Network Working Group J. Morris
Internet-Draft CDT
Intended status: Informational H. Tschofenig
Expires: April 21, 2011 Nokia Siemens Networks
B. Aboba
Microsoft Corporation
J. Peterson
NeuStar, Inc.
October 18, 2010
Policy Considerations for Internet Protocols
draft-morris-policy-cons-00.txt
Abstract
Without doubt the Internet infrastructure developed far beyond the
expectations of the original funding agencies, architects,
developers, and early users. The society's current use and
expectations often lead to the need to take the economical and
political context in which technology is deployed into consideration.
This document aims to make protocol designers aware of the public
policy-related questions that may impact standards development. This
document contains questions, as opposed to guidelines or strict rules
that should in all cases be followed. This document provides a
framework for identifying and discussing questions of public policy
concern and serves as an umbrella for related policy documents.
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
working documents as Internet-Drafts. The list of current Internet-
Drafts is at http://datatracker.ietf.org/drafts/current/.
Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months
and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any
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 April 21, 2011.
Copyright Notice
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Copyright (c) 2010 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
Provisions Relating to IETF Documents
(http://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of
publication of this document. Please review these documents
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to this document. Code Components extracted from this document must
include Simplified BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of
the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as
described in the Simplified BSD License.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
2. Scope . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
3. Terminology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
4. Potential Public Policy Concerns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
4.1. General Comments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
4.2. Content Censorship and Control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
4.2.1. Government Censorship . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
4.2.2. Private Control of Content . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
4.3. Discrimination Among Users and Content . . . . . . . . . . 11
4.4. Competition and Choice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
4.5. User Consent . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
4.6. Internationalization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
4.7. Accessibility . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
4.8. Personal Privacy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
4.9. Privacy vis-a-vis the Government . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
5. Questions about Technical Characteristics or Functionality . . 16
5.1. Bottlenecks, Choke-Points and Access Control . . . . . . . 16
5.2. Alteration or Replacement of Content . . . . . . . . . . . 17
5.3. Monitoring or Tracking of Usage . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
5.4. Retention, Collection, or Exposure of Data . . . . . . . . 17
5.5. Persistent Identifiers and Anonymity . . . . . . . . . . . 17
5.6. Access by Third Parties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
5.7. Discrimination among Users, or among Types of Traffic . . 18
5.8. Internationalization and Accessibility . . . . . . . . . . 18
5.9. Innovation, Competition, and End User Choice and
Control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
6. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
7. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
8. Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
9. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
9.1. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
9.2. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
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Authors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
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1. Introduction
This document suggests public policy questions that the authors
believe should be considered and possibly addressed within the IETF
when it is working on new or revised standards or protocols. This
document offers questions to be considered, rather than guidelines to
be followed. These questions are somewhat similar to the "Security
Considerations" section required in IETF documents.
This document is inspired by and directly modeled on RFC 3426
[RFC3426], entitled "General Architectural and Policy Considerations"
and published by the Internet Architecture Board (IAB) in November
2002. In RFC 3426, the IAB raises architectural questions that
should be considered in design decisions, without asserting that
there are clear guidelines that should be followed in all cases.
This document attempts to follow in the spirit of RFC 3426 by raising
questions to be considered without asserting that any particular
answers must be followed.
This document is motivated by the recognition that technical design
decisions made within the IETF and other standards bodies can have
significant impacts on public policy concerns. One well known and in
the meanwhile historical example of this possible impact can be found
in the standardization efforts around IPv6 on Ethernet networks.
[RFC2464], published in December 1998, specified that the interface
identifier of an IPv6 address was constructed in a way that it uses
the unique MAC address associated with the Ethernet interface
adapter. After the publication of RFC 2464, a significant policy
concern arose because the use of the unique and unchangeable MAC
address would significantly reduce a user's ability to conduct
private and/or anonymous communications using IPv6. The IETF
responded to those concerns by publishing RFC 3041 [RFC3041] entitled
"Privacy Extensions for Stateless Address Autoconfiguration in IPv6"
in January 2001. Privacy concerns relating this aspect in IPv6 still
exist today.
