Internet Draft J. Morris
A. Davidson
Center for Democracy & Technology
draft-morris-policy-considerations-00.txt June 2003
Expires: December 2003
Public Policy Considerations
for Internet Design Decisions
Status of this Memo
This document is an Internet-Draft and is in full conformance with
all provisions of Section 10 of [RFC2026]. Internet-Drafts are
working documents of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), its
areas, and its working groups. Note that other groups may also
distribute working documents as Internet-Drafts.
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."
The list of current Internet-Drafts can be accessed at
http://www.ietf.org/ietf/1id-abstracts.txt
The list of Internet-Draft Shadow Directories can be accessed at
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Abstract
This document suggests public policy questions that the IETF should
consider and possibly address when developing new standards and
protocols, and modifying or enhancing old standards and protocols.
This document contains questions to be considered, as opposed to
guidelines or rules that should in all cases be followed. This first
draft provides a framework for identifying and discussing questions
of public policy concern, and invites members of the IETF community
to contribute to the questions and discussions raised here.
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Conventions used in this document
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 [RFC2119].
Table of Contents
1. Introduction and Rationale for this Document...................2
2. Scope of this Document.........................................4
3. A Few Basic Definitions........................................5
4. Questions about Technical Characteristics or Functionality.....6
5. Discussion of Potential Public Policy Concerns................10
5.1 General Comments..........................................10
5.2 Content Censorship and Control............................11
5.2.1 Government Censorship ..............................11
5.2.2 Private Control of Content .........................11
5.3 Discrimination Among Users and Content....................12
5.4 Competition and Choice....................................13
5.5 User Consent..............................................13
5.6 Internationalization......................................14
5.7 Accessibility.............................................14
5.8 Personal Privacy..........................................15
5.8.1 Consumer Privacy and Data Protection ...............16
5.8.2 Privacy vis-a-vis the Government ...................17
6. Conclusion....................................................17
Security Considerations..........................................17
References.......................................................18
Acknowledgments..................................................20
Authors' Addresses...............................................20
1. Introduction and Rationale for this Document
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" currently required in IETF documents. [RFC2316].
This document is inspired by and directly modeled on [RFC 3426],
entitled "General Architectural and Policy Considerations" and
published by the Internet Architecture Board in November 2002. In
RFC 3426, the IAB suggests 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
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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
example of this possible impact can be found in the implementation of
IPv6 on Ethernet networks. [RFC 2464], published in December 1998,
specified that the IPv6 address for a computer on an Ethernet network
would incorporate the unique MAC address associated with the Ethernet
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 in January 2001 [RFC 3041],
entitled "Privacy Extensions for Stateless Address Autoconfiguration
in IPv6".
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. 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.
A common assertion within the IETF is that "we don't do public
policy." The goal of this document is NOT to suggest that the IETF
should "do" policy in the sense of intentionally conducting extensive
debates on public policy issues. But, as much as the IETF
appropriately tries not to "do" policy, many of its actions and
decisions squarely and significantly impact on public policy
concerns. This document seeks 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.
The authors see a range of important reasons why the IETF should seek
to be aware of the potential public policy impacts of its design
decisions, but will only suggest one here: The chance that IETF
standards will be widely deployed and then widely accepted in the
market is higher if those standards minimize harmful social impacts.
To be clear, it is not the view of the authors that impact on public
policy concerns must be avoided at all costs (if that were even
possible), or that if a particular proposed standard adversely
affects a public concern (say, privacy) that the standard should as a
matter of course be rejected. Some beneficial technologies might
unavoidably have secondary harmful impacts, and the benefits may
outweigh the harms. More generally, some technologies (such as those
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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 central goal of this paper 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.
2. Scope of this Document
The purported scope of this document is admittedly ambitious. This
document cannot possibly predict and identify all possible societal
impacts of future IETF design decisions. It does try, however, to
identify a broad range of possible public policy impacts that
experience suggests are most likely to arise. This document is a
first draft, and will require at least a few iterations before it
covers a reasonably full range of potential issues. The authors
invite comments, and specifically seek suggestions of specific
historic examples within the IETF where a public policy concern was
raised by a technology proposal. The more concrete examples this
document can contain, the more useful it will be to the IETF
community.
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
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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 authors articulate a perspective
that is in part a function of their country and culture. It is the
authors' hope that over time this document can be expanded to include
the concerns of a broader set of communities.
3. A Few Basic Definitions
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
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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
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.
4. 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 below. 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 first draft addresses the most common and well-known areas of
public policy concern, focusing on areas most likely to arise in the
IETF context. Subsequent drafts may include a broader range of
policy concerns.
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Bottlenecks, Choke-Points and Access Control:
* Would the Technology facilitate any bottlenecks or choke-points in
the network through which significant amounts of particular types of
traffic must flow?
