on the
Internet as a place of unfiltered, unmonitored freedom of speech, is
real.
Impacts:
- Right to freedom of expression
- Right to freedom of assembly and association
6.2.2. Privacy
Question(s): Did you have a look at the Guidelines in the Privacy
Considerations for Internet Protocols [RFC6973] section 7? Could
your protocol in any way impact the confidentiality of protocol
metadata? Could your protocol counter traffic analysis? Could your
protocol improve data minimization? Does your document identify
potentially sensitive logged data by your protocol and/or for how
long that needs to be retained for technical reasons?
Explanation: Privacy refers to the right of an entity (normally a
person), acting in its own behalf, to determine the degree to which
it will interact with its environment, including the degree to which
the entity is willing to share its personal information with others.
[RFC4949]. If a protocol provides insufficient privacy protection it
may have a negative impact on freedom of expression as users self-
censor for fear of surveillance, or find themselves unable to express
themselves freely.
Example: See [RFC6973]
Impacts:
- Right to freedom of expression
- Right to non-discrimination
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6.2.3. Content agnosticism
Question(s): If your protocol impacts packet handling, does it use
user data (packet data that is not included in the header)? Is it
making decisions based on the payload of the packet? Does your
protocol prioritize certain content or services over others in the
routing process ? Is the protocol transparent about the
prioritization that is made (if any)?
Explanation: Content agnosticism refers to the notion that network
traffic is treated identically regardless of payload, with some
exception where it comes to effective traffic handling, for instance
where it comes to delay tolerant or delay sensitive packets, based on
the header.
Example: Content agnosticism prevents payload-based discrimination
against packets. This is important because changes to this principle
can lead to a two-tiered Internet, where certain packets are
prioritized over others on the basis of their content. Effectively
this would mean that although all users are entitled to receive their
packets at a certain speed, some users become more equal than others.
Impacts:
- Right to freedom of expression
- Right to non-discrimination
- Right to equal protection
6.2.4. Security
Question(s): Did you have a look at Guidelines for Writing RFC Text
on Security Considerations [BCP72]? Have you found any "attacks that
are somewhat related to your protocol yet considered out of scope of
your document? Would these attacks be pertinent to the human rights
enabling features of the Internet (as described throughout this
document)?
Explanation: Most people speak of security as if it were a single
monolithic property of a protocol or system, however, upon reflection
one realizes that it is clearly not true. Rather, security is a
series of related but somewhat independent properties. Not all of
these properties are required for every application. Since
communications are carried out by systems and access to systems is
through communications channels, these goals obviously interlock, but
they can also be independently provided [BCP72].
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Example: See [BCP72].
Impacts:
- Right to freedom of expression
- Right to freedom of assembly and association
- Right to non-discrimination
- Right to security
6.2.5. Internationalization
Question(s): Does your protocol have text strings that have to be
understood or entered by humans? Does your protocol allow Unicode?
If so, do you accept texts in one charset (which must be UTF-8), or
several (which is dangerous for interoperability)? If character sets
or encodings other than UTF-8 are allowed, does your protocol mandate
a proper tagging of the charset? Did you have a look at [RFC6365]?
Explanation: Internationalization refers to the practice of making
protocols, standards, and implementations usable in different
languages and scripts (see Localization). In the IETF,
internationalization means to add or improve the handling of non-
ASCII text in a protocol. [RFC6365] A different perspective, more
appropriate to protocols that are designed for global use from the
beginning, is the definition used by W3C:
"Internationalization is the design and development of a
product, application or document content that enables easy
localization for target audiences that vary in culture, region,
or language." {{W3Ci18nDef}}
Many protocols that handle text only handle one charset (US-ASCII),
or leave the question of what CCS and encoding are used up to local
guesswork (which leads, of course, to interoperability problems). If
multiple charsets are permitted, they must be explicitly identified
[RFC2277]. Adding non-ASCII text to a protocol allows the protocol
to handle more scripts, hopefully representing users across the
world. In today's world, that is normally best accomplished by
allowing Unicode encoded in UTF-8 only.
In the current IETF policy [RFC2277], internationalization is aimed
at user-facing strings, not protocol elements, such as the verbs used
by some text-based protocols. (Do note that some strings are both
content and protocol elements, such as the identifiers.) If the
Internet wants to be a global network of networks, the protocols
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should work with other languages than English and other character
sets than latin characters. It is therefore crucial that at least
the content carried by the protocol can be in any script, and that
all scripts are treated equally.
Example: See localization
Impacts:
- Right to freedom of expression
- Right to political participation
- Right to participate in cultural life, arts and science
6.2.6. Censorship resistance
Question(s): Does this protocol introduce new identifiers or reuse
existing identifiers (e.g. MAC addresses) that might be associated
with persons or content? Does your protocol make it apparent or
transparent when access to a resource it restricted? Can your
protocol contribute to filtering in a way it could be implemented to
censor data or services? Could this be designed to ensure this
doesn't happen?
Explanation: Censorship resistance refers to the methods and measures
to prevent Internet censorship.
Example: In the development of the IPv6 protocol it was discussed to
embed a Media Access Control (MAC) address into unique IP addresses.
This would make it possible for 'eavesdroppers and other information
collectors to identify when different addresses used in different
transactions actually correspond to the same node. [RFC4941] This is
why Privacy Extensions for Stateless Address Autoconfiguration in
IPv6 have been introduced. [RFC4941]
Identifiers of content exposed within a protocol might be used to
facilitate censorship, as in the case of Application Layer based
censorship, which affects protocols like HTTP. Denial or restriction
of access can be made apparent by the use of status code 451 - which
allows server operators to operate with greater transparency in
circumstances where issues of law or public policy affect their
operation [RFC7725].
Impacts:
- Right to freedom of expression
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- Right to political participation
- Right to participate in cultural life, arts and science
- Right to freedom of assembly and association
6.2.7. Open Standards
Question(s): Is your protocol fully documented in a way that it could
be easily implemented, improved, built upon and/or further developed?