The goal of this document is that potential public policy impacts of
technical design decisions will be identified and considered during
the initial design process. Some would refer to this approach as
"privacy by design". This type of policy consideration already
happens in many cases within the IETF, but not in any systematic way
or with any assurance that public policy concerns will be identified
in most cases. We will provide some examples throught this document.
The goal of the document is not to suggest that the IETF should "do"
policy in the sense of intentionally conducting extensive debates on
public policy issues. However, many of the actions taken within the
IETF have an impact on public policy concerns. This document seeks
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to encourage the IETF to acknowledge those times when a design
decision might affect a policy concern, so that the community can
make a reasoned decision on whether and how to address the concern in
the particular situation.
Public policy concerns often cannot be avoid: Some beneficial
technologies might have secondary harmful impacts, and the benefits
may outweigh the harms. More generally, some technologies (such as
those that facilitate government surveillance) might intentionally
compromise a public concern such as privacy. Similarly, the inherent
goal of some technologies (such as those that discriminate among
traffic to provide assured levels of quality of service) might
simultaneously be viewed by some as beneficial and by others as
harmful.
In all of these cases, there may well be good reasons to develop the
technology notwithstanding the asserted harms to a policy concern.
The main goal of this document is simply to suggest that impacts on a
public concern should not happen without clear recognition of the
impacts, and without appropriate consideration of whether it is
possible to minimize harmful impacts while still meeting the design
requirements.
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2. Scope
This document cannot possibly predict and identify all possible
societal impacts of future IETF protocol and architectural design
decisions. It does try, however, to identify a broad range of
possible public policy impacts that experience suggests are most
likely to arise.
There are two broad categories of public policy impacts that this
document does not seek to cover with any thoroughness. First, this
document does not articulate the full range of concerns raised by
traditional security problems in the network. The IETF is already
appropriately focused on security issues, and those in the Security
Area are well able to identify and articulate the types of technical
design decisions that can lead to security problems. Many of the
privacy concerns highlighted in this document raise related security
concerns.
Second, this document does not attempt to identify the enormous range
of positive societal impacts that flow from network technology. The
vast majority of the work of the IETF -- from the introduction of an
entirely new method of Internet use to the fine tuning of an existing
routing protocol -- yields concrete and important social benefits.
This document does not discuss these positive benefits, but takes as
a given that technology proposals will not advance within the IETF
unless at least some portion of the community views the proposals as
beneficial.
This document is by no means an exhaustive list of public policy
concerns that relate to the Internet. This draft has instead focused
on policy issues that the authors believe are most likely to arise in
the IETF context. In addition, the views on public policy varies
among countries and cultures to a certain degree.
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3. Terminology
This document will use a limited number of defined terms, which
admittedly will not be precisely applicable in all situations:
TECHNOLOGY shall refer to a technical standard or innovation being
considered within the IETF, whether it is a "new" technology or
standard or a modification to an "old" technology or standard.
END USER shall refer to the user at one or the other end of a network
communication, or an automated or intelligent proxy for a user
located at the end of the communication. Thus, a concern over, for
example, the privacy of the End User would be applicable in cases
where a client-side application communicated on behalf of an End
User. In some contexts, a corporation or other organized collection
of human users might stand in the role of an End User. In some but
not all contexts, a communication might be from one End User to
another End User; in other context, a communication might be between
a Service Provider (defined below) and an End User.
ACCESS PROVIDER shall refer to the entity that most directly provides
network access to an End User or Service Provider. In the case of
End Users on the public Internet, a Access Provider will often be an
Internet Service Provider that provides dedicated or dial-up network
access. In other cases a Access Provider might be a company
providing access to its employees, or a university providing access
to its students and faculty.
SERVICE PROVIDER shall refer to an entity (human, corporate or
institutional) that provides or offers services or content to End
Users over the network (regardless of whether charges are sought for
such services or content). Thus, for example, a web site would be
viewed as a Service Provider.
A given entity (such as a company offering content on the web) might
be viewed as an Access Provider (vis-a-vis its employees), as an End
User (vis-a-vis the ISP from which it obtains network access), and as
a Service Provider (vis-a-vis End Users elsewhere on the Internet).
