Internet DRAFT - draft-varon-hrpc-methodology
draft-varon-hrpc-methodology
Human Rights Protocol Considerations Research Group J. Varon
Internet-Draft Coding Rights
Intended status: Informational N. ten Oever
Expires: August 12, 2016 Article19
C. Guarnieri
Centre for Internet and Human Rights
W. Scott
University of Washington
C. Cath
Oxford Internet Institute
February 09, 2016
Human Rights Protocol Considerations Methodology
draft-varon-hrpc-methodology-04
Abstract
This document presents steps undertaken for developing a methodology
to map engineering concepts at the protocol level that may be related
to promotion and protection of Human Rights, particularly the right
to freedom of expression and association. It aims to facilitate and
build the work done by the Human Rights Protocol Considerations
research group in the IRTF, as well as other authors within the IETF.
Exemplary work [RFC1984] [RFC6973] [RFC7258] has already been done in
the IETF on privacy issues that should be considered when creating an
Internet protocol. But, beyond privacy considerations, concerns for
freedom of expression and association were also a strong part of the
world-view of the community involved in developing the first Internet
protocols. Indeed, promoting open, secure and reliable connectivity
is essential for these rights. But how are this concepts addressed
in the protocol level? Are there others? This ID is intended to
explain research work done so far and to explore possible
methodological approaches to move further on exploring and exposing
the relations between standards and protocols and the promotion and
protection of the rights to freedom of expression and association.
Discussion on this draft at: hrpc@irtf.org //
https://www.irtf.org/mailman/listinfo/hrpc
Status of This Memo
This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the
provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.
Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering
Task Force (IETF). Note that other groups may also distribute
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Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months
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This Internet-Draft will expire on August 12, 2016.
Copyright Notice
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Table of Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
2. Research Topic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
3. Methodology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
3.1. Translating Human Rights Concept into Technical
Definitions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
3.2. Map cases of protocols being exploited or enablers . . . 6
3.3. Apply human rights technical definitions to the cases
mapped . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
4. Preliminary findings achieved by applying current proposed
methodology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
4.1. Current status: Translating Human Rights Concept into
Technical Definitions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
4.2. Current Status: Mapping protocols and standards related
to FoE and FoA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
4.3. Current Status: Extracting concepts from mapped RFCs . . 8
4.4. Current status: Translating human rights to technical
terms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
4.5. Current status: Building of a common glossary . . . . . . 10
4.6. Current status: Map cases of protocols being exploited or
enablers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
4.6.1. IP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
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4.6.2. DNS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
4.6.3. HTTP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
4.6.4. XMPP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
4.6.5. Peer to Peer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
4.6.6. Virtual Private Network . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
4.6.7. HTTP Status Code 451 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
4.6.8. Middleboxes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
4.6.9. DDOS attacks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
4.7. Current Status: Apply human rights technical definitions
to the cases mapped . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
4.7.1. Human Rights Threats . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
4.7.2. Human Rights Guidelines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
5. Next Steps of the Methodology still to be developed . . . . . 37
5.1. Future research questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
6. Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
7. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
8. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
9. Research Group Information . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
10. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
10.1. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
10.2. URIs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
1. Introduction
In a manner similar to the work done for [RFC6973] on Privacy
Consideration Guidelines, the premise of this research is that some
standards and protocols can solidify, enable or threaten human
rights.
As stated in [RFC1958], the Internet aims to be the global network of
networks that provides unfettered connectivity to all users at all
times and for any content. Our research hypothesis is that
Internet's objective of connectivity makes it an enabler of human
rights and that its architectural design tends to converge in
protecting and promoting the human rights framework.
Open, secure and reliable connectivity is essential for human rights
such as freedom of expression and freedom of association, as defined
in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights [UDHR]. Therefore,
considering connectivity as the ultimate objective of the Internet,
makes a clear case that the Internet is not only an enabler of human
rights, but that human rights lie at the basis of, and are ingrained
in, the architecture of the network.
But, while the Internet was designed with freedom and openness of
communications as core values, as the scale and the commercialization
of the Internet has grown greatly, the influence of such world-views
started to compete with other values. Therefore, decisive and human
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rights enabling characteristics of the Internet might be degraded if
they're not properly defined, described and protected as such. And,
on the other way around, not protecting these characteristics could
also result in (partial) loss of functionality and connectivity,
thus, in the internet architecture design itself.
An essential part of maintaining the Internet as a tool for
communication and connectivity is security. Indeed, "development of
security mechanisms is seen as a key factor in the future growth of
the Internet as a motor for international commerce and communication"
[RFC1984] and according to the Danvers Doctrine [RFC3365], there is
an overwhelming consensus in the IETF that the best security should
be used and standardized.
In [RFC1984], the Internet Architecture Board (IAB) and the Internet
Engineering Steering Group (IESG), the bodies which oversee
architecture and standards for the Internet, expressed: "concern by
the need for increased protection of international commercial
transactions on the Internet, and by the need to offer all Internet
users an adequate degree of privacy." Indeed, the IETF has been
doing a significant job in this area [RFC6973] [RFC7258], considering
privacy concerns as a subset of security concerns.
Besides privacy, it should be possible to highlight other aspects of
connectivity embedded in standards and protocols that can have human
rights considerations, such as freedom of expression and the right to
association and assembly online. This ID is willing to explain
research work done so far and explore possible methodological
approaches to move further on exploring and exposing these relations
between standards and protocols and the promotion and protection of
the rights to freedom of expression and association.
To move this debate further, information has been compiled at the
https://datatracker.ietf.org/rg/hrpc/ and discussions are happening
through the list hrpc@irtf.org
This document builds on the previous IDs published within the
framework of the hrpc research group [ID]
2. Research Topic
The growing impact of the Internet on the lives of individuals makes
Internet standards and protocols increasingly important to society.
The IETF itself, in [RFC2026], specifically states that the
'interests of the Internet community need to be protected'. There
are various examples of protocols and standards having a direct
impact on society, and by extension the human rights of end-users.
Privacy is just one example. Therefore, this proposal for research
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methodology is addressing as research topics the rights to freedom of
expression and association and it's relations to standards and
protocols.
These two rights are described in the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights:
Article 19 - Freedom of Expression (FoE) "Everyone has the right to
freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to
hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart
information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers."
Article 20 - Freedom of Association (FoA) "Everyone has the right to
freedom of peaceful assembly and association."
But how to talk about human rights in an engineering context?
But can we translate these concepts into Internet architecture
technical terms?
What standards and protocols could have any relationship with freedom
of expression and association?
What are the possible relationships between them?
3. Methodology
Mapping the relation between human rights and protocols and
architectures is a new research challenge, which requires a good
amount of interdisciplinary and cross organizational cooperation to
develop a consistent methodology. While the authors of this first
draft are involved in both human rights advocacy and research on
Internet technologies - we believe that bringing this work into the
IRTF facilitates and improves this work by bringing human rights
experts together with the community of researchers and developers of
Internet standards and technologies.
In order to map the potential relation between human rights and
protocols, so far, the HRPC research group has been gathering the
data from three specific sources:
a. Discourse analysis of RFCs To start addressing the issue, a
mapping exercise analyzing Internet architecture and protocols
features, vis-a-vis possible impact on human rights is being
undertaken. Therefore, research on the language used in current and
historic RFCs and mailing list discussions is underway to expose core
architectural principles, language and deliberations on human rights
of those affected by the network.
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b. Interviews with members of the IETF community during the Dallas
meeting of March 2015 Interviews with the current and past members of
the Internet Architecture Board (IAB), current and past members of
the Internet Engineering Steering Group(IESG) and chairs of selected
working groups and RFC authors. To get an insider understanding of
how they view the relationship (if any) between human rights and
protocols to play out in their work.
c. Participant observation in Working Groups By participating in
various working groups information was gathered about the IETFs day-
to-day work. From which which general themes and use-cases about
human rights and protocols were extracted.
All this data was then processed using the following three
consecutive strategies:
3.1. Translating Human Rights Concept into Technical Definitions
Step 1.1 - Mapping protocols and standards related to FoE and FoA
Activity: Mapping of protocols and standards that potentially enable
the internet as a tool for freedom of expression Expected Outcome:
list of RFCs that describe standards and protocols that are
potentially more closely related to FoE and FoA.
Step 1.2 - Extracting concepts from mapped RFCs Activity: Read the
selected RFCs to highlight central design and technical concepts
which impact human rights. Expected Outcome 1: a list of technical
terms that combined create the enabling environment for freedom of
expression and freedom of association. Expected Outcome 2: Possible
translations of human rights concepts to technical terms.
Step 1.3 - Building a common glossary In the analysis of existing
RFCs, central design and technical concepts shall be found which
impact human rights. Expected Outcome: a Glossary for human rights
protocol considerations with a list of concepts and definitions of
technical concepts
3.2. Map cases of protocols being exploited or enablers
Step 1.1 - Cases of protocols being exploited Activity 1: Map cases
in which users rights have been exploited, violated or compromised,
analyze which protocols or vulnerabilities in protocols are involved
with this. Activity 2: Understand technical rationale for the use of
particular protocols that undermine human rights. Expected Outcome:
list of protocols that have been exploited to expose users to rights
violation and rationale.