* Would the Technology permit a Third Party (including a government)
to exert control over End Users' use of the Internet as a whole?
* 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?
* 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?
* 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."
Alteration or Replacement of Content:
* 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."
Monitoring or Tracking of Usage:
* 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."
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Retention, Collection, or Exposure of Data:
* 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?
* 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?
* 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?
* 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."
Persistent Identifiers and Anonymity:
* 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?
* Would the Technology reduce the ability of a content provider to
provide content anonymously?
* Would the Technology reduce the ability of an End User to access
content or utilize functionality anonymously?
See discussion of "Personal Privacy."
Access by Third Parties:
* 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?
* 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."
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Discrimination among Users, or among Types of Traffic:
* 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?
* Would the Technology likely lead to a significant increase in cost
for basic or widely-used categories of communications?
* 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."
Internationalization and Accessibility
* Would the Technology function with the same level of quality, ease
of use, etc., across a broad range of languages and character sets?
* 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)?
* 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."
Innovation, Competition, and End User Choice and Control
* 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?
* Would the Technology likely reduce the number of viable competitive
providers of any common application or network functions?
* 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?
* Would the Technology likely reduce the number or variety of methods
available to the End User to accomplish common application or network
functions?
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* 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."
5. Discussion of 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.
5.1 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,
"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 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.
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5.2 Content Censorship and Control
As used here, the concept of censorship can encompass both
governmental and private actions.
5.2.1 Government Censorship
"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.
Some technology is intended to control access to content. The
Platform for Internet Content Selection of the World Wide Web
Consortium, [PICS], for example, was in part designed to facilitate
the limitation of access by some users (children, for example) to
certain types of content.
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). [ZE02] documents Saudi Arabia's routing of all Internet
traffic through central proxy servers, and [KB01] discusses the
response of China and Cuba to the Internet, to achieve such ends.
Governments also seek to control access to content through means
other than direct censorship. In the United States, for example,
[CIPA] requires that libraries that receive certain government
funding must use content filtering technology on Internet access they
offer to patrons, and [DOTKIDS] requires the creation of a subdomain
of the .US domain to be used only for children-suitable content.
5.2.2 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
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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. [CMCS02] illustrates, for example, the current
debate over "network neutrality" in the United States. These policy
concerns are commonly phrased in terms of discrimination among
content, and are discussed more fully in the next section.
5.3 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. [BM00], for example, explores the
policy concerns raised by content distribution networks.
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
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efficiency enhancement be structured so as to be available to the
broadest classes of traffic or users.
5.4 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
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.
5.5 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
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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.
5.6 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.
5.7 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.
Although focused on the World Wide Web, [W3C WAI-TA] 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
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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 World Wide Web Consortium's Web Accessibility Initiative [W3C
WAI] reflects a very well developed and comprehensive analysis of the
technical and design issues raised by accessibility concerns.
5.8 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 4 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
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communication may also increase the risk of unlawful private
interception.
Privacy considerations are too numerous and multifaceted to be
adequately addressed in this document. The discussion below only
briefly covers the key privacy issues. A forthcoming Internet-Draft
on "Privacy Considerations for Internet Protocols" will address
privacy issues more thoroughly.
5.8.1 Consumer Privacy and Data Protection
Consumer privacy protection in many parts of the world is based on
"fair information practices," which were authoritatively detailed in
[OECD] by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development.
Fair information practices include the following principles:
* Notice and Consent - before the collection of data, the data
subject should be provided: notice of what information is being
collected and for what purpose and an opportunity to choose whether
to accept the data collection and use. In Europe, data collection
cannot proceed unless data subject has unambiguously given his
consent (with exceptions).
* Collection Limitation - data should be collected for specified,
explicit and legitimate purposes. The data collected should be
adequate, relevant and not excessive in relation to the purposes for
which they are collected.
* Use/Disclosure Limitation - data should be used only for the
purpose for which it was collected and should not be used or
disclosed in any way incompatible with those purposes.
* Retention Limitation - data should be kept in a form that
permits identification of the data subject no longer than is
necessary for the purposes for which the data were collected.
* Accuracy - the party collecting and storing data is obligated to
ensure its accuracy and, where necessary, keep it up to date; every
reasonable step must be taken to ensure that data which are
inaccurate or incomplete are corrected or deleted.
* Access - a data subject should have access to data about
himself, in order to verify its accuracy and to determine how it is
being used.
* Security - those holding data about others must take steps to
protect its confidentiality.
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Many of these fair information practices are relevant to IETF
protocols. Even seemingly benign data and server logs can reveal
important information about individuals users. It is not sufficient
to address the risk of a technical attack on a body of data, because
privacy considerations must address the risk of non-technical attacks
on data (through legal process, rogue employees, etc.).