TRANSIT PROVIDERS shall refer to one or more entities that transport
communications between the Access Providers at either end of a
communication. Transit Providers are often thought to transport
packets of communications without regard to their content (other
than, of course, their destination), but increasingly some Transit
Providers may handle traffic differently depending on the type of
traffic.
THIRD PARTY shall refer to any individual or entity other than End
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Users, Access Providers, Service Providers, and Transit Providers.
For a given communication, Third Parties could include, for example,
governments seeking to execute lawful interceptions, hackers seeking
to interfere with or intercept communications, or in some situations
entities that provide, under contract, content or functionality to a
Service Provider (such as, for example, an entity that serves
advertisements for insertion in a web page).
In some cases the distinction between a Transit Provider and a Third
Party may blur, if the Transit Provider manipulates or discriminates
among traffic based on characteristics such as its content, sender,
or receiver. Similarly, the line between a Service Provider and a
Third Party may blur as more service functions are contracted out.
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4. Potential Public Policy Concerns
Below are brief discussions of common categories of public policy
concern that might be raised by technologies developed by the IETF.
The discussions are not intended to present comprehensive analyses of
the policy concern, but are intended to assist in identifying
situations in which the concern is implicated and should be
considered.
4.1. General Comments
The fundamental design principles of the Internet, including
openness, interoperability, and the end-to-end principle, have
themselves been critical contributors to the value of the Internet
from a public policy perspective. Thus, as a first rule of promoting
healthy public policy impacts, the IETF should continue to maintain
and promote the architectural goals that it has historically pursued.
Because of this congruence between architectural values and public
policy values, many of the design considerations in RFC 3426
[RFC3426], "General Architectural and Policy Considerations" directly
promote an Internet that is supportive of good public policy values.
As one of many examples, Section 12.1 of [RFC3426] discusses the
value of user choice, and quotes [CWSB02] to say that "user
empowerment is a basic building block, and should be embedded into
all mechanism whenever possible." User choice is a fundamental
public policy concern, discussed more below.
[CWSB02], titled "Tussle in Cyberspace: Defining Tomorrow's
Internet," is itself a valuable exploration of the intersection
between technology design and public policy concerns. A key premise
of [CWSB02] is that "different stakeholders that are part of the
Internet milieu have interests that may be adverse to each other, and
these parties each vie to favor their particular interests." Many of
the "tussles" that [CWSB02] analyzes are situations in which public
policy considerations should be assessed in making design decisions.
More broadly, [CWSB02] provides to technology designers a conceptual
framework that recognizes the existence of "tussles" and seeks to
accommodate them constructively within a design.
4.2. Content Censorship and Control
As used here, the concept of censorship can encompass both
governmental and private actions.
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4.2.1. Government Censorship
[Editor's Note: Add more references in an upcoming version of the
draft.]
"Censorship" is most commonly thought of as government-imposed
control or blocking of access to content. Many believe that as a
matter of public policy, censorship should be minimized or avoided.
For example, in May 2003 the Council of Europe stated in its
"Declaration on freedom of communication on the Internet" that
"Public authorities should not, through general blocking or filtering
measures, deny access by the public to information and other
communication on the Internet, regardless of frontiers." [COE03].
But not all censorship is viewed by all as contrary to public policy.
In November 2002 in [COE02], the same Council of Europe specifically
endorsed government regulation of "hate speech" on the Internet.
Harder to identify are technologies not intended for content control
but which can be used to censor or restrict access to content. Any
technology that creates or permits bottlenecks or choke-points in the
network, through which significant traffic must pass, increases the
risk of censorship. Governments seeking to censor content or
restrict access to the Internet will exploit network bottlenecks
(albeit often bottlenecks created by network topology not technology
standards).
4.2.2. Private Control of Content
Governments are not the only entities that attempt to restrict the
content to which Internet users have access. In some cases Access
Providers (commonly Internet Service Providers) seek to control the
content available to their customers. Some do so with full knowledge
and consent of the customers (to provide, for example, a "family
friendly" online experience). Others, however, favor certain content
(for example, that of contractual business partners) over competing
content, and do so without the clear understanding of their
customers.