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Step 1.2 - Cases of protocols being enablers Activity: Map cases in
which users rights have been enabled, promoted and protected and
analyze which characteristics in the protocols are involved with
this. Expected Outcome: list of characteristics in the protocols
that have been key to promote and protect the rights to freedom of
expression and association that could be added to our glossary
3.3. Apply human rights technical definitions to the cases mapped
Step 1 - Glossary and Cases Activity: Investigate alternative
technical options from within list of technical design principle (see
[HRPC-GLOSSARY]) that could have been applied in the mapped cases to
strengthen our technical definition of FoE and FoA, and hence human
rights and connectivity of the network.
Expected Outcome: Identify best (and worst) current practices.
Develop procedures to systematically evaluate protocols for potential
human rights impact.
4. Preliminary findings achieved by applying current proposed
methodology
4.1. Current status: Translating Human Rights Concept into Technical
Definitions
Step 1.1 - Mapping protocols and standards related to FoE and FoA
Below are some examples of these protocols and standards that might
be related to FoE and FoA and FoE:
HTTP Websites made it extremely easy for individuals to publish their
ideas, opinions and thoughts. Never before has the world seen an
infrastructure that made it this easy to share information and ideas
with such a large group of other people. The HTTP architecture and
standards, including [RFC7230], [RFC7231], [RFC7232], [RFC7234],
[RFC7235], [RFC7236], and [RFC7237], are essential for the publishing
of information. The HTTP protocol, therefore, forms an crucial
enabler for freedom of expression, but also for the right to freely
participate in the culture life of the community (Article 27) [UDHR],
to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its
benefits.
Real time communications through XMPP and WebRTC Collaborations and
cooperation via the Internet have take a large step forward with the
progress of chat and other other real time communications protocols.
The work on XMPP [RFC6162] has enabled new methods of global
interactions, cooperation and human right advocacy. The WebRTC work
being done to standardize the API and protocol elements to support
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real-time communications for browsers, mobile applications and IoT by
the World Wide Consortium (W3C) and the IETF is another artifact
enabling human rights globally on the Internet.
Mailing lists Collaboration and cooperation have been part of the
Internet since its early beginning, one of the instruments of
facilitating working together in groups are mailing lists (as
described in [RFC2639], [RFC2919], and [RFC6783]. Mailing lists are
critical instruments and enablers for group communication and
organization, and therefore form early artifacts of the
(standardized) ability of Internet standards to enable the right to
freedom of assembly and association.
IDNs English has been the lingua franca of the Internet, but for many
Internet user English is not their first language. To have a true
global Internet, one that serves the whole world, it would need to
reflect the languages of these different communities. The
Internationalized Domain Names IDNA2008 ([RFC5890], [RFC5891],
[RFC5892], and [RFC5893]), describes standards for the use of a broad
range of strings and characters (some also written from right to
left). This enables users who use other characters than the standard
LDH ascii typeset to have their own URLs. This shows the ambition of
the Internet community to reflect the diversity of users and to be in
line with Article 2 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
which clearly stipulates that "everyone is entitles to all rights and
freedoms "[...]", without distinction of any kind, such as "[...]"
language "[...]"." [UDHR]
4.2. Current Status: Mapping protocols and standards related to FoE and
FoA
Based on these standards and protocols as well as an analysis of
existing RFCs and literature, a listing of architectural concepts has
been made.
Step 1.2 - Extracting concepts from mapped RFCs The list of RFCs as
well as relevant literature has used to extract key architectural
principles. The main architectural concepts were subsequently listed
in the glossary [HRPC-GLOSSARY].
4.3. Current Status: Extracting concepts from mapped RFCs
Expected Outcome 1: a list of technical terms that combined create
the enabling environment for human rights, such a freedom of
expression and freedom of association.
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Architectural principles Enabling features
and characteristics for user rights
/------------------------------------------------\
| |
+=================|=============================+ |
= | = |
= | End to end = |
= | Reliability = |
= | Resilience = Access as |
= | Interoperability = Human Right |
= Good enough | Transparency = |
= principle | Data minimization = |
= | Permissionless innovation = |
= Simplicity | Graceful degradation = |
= | Connectivity = |
= | Heterogenity = |
= | = |
= | = |
= \------------------------------------------------/
= =
+===============================================+
4.4. Current status: Translating human rights to technical terms
Expected outcome 2: This analysis aims to translate human rights
concepts that impact or are impacted by the Internet as follows:
The combination of content agnosticism, connectivity, security,
privacy (as defined in [RFC6973] ), and open standards are the
technical principles that underlay freedom of expression on the
Internet.
( Connectivity )
( Privacy )
( Security ) = Right to freedom of expression
( Content agnosticism )
( Internationalization )
( Censorship resistance )
( Open Standards )
( Heterogeneity support )
( Anonymity )
( Privacy ) = Right to non-discrimination
( Pseudonymity )
( Content agnosticism )
( Accessibility )
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( Content Agnosticism )
( Security ) = Right to equal protection
( Anonymity )
( Privacy ) = Right to be presumed innocent
( Security )
( Accessibility )
( Internationalization ) = Right to political participation
( Censorship resistance )
( Open standards )
( Localization ) = Right to participate in cultural life,
( Internationalization ) arts and science
( Censorship resistance )
( Connectivity )
( Decentralization )
( Censorship resistance ) = Right to freedom of assembly
( Pseudonymity ) and association
( Anonymity )
( Security )
( Reliability )
( Confidentiality )
( Integrity ) = Right to security
( Authenticity )
( Anonymity )
Step 1.3 - Build a common glossary
4.5. Current status: Building of a common glossary
Expected Outcome: A glossary has been developed, which aims to build
on other relevant published glossaries by the IETF and relevant
literature: [HRPC-GLOSSARY]). This document aims to provide a
description of relevant architectural principals as well as technical
concepts that are relevant for describing the impact of protocols on
human rights.
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4.6. Current status: Map cases of protocols being exploited or enablers
4.6.1. IP
The Internet Protocol version 4, known as 'layer 3' of the internet,
and specified as a common encapsulation and protocol header, is
defined by [RFC0791]. The evolution of Internet communications have
led to continued development in this area, encapsulated in the
development of version 6 of the protocol in [RFC2460]. In spite of
this updated protocol, we find that 25 years after the specification
of version 6 of the protocol, the older v4 standard continues to
account for a sizable majority of internet traffic.
The internet was designed as a platform for free and open
communication, most notably encoded in the end-to-end principle, and
that philosophy is also present in the technical implementation of
the Internet Protocol. [RFC3724] While the protocol was designed to
exist in an environment where intelligence is at the end hosts, it
has proven to provide sufficient information that a more intelligent
network core can make policy decisions and enforce policy shaping and
restricting the communications of end hosts. These capabilities for
network control and limitations of the freedom of expression by end
hosts can be traced back to the IPv4 design, helping us understand
which technical protocol decisions have led to harm of these human
rights.
Two major shifts have occurred to harm freedom of expression through
misuse of the Internet Protocol. The first is the network's
exploitation of the public visibility of the host pairs for all
communications, and the corresponding ability to discriminate and
block traffic as a result of that metadata. The second is the
selective development of IP options. Protocol extensions including
Mobility and Multicasting have proposed alternate communication modes
and suggest that different forms of assemply could be supported by an
a robust IP layer. Instead, the protocol has limited the
deployability of such extensions by not providing a mechanism for
appropriate fallback behavior when unrecognized extensions are
encountered.
4.6.1.1. Network visibility of Source and Destination
The IPv4 protocol header contains fixed location fields for both the
source and destination IP addresses [RFC0791]. These addresses
identify both the host sending and receiving each message, and allow
the core network to understand who is talking to whom, and to
practically limit communication selectively between pairs of hosts.
Blocking of communication based on the pair of source and destination
is one of the most common limitations on the ability for hosts to
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communicate today, [caida] and can be seen as a restriction of the
ability for those hosts to assemble or to consensually express
themselves.
Inclusion of an Internet-wide identified source in the IP header is
not the only possible design, especially since the protocol is most
commonly implemented over Ethernet networks exposing only link-local
identifiers. [RFC0894] A variety of alternative designs including
source routing, and spoofing of the source IP address are technicaly
supported by the protocol, but neither are regularly allowed on the
Internet. While projects like [torproject] provide an alternative
implementation of anonymity in connections, they have been developed
in spite of the IPv4 protocol design.
4.6.1.2. Protocols
The other major feature of the IP protocol header is that it
specifies the protocol encapsulated in each message in an easily
observable form, and does not encourage a design where the
encapsulated protocol is not available to a network observer. This
design has resulted in a proliferation of routers which inspect the
inner protocol, and has resulted in a stagnation where only the TCP
and UDP protocols are widely supported across the Internet. While
the IP protocol was designed as the entire set of metadata needed for
routing, subsequent enhanced routers have found value on making
policy decisions based on the contents of TCP and UDP headers as
well, and are encoded with the assumption that only these protocols
will be used for data transfer. [spdy] [RFC4303] defines an encrypted
encapsulation of additional protocols, but lacks widespread
deployment and faces the same challenge as any other protocol of
providing sufficient metadata with each message for routers to make
positive policy decisions. Protocols like [RFC4906] have seen
limited wide-area uptake, and these alternate designs are frequently
re-implemented on top of UDP. [quic]
4.6.1.3. Address Translation and Mobility
A major structural shift in the Internet which has undermined the
protocol design of IPv4, and has significantly reduced the freedom of
end users to communicate and assemble in the introduction network
address translation. [RFC1631] Network address translation is a
process whereby organizations and autonomous systems to connect two
networks by translating the IPv4 source and destination addresses
between the two. This process puts the router performing the
translation into a privileged position, where it can decide which
subset of communications are worthy of translation, and whether an
unknown request for communication will be correctly forwarded to a
host on the other network.