Do you depend on proprietary code for the implementation, running or
further development of your protocol? Does your protocol favor a
particular proprietary specification over technically equivalent and
competing specification(s), for instance by making any incorporated
vendor specification "required" or "recommended" [RFC2026]? Do you
normatively reference another standard that is not available without
cost (and could it possible be done without)? Are you aware of any
patents that would prevent your standard from being fully implemented
[RFC3979] [RFC6701]?
Explanation: The Internet was able to be developed into the global
network of networks because of the existence of open, non-proprietary
standards [Zittrain]. They are crucial for enabling
interoperability. Yet, open standards are not explicitly defined
within the IETF. On the subject, [RFC2026] states: Various national
and international standards bodies, such as ANSI, ISO, IEEE, and ITU-
T, develop a variety of protocol and service specifications that are
similar to Technical Specifications defined at the IETF. National
and international groups also publish "implementors' agreements" that
are analogous to Applicability Statements, capturing a body of
implementation-specific detail concerned with the practical
application of their standards. All of these are considered to be
"open external standards" for the purposes of the Internet Standards
Process. Similarly, [RFC3935] does not define open standards but
does emphasize the importance of 'open process': any interested
person can participate in the work, know what is being decided, and
make his or her voice heard on the issue. Part of this principle is
the IETF's commitment to making its documents, WG mailing lists,
attendance lists, and meeting minutes publicly available on the
Internet.
Open standards are important as they allow for permissionless
innovation, which is important to maintain the freedom and ability to
freely create and deploy new protocols on top of the communications
constructs that currently exist. It is at the heart of the Internet
as we know it, and to maintain its fundamentally open nature, we need
to be mindful of the need for developing open standards.
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All standards that need to be normatively implemented should be
freely available and with reasonable protection for patent
infringement claims, so it can also be implemented in open source or
free software. Patents have often held back open standardization or
been used against those deploying open standards, particularly in the
domain of cryptography [newegg]. An exemption of this is sometimes
made when a protocol is standardized that normatively relies on
speficiations produced by others SDOs that are not freely available.
Patents in open standards or in normative references to other
standards should have a patent disclosure [notewell], royalty-free
licensing [patentpolicy], or some other form of reasonable
protection. Reasonable patent protection should includes but is not
limited to cryptographic primitives.
Example: [RFC6108] describes a system for providing critical end-user
notifications to web browsers, which has been deployed by Comcast, an
Internet Service Provider (ISP). Such a notification system is being
used to provide near-immediate notifications to customers, such as to
warn them that their traffic exhibits patterns that are indicative of
malware or virus infection. There are other proprietary systems that
can perform such notifications, but those systems utilize Deep Packet
Inspection (DPI) technology. In contrast to DPI, this document
describes a system that does not rely upon DPI, and is instead based
in open IETF standards and open source applications.
Impacts:
- Right to freedom of expression
- Right to participate in cultural life, arts and science
6.2.8. Heterogeneity Support
Question(s): Does your protocol support heterogeneity by design?
Does your protocol allow for multiple types of hardware? Does your
protocol allow for multiple types of application protocols? Is your
protocol liberal in what it receives and handles? Will it remain
usable and open if the context changes? Does your protocol allow
there to be well-defined extension points? Do these extension points
allow for open innovation?
Explanation: The Internet is characterized by heterogeneity on many
levels: devices and nodes, router scheduling algorithms and queue
management mechanisms, routing protocols, levels of multiplexing,
protocol versions and implementations, underlying link layers (e.g.,
point-to-point, multi-access links, wireless, FDDI, etc.), in the
traffic mix and in the levels of congestion at different times and
places. Moreover, as the Internet is composed of autonomous
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organizations and Internet service providers, each with their own
separate policy concerns, there is a large heterogeneity of
administrative domains and pricing structures. As a result, the
heterogeneity principle proposed in [RFC1958] needs to be supported
by design [FIArch].
Example: Heterogeneity is inevitable and needs be supported by
design. Multiple types of hardware must be allowed for, e.g.
transmission speeds differing by at least 7 orders of magnitude,
various computer word lengths, and hosts ranging from memory-starved
microprocessors up to massively parallel supercomputers. Multiple
types of application protocol must be allowed for, ranging from the
simplest such as remote login up to the most complex such as
distributed databases [RFC1958].
Impacts:
- Right to freedom of expression
- Right to political participtation
6.2.9. Anonymity
Question(s): Did you have a look at the Privacy Considerations for
Internet Protocols [RFC6973], especially section 6.1.1 ?
Explanation: Anonymity refers to the condition of an identity being
unknown or concealed [RFC4949]. Even though full anonymity is hard
to achieve, it is a non-binary concept. Making pervasive monitoring
and tracking harder is important for many users as well as for the
IETF [RFC7258]. Achieving a higher level of anonymity is an
important feature for many end-users, as it allows them different
degrees of privacy online.
Example: Often protocols expose personal data, it is important to
consider ways to mitigate the obvious privacy impacts. A protocol
that uses data that could help identify a sender (items of interest)
should be protected from third parties. For instance if one wants to
hide the source/destination IP addresses of a packet, the use of
IPsec in tunneling mode (e.g., inside a virtual private network) can
be helpful to protect from third parties likely to eavesdrop packets
exchanged between the tunnel endpoints.
Impacts:
- Right to non-discrimination
- Right to political participation
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- Right to freedom of assembly and association
- Right to security
6.2.10. Pseudonymity
Question(s): Have you considered the Privacy Considerations for
Internet Protocols [RFC6973], especially section 6.1.2 ? Does the
protocol collect personally derived data? Does the protocol generate
or process anything that can be, or be tightly correlated with,
personally identifiable information? Does the protocol utilize data
that is personally-derived, i.e. derived from the interaction of a
single person, or their device or address? Does this protocol
generate personally derived data, and if so how will that data be
handled?