5.8.2 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:
* interception of communications in real-time;
* interception of traffic data (routing information) in real-time;
* access to data stored by service providers, including traffic
data being stored for billing purposes; and
* 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.
6. Conclusion
This document has sought to identify a range of public policy
concerns that may arise in the work of the IETF. The authors invite
comments and suggestions about ways to make this document more useful
and complete.
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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References
[BM00] Berman, J. & Morris, J., "The Broadband Internet: The End
of the Equal Voice?", Computers, Freedom & Privacy
Conference, April 2000. URL
"http://www.cdt.org/publications/broadbandinternet.pdf
".
[CIPA] United States Congress, "Children's Internet Protection
Act", December 2000. URL
"http://www.cdt.org/legislation/106th/speech/001218cip
a.pdf".
[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," November 7, 2002. URL
"http://www.coe.int/T/E/Legal_affairs/Legal_co-
operation/Combating_economic_crime/Cybercrime/Racism_o
n_internet/PC-RX(2002)24E-1.pdf".
[COE03] Council of Europe, "Declaration on freedom of
communication on the Internet," May 28, 2003. URL
"http://cm.coe.int/stat/E/Public/2003/adopted_texts/de
clarations/dec-28052003.htm".
[CMCS02] Cooper, M., Murray, C., Chester, J., & Schwartzman, A.,
Letter to High-Tech Broadband Coalition, August 16,
2002. URL
"http://www.mediaaccess.org/programs/broadband/chester
ltr090302.pdf".
[CWSB02] Clark, D., Wroslawski, J., Sollins, K., and Braden, R.,
"Tussle in Cyberspace: Defining Tomorrow's Internet",
SIGCOMM 2002. URL
"http://www.acm.org/sigcomm/sigcomm2002/papers/tussle.
html".
[DOTKIDS] United States Congress, "Dot Kids Implementation and
Efficiency Act of 2002", November 2002. URL
"http://www.kids.us/content_policy/kids_efficiency_act
.pdf".
[KB01] Kalathil, S. & Boas, T., "The Internet and State Control
in Authoritarian Regimes: China, Cuba, and the
Counterrevolution", July 2001. URL
"http://www.ceip.org/files/pdf/21KalathilBoas.pdf".
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Internet-Draft Public Policy Considerations June 2003
[OECD] Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development,
"OECD Guidelines on the Protection of Privacy and
Transborder Flows of Personal Data," 1980. URL
"http://www.oecd.org/EN/document/0,,EN-document-0-
nodirectorate-no-24-10255-0,00.html".
[PICS] World Wide Web Consortium, "Platform for Internet Content
Selection." URL "http://www.w3.org/PICS/".
[RFC2026] Bradner, S., "The Internet Standards Process -- Revision
3", BCP 9, RFC 2026, October 1996.
[RFC2119] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997
[RFC2316] Bellovin, S., "Report of the IAB Security Architecture
Workshop", RFC 2316, April 1998.
[RFC2464] Crawford, M., "Transmission of IPv6 Packets Over Ethernet
Networks", RFC 2464, December 1998.
[RFC2804] IAB & IESG, "IETF Policy on Wiretapping", RFC 2804, May
2000.
[RFC3041] Narten, T. & Draves, R., "Privacy Extensions for
Stateless Address Autoconfiguration in IPv6", RFC
3041, January 2001.
[RFC3238] Floyd, S. & Daigle, L., "IAB Architectural and Policy
Considerations for Open Pluggable Edge Services", RFC
3238, January 2002.
[RFC3426] Floyd, S., ed., "General Architectural and Policy
Considerations," RFC 3426, November 2002.
[W3C WAI] World Wide Web Consortium, "Web Accessibility
Initiative". URL "http://www.w3.org/WAI/".
[W3C WAI-TA] World Wide Web Consortium, "WAI Technical Activity".
URL "http://www.w3.org/WAI/Technical/Activity.html".
[ZE02] Zittrain, J. & Edelman, B., "Documentation of Internet
Filtering in Saudi Arabia," September 2002. URL
"http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/filtering/saudiarabia/".
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Acknowledgments
The authors would like to thank Sally Floyd and the Internet
Architecture Board for devising the approach to policy considerations
used in [RFC 3426], which this document tries to follow.
Authors' Addresses
John B. Morris, Jr.
Center for Democracy & Technology
1634 I Street, NW, Suite 1100
Washington, D.C. 20006
USA
Email: jmorris@cdt.org
Alan B. Davidson
Center for Democracy & Technology
1634 I Street, NW, Suite 1100
Washington, D.C. 20006
USA
Email: abd@cdt.org
PLEASE SEND COMMENTS AND SUGGESTIONS TO jmorris@cdt.org
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