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This process of translation has widespread adoption despite promoting
a process that goes against the stated end-to-end process of the
underlying protocol [natusage]. In contrast, the proposed mechanism
to provide support for mobility and forwarding to clients which may
move, encoded instead as an option in the IP protocol in [RFC5944],
has failed to gain traction. This situation again suggests that the
compromise made in design of the protocol has resulted in a
technology which failed to technical encode the freedom of expression
goals it was designed to promote.
4.6.2. DNS
The Domain Name System (DNS) [RFC1035], provides service discovery
capabailities, and provides a mechanism to associate human readable
names with services. The DNS system is organized around a set of
independently operated 'Root Servers' run by organizations around the
web which enact ICANN's policy by answering queries for which
organizations have been delegated to manage registration under each
Top Level Domain (TLD). Top Level domains are maintained and
determined by ICANN. These namespaces encompass several classes of
services. The initial name spaces including '.Com' and '.Net',
provide common spaces for expression of ideas, though their policies
are enacted through US based companies. Other name spaces are
delegated to specific nationalities, and may impose limits designed
to focus speech in those forums both to promote speech from that
nationality, and to comply with local limits on expression and social
norms. Finally, the system has been recently expanded with
additional generic and sponsored name spaces, for instance '.travel'
and '.ninja', which are operated by a range of organizations which
may independently determine their registration policies.
DNS has significant privacy issues per [RFC7626]. Most notable are
the lack of encryption to limit the visibility of requests for domain
resolution from intermediary parties, and a limited deployment of
DNSSEC to provide authentication, allowing the client to know that
they have received a correct, "authoritative", answer to a query.
Together, this situation results in ongoing harm to freedom of
expression as interference with the operation of DNS has become one
of the central mechanisms used to block access to websites. This
interference limits both the freedom of expression of the publisher
to offer their content, and the freedom of assembly for clients to
congregate in a shared virtual space.
There have been several mechanisms used impose these limitations
based on the technical design of the DNS protocol. These have led to
a number of situations where limits on expression have been imposed
through subversion of the DNS protocol. Each of these situations has
accompanying aspects of protocol design enabling those limitations.
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4.6.2.1. Removal of records
There have been a number of cases where the records for a domain are
removed from the name system due to real-world events. Examples of
this removal includes the 'seizure' of wikileaks [bbc-wikileaks] and
the names of illegally operating gambling operations by the United
States ICE unit, which compelled the US-based registry in charge of
the .com TLD to hand ownership of those domains over to the
government. The same technique has been notably used by Libya to
remove sites in violation of "our Country's Law and Morality (which)
do not allow any kind of pornography or its promotion." [techyum]
At a protocol level, there is no technical auditing for name
ownership, as in alternate systems like [namecoin]. As a result,
there is no ability for users to differentiate seizure from the
legitimate transfer of name ownership, which is purely a policy
decision of registrars. While DNSSEC addresses network distortion
events described below, it does not tackle this problem, which has
the cooperation of (or compelled action by) the registry.
4.6.2.2. Distortion of records
The most common mechanism by which the DNS system is abused to limit
freedom of expression is through manipulation of protocol messages by
the network. One form occurs at an organizational level, where
client computers are instructed to use a local DNS resolver
controlled by the organization. The DNS resolver will then
selectively distort responses rather than request the authoritative
lookup from the upstream system. The second form occurs through the
use of deep packet inspection, where all DNS protocol messages are
inspected by the network, and objectionable content is distorted, as
in [turkey].
A notable instance of distortion has occurred in Greece [ververis],
where a study found evidence of both of deep packet inspection to
distort DNS replies, and overblocking of content, where ISPs
prevented clients from resolving the names of domains which they were
not instructed to do through the governmental order prompting the
blocking systems there.
At a protocol level, the effectiveness of these attacks is made
possible by a lack of authentication in the DNS protocol. DNSSEC
provides the ability to determine authenticity of responses when
used, but it is not regularly checked by resolvers. DNSSEC is not
effective when the local resolver for a network is complicit in the
distortion, for instance when the resolver assigned for use by an ISP
is the source of injection. Selective distortion of records has also
been made possible by the predictable structure of DNS messages,
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which make it computationally easy for a network device to watch all
passing messages even at high speeds, and the lack of encryption,
which allows the network to distort only an objectionable subset of
protocol messages. Specific distortion mechanisms are discussed
further in [draft-hall-censorship-tech-01].
4.6.2.3. Injection of records
Responding incorrectly to requests for name lookups is the most
common mechanism that in-network devices use to limit the ability of
end users to discover services. A deviation which accomplishes a
similar objective, though may be seen as different from a freedom of
expression perspective, is the injection of incorrect responses to
queries. The most prominent example of this behavior occurs in
China, where requests for lookups of sites which have been deemed
inappropriate will trigger the network to respond with a bogus
response, causing the client to ignore the real response when it
subsequently arrives. [greatfirewall] Unlike the other forms of
discussion discussed above, injection does not stifle the ability of
a server to announce it's name, it instead provides another voice
which answers sooner. This is effective because without DNSSEC, the
protocol will respond to whichever answer is received first, without
listening for subsequent answers.
4.6.3. HTTP
The Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), described in its version 1.1
in RFC 7230 to 7237, is a request-response application protocol
developed throughout the 1990s, and factually contributed to the
exponential growth of the Internet and the inter-connection of
populations around the world. Because of its simple design, HTTP has
become the foundation of most modern Internet platforms and
communication systems, from websites, to chat systems, and computer-
to-computer applications. In its manifestation with the World Wide
Web, HTTP has radically revolutionized the course of technological
development and the ways people interact with online content and with
each other. However, HTTP is also a fundamentally insecure protocol,
that doesn't natively provide encryption properties. While the
definition of the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL), and later of Transport
Layer Security (TLS), also happened during the 1990s, the fact that
HTTP doesn't mandate the use of such encryption layers to developers
and service providers, caused a very late adoption. Only in the
middle of the 2000s we observed big Internet service providers, such
as Google, starting to provide encrypted access to their web
services.
The lack of sensitivity and understanding of the critical importance
of securing web traffic incentivized malicious and offensive actors
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to develop, deploy and utilize at large interception systems and
later active injection attacks, in order to swipe large amounts of
data, compromise Internet-enabled devices. The commercial
availability of systems and tools to perform these types of attacks
also led to a number of human rights abuses that have been discovered
and reported over the years and that painted a dark picture on the
current state of control over the Internet.
Generally we can identify in Traffic Interception and Traffic
Manipulation the two most problematic attacks that can be performed
against applications employing a clear-text HTTP transport layer.
4.6.3.1. Traffic Interception
While we are seeing an increasing trend in the last couple of years
to employ SSL/TLS as a secure traffic layer for HTTP-based
applications, we are still far from seeing an ubiquitous use of
encryption on the World Wide Web. It is important to consider that
the adoption of SSL/TLS is also a relatively recent phenomena.
Google introduced an option for its GMail users to navigate with SSL
only in 2008 [Rideout], and turned SSL on by default later in 2010
[Schillace]. It took an increasing amount of scandalous security
breaches and revelations on global surveillance from Edward Snowden
to have other Internet service providers to follow Google's lead.
For example, Yahoo enabled SSL/TLS by default on its webmail services
only towards the end of 2013 [Peterson].
As we learned through the Snowden's revelations, intelligence
agencies have been intercepting and collecting unencrypted traffic at
large for many years. There are documented examples of such mass
surveillance programs with GCHQ's TEMPORA and NSA's XKEYSCORE.
Through these programs NSA/GCHQ have been able to swipe large amounts
of data including email and instant messaging communications which
have been transported by the respective providers in clear for years,
unsuspecting of the pervasiveness and scale of governments' efforts
and investment into global mass surveillance capabilities.
However, similar mass interception of unencrypted HTTP communications
is also often employed at a nation-level by less democratic countries
by exercising control over state-owned Internet Service Providers
(ISP) and through the use of commercially available monitoring,
collection, and censorship equipment. Over the last few years a lot
of information has come to public attention on the role and scale of
a surveillance industry dedicated to develop interception gear of
different types. We have several records of such equipment being
sold and utilized by oppressive regimes in order to monitor entire
segments of population especially at times of social and political
distress, uncovering massive human rights abuses. For example, in
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2013 the group Telecomix revealed that the Syrian regime was making
use of BlueCoat products in order to intercept clear-text traffic as
well as to enforce censorship of unwanted content [RSF]. Similarly
in 2012 it was found that the French Amesys provided the Gaddafi's
government with equipment able to intercept emails, Facebook traffic,
and chat messages ad a country level. The use of such systems,
especially in the context of the Arab Spring and of civil uprisings
against the dictatorships, has caused serious concerns of significant
human rights abuses in Libya.
4.6.3.2. Traffic Manipulation
The lack of a secure transport layer over HTTP connections not only
exposes the users to interception of the content of their
communications, but is more and more commonly abused as a vehicle for
active compromises of computers and mobile devices. If an HTTP
session travels in clear over the network, any node positioned at any
point in the network is able to perform man-in-the-middle attacks and
observe, manipulate, and hijack the session and modify the content of
the communication in order to trigger unexpected behavior by the
application generating the traffic. For example, in the case of a
browser the attacker would be able to inject malicious code in order
to exploit vulnerabilities in the browser or any of its plugins.