Explanation: Pseudonymity - the ability to use a persistent
identifier not linked to one's offline identity" straight away - is
an important feature for many end-users, as it allows them different
degrees of disguised identity and privacy online.
Example: Designing a standard that exposes personal data, it is
important to consider ways to mitigate the obvious impacts. While
pseudonyms cannot be simply reverse engineered - some early
approaches simply took approaches such as simple hashing of IP
addreses, these could then be simply reversed by generating a hash
for each potential IP address and comparing it to the pseudonym -
limiting the exposure of personal data remains important.
Pseudonymity means using a pseudonym instead of one's "real" name.
There are many reasons for users to use pseudoyms, for instance to:
hide their gender, protect themselves against harassment, protect
their families' privacy, frankly discuss sexuality, or develop a
artistic or journalistic persona without retribution from an
employer, (potential) customers, or social surrounding.
[geekfeminism] The difference between anonymity and pseudonymity is
that a pseudonym often is persistent. "Pseudonymity is strengthened
when less personal data can be linked to the pseudonym; when the same
pseudonym is used less often and across fewer contexts; and when
independently chosen pseudonyms are more frequently used for new
actions (making them, from an observer's or attacker's perspective,
unlinkable)." [RFC6973]
Impacts:
- Right to non-discrimination
- Right to freedom of assembly and association
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6.2.11. Accessibility
Question(s): Is your protocol designed to provide an enabling
environment for people who are not able-bodied? Have you looked at
the W3C Web Accessibility Initiative for examples and guidance?
Explanation: The Internet is fundamentally designed to work for all
people, whatever their hardware, software, language, culture,
location, or physical or mental ability. When the Internet meets
this goal, it is accessible to people with a diverse range of
hearing, movement, sight, and cognitive ability [W3CAccessibility].
Sometimes in the design of protocols, websites, web technologies, or
web tools, barriers are created that exclude people from using the
Web.
Example: The HTML protocol as defined in [HTML5] specifically
requires that every image must have an alt attribute (with a few
exceptions) to ensure images are accessible for people that cannot
themselves decipher non-text content in web pages.
Impacts:
- Right to non-discrimination
- Right to freedom of assembly and association
- Right to education
- Right to political participation
6.2.12. Localization
Question(s): Does your protocol uphold the standards of
internationalization? Have made any concrete steps towards
localizing your protocol for relevant audiences?
Explanation: Localization refers to the adaptation of a product,
application or document content to meet the language, cultural and
other requirements of a specific target market (a locale)
[W3Ci18nDef]. It is also described as the practice of translating an
implementation to make it functional in a specific language or for
users in a specific locale (see Internationalization).
Example: The Internet is a global medium, but many of its protocols
and products are developed with a certain audience in mind, that
often share particular characteristics like knowing how to read and
write in ASCII and knowing English. This limits the ability of a
large part of the world's online population from using the Internet
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in a way that is culturally and linguistically accessible. An
example of a protocol that has taken into account the view that
individuals like to have access to data in their native language can
be found in [RFC5646]. This protocol labels the information content
with an identifier for the language in which it is written. And this
allows information to be presented in more than one language.
Impacts:
- Right to non-discrimination
- Right to participate in cultural life, arts and science
- Right to freedom of expression
6.2.13. Decentralization
Question(s): Can your protocol be implemented without one single
point of control? If applicable, can your protocol be deployed in a
federated manner? What is the potential for discrimination against
users of your protocol? How can the use of your protocol be used to
implicate users? Does your protocol create additional centralized
points of control?
Explanation: Decentralization is one of the central technical
concepts of the architecture of the networks, and embraced as such by
the IETF [RFC3935]. It refers to the absence or minimization of
centralized points of control; a feature that is assumed to make it
easy for new users to join and new uses to unfold [Brown]. It also
reduces issues surrounding single points of failure, and distributes
the network such that it continues to function if one or several
nodes are disabled. With the commercialization of the Internet in
the early 1990's there has been a slow move to move away from
decentralization, to the detriment of the technical benefits of
having a decentralized Internet.
Example: The bits traveling the Internet are increasingly susceptible
to monitoring and censorship, from both governments and Internet
service providers, as well as third (malicious) parties. The ability
to monitor and censor is further enabled by the increased
centralization of the network that creates central infrastructure
points that can be tapped in to. The creation of peer-to-peer
networks and the development of voice-over-IP protocols using peer-
to-peer technology in combination with distributed hash table (DHT)
for scalability are examples of how protocols can preserve
decentralization [Pouwelse].
Impacts:
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- Right to freedom of expression
- Right to freedom of assembly and association
6.2.14. Reliability
Question(s): Is your protocol fault tolerant? Does it degrade
gracefully? Can your protocol resist malicious degradation attempts?
Do you have a documented way to announce degradation? Do you have
measures in place for recovery or partial healing from failure? Can
your protocol maintain dependability and performance in the face of
unanticipated changes or circumstances?
Explanation: Reliability ensures that a protocol will execute its
function consistently and error resistant as described, and function
without unexpected result. A system that is reliable degenerates
gracefully and will have a documented way to announce degradation.
It also has mechanisms to recover from failure gracefully, and if
applicable, allow for partial healing. It is important here to draw
a distinction between random degradation and malicious degradation.
Many current attacks against TLS, for example, exploit TLS's ability
to gracefully degrade to older cipher suites - from a functional
perspective, this is good. From a security perspective, this can be
very bad. As with confidentiality, the growth of the Internet and
fostering innovation in services depends on users having confidence
and trust [RFC3724] in the network. For reliability it is necessary
that services notify the users if a delivery fails. In the case of
real-time systems in addition to the reliable delivery the protocol
needs to safeguard timeliness.
Example: In the modern IP stack structure, a reliable transport layer
requires an indication that transport processing has successfully
completed, such as given by TCP's ACK message [RFC0793], and not
simply an indication from the IP layer that the packet arrived.
Similarly, an application layer protocol may require an application-
specific acknowledgement that contains, among other things, a status
code indicating the disposition of the request (See [RFC3724]).
