Re: What will incentivize deployment of explicit proxies?

On Tue, Dec 3, 2013 at 1:53 AM, Nicolas Mailhot <nicolas.mailhot@laposte.net
> wrote:

>
> Le Mar 3 décembre 2013 08:37, William Chan (陈智昌) a écrit :
> > Pardon me if this is obvious, but it's not immediately obvious to me what
> > will cause people to use explicit proxies instead of MITM proxies? Who is
> > going to deploy them? The 2 cases I can think of are:
>
> I think browser and privacy people really need to remove their 'us vs
> them' blinders and the debate will be much more constructive.
>

Wow, this is fairly aggressive. Did my email really prompt this? I was
mostly trying to walk through the incentives for all the different players
in the ecosystem that would need to change and see if the incentives were
appropriately aligned to do so.


>
> The protocol in itself is not going to change power repartition by itself.
> The past proved it. Generalized TLS only resulted in generalized hostile
> MITM and everyone lost (intermediaries did let TLS pass blindly as long it
> was limited to clear needs like banks; they will let end-to-end http/2
> encryption pass for the same needs in http/2; they won't allow it for the
> streams that made them deploy TLS MITM today, it's as simple as that). So
> please stop thinking about http/2 as a way for one party to force its will
> on others and things will be a lot easier to design and discuss.
>

Hm, I don't think there's anything I've said in this email thread about
doing this. Perhaps you are replying to an opinion I stated in a different
thread?


>
> Once you've acknowledged that in real life the ietf and the w3c don't have
> some magic powers even the UN or the USA lack today, things are a lot
> easier to contemplate.
>
> A good http/2 protocol would give visibility on the nodes that process
> http traffic to everyone (web client, intermediaries, web sites). A good
> http/2 protocol would give everyone the means to authenticate every other
> party and communicate with it. A good http/2 protocol would give the
> choice between three modes (in clear with anti-tampering signatures,
> chained hops with either hop-by-hop or hop-to-end encryption with
> anti-tampering signatures, end-to-end stream encryption with just enough
> routing info for intermediaries to route envelopes, with possibility to
> authenticate itself at every node involved).
>
> Then, the exact mode used is negotiated between all parties (and in case
> of negotiation failure the connexion fails and can be retried on another
> network path later).
>
> If browser people do their part and implement the (admittedly non-trivial)
> UI to manage that, there will be a strong incentive to deploy because you
> can't imagine how sick operators are of all the ways browsers screw up
> http/1 by refusing to admit intermediaries exist. Browsers are by no means
> pure and innocent maidens and they bear a large part of responsibility for
> the current mess. Other parties are not evil monsters, by and large the
> only reason they've configured MITM is because you gave them no other
> choice (and then when the equipments become largely available they were
> abused, they would not have been if browsers had not forced development of
> stealth mode in the first place). And the correct UI is non trivial
> because the real word is non-trivial, live with it reality denial will get
> you nowhere.
>
> Furthermore there will be a strong incentive for privacy people to require
> from their law-maker the deployment of http/2 intermediaries because
> (unlike http/1) a good http/2 protocol will enable proper communication of
> terms of use between intermediaries and end-users, and clarify things
> enough non-browsers get a chance to connect even in presence of
> intermediaries.
>
> And then privacy people can lobby to forbid the terms they don't like in
> the same way they can lobby for anything else, and in lawful countries
> whatever law is passed will be applied. Democracy strives on transparency,
> not on sleight of hands (be them intermediary, web site or browser
> initiated).
>
> There is no incentive for http/2 only if you think in terms of malfeasance
> and trickery, and frankly both those accusations, and the conceit you can
> do anything about social contracts, are getting old fast.
>

Oh wow, I read through the rest of this email and...I don't know how to
respond really.


>
> --
> Nicolas Mailhot
>
>