Whether such private content control is contrary to public policy
will turn on a host of specific considerations (including notice and
alternative choice), but undeniably such content control raises
policy concerns. These policy concerns are commonly phrased in terms
of discrimination among content, and are discussed more fully in the
next section.
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4.3. Discrimination Among Users and Content
In a simplistic conception of the early Internet, all traffic of any
kind was broken into packets and all packets were treated equally
within the network. This idea has promoted a broad and strong
perception of equality within the Internet -- one class of traffic
will not take priority over other classes, and a lone individual's
packets will be treated the same as a large corporation's packets.
Any technology that moves away from this notion of equality -- even
technologies that are clearly beneficial -- raise significant public
policy questions, including "who controls the preferential
treatment," "who qualifies for it," "will it require additional
expenditure to obtain it," and "how great a disparity will it
create."
Thus, for example, quality of service and content distribution
networks both raise questions about what and who will be favored,
whether the rough equality of the Internet will be lost, and whether
the financially strong will come to dominate the Internet and make it
less useful for the less well off.
The concern over discrimination addresses both discrimination based
on identity of user, and on type of traffic. Content distribution
networks enable, for example, individual web sites able to afford the
CDN services to be delivered more quickly than competing web sites
that are not able to afford such services. In contrast, a core focus
of quality of service efforts is on the need to provide enhanced
levels of service to some types of traffic (e.g., Internet
telephony).
Concern about discrimination does not suggest that technologies that
handle certain categories of traffic more efficiently should never be
pursued. The concern, however, may in some cases suggest that an
efficiency enhancement be structured so as to be available to the
broadest classes of traffic or users.
4.4. Competition and Choice
Critical elements of the Internet's development and success have been
the ability to create new and innovative uses of the network, the
relative ease in creating and offering competitive services,
products, and methods, and the ability of Internet users to choose
from a range of providers and methods. Anything that reduces
innovation, competition, or user choice raises significant public
policy concerns.
Indeed, the need for competition and user choice is perhaps greater
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now than in earlier days of the Internet. There is a greater
divergence today in the interests and agendas of users and service
providers than in the past, and that divergence makes it more
important that users be able to choose among service providers (in
part to seek providers that they trust the most).
[CWSB02] extensively addresses the important need for competition and
user choice, and provides detailed suggestions and guidelines for
Internet designer to consider.
4.5. User Consent
A familiar public policy concern over user consent focuses on the use
of personal data (as discussed more fully below under "Privacy").
The usage here, however, has a broader meaning: the consent (or lack
of consent) of a user regarding an action or function executed by or
within the network.
Many actions performed using IETF protocols require the specific
initiation by a user, and the user's consent can fairly be assumed.
Thus, if a user transmits a request using SIP, the Session Initiation
Protocol, it is safe to assume that the user consents to the normal
handling and execution of the SIP request.
Other actions performed using IETF protocols are not initiated by a
user, but are so inherently a part of normal network operations that
consent can be assumed. For example, if in the middle of the network
certain packets are slowed by congestion, it is safe to assume
sufficient consent for congestion control mechanisms and rerouting of
the packets.
Uncertainty about consent arises, however, in areas where IETF
protocols can be viewed as deviating from some conception of
"normal." A simple example relates to the evolution of caching,
where as caching of various types of data became the norm, there
emerged a need to be able to set flags to prevent caching, which in a
sense can be thought of as a form of negative consent.
Middle boxes and other functions that deviate from the historic
"norm" -- the end-to-end principle -- also can raise issues of
consent. For example, Section 3 of [RFC3238], titled "IAB
Architectural and Policy Considerations for Open Pluggable Edge
Services," explores a range of consent and data integrity issues
raised by the OPES protocol proposals. As that analysis makes clear,
the consent issue is not necessarily confined to the consent of the
client in a client/server transaction, but may also involve the
consent of the server to an action undertaken on the request of the
client.
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4.6. Internationalization
[RFC3426] calls on protocol designers to ask the key question about
"Internationalization":
"Where protocols require elements in text format, have the
possibly conflicting requirements of global comprehensibility and
the ability to represent local text content been properly weighed
against each other?"
[RFC3426] explores the significant challenges raised by the need to
balances these conflicting goals, and raises the possibility that the
historic preference for the use of case-independent ASCII characters
in protocols may need to change to accommodate a broader set of
international languages.