Impacts:
- Right to freedom of expression
- Right to security
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6.2.15. Confidentiality
Question(s): Does this protocol expose information related to
identifiers or data? If so, does it do so to each other protocol
entity (i.e., recipients, intermediaries, and enablers) [RFC6973]?
What options exist for protocol implementers to choose to limit the
information shared with each entity? What operational controls are
available to limit the information shared with each entity?
What controls or consent mechanisms does the protocol define or
require before personal data or identifiers are shared or exposed via
the protocol? If no such mechanisms or controls are specified, is it
expected that control and consent will be handled outside of the
protocol?
Does the protocol provide ways for initiators to share different
pieces of information with different recipients? If not, are there
mechanisms that exist outside of the protocol to provide initiators
with such control?
Does the protocol provide ways for initiators to limit which
information is shared with intermediaries? If not, are there
mechanisms that exist outside of the protocol to provide users with
such control? Is it expected that users will have relationships that
govern the use of the information (contractual or otherwise) with
those who operate these intermediaries? Does the protocol prefer
encryption over clear text operation?
Does the protocol provide ways for initiators to express individuals'
preferences to recipients or intermediaries with regard to the
collection, use, or disclosure of their personal data?
Explanation: Confidentiality refers to keeping your data secret from
unintended listeners [BCP72]. The growth of the Internet depends on
users having confidence that the network protects their personal data
[RFC1984].
Example: Protocols that do not encrypt their payload make the entire
content of the communication available to the idealized attacker
along their path. Following the advice in [RFC3365], most such
protocols have a secure variant that encrypts the payload for
confidentiality, and these secure variants are seeing ever-wider
deployment. A noteworthy exception is DNS [RFC1035], as DNSSEC
[RFC4033]does not have confidentiality as a requirement. This
implies that, in the absence of changes to the protocol as presently
under development in the IETF's DNS Private Exchange (DPRIVE) working
group, all DNS queries and answers generated by the activities of any
protocol are available to the attacker. When store-and-forward
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protocols are used (e.g., SMTP [RFC5321]), intermediaries leave this
data subject to observation by an attacker that has compromised these
intermediaries, unless the data is encrypted end-to-end by the
application-layer protocol or the implementation uses an encrypted
store for this data [RFC7624].
Impacts:
- Right to privacy
- Right to security
6.2.16. Integrity
Question(s): Does your protocol maintain, assure and/or verify the
accuracy of payload data? Does your protocol maintain and assure the
consistency of data? Does your protocol in any way allow for the
data to be (intentionally or unintentionally) altered?
Explanation: Integrity refers to the maintenance and assurance of the
accuracy and consistency of data to ensure it has not been
(intentionally or unintentionally) altered.
Example: Integrity verification of data is important to prevent
vulnerabilities and attacks, like man-in-the-middle-attacks. These
attacks happen when a third party (often for malicious reasons)
intercepts a communication between two parties, inserting themselves
in the middle changing the content of the data. In practice this
looks as follows:
Alice wants to communicate with Bob.
Corinne forges and sends a message to Bob, impersonating Alice. Bob
cannot see the data from Alice was altered by Corinne.
Corinne intercepts and alters the communication as it is sent between
Alice and Bob.
Corinne is able to control the communication content.
Impacts:
- Right to freedom of expression
- Right to security
6.2.17. Authenticity
Question(s): Do you have sufficient measures to confirm the truth of
an attribute of a single piece of data or entity? Can the attributes
get garbled along the way (see security)? If relevant have you
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implemented IPsec, DNSsec, HTTPS and other Standard Security Best
Practices?
Explanation: Authenticity ensures that data does indeed come from the
source it claims to come from. This is important to prevent certain
attacks or unauthorized access and use of data.
Example: Authentication of data is important to prevent
vulnerabilities and attacks, like man-in-the-middle-attacks. These
attacks happen when a third party (often for malicious reasons)
intercepts a communication between two parties, inserting themselves
in the middle and posing as both parties. In practice this looks as
follows:
Alice wants to communicate with Bob.
Alice sends data to Bob.
Corinne intercepts the data sent to Bob.
Corinne reads (and potentially alters) the message to Bob.
Bob cannot see the data did not come from Alice but from Corinne.
When there is proper authentication the scenario would be as follows:
Alice wants to communicate with Bob.
Alice sends data to Bob.
Corinne intercepts the data sent to Bob.
Corinne reads and alters the message to Bob.
Bob can see the data did not come from Alice but from Corinne.
Impacts:
- Right to privacy
- Right to freedom of expression
- Right to security
6.2.18. Adaptability
Question(s): Is your protocol written in such a way that is would be
easy for other protocols to be developed on top of it, or to interact
with it? Does your protocol impact permissionless innovation? See
'Connectivity' above.
Explanation: Adaptability is closely interrelated with permissionless
innovation, both maintain the freedom and ability to freely create
and deploy new protocols on top of the communications constructs that
currently exist. It is at the heart of the Internet as we know it,
and to maintain its fundamentally open nature, we need to be mindful
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of the impact of protocols on maintaining or reducing permissionless
innovation to ensure the Internet can continue to develop.
Example: WebRTC generates audio and/or video data. In order to
ensure that WebRTC can be used in different locations by different
parties it is important that standard Javascript APIs are developed
to support applications from different voice service providers.
Multiple parties will have similar capabilities, in order to ensure
that all parties can build upon existing standards these need to be
adaptable, and allow for permissionless innovation.
Impacts:
- Right to education
- Freedom of expression
- Freedom of assembly and association
6.2.19. Outcome Transparency
Question(s): Are the effects of your protocol fully and easily
comprehensible, including with respect to unintended consequences of
protocol choices?
Explanation: certain technical choice may have unintended
consequences.
