- From: Alex Rousskov <rousskov@measurement-factory.com>
- Date: Thu, 3 Dec 2015 15:26:37 -0700
- To: HTTP Working Group <ietf-http-wg@w3.org>
- Cc: Robert Collins <robertc@robertcollins.net>
On 12/03/2015 11:32 AM, Robert Collins wrote: > I haven't met > a single non-internet-technicalities-savvy person who didn't express > immense surprise at the idea that their normal browsing would be > visible to *anyone* other than the site they were browsing on. I have met many technically-illiterate folks who assume their impersonal communications are monitored by their government. If given the choice of no internet or monitored internet, I bet many would pick the latter (and would express immense surprise that they are being asked a question with such an obvious [to them] answer!). Our personal worldview, experience, and aspirations are not always shared by the billions we are tempted to represent here (even if we dare to characterize our current views as "enlightened" and worth mimicking by those billions). > Is it less harmful to: > > - expose everything > - protect everything Instead of deciding which extreme is less harmful, we should be focusing on protocols and deployment recommendations that give people meaningful choices without breaking infrastructure. It is not this WG job to decide whether the Kazakh government (or the example.com employer or a concerned parent) has the right to monitor communication of their citizens (or employees or kids). It could be this WG job to design protocols and deployment recommendations that make monitoring easy to integrate, discover, and either consent to or reject. Doing so would save a lot of energy for such useful things as educating folks about surveillance trade-offs so that their consent (or lack of thereof) becomes more informed. Alex.
Received on Thursday, 3 December 2015 22:27:08 UTC