Media without censorship (CensorFree) scenarios
draft-pouwelse-censorfree-scenarios-00

Internet Engineering Task Force                         J. Pouwelse, Ed.
Internet-Draft                            Delft University of Technology
Intended status: Standards Track                            July 9, 2012
Expires: January 10, 2013

            Media without censorship (CensorFree) scenarios
                 draft-pouwelse-censorfree-scenarios-00

Abstract

   This document describes some scenarios in which one can imagine that
   the ability of authoritarian regime to censor news dissemination is
   reduced.  It tries to draw some conclusions about what's desirable
   and what's not acceptable for users in those scenarios.

   The CensorFree objective is to standardize the protocols for
   microblogging on smartphones with a focus on security and censorship
   resistance.  Microblog entries are short text messages, possibly
   enriched with pictures or streaming video.  The goal is to devise
   protocols which guard against all known forms of censorship such as:
   cyberspace sabotage, digital eavesdropping, infiltration, fraud,
   Internet kill switches and lawyer-based attacks with the best known
   protective methods.

Status of This Memo

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Copyright Notice

   Copyright (c) 2012 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
   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.  Requirements Language . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
   2.  Introduction  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
   3.  Goal: microblogging . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
   4.  Three driving scenarios . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
     4.1.  20sec scenario  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
     4.2.  Internet-Free scenario  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
     4.3.  Friends-only scenario . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
   5.  Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
   6.  IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
   7.  References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
     7.1.  Normative References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
     7.2.  Informative References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
     7.3.  URL References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

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1.  Requirements Language

   The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
   "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this
   document are to be interpreted as described in RFC 2119 [RFC2119].

2.  Introduction

   Freedom to spread information is under active attack in various
   corners of The Internet.  Internet freedom has been losing and
   declining in many areas.  The Internet has been put under strict
   control using mechanisms of significant sophistication and
   complexity.  The age of cyber suppression is upon us and we need to
   act.  The forces favoring freedom need to avoid fragmentation of
   effort and re-group under a single initiative in order to impact the
   lives of millions.

   Democratic countries also face a dilemma.  Restrictions on the free
   information flow is the topics of several proposed laws by elected
   representatives.  The strength of copyright law impacts digital
   information flow.  Politicians must decide between weak copyright
   law, as championed by civil rights activists versus strong copyright
   enforcement, as promoted by numerous players in the creative
   industries.  Recent furor around SOPA, PIPA, etc. in the US plus the
   European Parliament vote on ACTA is highly relevant in this context.

   A glimmer of hope exists.  The Arab Spring shows that a new
   generation is claiming their right to express themselves.
   Microblogging, social media in general and traditional satellite news
   broadcast networks are perceived as critical catalysts for political
   change.  Generic computational fabric is soon getting in the hands of
   two billion people with the growth of smartphones and increasingly
   affordable communication.  These smartphones are increasingly used to
   record and spread disruptive audiovisual material, even in regions
   without media freedom.

   The uniqueness of The Internet lies in the IETF standards.  Moving
   certain bits to certain locations or offering a service requires no
   prior official approval.  However, Internet-deployed mechanisms now
   exist which filter news and media in general for both surveillance
   and censorship.  The Internet has ceased to provide reliable
   transport service for all users.  The IETF can repeat itA's
   historical inter-networking role again by setting the standard for
   reliable flow of packets of news.

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3.  Goal: microblogging

   The goal of creating a microblogging standard and facilitating a
   reference implementation for portable devices which is capable of
   operating in a hostile environment.  Microblogging is an increasingly
   popular technology for lightweight interaction over the Internet.  It
   differs from traditional blogging in that [OPENMICRO]:

   o  Posts are short (typically less than 140 characters, which is the
      limit in SMS).

   o  Posts are in plain text.

   o  People can reply to your posts, but not directly comment on them.

   o  People learn about your posts only if they have permission to view
      them.

   o  Your microblogging feed is discovered based on your identity at a
      domain or with a service.

   This proposed draft standard SHALL provide: "information
   dissemination from a single smartphone to an audience of millions in
   the form of microblogging, enriched with pictures or streaming video
   which is guarded against all known forms of censorship such as:
   cyberspace sabotage, digital eavesdropping, infiltration, fraud,
   Internet kill switches and lawyer-based attacks with the best known
   protective methods".

4.  Three driving scenarios

   Recent events has shown the power of ubiquitous camera-phones, new
   media and microblogging.  This document proposes to uses smartphones,
   wifi and USB sticks for multimedia playback and transport.  The
   architecture, features and driving scenarios are specifically crafted
   to enable compliant implementations as a single smartphone app
   without any additional server infrastructure.

4.1.  20sec scenario

   First scenario, called "20sec", defines an open microblogging
   standard.  This first scenario duplicates existing microblogging
   practices with an open standard in a fully decentralized setting.
   Smartphone owner Alice with wifi-based Internet access records a
   video, attaches this video to a microblog entry and shares this story
   plus video automatically with friends Bob and Charlie which are
   subscribed to her news feed.  Alice does not need to trust any
   central server with her credentials or has to prove her identity to a

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   central (web) server.  Bob and Charlie are both behind a NAT
   middlebox compliant to the BEHAVE recommendations [RFC4787].  No
   assistance of a coordinating server (e.g.  STUN or TURN) is required
   to traverse this NAT box using UDP messages.  This scenario assumes
   some form of direct Internet access, the next scenario deals with
   packet forwarding.