Example: lack of authenticity may lead to lack of integrity and
negative externalities, of which spam is an example. Lack of data
that could be used for billing and accounting can lead to so-called
"free" arrangements which obscure the actual costs and distribution
of the costs, for example the barter arrangements that are commonly
used for Internet interconnection; and the commercial exploitation of
personal data for targeted advertising which is the most common
funding model for the so-called "free" services such as search
engines and social networks.
Impacts: - Freedom of expression - Privacy - Freedom of assembly and
association - Access to information
7. Document Status
This document has been developed within the framework of the Human
Rights Protocols Considerations Research Group, based on discussions
on the hrpc mailinglist and during hrpc sessions, where this document
also has been extensively discussed. The document has received
eleven in-depth reviews on list, and received many comments from
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inside and outside the IRTF and IETF community. The research group
has reached consensus on publishing this document as informational
research group consensus document.
8. Acknowledgements
A special thanks to all members of the hrpc RG who contributed to
this draft. The following deserve a special mention:
- Joana Varon for helping draft the first iteration of the
methodology, previous drafts and the direction of the film Net of
Rights and working on the interviews at IETF92 in Dallas.
- Daniel Kahn Gillmor (dkg) for helping with the first iteration of
the glossary as well as a lot of technical guidance, support and
language suggestions.
- Claudio Guarnieri for writing the first iterations of the case
studies on VPN, HTTP, and Peer to Peer.
- Will Scott for writing the first iterations of the case studies on
DNS, IP, XMPP.
- Avri Doria for proposing writing a glossary in the first place,
help with writing the initial proposals and Internet Drafts, her
reviews and contributions to the glossary.
and Stephane Bortzmeyer, John Curran, Barry Shein, Joe Hall, Joss
Wright, Harry Halpin, and Tim Sammut who made a lot of excellent
suggestions, many of which found their way directly into the text.
We want to thank Amelia Andersdotter, Stephen Farrell, Stephane
Bortzemeyer, Shane Kerr, Giovane Moura, James Gannon, Alissa Cooper,
Andrew Sullivan, S. Moonesamy, Roland Bless and Scott Craig for
their reviews and testing the HRPC guidelines in the wild. We would
also like to thank Molly Sauter, Arturo Filasto, Nathalie Marechal,
Eleanor Saitta, Richard Hill and all others who provided input on the
draft or the conceptualization of the idea. Thanks to Edward Snowden
for his comments regarding the impact of protocols on the rights of
users at IETF93.
9. Security Considerations
As this document concerns a research document, there are no security
considerations.
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10. IANA Considerations
This document has no actions for IANA.
11. Research Group Information
The discussion list for the IRTF Human Rights Protocol Considerations
Research Group is located at the e-mail address hrpc@ietf.org [3].
Information on the group and information on how to subscribe to the
list is at https://www.irtf.org/mailman/listinfo/hrpc
Archives of the list can be found at: https://www.irtf.org/mail-
archive/web/hrpc/current/index.html
12. References
12.1. Informative References
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[Clarketal]
Clark, D., Wroclawski, J., Sollins, K., and R. Braden,
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[Denardis15]
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(RFCs)", 2014, <https://github.com/npdoty/rfc-analysis>.
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[Douceur] Douceur, J., "The Sybil Attack", 2002,
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[Dutton] Dutton, W., "Freedom of Connection, Freedom of Expression:
the Changing legal and regulatory Ecology Shaping the
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Agenda - Recommendations for Freedom Online", 2014,
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content/uploads/2014/04/FOC-recommendations-
consensus.pdf>.
[FRAMEWORK]
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internationalization, prepared by ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 22/WG
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[Franklin]
Franklin, U., "The Real World of Technology", 1999,
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the-real-world-of-technology-digital>.
[freenet1]
Freenet, "What is Freenet?", n.d.,
<https://freenetproject.org/whatis.html>.
[freenet2]
Ian Clarke, ., "The Philosphy behind Freenet?", n.d.,
<https://freenetproject.org/philosophy.html>.
[geekfeminism]
Geek Feminism Wiki, "Pseudonymity", 2015,
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[Geertz] Clifford, G., "Kinship in Bali", Chicago University of
Chicago Press. , 1975,
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bo3625088.html>.
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[Googlepatent]
Google, ., "Method and device for network traffic
manipulation", 2012, <https://www.google.com/patents/
EP2601774A1?cl=en>.
[greatfirewall]
Anonymous, ., "Towards a Comprehensive Picture of the
Great Firewall's DNS Censorship", 2014,
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foci14-anonymous.pdf>.
[GreenMovement]
Villeneuve, N., "Iran DDoS", 2009,
<https://www.nartv.org/2009/06/16/iran-ddos/>.
[Greenwald]
Greenwald, G., "XKeyscore: NSA tool collects 'nearly
everything a user does on the internet'", 2013,
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secret-program-online-data>.
[Haagsma] Haagsma, L., "Deep dive into QUANTUM INSERT", 2015,
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deep-dive-into-quantum-insert/>.
[hall] Hall, J., Aaron, M., and B. Jones, "A Survey of Worldwide
Censorship Techniques", 2015,
<https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-hall-censorship-tech-
01>.
[Hill2014]
Hill, R., "Partial Catalog of Human Rights Related to ICT
Activities", 2014,
<http://www.apig.ch/UNIGE%20Catalog.pdf>.
[Hornet] Chen, C., Asoni, D., Barrera, D., Danezis, G., and A.
Perrig, "HORNET: High-speed Onion Routing at the Network
Layer", CCS '15 Proceedings of the 22nd ACM SIGSAC
Conference on Computer and Communications Security Pages
1441-1454 , 2015, <https://dl.acm.org/
citation.cfm?id=2813628>.
[HRC2012] United Nations Human Rights Council, "UN General Assembly
Resolution "The right to privacy in the digital age"
(A/C.3/68/L.45)", 2011,
<http://daccess-ods.un.org/TMP/554342.120885849.html>.
[HTML5] W3C, "HTML5", 2014, <https://www.w3.org/TR/html5/>.