Similarly, the attacker would be able to intercept, trojanize, and
repackage binary software updates that are very commonly downloaded
in clear by applications such as word processors and media players.
If the HTTP session would be encrypted, the tampering of the content
would not be possible, and these network injection attacks would not
be successful.
While traffic manipulation attacks have been long known, documented,
and prototyped especially in the context of WiFi and LAN networks, in
the last few years we observed an increasing investment into the
production and sale of network injection equipment both available
commercially as well as deployed at scale by intelligence agencies.
For example we learned from some of the documents provided by Edward
Snowden to the press, that the NSA has constructed a global network
injection infrastructure, called QUANTUM, able to leverage mass
surveillance in order to identify targets of interests and
subsequently task man-on-the-side attacks to ultimately compromise a
selected device. Among other attacks, NSA makes use of an attack
called QUANTUMINSERT [Haagsma] which intercepts and hijacks an
unencrypted HTTP communication and forces the requesting browser to
redirect to a host controlled by NSA instead of the intended website.
Normally, the new destination would be an exploitation service,
referred in Snowden documents as FOXACID, which would attempt at
executing malicious code in the context of the target's browser. The
Guardian reported in 2013 that NSA has for example been using these
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techniques to target users of the popular anonymity service Tor
[Schneier]. The German NDR reported in 2014 that NSA has also been
using its mass surveillance capabilities to identify Tor users at
large [Appelbaum]. Recently similar capabilities of Chinese
authorities have been reported as well in what has been informally
called the "Great Cannon" [Marcak], which raised numerous concerns on
the potential curb on human rights and freedom of speech due to the
increasing tighter control of Chinese Internet communications and
access to information. Network injection attacks are also made
widely available to state actors around the world through the
commercialization of similar, smaller scale equipment that can be
easily acquired and deployed at a country-wide level. Companies like
FinFisher and HackingTeam are known to have network injection gear
within their products portfolio, respectively called FinFly ISP and
RCS Network Injector [Marquis-Boire]. The technology devised and
produced by HackingTeam to perform network traffic manipulation
attacks on HTTP communications is even the subject of a patent
application in the United States [Googlepatent]. Access to offensive
technologies available on the commercial lawful interception market
has been largely documented to have lead to human rights abuses and
illegitimate surveillance of journalists, human rights defenders, and
political activists in many countries around the world. Companies
like FinFisher and HackingTeam have been found selling their products
to oppressive regimes with little concern for bad human rights
records [Collins]. While network injection attacks haven't been the
subject of much attention, they do enable even unskilled attackers to
perform silent and very resilient compromises, and unencrypted HTTP
remains one of the main vehicles.
4.6.4. XMPP
The Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP), specified in
[RFC6120], provides a standard for interactive chat messaging, and
has evolved to encompass interoperable text, voice, and video chat.
The protocol is structured as a federated network of servers, similar
to email, where users register with a local server which acts one
their behalf to cache and relay messages. This protocol design has
many advantages, allowing servers to shield clients from denial of
service and other forms of retribution for their expression, and
designed to avoid central entities which could control the ability to
communicate or assemble using the protocol.
None-the-less, there are plenty of aspects of the protocol design of
XMPP which shape the ability for users to communicate freely, and to
assembly through the protocol. The protocol also has facets that may
stifle speech as users self-censor for fear of surveillance, or find
themselves unable to express themselves naturally.
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4.6.4.1. User Identification
The XMPP specification dictates that clients are identified with a
resource (node@domain/home [1] / node@domain/work [2]) to distinguish
the conversations to specific devices. While the protocol does not
specify that the resource must be exposed by the client's server to
remote users, in practice this has become the default behavior. In
doing so, users can be tracked by remote friends and their servers,
who are able to monitor presence not just of the user, but of each
individual device the user logs in with. This has proven to be
misleading to many users, [pidgin] since many clients only expose
user level rather than device level presence. Likewise, user
invisibility so that communication can occur while users don't notify
all buddies and other servers of their availability is not part of
the formal protocol, and has only been added as an extension within
the XML stream rather than enforced by the protocol.
4.6.4.2. Surveillance of Communication
The XMPP protocol specifies the standard by which communication of
channels may be encrypted, but it does not provide visibility to
clients of whether their communications are encrypted on each link.
In particular, even when both clients ensure that they have an
encrypted connection to their XMPP server to ensure that their local
network is unable to read or disrupt the messages they send, the
protocol does not provide visibility into the encryption status
between the two servers. As such, clients may be subject to
selective disruption of communications by an intermediate network
which disrupts communications based on keywords found through Deep
Packet Inspection. While many operators have commited to only
establishing encrypted links from their servers in recognition of
this vulnerability, it remains impossible for users to audit this
behavior and encrypted connections are not required by the protocol
itself [xmppmanifesto].
In particular, section 13.14 of the protocol specification [RFC6120]
explicitly acknowledges the existence of a downgrade attack where an
adversary controlling an intermediate network can force the inter
domain federation between servers to revert to a non-encrypted
protocol were selective messages can then be disrupted.
4.6.4.3. Group Chat Limitations
Group chat in the XMPP protocol is defined as an extension within the
XML specification of the XMPP protocol (https://xmpp.org/extensions/
xep-0045.html). However, it is not encoded or required at a protocol
level, and not uniformly implemented by clients.
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The design of multi-user chat in the XMPP protocol suffers from
extending a protocol that was not designed with assembly of many
users in mind. In particular, in the federated protocol provided by
XMPP, multi-user communities are implemented with a distinguished
'owner', who is granted control over the participants and structure
of the conversation.
Multi-user chat rooms are identified by a name specified on a
specific server, so that while the overall protocol may be federated,
the ability for users to assemble in a given community is moderated
by a single server. That server may block the room and prevent
assembly unilaterally, even between two users neither of whom trust
or use that server directly.
4.6.5. Peer to Peer
Peer-to-Peer (P2P) is a network architecture (defined in [RFC7574])
in which all the participant nodes are equally responsible engaged
into the storage and dissemination of information. A P2P network is
a logical overlay that lives on top of the physical network, and
allows nodes (or "peers") participating to it to establish contact
and exchange information directly from one to each other. The
implementation of a P2P network may very widely: it may be structured
or unstructured, and it may implement stronger or weaker
cryptographic and anonymity properties. While its most common
application has traditionally been file-sharing (and other types of
content delivery systems), P2P is increasingly becoming a popular
architecture for networks and applications that require (or
encourage) decentralization. A prime example is Bitcoin (and similar
cryptocurrencies), as well as Skype, Spotify and other proprietary
multimedia applications.
In a time of heavily centralized online services, peer-to-peer is
often seen as an alternative, more democratic, and resistant
architecture that displaces structures of control over data and
communications and delegates all peers equally to be responsible for
the functioning, integrity, and security of the data. While in
principle peer-to-peer remains critical to the design and development
of future content distribution, messaging, and publishing systems, it
poses numerous security and privacy challenges which are mostly
delegated to individual developers to recognize, analyze, and solve
in each implementation of a given P2P network.
4.6.5.1. Network Poisoning
Since content, and in some occasions peer lists, are safeguarded and
distributed by its members, P2P networks are prone to what are
generally defined as "poisoning attacks". Poisoning attacks might be
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directed directly at the data that is being distributed, for example
by intentionally corrupting it, or at the index tables used to
instruct the peers where to fetch the data, or at routing tables,
with the attempt of providing connecting peers with lists of rogue or
non-existing peers, with the intention to effectively cause a Denial
of Service on the network.
4.6.5.2. Throttling
Peer-to-Peer traffic (and BitTorrent in particular) represents a high
percentage of global Internet traffic and it has become increasingly
popular for Internet Service Providers to perform throttling of
customers lines in order to limit bandwidth usage [torrentfreak1] and
sometimes probably as an effect of the ongoing conflict between
copyright holders and file-sharing communities [wikileaks].
Throttling the peer-to-peer traffic makes some uses of P2P networks
ineffective and it might be coupled with stricter inspection of
users' Internet traffic through Deep Packet Inspection techniques
which might pose additional security and privacy risks.
4.6.5.3. Tracking and Identification
One of the fundamental and most problematic issues with traditional
peer-to-peer networks is a complete lack of anonymization of its
users. For example, in the case of BitTorrent, all peers' IP
addresses are openly available to the other peers. This has lead to
an ever-increasing tracking of peer-to-peer and file-sharing users
[ars]. As the geographical location of the user is directly exposed,
and so could be his identity, the user might become target of
additional harassment and attacks, being of physical or legal nature.
For example, it is known that in Germany lawfirms have made extensive
use of peer-to-peer and file-sharing tracking systems in order to
identify downloaders and initiate legal actions looking for
compensations [torrentfreak2].
It is worth nothing that there are varieties of P2P networks that
implement cryptographic practices and that introduce anonymization of
its users. Such implementations proved to be successful in resisting
censorship of content, and tracking of the network peers. A primary
example is FreeNet [freenet1], a free software application designed
to significantly increase the difficulty of users and content
identification, and dedicated to foster freedom of speech online
[freenet2].