4.7. Accessibility
The concept of "accessibility" addresses the ability of persons with
disabilities to use the Internet in general and the full range of
applications and network functions that are commonly available to
persons without disabilities.
The W3C Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) Technical Activity
illustrates the concern and explains that a focus on accessibility is
needed "to ensure that the full range of core technologies of the Web
are accessible . . . . Barriers exist when these technologies lack
features needed by users with visual, hearing, physical, cognitive or
neurological disabilities, or when the accessibility potential in the
technology is not carried through into the Web application or Web
content. For instance, in order for a multimedia presentation to be
accessible to someone who is blind, the markup language for the
presentation must support text equivalents for images and video; the
multimedia player used must support access to the text equivalents;
and the content author must make appropriate text equivalents
available. These text equivalents can then be rendered as speech or
braille output, enabling access to the content regardless of
disability or device constraints."
Many policy concerns about accessibility relate specifically to the
user interfaces used by applications, and as such these concerns
generally fall outside of the province of the IETF. But in the
Applications Area and to a lesser extent elsewhere within the IETF,
some design decisions could ultimately constrain the accessibility of
applications based on IETF protocols.
The W3C's WAI initiative reflects a very well developed and
comprehensive analysis of the technical and design issues raised by
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accessibility concerns.
[Editor's Note: A future version of this document will add text about
multi-media emergency services support here.]
4.8. Personal Privacy
Individual privacy concerns are often divided into two components:
First, "consumer privacy" (also termed "data protection") commonly
addresses the right of individuals to control information about
themselves generated or collected in the course of commercial
interactions. Second, "privacy rights vis-a-vis the government"
addresses individuals' protection against unreasonable government
intrusions on privacy, including the interceptions of communications.
In the IETF context, a third category of privacy concern -- privacy
against private interception of or attacks on data or communications
-- is largely covered by the IETF's focus on security considerations.
Although security considerations are crucial to privacy
considerations, "consumer privacy" and "privacy vis-a-vis the
government" raise significantly different issues than traditional
security considerations. With security considerations, a key focus
is on maintaining the privacy of information against unauthorized
attack. Other forms of privacy, however, focus not on unauthorized
access to information, but on the "secondary use" of information for
which access was (at least temporarily) authorized. The question
often is not "how can I keep you from seeing my information" but "how
can I give you my information for one purpose and keep you from using
it for another."
The questions raised in Section 5 above do not differentiate between
the different categories of privacy, because for most purposes within
the IETF, technologies that create risk for one type of privacy
likely also create risk for other types of privacy. Once a potential
privacy concern is identified, however, the different types of
privacy concern may present different public policy considerations.
Indeed, the policy considerations may well be in tension -- a
technology that permits a lawful governmental interception of a
communication may also increase the risk of unlawful private
interception.
Privacy considerations are too numerous and multifaceted to be
adequately addressed in this document. For a more detailed treatment
please refer to [I-D.morris-privacy-considerations].
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4.9. Privacy vis-a-vis the Government
Although privacy is internationally recognized as a human right, most
governments claim the authority to invade privacy through the
following means, among others:
o interception of communications in real-time;
o interception of traffic data (routing information) in real-time;
o access to data stored by service providers, including traffic data
being stored for billing purposes; and
o access to data stored by users.
These means of access to communications and stored data should be
narrowly defined and subject to independent controls under strict
standards. Real-time interception of communications should take
place only with prior approval by the judicial system, issued under
standards at least as strict as those for police searches of private
homes.
In 1999, in the "Raven" discussions, the IETF considered whether it
should take action to build wiretapping capability into the Internet.
Ultimately, as detailed in [RFC2804], the community decided that an
effort to build wiretapping capability into the Internet would create
significant and unacceptable security risks.
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5. Questions about Technical Characteristics or Functionality
In this section we list questions to ask in designing protocols. The
issues raised by the questions are discussed in more depth in
Section 5. We are not suggesting that each of these questions
requires an explicit answer -- some questions will be more relevant
to one design decision than to another.