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[ICCPR] United Nations General Assembly, "International Covenant
on Civil and Political Rights", 1976,
<http://www.ohchr.org/EN/ProfessionalInterest/Pages/
CCPR.aspx>.
[ICESCR] United Nations General Assembly, "International Covenant
on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights", 1966,
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CESCR.aspx>.
[Insinuator]
Schiess, N., "Vulnerabilities & attack vectors of VPNs (Pt
1)", 2013, <https://www.insinuator.net/2013/08/
vulnerabilities-attack-vectors-of-vpns-pt-1/>.
[IRP] Internet Rights and Principles Dynamic Coalition, "10
Internet Rights & Principles", 2014,
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content/uploads/2014/06/
IRPC_10RightsandPrinciples_28May2014-11.pdf>.
[Jabri] Jabri, V., "Discourses on Violence - conflict analysis
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[Kaye] Kaye, D., "Report of the Special Rapporteur on the
promotion and protection of the right to freedom of
opinion and expression", 2016,
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Privatesectorinthedigitalage.aspx>.
[King] King, C., "Power, Social Violence and Civil Wars",
Washington D.C. United States Institute of Peace Press ,
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[Lessig] Lessig, L., "Code - And Other Laws of Cyberspace, Version
2.0.", New York Basic Books , 2006, <http://codev2.cc/>.
[Marcak] Marcak, B., Weaver, N., Dalek, J., Ensafi, R., Fifield,
D., McKune, S., Rey, A., Scott-Railton, J., Deibert, R.,
and V. Paxson, "China's Great Fire Cannon", 2015,
<https://citizenlab.org/2015/04/chinas-great-cannon/>.
[Marquis-Boire]
Marquis-Boire, M., "Schrodinger's Cat Video and the Death
of Clear-Text", 2014, <https://citizenlab.org/2014/08/cat-
video-and-the-death-of-clear-text/>.
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[Meyer] Meyer, J., "Defining and Evaluating Resilience: A
Performability Perspective, presentation at International
Workshop on Performability Modeling of Computer and
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Alternatives to Internet-based Services - An Issue of
Internet Governance", Westminister Papers in Communication
and Culture , 2015, <http://doi.org/10.16997/wpcc.214>.
[namecoin]
Namecoin, "Namecoin - Decentralized secure names", 2015,
<https://namecoin.info/>.
[natusage]
Maier, G., Schneider, F., and A. Feldmann, "NAT usage in
Residential Broadband networks", 2011,
<http://www.icsi.berkeley.edu/pubs/networking/
NATusage11.pdf>.
[NETmundial]
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NETmundial-Multistakeholder-Document.pdf>.
[newegg] Mullin, J., "Newegg on trial: Mystery company TQP rewrites
the history of encryption", 2013, <http://arstechnica.com/
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re-writes-the-history-of-encryption/>.
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well.html>.
[patentpolicy]
W3C, "W3C Patent Policy", 2004,
<https://www.w3.org/Consortium/Patent-Policy-20040205/>.
[Penney] Penney, J., "Chilling Effects: Online Surveillance and
Wikipedia Use", 2016, <http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/
papers.cfm?abstract_id=2769645>.
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[Peterson]
Peterson, A., Gellman, B., and A. Soltani, "Yahoo to make
SSL encryption the default for Webmail users. Finally.",
2013, <http://gmailblog.blogspot.de/2010/01/
default-https-access-for-gmail.html>.
[PETS2015VPN]
Pera, V., Barbera, M., Tyson, G., Haddadi, H., and A. Mei,
"A Glance through the VPN Looking Glass", 2015,
<http://www.eecs.qmul.ac.uk/~hamed/papers/
PETS2015VPN.pdf>.
[pidgin] js, . and Pidgin Developers, "-XMPP- Invisible mode
violating standard", July 2015,
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[Pouwelse]
Pouwelse, Ed, J., "Media without censorship", 2012,
<https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-pouwelse-censorfree-
scenarios>.
[Rachovitsa]
Rachovitsa, A., "Engineering 'Privacy by Design' in the
Internet Protocols - Understanding Online Privacy both as
a Technical and a Human Rights Issue in the Face of
Pervasive Monitoring", International Journal of Law and
Information Technology , 2015, <https://www.ietf.org/mail-
archive/web/hrpc/current/pdfRBnRYFeVsm.pdf>.
[RFC0226] Karp, P., "Standardization of host mnemonics", RFC 226,
DOI 10.17487/RFC0226, September 1971,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc226>.
[RFC0760] Postel, J., "DoD standard Internet Protocol", RFC 760,
DOI 10.17487/RFC0760, January 1980,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc760>.
[RFC0791] Postel, J., "Internet Protocol", STD 5, RFC 791,
DOI 10.17487/RFC0791, September 1981,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc791>.
[RFC0793] Postel, J., "Transmission Control Protocol", STD 7,
RFC 793, DOI 10.17487/RFC0793, September 1981,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc793>.
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[RFC0894] Hornig, C., "A Standard for the Transmission of IP
Datagrams over Ethernet Networks", STD 41, RFC 894,
DOI 10.17487/RFC0894, April 1984,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc894>.
[RFC1035] Mockapetris, P., "Domain names - implementation and
specification", STD 13, RFC 1035, DOI 10.17487/RFC1035,
November 1987, <http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc1035>.
[RFC1122] Braden, R., Ed., "Requirements for Internet Hosts -
Communication Layers", STD 3, RFC 1122,
DOI 10.17487/RFC1122, October 1989,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc1122>.
[RFC1958] Carpenter, B., Ed., "Architectural Principles of the
Internet", RFC 1958, DOI 10.17487/RFC1958, June 1996,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc1958>.
[RFC1984] IAB and IESG, "IAB and IESG Statement on Cryptographic
Technology and the Internet", BCP 200, RFC 1984,
DOI 10.17487/RFC1984, August 1996,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc1984>.