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4.6.5.4. Sybil Attacks
In open-membership P2P networks, a single attacker can pretend to be
many participants, typically by creating multiple fake identities of
whatever kind the P2P network uses [Douceur]. Attackers can use
Sybil attacks to bias choices the P2P network makes collectively
toward the attacker's advantage, e.g., by making it more likely that
a particular data item (or some threshold of the replicas or shares
of a data item) are assigned to attacker-controlled participants. If
the P2P network implements any voting, moderation, or peer review-
like functionality, Sybil attacks may be used to "stuff the ballots"
toward the attacker's benefit. Companies and governments can use
Sybil attacks on discussion-oriented P2P systems for "astroturfing"
or creating the appearance of mass grassroots support for some
position where there is none in reality.
4.6.5.5. Conclusions
Encrypted P2P and Anonymous P2P networks already emerged and provided
viable platforms for sharing material, publish content anonymously,
and communicate securely [bitmessage]. If adopted at large, well-
designed and resistant P2P networks might represent a critical
component of a futuresecure and distributed Internet, enabling
freedom of speech and freedom of information at scale.
4.6.6. Virtual Private Network
4.6.6.1. Introduction
A Virtual Private Network (VPN) is a point-to-point connection that
enables two computers to communicate over an encrypted tunnel. There
are multiple implementations and protocols used in provisioning a
VPN, and they generally diversify by encryption protocol or
particular requirements, most commonly in proprietary and enterprise
solutions. VPNs are used commonly either to enable some devices to
communicate through peculiar network configurations, or in order to
use some privacy and security properties in order to protect the
traffic generated by the end user; or both. VPNs have also become a
very popular technology among human rights defenders, dissidents, and
journalists worldwide to avoid local illegitimate wiretapping and
eventually also to circumvent censorship. Among human rights
defenders VPNs are often debated as a potential alternative to Tor or
other anonymous networks. Such comparison is misleading, as some of
the privacy and security properties of VPNs are often misunderstood
by less tech-savvy users, which could ultimately lead to unintended
problems.
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As VPNs increased in popularity, commercial VPN providers have
started growing in business and are very commonly picked by human
rights defenders and people at risk, as they are normally provided
with an easy-to-use service and sometimes even custom applications to
establish the VPN tunnel. Not being able to control the
configuration of the network, and even less so the security of the
application, assessing the general privacy and security state of
common VPNs is very hard. Often such services have been discovered
leaking information, and their custom applications have been found
flawed. While Tor and similar networks receive a lot of scrutiny
from the public and the academic community, commercial or non-
commercial VPN networks are way less analyzed and understood, and it
might be valuable to establish some standards to guarantee a minimal
level of privacy and security to those who need them the most.
4.6.6.2. False sense of Anonymity
One of the common misconception among users of VPNs is the level of
anonymity VPN can provide. This sense of anonymity can be betrayed
by a number of attacks or misconfugrations of the VPN provider. It
is important to remember that, contrarily to Tor and similar systems,
VPN was not designed to provide anonymity properties. From a
technical point of view, the VPN might leak identifiable information,
or might be subject of correlation attacks that could expose the
originating address of the connecting user. Most importantly, it is
vital to understand that commercial and non-commercial VPN providers
are bound by the law of the jurisdiction they reside in or in which
their infrastructure is located, and they might be legally forced to
turn over data of specific users if legal investigations or
intelligence requirements dictate so. In such cases, if the VPN
providers retain logs, it is possible that the information of the
user is provided to the user's adversary and leads to his or her
identification.
4.6.6.3. Logging
With VPN being point-to-point connections, the service providers are
in fact able to observe the original location of the connecting users
and they are able to track at what time they started their session
and eventually also to which destinations they're trying to connect
to. If the VPN providers retain logs for long enough, they might be
forced to turn over the relevant data or they might be otherwise
compromised, leading to the same data getting exposed. A clear log
retaining policy could be enforced, but considering that countries
enforce very different levels of data retention policies, VPN
providers should at least be transparent on what information do they
store and for how long is being kept.
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4.6.6.4. 3rd Party Hosting
VPN providers very commonly rely on 3rd parties to provision the
infrastructure that is later going to be used to run VPN endpoints.
For example, they might rely on external dedicated server hosting
providers, or on uplink providers. In those cases, even if the VPN
provider itself isn't retaining any significant logs, the information
on the connecting users might be retained by those 3rd parties
instead, introducing an additional collection point for the
adversary.
4.6.6.5. IPv6 Leakage
Some studies proved that several commercial VPN providers and
applications suffer of critical leakage of information through IPv6
due to improper support and configuration [PETS2015VPN]. This is
generally caused by a lack of proper configuration of the client's
IPv6 routing tables. Considering that most popular browsers and
similar applications have been supporting IPv6 by default, if the
host is provided with a functional IPv6 configuration, the traffic
that is generated might be leaked if the VPN application isn't
designed to manipulate such traffic properly.
4.6.6.6. DNS Leakage
Similarly, VPN services that aren't handling DNS requests and are not
running DNS servers of their own, might be prone to DNS leaking which
might not only expose sensitive information on the activity of the
user, but could also potentially lead to DNS hijacking attacks and
following compromises.
4.6.6.7. Traffic Correlation
As revelations of mass surveillance have been growing in the press,
additional details on attacks on secure Internet communications have
come to the public's attention. Among these, VPN appeared to be a
very interesting target for attacks and collectiong efforts. Some
implementations of VPN appear to be particularly vulnerable to
identification and collection of key exchanges which, some Snowden
documents revealed, are systematically collected and stored for
future reference. The ability of an adversary to monitor network
connections at many different points over the Internet, can allow
them to perform traffic correlation attacks and identify the origin
of certain VPN traffic by cross referencing the connection time of
the user to the endpoint and the connection time of the endpoint to
the final destination. These types of attacks, although very
expensive and normally only performed by very resourceful
adversaries, have been documented [spiegel] to be already in practice
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and could completely vanify the use of a VPN and ultimately expose
the activity and the identity of a user at risk.
4.6.7. HTTP Status Code 451
Every Internet user has run into the '404 Not Found' Hypertext
Transfer Protocol (HTTP) status code when trying, and failing, to
access a particular website. It is a response status that the server
sends to the browser, when the server cannot locate the URL. '403
Forbidden' is another example of this class of code signals that
gives users information about what is going on. In the '403' case
the server can be reached, but is blocking the request because the
user is trying to access content forbidden to them. This can be
because the specific user is not allowed access to the content (like
a government employee trying to access pornography on a work-
computer) or because access is restricted to all users (like social
network sites in certain countries). As surveillance and censorship
of the Internet is becoming more commonplace, voices were raised at
the IETF to introduce a new status code that indicates when something
is not available for 'legal reasons' (like censorship):
The 451 status code would allow server operators to operate with
greater transparency in circumstances where issues of law or public
policy affect their operation. This transparency may be beneficial
both to these operators and to end-users [Bray].
The status code would be named '451', a reference to Bradbury's
famous novel on censorship
During the IETF meeting in Dallas, there was discussion about the
usefulness of '451'. The main tension revolved around the lack of an
apparent machine-readable technical use of the information. The
extent to which '451' is just 'political theatre' or whether it has a
concrete technical use was heatedly debated. Some argued that 'the
451 status code is just a status code with a response body' others
said it was problematic because 'it brings law into the picture'.
Again others argued that it would be useful for individuals, or
organizations like the 'Chilling Effects' project, crawling the web
to get an indication of censorship (IETF discussion on '451' -
author's field notes March 2015). There was no outright objection
during the Dallas meeting against moving forward on status code
'451', and on December 18, 2015 the Internet Engineering Steering
Group approved publication of 'An HTTP Status Code to Report Legal
Obstacles'. It is still in the process of becoming an RFC, but could
effectively be used from the day of approval.
What is interesting about this particular case is that not only
technical arguments but also the status code's outright potential
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political use for civil society played a substantial role in shaping
the discussion, and the decision to move forward with this
technology.
It is however important to note that 451 is not a solution to detect
all occasions of censorship. A large swath of Internet filtering
occurs in the network rather than the server itself. For these forms
of censorship 451 plays a limited role, as the servers will not be
able to send the code, because they haven't received the requests (as
is the case with servers with resources blocked by the Chinese Golden
shield). Such filtering regimes are unlikely to voluntarily inject a
451 status code. The use of 451 is most likely to apply in the case
of cooperative, legal versions of content removal resulting from
requests to providers. One can think of content that is removed or
blocked for legal reasons, like copyright infringement, gambling
laws, child abuse, et cetera. The major use case is thus clearly on
the Web server itself, not the network. Large Internet companies and
search engines are constantly asked to censor content in various
jurisdictions. 451 allows this to be easily discovered, for instance
by initiatives like the Lumen Database. In the case of adversarial
blocking done by a filtering entity on the network 451 is less
useful.
Overall, the strength of 451 lies in its ability to provide
transparency by giving the reason for blocking, and giving the end-
user the ability to file a complaint. It allows organizations to
easily measure censorship in an automated way, and prompts the user
to access the content via another path (e.g. TOR, VPNs) when (s)he
encounters the 451 status code.
Status code 451 impact human rights by making censorship more
transparent and measurable. THe status code increases transparency
both by signaling the existence of censorship (instead of a much more
broad HTTP error message like HTTP status code 404) as well as
providing details of the legal restriction, which legal authority is
imposing it, and what class of resources it applies to. This
empowers the user to seek redress.