There is not a one-to-one correspondence between the questions listed
in this section and the discussions in Section 5. Instead, for each
group of questions listed below, there are one or more references to
later substantive discussions.
Some of the questions will be easy to answer for a given technology.
Others will require creative thinking to assess whether a proposed
technology might be misused to achieve a result not intended by the
technology proponents.
This document addresses the most common and well-known areas of
public policy concern, focusing on areas most likely to arise in the
IETF context.
5.1. Bottlenecks, Choke-Points and Access Control
o Would the Technology facilitate any bottlenecks or choke-points in
the network through which significant amounts of particular types
of traffic must flow?
o Would the Technology permit a Third Party (including a government)
to exert control over End Users' use of the Internet as a whole?
o Would the Technology permit a Transit Provider or Third Party
(including a government) to exert control over the use of
particular content, functionality, or resources?
o Would the Technology permit an Access Provider or Service Provider
to exert control over particular content, functionality, or
resources, other than that known by the End User to be controlled
by the Access Provider or Service Provider?
o Would the Technology permit Third Party (including a government)
to require that particular content or functionality be confined
(or "zoned") into, or excluded from, any particular subpart of the
Internet (such as a particular Global Top Level Domain)?
See discussions of "Content Censorship and Control", "Personal
Privacy", "Discrimination Among Users and Content",
"Competition and Choice", and "User Consent."
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5.2. Alteration or Replacement of Content
o Would the Technology permit a Third Party to alter any of the
content of a communication without (a) the express instruction or
consent of the Service Provider and the End User, or (b) the
knowledge of the Service Provider or the End User?
See discussions of "Content Censorship and Control" and "User
Consent."
5.3. Monitoring or Tracking of Usage
o Would the Technology permit the monitoring or tracking by a Third
Party of the use of particular content, functionality, or
resources?
See discussion of "Personal Privacy."
5.4. Retention, Collection, or Exposure of Data
o Would the Technology require or permit the retention of any
information about individual packets or communications, or
individual End Users, either (a) beyond the conclusion of the
immediate network or communications event, or (b) for longer than
a reasonably brief period of time in which a communications
"session" can be concluded?
o Would the Technology permit the reading or writing of any file on
an End User's computer without the explicit knowledge of the End
User?
o Would the Technology permit or require that information other than
location and routing information (such as, for example, personal
information or search terms) be made a part of a URL or URI used
for a communication?
o Would the Technology permit or require that personal or
confidential information be made available to any Third Party,
Transit Provider, or Access Provider?
See discussion of "Personal Privacy."
5.5. Persistent Identifiers and Anonymity
o Would the Technology require or permit the association of a
persistent identifier with a particular End User, or a computer
used by one or more End Users?
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o Would the Technology reduce the ability of a content provider to
provide content anonymously?
o Would the Technology reduce the ability of an End User to access
content or utilize functionality anonymously?
See discussion of "Personal Privacy."
5.6. Access by Third Parties
o Would the Technology permit any Third Party to have access to
packets to and from End Users without the explicit consent of the
End Users?
o Would the Technology permit or require any Third Party to store
any information about an End User, or an End User's communications
(even with the knowledge and consent of the End User)?
See discussions of "Personal Privacy" and "User Consent."
5.7. Discrimination among Users, or among Types of Traffic
o Would the Technology require or permit an Access Provider or
Transit Provider to provide differing levels of service or
functionality based on (a) the identity or characteristic of the
End User, or (b) the type of traffic being handled?
o Would the Technology likely lead to a significant increase in cost
for basic or widely-used categories of communications?
o Would likely implementations of a new mode of communication
require such a financial or resource investment so that the mode
would effectively not be available to individuals, or small or
non-profit entities?
See discussion of "Discrimination Among Users and Content."
5.8. Internationalization and Accessibility
o Would the Technology function with the same level of quality, ease
of use, etc., across a broad range of languages and character
sets?
o Would the likely implementations of the Technology be as useful to
mainstream End Users as to non-mainstream End Users (such as, for
example, End Users with disabilities)?
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o Would the Technology likely reduce the ability of non-mainstream
End Users (such as, for example, End Users with disabilities) to
utilize any common application or network functions?
See discussions of "Internationalization" and "Accessibility."