[RFC2026] Bradner, S., "The Internet Standards Process -- Revision
3", BCP 9, RFC 2026, DOI 10.17487/RFC2026, October 1996,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2026>.
[RFC2277] Alvestrand, H., "IETF Policy on Character Sets and
Languages", BCP 18, RFC 2277, DOI 10.17487/RFC2277,
January 1998, <http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2277>.
[RFC2460] Deering, S. and R. Hinden, "Internet Protocol, Version 6
(IPv6) Specification", RFC 2460, DOI 10.17487/RFC2460,
December 1998, <http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2460>.
[RFC2775] Carpenter, B., "Internet Transparency", RFC 2775,
DOI 10.17487/RFC2775, February 2000,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2775>.
[RFC3022] Srisuresh, P. and K. Egevang, "Traditional IP Network
Address Translator (Traditional NAT)", RFC 3022,
DOI 10.17487/RFC3022, January 2001,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc3022>.
[RFC3365] Schiller, J., "Strong Security Requirements for Internet
Engineering Task Force Standard Protocols", BCP 61,
RFC 3365, DOI 10.17487/RFC3365, August 2002,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc3365>.
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[RFC3536] Hoffman, P., "Terminology Used in Internationalization in
the IETF", RFC 3536, DOI 10.17487/RFC3536, May 2003,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc3536>.
[RFC3724] Kempf, J., Ed., Austein, R., Ed., and IAB, "The Rise of
the Middle and the Future of End-to-End: Reflections on
the Evolution of the Internet Architecture", RFC 3724,
DOI 10.17487/RFC3724, March 2004,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc3724>.
[RFC3935] Alvestrand, H., "A Mission Statement for the IETF",
BCP 95, RFC 3935, DOI 10.17487/RFC3935, October 2004,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc3935>.
[RFC3979] Bradner, S., Ed., "Intellectual Property Rights in IETF
Technology", RFC 3979, DOI 10.17487/RFC3979, March 2005,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc3979>.
[RFC4033] Arends, R., Austein, R., Larson, M., Massey, D., and S.
Rose, "DNS Security Introduction and Requirements",
RFC 4033, DOI 10.17487/RFC4033, March 2005,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc4033>.
[RFC4084] Klensin, J., "Terminology for Describing Internet
Connectivity", BCP 104, RFC 4084, DOI 10.17487/RFC4084,
May 2005, <http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc4084>.
[RFC4101] Rescorla, E. and IAB, "Writing Protocol Models", RFC 4101,
DOI 10.17487/RFC4101, June 2005,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc4101>.
[RFC4941] Narten, T., Draves, R., and S. Krishnan, "Privacy
Extensions for Stateless Address Autoconfiguration in
IPv6", RFC 4941, DOI 10.17487/RFC4941, September 2007,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc4941>.
[RFC4949] Shirey, R., "Internet Security Glossary, Version 2",
FYI 36, RFC 4949, DOI 10.17487/RFC4949, August 2007,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc4949>.
[RFC5246] Dierks, T. and E. Rescorla, "The Transport Layer Security
(TLS) Protocol Version 1.2", RFC 5246,
DOI 10.17487/RFC5246, August 2008,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5246>.
[RFC5321] Klensin, J., "Simple Mail Transfer Protocol", RFC 5321,
DOI 10.17487/RFC5321, October 2008,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5321>.
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[RFC5646] Phillips, A., Ed. and M. Davis, Ed., "Tags for Identifying
Languages", BCP 47, RFC 5646, DOI 10.17487/RFC5646,
September 2009, <http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5646>.
[RFC5694] Camarillo, G., Ed. and IAB, "Peer-to-Peer (P2P)
Architecture: Definition, Taxonomies, Examples, and
Applicability", RFC 5694, DOI 10.17487/RFC5694, November
2009, <http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5694>.
[RFC5944] Perkins, C., Ed., "IP Mobility Support for IPv4, Revised",
RFC 5944, DOI 10.17487/RFC5944, November 2010,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5944>.
[RFC6101] Freier, A., Karlton, P., and P. Kocher, "The Secure
Sockets Layer (SSL) Protocol Version 3.0", RFC 6101,
DOI 10.17487/RFC6101, August 2011,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6101>.
[RFC6108] Chung, C., Kasyanov, A., Livingood, J., Mody, N., and B.
Van Lieu, "Comcast's Web Notification System Design",
RFC 6108, DOI 10.17487/RFC6108, February 2011,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6108>.
[RFC6120] Saint-Andre, P., "Extensible Messaging and Presence
Protocol (XMPP): Core", RFC 6120, DOI 10.17487/RFC6120,
March 2011, <http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6120>.
[RFC6365] Hoffman, P. and J. Klensin, "Terminology Used in
Internationalization in the IETF", BCP 166, RFC 6365,
DOI 10.17487/RFC6365, September 2011,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6365>.
[RFC6698] Hoffman, P. and J. Schlyter, "The DNS-Based Authentication
of Named Entities (DANE) Transport Layer Security (TLS)
Protocol: TLSA", RFC 6698, DOI 10.17487/RFC6698, August
2012, <http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6698>.
[RFC6701] Farrel, A. and P. Resnick, "Sanctions Available for
Application to Violators of IETF IPR Policy", RFC 6701,
DOI 10.17487/RFC6701, August 2012,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6701>.
[RFC6797] Hodges, J., Jackson, C., and A. Barth, "HTTP Strict
Transport Security (HSTS)", RFC 6797,
DOI 10.17487/RFC6797, November 2012,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6797>.
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[RFC6973] Cooper, A., Tschofenig, H., Aboba, B., Peterson, J.,
Morris, J., Hansen, M., and R. Smith, "Privacy
Considerations for Internet Protocols", RFC 6973,
DOI 10.17487/RFC6973, July 2013,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6973>.
[RFC7258] Farrell, S. and H. Tschofenig, "Pervasive Monitoring Is an
Attack", BCP 188, RFC 7258, DOI 10.17487/RFC7258, May
2014, <http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7258>.