4.6.8. Middleboxes
On the current Internet, transparency on how packets reach a
destination is no longer a given. This is due to the increased
presence of firewalls, spam filters, and network address translators
networks (NATs) - or middleboxes as these hosts are often called -
that make use of higher-layer fields to function [Walfish]. This
development is contentious. The debate also unfolded at the IETF,
specifically at the Session Protocol Underneath Datagrams (SPUD)
Birds of a Feather (BOF) meeting held at the IETF conference in March
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2015. The discussion at the BOF focused on questions about adding
meta-data, or other information to traffic flows, to enable the
sharing of information with middleboxes in that flow. During the
sessions two competing arguments were distilled. On the one hand
adding additional data would allow for network optimization, and
hence improve traffic carriage. On the other hand, there are risks
of information leakage and other privacy and security concerns.
Middleboxes, and the protocols guiding them, influence individuals'
ability to communicate online freely and privately. Repeatedly
mentioned in the discussion was the danger of intentional and
unintentional censorship that comes with middleboxes, and the IETF's
role to prevent such censorship from happening. It is also regularly
mentioned that middleboxes can stifle free and open innovation.
Middleboxes are becoming a proxy for the debate on the extent to
which commercial interests are a valid reason to undermine the end-
to-end principle. The potential for abuse and censoring, and thus
ultimately the impact of middleboxes on the Internet as a place of
unfiltered, unmonitored freedom of speech, is real. It is impossible
to make any definitive statements about the direction the debate on
middleboxes will take at the IETF. The opinions expressed in the
SPUD BOF and by the various interviewees indicate that a majority of
engineers are trying to mitigate the negative effects of middleboxes
on freedom of speech, but their ability to act is limited by their
larger commercial context that is expanding the use of middleboxes.
4.6.8.1. Content Delivery Networks
Content Delivery Networks (CDN) are an example of middlebox
implementation that can provide a better delivery of content, but at
the same time they also form an extra point of control, which can for
instance (be ordered to) apply certain filters. Since almost by
definition a CDN would be more local to the requester it would seem
it's more likely to be within the loci of the requester's political
or commercial domain and hence out of the practical control of the
originating site whose content is being removed and/or modified. So
while an SDN can be an implementation of a middlebox that increases
good quality access to information, it might also have significant
impact on freedom of expression and access to information.
4.6.9. DDOS attacks
Are Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks a legitimate form of
online protest protected by the right to freedom of speech and
association? Can they be seen as the equivalent to 'million-(wo)men
marches', or sit-ins? Or are they a threat to freedom of expression
and access to information, by limiting access to websites and in
certain cases the freedom of speech of others? These questions are
crucial in our day and age, where political debates, civil
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disobedience and other forms of activism are increasingly moving
online.
Many individuals, not excluding IETF engineers, have argued that DDoS
attacks are fundamentally against freedom of speech. Technically
DDoS attacks are when multiple computers overload the bandwidth or
resources of a website (or other system) by flooding it with traffic,
causing it to temporarily stop being available to users. In their
2010 report Zuckerman et al argue that DDoS attacks are a bad thing
because they are increasingly used by governments to attack and
silence critics. Their research demonstrates that in many countries
independent media outlets and human rights organizations are the
victim of DDoS attacks, which are directly or indirectly linked to
their governments. These types of attacks are particularly
complicated because attribution is difficult, creating a situation in
which governments can effectively censor content, while being able to
deny involvement in the attacks [Zuckerman]. DDoS attacks can thus
stifle freedom of expression, complicate the ability of independent
media and human rights organizations to exercise their right to
(online) freedom of association, while facilitating the ability of
governments to censor dissent. When it comes to comparing DDoS
attacks to protests in offline life, it is important to remember that
only a limited number of DDoS attacks involved solely willing
participants. In most cases, the clients are hacked computers of
unrelated parties that have not consented to being part of a DDoS
(for exceptions see Operation Abibil [Abibil] or the Iranian Green
Movement DDoS [GreenMovement]).
In addition, DDoS attacks are increasingly used as an extortion
tactic, with criminals flooding a website - rendering it inaccessible
- until the owner pays them a certain amount of money to stop the
attack. The costs of mitigating such attacks, either by improving
security to prevent them or paying off the attackers, ends up being
paid by the consumer.
All of these issues seem to suggest that the IETF should try to
ensure that their protocols cannot be used for DDoS attacks.
Decreasing the number of vulnerabilities in the network stacks of
routers or computers, reducing flaws in HTTPS implementations, and
depreciating non-secure HTTP protocols could address this issue. The
IETF can clearly play a role in bringing about some of these changes,
and has indicated in [RFC7258] its commitment to mitigating
'pervasive monitoring (...) in the design of IETF protocols, where
possible.' This means the use of encryption should become standard.
Effectively, for the web this means standardized use of HTTPS. The
IETF could redirect its work such that HTPPS becomes part-and-parcel
of its standards. However, next to the various technical trade-offs
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that this might lead to it is important to consider that DDoS attacks
are sometimes seen as a method for exercising freedom of speech.
DDoS although disruptive, and silencing at times, can also enable as
protest and speech. Or as Sauter [Sauter] argues: 'though DDoS as a
tactic is still relatively novel, it fits within a centuries- long
tradition of breaking laws and disrupting business as usual to make a
political point. These actions aren't simply disruption for
disruption's sake. Rather they serve to help the activist or
dissenter to direct the attention of the public through the
interpolation of difference into routine.' (30-31). An often heard
argument against DDoS attacks is that you cannot construe it as a
means to exercise your right to freedom of speech, when the means
used effectively impede the right of the party on the receiving end
of the attack to exercise that same right. The problem with this
line of argumentation is that it conveniently ignores the fact that
online DDoS attacks are often one of the few effective ways for
activists to gain the attention of the media, the government or other
parties of interest. Simply putting up a website for a cause won't
garner the same amount of attention as directly confronting the issue
via the website of the individual or organization at the heart of the
issue. The ability of activists to do so should be protected,
especially considering the fact that as Sauter (2014:4) explains:
'Collectively, we have allowed the construction of an entire public
sphere, the Internet, which by accidents of evolution and design, has
none of the inherent free speech guarantees we have come to expect.
Dissenting voices are pushed out of the paths of potential audiences,
effectively removing them from the public discourse. There is
nowhere online for an activist to stand with her friends and her
sign. She might set up a dedicated blog--which may or may not ever
be read--but it is much harder for her to stand collectively with
others against a corporate giant in the online space.' Although the
Internet is often compared to public space, it is not. Rather the
opposite. The Internet is almost entirely owned by private entities.
And the IETF plays a crucial role in developing this privatized
commercialized Internet.
From a legal and political perspective, the IETF does not have the
legitimacy to determine when a DDoS is legitimate (in legal or
political terms). It does not have the capability to make this
judgment as a matter of public policy and subsequently translate it
to code. Nor should the IETF try to do so. From a technical
perspective, the difference between a 'legitimate' and 'illegitimate'
DDoS attack is meaningless because it would be extremely difficult
for the IETF to engineer a way to detect that difference. In
addition, there is a need for the IETF to be consistent in the face
of attacks (an attack is an attack is an attack) to maintain the
viability of the network. Arguing that some DDoS attacks should be
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allowed, based on the motivation of the attackers complicates the
work of the IETF. Because it approaches PM regardless of the
motivation of the attackers (see [RFC7258]) for reasoning), taking
the motivation of the attackers into account for DDoS would
indirectly undermine the ability of the IETF to protect the right to
privacy because it introduces an element of inconsistency into how
the IETF deals with attacks.
David Clark recently published a paper warning that the future of the
Internet is in danger. He argues that the private sector control
over the Internet is too strong, limiting the myriad of ways in which
it can be used [Daedalus], including for freedom of speech. But just
because freedom of speech, dissent, and protest are human rights, and
DDoS is a potential expression of those rights, doesn't mean that
DDoS in and of itself is a right. To widen the analogy, just because
the Internet is a medium through which the right to freedom of
expression can be exercised does not make access to the Internet or
specific ICTs or NCTs a human right. Uses of DDoS might or might not
be legitimate for political reasons, but the IETF has no means or
methods to assess this, and in general enabling DDoS would mean a
deterioration of the network and thus freedom of expression.
In summation, the IETF cannot be expected to take a moral stance on
DDoS attacks, or create protocols to enable some attacks and inhibit
others. But what it can do is critically reflect on its role in
creating a commercialized Internet without a defacto public space or
inherent protections for freedom of speech.
4.7. Current Status: Apply human rights technical definitions to the
cases mapped
4.7.1. Human Rights Threats
The human rights threats on the Internet come in a myriad of forms.
Protocols and standards can harm or enable the right to freedom of
expression, right to non-discrimination, right to equal protection,
right to be presumed innocence, right to participate in cultural
life, arts and science, right to freedom of assembly and association,
and the right to security. An end-user who is denied access to
certain services, data or websites may be unable to disclose vital
information about the malpractices of a government or other
authority. A person whose communications are monitored may be
prevented from exercising their right to freedom of association. In
a worst-case scenario, protocols that leak information can lead to
physical danger. A realistic example to consider is when opposition
leaders in totalitarian regimes are subjected to torture on the basis
of information gathered by the regime through information leakage in
protocols.
