Review of draft-pauly-httpbis-geoip-hint-01

Hello,

Writing to share my thoughts on draft-pauly-httpbis-geoip-hint-01.

As a researcher studying censorship in India, IP-based geolocation is of interest due to the prevalence of geo-blocking, wherein a web server estimates a user’s location from their IP address and withholds certain content.

IP-based geo-blocking has become the predominant technical means of conducting internet censorship in India. The government here seldom blocks access to entire websites, but instead issues takedown orders to popular platforms to block individual pieces of content, who utilize geo-blocking to restrict access to content in the country. Reports indicate that out of the 6,775 pieces of content (includes web pages, websites, apps, social media posts and accounts) blocked by the Indian government in 2022, about 50% were X/Twitter posts and accounts and 25% were on Facebook. [0]

The multi-party relay systems being built with protocols like MASQUE and Oblivious HTTP are a welcome privacy advancement. They stop the leakage of source IP address and related metadata to web servers, and can prevent geo-blocking and user profiling based on an IP address.

However, supplying geolocation information through alternate means, such as geolocation hints and geohashes [1], weakens the privacy properties of these systems. The geolocation hint mechanism described in this draft appears to be a roundabout way of maintaining support for IP geolocation even when a user has opted to use a proxy for privacy purposes.

Web services have incorrectly come to rely on routing layer metadata to derive private information about internet users without their knowledge or consent. This mechanism needs to be deprecated in favor of consensual location sharing APIs, such as those being developed at the W3C [2], and the standardization of IP privacy solutions at the IETF appears to be an opportune time to do so.

If the authors choose to move forward with retaining IP-based geolocation methods, I would suggest placing the following high-level constraints on any potential solution that is developed:

- Any geolocation hint mechanism must be narrowly constrained to the MASQUE proxy use case that the authors appear to be solving for, and should not be applicable to all HTTP requests, as envisioned in this draft.
- Sharing geolocation hints must be made opt-in with clear and transparent guidelines for usage and privacy considerations, giving internet users (and not just “user agents”) the choice to enable this functionality.
- Define a roadmap that clearly articulates an intention to deprecate IP-based geolocation mechanisms with an on-ramp to consensual location sharing APIs.

I hope this is a useful perspective and remain available to participate in designing alternative solutions to this draft.

Regards,

Divyank
Internet of Rights Fellow, ARTICLE 19

[0] https://www.medianama.com/2023/02/223-dont-interfere-says-indian-govt-urls-blocked-2022/
[1] https://www.apple.com/icloud/docs/iCloud_Private_Relay_Overview_Dec2021.pdf
[2] https://www.w3.org/TR/geolocation/