5.9. Innovation, Competition, and End User Choice and Control
o Would the Technology reduce the ability of future designers to
create new and innovative uses of the Internet, or new methods to
accomplish common network functions?
o Would the Technology likely reduce the number of viable
competitive providers of any common application or network
functions?
o Would the Technology likely reduce the ability of small or poorly-
funded providers to compete in the provision of any common
application or network functions?
o Would the Technology likely reduce the number or variety of
methods available to the End User to accomplish common application
or network functions?
o Would the Technology likely reduce the level of control the End
User can exercise over common application or network functions?
See discussion of "Competition and Choice."
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6. Security Considerations
This document does not propose any new protocols or changes to old
protocols, and therefore does not involve any security considerations
in that sense. Many of the privacy issues discussed here also raise
security issues, but this document is not intended to be a
comprehensive look at security issues.
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7. IANA Considerations
This document does not require actions by IANA.
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8. Acknowledgments
We would like to thank Alan B. Davidson for his work on a prior
version of this document.
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9. References
9.1. Normative References
[RFC2316] Bellovin, S., "Report of the IAB Security Architecture
Workshop", RFC 2316, April 1998.
[RFC4101] Rescorla, E. and IAB, "Writing Protocol Models", RFC 4101,
June 2005.
[RFC3426] Floyd, S., "General Architectural and Policy
Considerations", RFC 3426, November 2002.
[RFC2464] Crawford, M., "Transmission of IPv6 Packets over Ethernet
Networks", RFC 2464, December 1998.
[RFC3041] Narten, T. and R. Draves, "Privacy Extensions for
Stateless Address Autoconfiguration in IPv6", RFC 3041,
January 2001.
[RFC3238] Floyd, S. and L. Daigle, "IAB Architectural and Policy
Considerations for Open Pluggable Edge Services",
RFC 3238, January 2002.
[RFC2804] IAB and IESG, "IETF Policy on Wiretapping", RFC 2804,
May 2000.
9.2. Informative References
[I-D.morris-privacy-considerations]
Aboba, B., Morris, J., Peterson, J., and H. Tschofenig,
"Privacy Considerations for Internet Protocols",
draft-morris-privacy-considerations-00 (work in progress),
October 2010.
[CWSB02] Clark, D., Wroslawski, J., Sollins, K., and R. Braden,
"Tussle in Cyberspace: Defining Tomorrow's Internet", In
Proc. ACM SIGCOMM ,
http://www.acm.org/sigcomm/sigcomm2002/papers/tussle.html,
2002.
[OECD] Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development,
"OECD Guidelines on the Protection of Privacy and
Transborder Flows of Personal Data", available at
(September 2010) , http://www.oecd.org/EN/document/
0,,EN-document-0-nodirectorate-no-24-10255-0,00.html,
1980.
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[COE02] Council of Europe, "Additional Protocol to the Convention
on Cybercrime concerning the criminalisation of acts of a
racist and xenophobic nature committed through computer
systems", available at (October 2010) , http://
www.coe.int/T/E/Legal_affairs/Legal_co-operation/
Combating_economic_crime/Cybercrime/Racism_on_internet/
PC-RX(2002)24E-1.pdf, November 2002.
[COE03] Council of Europe, "Declaration on freedom of
communication on the Internet", available at (October
2010) , http://cm.coe.int/stat/E/Public/2003/
adopted_texts/declarations/dec-28052003.htm, May 2003.
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Authors' Addresses
John B. Morris, Jr.
Center for Democracy and Technology
1634 I Street NW, Suite 1100
Washington, DC 20006
USA
Email: jmorris@cdt.org
URI: http://www.cdt.org
Hannes Tschofenig
Nokia Siemens Networks
Linnoitustie 6
Espoo 02600
Finland
Phone: +358 (50) 4871445
Email: Hannes.Tschofenig@gmx.net
URI: http://www.tschofenig.priv.at
Bernard Aboba
Microsoft Corporation
One Microsoft Way
Redmond, WA 98052
US
Email: bernarda@microsoft.com
Jon Peterson
NeuStar, Inc.
1800 Sutter St Suite 570
Concord, CA 94520
US
Email: jon.peterson@neustar.biz
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