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This sections details several 'common' threats to human rights,
indicating how each of these can lead to human rights violations/
harms and present several examples of how these threats to human
rights materialize on the Internet. This threat modeling is inspired
by [RFC6973] Privacy Considerations for Internet Protocols, which
bases itself on security threat analysis. This method is by no means
a perfect solution for assessing human rights risks in Internet
protocols and systems; it is however the best approach currently
available. Certain human rights threats are indirectly considered in
Internet protocols as part of the standard privacy and security
considerations. Others suggested are tailored specifically to human
rights, and represents considerations not currently considered in
other RFCs.
Many threats, enablers and risks are linked to different rights.
This is not unsurprising if one takes into account that human rights
are interrelated, interdependent and universal. Here however we're
not discussing all human rights because not all human rights are
relevant to ICTs in general and protocols and standards in
particular. This is by no means an attempt to cherry picks right, if
other rights seem relevant, please contact the authors and/or the
hrpc mailinglist.
4.7.2. Human Rights Guidelines
This section provides guidance for document authors in the form of a
questionnaire about a protocol being designed. The questionnaire may
be useful at any point in the design process, particularly after
document authors have developed a high-level protocol model as
described in [RFC4101].
Note that the guidance provided in this section does not recommend
specific practices. The range of protocols developed in the IETF is
too broad to make recommendations about particular uses of data or
how human rights might be balanced against other design goals.
However, by carefully considering the answers to each question,
document authors should be able to produce a comprehensive analysis
that can serve as the basis for discussion of whether the protocol
adequately protects against human rights threats. This guidance is
meant to help the thought process of a human rights analysis; it does
not provide specific directions for how to write a human rights
protocol considerations section (following the example set in
[RFC6973]).
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4.7.2.1. Right to freedom of expression
4.7.2.1.1. Connectivity
Does your protocol honor the end-to-end principle?
4.7.2.1.2. Privacy
Did you have a look at the Guidelines in the Privacy Considerations
for Internet Protocols [RFC6973] section 7? Does your protocol in
any way impact the confidentiality of protocol metadata? Does your
protocol countering traffic analysis, or data minimisation?
4.7.2.1.3. Security
Did you have a look at Guidelines for Writing RFC Text on Security
Considerations [RFC3552]?
4.7.2.1.4. Content agnosticism
If your protocol impact packet handling, does it look at the packet
content? Is it making decisions based on the content of the packet?
Is the protocol transparent about its decision? Does your protocol
prioritize certain content or services over others?
4.7.2.1.5. Internationalization
Does your protocol have text string that are readable or entered by
humans? Does your protocol allow Unicode encoded in UTF-8 only,
thereby shifting conversion issues away from individual choices? Did
you have a look at [RFC6365]?
4.7.2.1.6. Censorship resistance
Does your protocol make censorship easier by exposing specific
identifiers that could be sensitive for filtering. When filtering is
happening, does your protocol help make it apparent or transparent?
4.7.2.1.7. Open Standards
Is your protocol fully documented in a way that it could be easily
implemented, improved, build upon and/or further developed. Is there
any proprietary code needed for the implementation, running or
further development of your protocol?
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4.7.2.1.8. Heterogeneity Support
Does your protocol support heterogeneity by design? Does your
protocol allow for multiple types of hardware? Does your protocol
allow for multiple types of application protocols?
4.7.2.2. Right to non-discrimination
4.7.2.2.1. Anonymity
Did you have a look at the Privacy Considerations for Internet
Protocols [RFC6973], especially section 6.1.1 ?
4.7.2.2.2. Privacy
See above
4.7.2.2.3. Pseudonymity
Did you have a look at the Privacy Considerations for Internet
Protocols [RFC6973], especially section 6.1.2 ?
4.7.2.2.4. Content agnosticism
See above
4.7.2.2.5. Accessibility
Is your protocol optimized for low bandwidth and high latency
connections? Could your protocol also be developed in a stateless
manner?
4.7.2.3. Right to equal protection
4.7.2.3.1. Content agnosticism
See above
4.7.2.4. Right to be presumed innocent
Is is possible to deploy your protocol without a single point of
control? If applicable, can it also implemented in a federated way?
4.7.2.4.1. Anonymity
See above
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4.7.2.4.2. Privacy
See above
4.7.2.4.3. Security
See above
4.7.2.5. Right to political participation
4.7.2.5.1. Accessibility
when websites, web technologies, or web tools are badly designed,
they can create barriers that exclude people from using the Web. Is
your protocol designed to provide an enabling environment for people
with disabilities? It might be relevant to look at the W3C Web
Accessibility Initiative for examples and guidance.
4.7.2.5.2. Internationalization
See above
4.7.2.5.3. Censorship resistance
See above
4.7.2.6. Right to participate in cultural life, arts and science
4.7.2.6.1. Open Standards
See above
4.7.2.6.2. Localization
Does your protocol live up to standards of internationalization (see
above)? Have you considered localizing your protocol for relevant
audiences?
4.7.2.6.3. Internationalization
See above
4.7.2.6.4. Censorship resistance
See above
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4.7.2.7. Right to freedom of assembly and association
4.7.2.7.1. Connectivity
See above
4.7.2.7.2. Decentralization
Does your protocol contribute to more centralized points of control?
Can your protocol be implemented without one single point of control.
If applicable, can your protocol be deployed in a federated manner?
4.7.2.7.3. Censorship resistance
See above
4.7.2.7.4. Pseudonymity
See above
4.7.2.7.5. Anonymity
See above
4.7.2.8. Security
See above
4.7.2.9. Right to security
4.7.2.9.1. Reliability
Is your protocol fault tolerant? Does it degrade gracefully? Do you
have a documented way to announce degradation? Do you have measures
in place for recovery or partial healing from failure? Is your
protocol able to maintain dependability and performance in the face
of unanticipated changes or circumstances?
4.7.2.9.2. Confidentiality
(cf [RFC6973] ) Which information related to identifiers or data is
exposed to each other protocol entity (i.e., recipients,
intermediaries, and enablers)? Are there ways for protocol
implementers to choose to limit the information shared with each
entity? Are there operational controls available to limit the
information shared with each entity?
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What controls or consent mechanisms does the protocol define or
require before personal data or identifiers are shared or exposed via
the protocol? If no such mechanisms or controls are specified, is it
expected that control and consent will be handled outside of the
protocol?
Does the protocol provide ways for initiators to share different
information with different recipients? If not, are there mechanisms
that exist outside of the protocol to provide initiators with such
control?
Does the protocol provide ways for initiators to limit which
information is shared with intermediaries? If not, are there
mechanisms that exist outside of the protocol to provide users with
such control? Is it expected that users will have relationships that
govern the use of the information (contractual or otherwise) with
those who operate these intermediaries?
Does the protocol provide ways for initiators to express individuals'
preferences to recipients or intermediaries with regard to the
collection, use, or disclosure of their personal data?
4.7.2.9.3. Integrity
Does your protocol maintain and assure the accuracy of data? Does
your protocol maintain and assure the consistency of data? Does your
protocol in any way allow for the data to be (intentionally or
unintentionally) altered?
4.7.2.9.4. Authenticity
Do you have enough measures to confirm the truth of an attribute of a
single piece of data or entity? Can the attributes get garbled along
the way (see security)? If relevant have you implemented IPsec and
other Standard Security Best Practices?
4.7.2.9.5. Anonymity
See above
4.7.2.10. Right to education
4.7.2.10.1. Acceptability
Do your protocols adhere to the principle of non-discrimination (see
above)? Do your protocols adhere to the principle of content
agnosticism (see above)?
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4.7.2.10.2. Availability
Do your protocols use or depend on proprietary code? Also see 'Open
Standards' above. Also see 'Connectivity' above.
4.7.2.10.3. Accessibility
See above
4.7.2.10.4. Adaptability
Could your protocol stifle or hinder permissionless innovation in any
way? See 'Connectivity' above
5. Next Steps of the Methodology still to be developed
5.1. Future research questions
All of the steps mentioned above raise the following question that
need to be addressed after the research methodological steps outlined
above have been completed:
How can the rights enabling environment be safeguarded in (future)
protocol development?
How can (nontransparent) human rights violations be minimized in
(future) protocol development?
Can we propose guidelines to protect the Internet as a human-rights-
enabling environment in future protocol development, specially in
relation to freedom of expression and freedom of association, in a
manner similar to the work done for Privacy Considerations in
[RFC6973] ?
Assuming that the research produces useful results, can the objective
evolve into the creation of a set of recommended considerations for
the protection of applicable human rights?
6. Acknowledgements
Special thanks to all members of the hrpc RG who contributed to this
draft. The following deserve a special mention: Stephane Bortzmeyer,
dkg, Tim Sammut and Barry Shein. We would also like to thank Molly
Sauter, Arturo Filasto, Eleanor Saitta and all other who provided
input on the draft or the ideas.
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7. Security Considerations
As this draft concerns a research document, there are no security
considerations.
8. IANA Considerations
This document has no actions for IANA.
9. Research Group Information
The discussion list for the IRTF Human Rights Protocol Considerations
proposed working group is located at the e-mail address hrpc@ietf.org
[3]. Information on the group and information on how to subscribe to
the list is at https://www.irtf.org/mailman/listinfo/hrpc
Archives of the list can be found at: https://www.irtf.org/mail-
archive/web/hrpc/current/index.html
10. References
10.1. Informative References
[Abibil] Danchev, D., "Dissecting 'Operation Ababil' - an OSINT
Analysis", 2012, <http://ddanchev.blogspot.be/2012/09/
dissecting-operation-ababil-osint.html>.