[RFC7469] Evans, C., Palmer, C., and R. Sleevi, "Public Key Pinning
Extension for HTTP", RFC 7469, DOI 10.17487/RFC7469, April
2015, <http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7469>.
[RFC7540] Belshe, M., Peon, R., and M. Thomson, Ed., "Hypertext
Transfer Protocol Version 2 (HTTP/2)", RFC 7540,
DOI 10.17487/RFC7540, May 2015,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7540>.
[RFC7574] Bakker, A., Petrocco, R., and V. Grishchenko, "Peer-to-
Peer Streaming Peer Protocol (PPSPP)", RFC 7574,
DOI 10.17487/RFC7574, July 2015,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7574>.
[RFC7624] Barnes, R., Schneier, B., Jennings, C., Hardie, T.,
Trammell, B., Huitema, C., and D. Borkmann,
"Confidentiality in the Face of Pervasive Surveillance: A
Threat Model and Problem Statement", RFC 7624,
DOI 10.17487/RFC7624, August 2015,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7624>.
[RFC7626] Bortzmeyer, S., "DNS Privacy Considerations", RFC 7626,
DOI 10.17487/RFC7626, August 2015,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7626>.
[RFC7725] Bray, T., "An HTTP Status Code to Report Legal Obstacles",
RFC 7725, DOI 10.17487/RFC7725, February 2016,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7725>.
[RFC7754] Barnes, R., Cooper, A., Kolkman, O., Thaler, D., and E.
Nordmark, "Technical Considerations for Internet Service
Blocking and Filtering", RFC 7754, DOI 10.17487/RFC7754,
March 2016, <http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7754>.
[RFC7858] Hu, Z., Zhu, L., Heidemann, J., Mankin, A., Wessels, D.,
and P. Hoffman, "Specification for DNS over Transport
Layer Security (TLS)", RFC 7858, DOI 10.17487/RFC7858, May
2016, <http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7858>.
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[RFC8164] Nottingham, M. and M. Thomson, "Opportunistic Security for
HTTP/2", RFC 8164, DOI 10.17487/RFC8164, May 2017,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8164>.
[Richie] Richie, J. and J. Lewis, "Qualitative Research Practice -
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[Rideout] Rideout, A., "Making security easier", 2008,
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[Saltzer] Saltzer, J., Reed, D., and D. Clark, "End-to-End Arguments
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1984, pp 277-288. , 1984.
[Sandvine]
Sandvine, "Sandvine: Over 70% Of North American Traffic Is
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[Schillace]
Schillace, S., "Default https access for Gmail", 2010,
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default-https-access-for-gmail.html>.
[Schneier]
Schneier, B., "Attacking Tor - how the NSA targets users'
online anonymity", 2013,
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[Schroeder]
Schroeder, I. and B. Schmidt, "Introduction - Violent
Imaginaries and Violent Practice", London and New York
Routledge , 2001, <http://resourcelists.st-
andrews.ac.uk/items/
BFC20363-67B0-B3EF-EA48-13E5230E7899.html>.
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[spiegel] SPIEGEL, "Prying Eyes - Inside the NSA's War on Internet
Security", 2014,
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inside-the-nsa-s-war-on-internet-security-a-1010361.html>.
[sslstrip]
Marlinspike, M., "Software >> sslstrip", 2011,
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[techyum] Violet, ., "Official - vb.ly Link Shortener Seized by
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[torproject]
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[torrentfreak1]
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is-your-isp-messing-with-bittorrent-traffic-find-out-
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[torrentfreak2]
Andy, ., "LAWYERS SENT 109,000 PIRACY THREATS IN GERMANY
DURING 2013", 2014, <https://torrentfreak.com/lawyers-
sent-109000-piracy-threats-in-germany-during-
2013-140304/>.
[tribler] Delft University of Technology, Department EWI/PDS/
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about.html>.
[UDHR] United Nations General Assembly, "The Universal
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[UNGA2013]
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<http://daccess-ods.un.org/TMP/1133732.05065727.html>.
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[UNHRC2016]
United Nations Human Rights Council, "UN Human Rights
Council Resolution "The promotion, protection and
enjoyment of human rights on the Internet" (A/HRC/32/
L.20)", 2016, <https://documents-dds-
ny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/LTD/G16/131/89/PDF/
G1613189.pdf?OpenElement>.
[ververis]
Vasilis, V., Kargiotakis, G., Filasto, A., Fabian, B., and
A. Alexandros, "Understanding Internet Censorship Policy -
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foci15-paper-ververis-update.pdf>.
[W3CAccessibility]
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[W3Ci18nDef]
W3C, "Localization vs. Internationalization", 2010,
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[wikileaks]
Sladek, T. and E. Broese, "Market Survey : Detection &
Filtering Solutions to Identify File Transfer of Copyright
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EANTC-Survey-1.5-unsecured.pdf>.
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Wikipedia, "Tempora", 2016,
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[WSJ] Sonne, P. and M. Coker, "Firms Aided Libyan Spies", 2011,
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[WynsbergheMoura]
Wynsberghe, A. and G. Moura, "The concept of embedded
values and the example of internet security", 2013,
<http://doc.utwente.nl/87095/>.
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[xmppmanifesto]
Saint-Andre, P. and . XMPP Operators, "A Public Statement
Regarding Ubiquitous Encryption on the XMPP Network",
2014,
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[Zittrain]
Zittrain, J., "The Future of the Internet - And How to
Stop It", Yale University Press , 2008,
<https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/4455262/
Zittrain_Future%20of%20the%20Internet.pdf?sequence=1>.
12.2. URIs
[1] mailto:node@domain/home
[2] mailto:node@domain/work
[3] mailto:hrpc@ietf.org
Authors' Addresses
Niels ten Oever
ARTICLE 19
EMail: niels@article19.org
Corinne Cath
Oxford Internet Institute
EMail: corinnecath@gmail.com
ten Oever & Cath Expires January 17, 2018 [Page 74]