   The scenario requirements are performance equal to central-server
   based approach (e.g. the ability to reach 20 million people in 20
   seconds), optional backwards compatibility and that there are no
   dependencies on any kind of central infrastructure (DNS, web servers,
   access portal, CDN cloud).  This first scenario duplicates existing
   microblogging practices with an open standard in a fully
   decentralized setting.  The 20sec scenario requires that solutions
   provide seamless backwards compatibility with existing leading
   solutions by using content import tools (e.g.  Twitter, Sina Weibo,
   chyrp, heello).  Proposed open solutions MUST permit easy bulk trans-
   coding and ingest of existing news feeds into this open standard.

   An essential feature of the 20sec scenario is all potential central
   gatekeepers are removed.  Ownership of data is fundamental to
   autonomy.  To meet the anti-censorship goal, 20sec assumes an
   infrastructure which is not dependent and completely decoupled from
   potentially hostile servers such as DNS servers, web servers, swarm
   trackers, access portals. 20sec is based on full self-organization.
   The infrastructure consists purely of devices running compliant
   implementations.  No central server requires installation or
   maintenance, making this infrastructure independant on any type of
   funding or business model. 20sec requires an overlay which is highly
   resilient.  Smartphones, tablets and PCs are able to utilize this P2P
   overlay for microblogging.  Existing solutions such as [OPENMICRO]
   require a central webserver and OAuth-like authentication primitives.
   This prior work is not suitable for our 20sec scenario, as we aim to
   remove all server reliance and equality of.

4.2.  Internet-Free scenario

   The Internet-free scenario describes a situation without direct
   Internet access.  It is focussed on ad-hoc packet forwarding between
   smartphones.

   Smartphone owner Alice records a video, attaches this video to a
   microblog entry and shares this story plus video automatically with
   friends Bob and Charlie which are subscribed to her news feed. at
   some point within range of the wifi,bluetooth or other wireless
   capability of Alice.  In an age where

   Smartphone owner Alice has no Internet access.  She records a video,

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   attaches this video to a microblog entry in her phone app.  Friends
   Bob and Charlie are at some point within range of the wifi, bluetooth
   or other wireless capability of Alice.  This fresh microblog entry
   plus video is shared automatically.  Bob obtained the message from
   Alice because he has software installed which is periodically
   scanning if other smartphones are around and if they possibly have
   fresh news.  This periodic synchronization is very energy-efficient
   and requires no re-configuration if he has Internet access with a
   symmetric NAT.  Bob sees no noticeable decrease in battery lifetime
   after he obtained this unconstrained news access.  Charlie later goes
   to a square where numerous people have gathered, most of which are
   highly interested in the latest videos.  The message automatically
   spreads in this crowd.  Note that this scenario differs from
   disruption-tolerant networking (DTN).  Within DTN the focus lies goes
   to finding routes to an explicitly given destination, usually by
   maintaining routing tables.

4.3.  Friends-only scenario

   This third scenario uses friend-to-friend networking to remove the
   requirement for active networking and wifi sensing.  Smartphones need
   to be synced manually.

   Reports from repressive regions indicate that USB sticks are commonly
   used to transport sensitive information.  In the Friends-only
   scenario a network of friends is trusted to transport news manually,
   simply carrying it around.  Smartphones with NFC capability or manual
   USB transfer are used to duplicate and move messages.

   As direct social connections are sparse and proximity of friends is
   not continuous, the standard SHOULD facilitate usage of friends-of-
   friends or further removed social ties to relay news messages.  This
   requires the development of a decentralised social network, for
   instance, with digital signatures of friendship certificates.
   However, information hiding techniques are probably essential in this
   scenarios.

   This scenario requires further discussion and expansion.

5.  Security Considerations

   tbd.

6.  IANA Considerations

   tbd.

7.  References

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7.1.  Normative References

   [RFC2119]    Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
                Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997.

   [RFC2578]    McCloghrie, K., Ed., Perkins, D., Ed., and J.
                Schoenwaelder, Ed., "Structure of Management Information
                Version 2 (SMIv2)", STD 58, RFC 2578, April 1999.

   [RFC2579]    McCloghrie, K., Ed., Perkins, D., Ed., and J.
                Schoenwaelder, Ed., "Textual Conventions for SMIv2",
                STD 58, RFC 2579, April 1999.

   [RFC2580]    McCloghrie, K., Perkins, D., and J. Schoenwaelder,
                "Conformance Statements for SMIv2", STD 58, RFC 2580,
                April 1999.

7.2.  Informative References

   [RFC3410]    Case, J., Mundy, R., Partain, D., and B. Stewart,
                "Introduction and Applicability Statements for Internet-
                Standard Management Framework", RFC 3410, December 2002.

   [RFC4787]    Audet, F. and C. Jennings, "Network Address Translation
                (NAT) Behavioral Requirements for Unicast UDP", BCP 127,
                RFC 4787, January 2007.

7.3.  URL References

   [OPENMICRO]  XEP-0277: Microblogging over XMPP,
                "http://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0277.html".

Author's Address

   Johan Pouwelse (editor)
   Delft University of Technology
   Mekelweg 4
   Delft
   The Netherlands

   Phone: +31 15 278 2539
   EMail: J.A.pouwelse@tudelft.nl

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