IETF Problem Statement on Elision and Discussion on Privacy & Human Rights

This Monday morning in Brisbane, Australia (8.30am on Monday 3/18 in
Brisbane, but 10.30pm on Sunday 3/17 in UTC), Blockchain Commons will be
speaking at IETF 119's ALLDISPATCH on some of the privacy and humans rights
consideration that went into the design of Gordian Envelope.

The IETF has some interesting contradictions in old RFCs (6973 & 8280) that
they wrote on privacy and human rights considerations, but beyond that
their RFCs have become out-of-date and largely they haven't been used in
IETF standards as requirements since their release.

We need better and more concrete standards to better support privacy and
human rights. Specific to support the data minimization goals of these
RFCs, we've been focusing on deterministic hashed data elision, which
allows any data holder to remove some of the content while still
maintaining full data integrity and authenticity.

We think Gordian Envelope is a good implementation of deterministic hashed
data elision, and it's one that's neither too traditional nor too
revolutionary. It walks the middle path that's actually required to ensure
that privacy advancements happen. We think it's a better solution than the
salted list of SD-CWT or much newer and more complex technologies such as
BBS and other Zero-Knowledge Proofs.

But our real goal is not specifically our working proof-of-concept — it is
to ensure that data minimization will be "required", and not just a
"consideration". And beyond that, that the other privacy and human rights
goals that RFCs 6973 & 8280 aspire to, are updated to have concrete
requirements and mandatory features for future standards to conform to.

If you're attending IETF 119, please consider joining us at the ALLDISPATCH
meeting, 8.30-11.30am 3/18 Brisbane time (Sunday evening for most of the
rest of the world). We are in the sixth slot, which means that we are most
likely to start sometime between 9.45 and 10.15am , depending on how things
are running.

We'd appreciate your support for privacy and for human rights.

Some Links:
* Our I-D on the Problem:
https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-appelcline-hashed-elision/
* Our ALLDISPATCH Presentation:
https://github.com/BlockchainCommons/Gordian-Developer-Community/tree/master/meetings/2024/03-18
* Envelope Overview: https://developer.blockchaincommons.com/envelope/

Thanks!

-- Christopher Allen