Re: SSL/TLS everywhere fail

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In message <5664CDDB.4070108@cs.tcd.ie>, Stephen Farrell writes:

>Please look at the ~1000 messages in the ietf@ietf.org archive on
>the topic of that draft. Please consider the (video or whatever
>form of reporting you prefer of the) technical plenary at IETF-88
>with about 1000 people in the room who also expressed that same
>consensus. (Albeit less precisely, which was the point of getting
>the RFC done.)

The goals to be aimed for should certainly be a consensus decision,
and such "wide" processes are the norm:  General assemblies and
political party congresses etc.

BCP188 is typical for the outcome of such "wide" processes, and
similar lofty ambitions and language can be found in pretty much
any party or NGO platform document anywhere in the world.

The actual strategy for getting to those goals is usually laid down
by a much smaller group, taking into account the realities of the
battles to be fought and the relative strengths and weaknesses of
the opposition to be overcome.

IETF does not seem to have done that.

There are many valid and sound arguments why IETF should not or
even can not have a "central committee" or "leadership" of kind
which usually responsible for laying the strategy.

But lacking both leadership and strategy makes IETF, as organization,
totally unsuited to take on all the worlds governments in a fight
to win a basic human right of privacy.

...which is what BCP188 attempts to commit IETF to do.

Amnesty International and similar human rights organizations would
be much better vehicles than IETF can ever be.

Poul-Henning

-- 
Poul-Henning Kamp       | UNIX since Zilog Zeus 3.20
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Never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by incompetence.

Received on Monday, 7 December 2015 01:09:52 UTC