[Appelbaum]
Appelbaum, J., Gibson, A., Kabish, V., Kampf, L., and L.
Ryge, "NSA targets the privacy-conscious", 2015,
<http://daserste.ndr.de/panorama/aktuell/
nsa230_page-1.html>.
[Bray] Bray, T., "A New HTTP Status Code for Legally-restricted
Resources", 2016, <https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-
httpbis-legally-restricted-status-04>.
[Collins] Collins, K., "Hacking Team's oppressive regimes customer
list revealed in hack", 2015,
<http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2015-07/06/
hacking-team-spyware-company-hacked>.
[Daedalus]
Clark, D., "The Contingent Internet", Daedalus Winter
2016, Vol. 145, No. 1. p. 9-17 , 2016,
<http://www.mitpressjournals.org/toc/daed/current>.
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[Douceur] Douceur, J., "The Sybil Attack", 2002,
<http://research.microsoft.com:8082/pubs/74220/
IPTPS2002.pdf>.
[Googlepatent]
Google, ., "Method and device for network traffic
manipulation", 2012, <https://www.google.com/patents/
EP2601774A1?cl=en>.
[GreenMovement]
Villeneuve, N., "Iran DDoS", 2009,
<https://www.nartv.org/2009/06/16/iran-ddos/>.
[HRPC-GLOSSARY]
ten Oever, N., Doria, A., and D. Gillmor, "Human Rights
Protocol Considerations Glossary", 2015,
<https://www.ietf.org/id/draft-dkg-hrpc-glossary-00.txt>.
[Haagsma] Haagsma, L., "Deep dive into QUANTUM INSERT", 2015,
<http://blog.fox-it.com/2015/04/20/
deep-dive-into-quantum-insert/>.
[ID] ten Oever, N., Doria, A., and J. Varon, "Proposal for
research on human rights protocol considerations", 2015,
<http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-doria-hrpc-proposal>.
[Marcak] Marcak, B., Weaver, N., Dalek, J., Ensafi, R., Fifield,
D., McKune, S., Rey, A., Scott-Railton, J., Deibert, R.,
and V. Paxson, "China's Great Fire Cannon", 2015,
<https://citizenlab.org/2015/04/chinas-great-cannon/>.
[Marquis-Boire]
Marquis-Boire, M., "Schrodinger's Cat Video and the Death
of Clear-Text", 2014, <https://citizenlab.org/2014/08/cat-
video-and-the-death-of-clear-text/>.
[PETS2015VPN]
Pera, V., Barbera, M., Tyson, G., Haddadi, H., and A. Mei,
"A Glance through the VPN Looking Glass", 2015,
<http://www.eecs.qmul.ac.uk/~hamed/papers/
PETS2015VPN.pdf>.
[Peterson]
Peterson, A., Gellman, B., and A. Soltani, "Yahoo to make
SSL encryption the default for Webmail users. Finally.",
2013, <http://gmailblog.blogspot.de/2010/01/
default-https-access-for-gmail.html>.
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[RFC0791] Postel, J., "Internet Protocol", STD 5, RFC 791, DOI
10.17487/RFC0791, September 1981,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc791>.
[RFC0894] Hornig, C., "A Standard for the Transmission of IP
Datagrams over Ethernet Networks", STD 41, RFC 894, DOI
10.17487/RFC0894, April 1984,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc894>.
[RFC1035] Mockapetris, P., "Domain names - implementation and
specification", STD 13, RFC 1035, DOI 10.17487/RFC1035,
November 1987, <http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc1035>.
[RFC1631] Egevang, K. and P. Francis, "The IP Network Address
Translator (NAT)", RFC 1631, DOI 10.17487/RFC1631, May
1994, <http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc1631>.
[RFC1958] Carpenter, B., Ed., "Architectural Principles of the
Internet", RFC 1958, DOI 10.17487/RFC1958, June 1996,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc1958>.
[RFC1984] IAB and , "IAB and IESG Statement on Cryptographic
Technology and the Internet", BCP 200, RFC 1984, DOI
10.17487/RFC1984, August 1996,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc1984>.
[RFC2026] Bradner, S., "The Internet Standards Process -- Revision
3", BCP 9, RFC 2026, DOI 10.17487/RFC2026, October 1996,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2026>.
[RFC2460] Deering, S. and R. Hinden, "Internet Protocol, Version 6
(IPv6) Specification", RFC 2460, DOI 10.17487/RFC2460,
December 1998, <http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2460>.
[RFC2639] Hastings, T. and C. Manros, "Internet Printing
Protocol/1.0: Implementer's Guide", RFC 2639, DOI
10.17487/RFC2639, July 1999,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2639>.
[RFC2919] Chandhok, R. and G. Wenger, "List-Id: A Structured Field
and Namespace for the Identification of Mailing Lists",
RFC 2919, DOI 10.17487/RFC2919, March 2001,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2919>.
[RFC3365] Schiller, J., "Strong Security Requirements for Internet
Engineering Task Force Standard Protocols", BCP 61, RFC
3365, DOI 10.17487/RFC3365, August 2002,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc3365>.
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[RFC3552] Rescorla, E. and B. Korver, "Guidelines for Writing RFC
Text on Security Considerations", BCP 72, RFC 3552, DOI
10.17487/RFC3552, July 2003,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc3552>.
[RFC3724] Kempf, J., Austein., R., Ed., and IAB, "The Rise of the
Middle and the Future of End-to-End: Reflections on the
Evolution of the Internet Architecture", RFC 3724, DOI
10.17487/RFC3724, March 2004,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc3724>.
[RFC4101] Rescorla, E. and IAB, "Writing Protocol Models", RFC 4101,
DOI 10.17487/RFC4101, June 2005,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc4101>.
[RFC4303] Kent, S., "IP Encapsulating Security Payload (ESP)", RFC
4303, DOI 10.17487/RFC4303, December 2005,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc4303>.
[RFC4906] Martini, L., Ed., Rosen, E., Ed., and N. El-Aawar, Ed.,
"Transport of Layer 2 Frames Over MPLS", RFC 4906, DOI
10.17487/RFC4906, June 2007,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc4906>.
[RFC5890] Klensin, J., "Internationalized Domain Names for
Applications (IDNA): Definitions and Document Framework",
RFC 5890, DOI 10.17487/RFC5890, August 2010,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5890>.
[RFC5891] Klensin, J., "Internationalized Domain Names in
Applications (IDNA): Protocol", RFC 5891, DOI 10.17487/
RFC5891, August 2010,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5891>.
[RFC5892] Faltstrom, P., Ed., "The Unicode Code Points and
Internationalized Domain Names for Applications (IDNA)",
RFC 5892, DOI 10.17487/RFC5892, August 2010,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5892>.
[RFC5893] Alvestrand, H., Ed. and C. Karp, "Right-to-Left Scripts
for Internationalized Domain Names for Applications
(IDNA)", RFC 5893, DOI 10.17487/RFC5893, August 2010,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5893>.
[RFC5944] Perkins, C., Ed., "IP Mobility Support for IPv4, Revised",
RFC 5944, DOI 10.17487/RFC5944, November 2010,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5944>.
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[RFC6120] Saint-Andre, P., "Extensible Messaging and Presence
Protocol (XMPP): Core", RFC 6120, DOI 10.17487/RFC6120,
March 2011, <http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6120>.
[RFC6162] Turner, S., "Elliptic Curve Algorithms for Cryptographic
Message Syntax (CMS) Asymmetric Key Package Content Type",
RFC 6162, DOI 10.17487/RFC6162, April 2011,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6162>.
[RFC6365] Hoffman, P. and J. Klensin, "Terminology Used in
Internationalization in the IETF", BCP 166, RFC 6365, DOI
10.17487/RFC6365, September 2011,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6365>.
[RFC6783] Levine, J. and R. Gellens, "Mailing Lists and Non-ASCII
Addresses", RFC 6783, DOI 10.17487/RFC6783, November 2012,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6783>.
[RFC6973] Cooper, A., Tschofenig, H., Aboba, B., Peterson, J.,
Morris, J., Hansen, M., and R. Smith, "Privacy
Considerations for Internet Protocols", RFC 6973, DOI
10.17487/RFC6973, July 2013,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6973>.
[RFC7230] Fielding, R., Ed. and J. Reschke, Ed., "Hypertext Transfer
Protocol (HTTP/1.1): Message Syntax and Routing", RFC
7230, DOI 10.17487/RFC7230, June 2014,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7230>.
[RFC7231] Fielding, R., Ed. and J. Reschke, Ed., "Hypertext Transfer
Protocol (HTTP/1.1): Semantics and Content", RFC 7231, DOI
10.17487/RFC7231, June 2014,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7231>.
[RFC7232] Fielding, R., Ed. and J. Reschke, Ed., "Hypertext Transfer
Protocol (HTTP/1.1): Conditional Requests", RFC 7232, DOI
10.17487/RFC7232, June 2014,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7232>.
[RFC7234] Fielding, R., Ed., Nottingham, M., Ed., and J. Reschke,
Ed., "Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP/1.1): Caching",
RFC 7234, DOI 10.17487/RFC7234, June 2014,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7234>.
[RFC7235] Fielding, R., Ed. and J. Reschke, Ed., "Hypertext Transfer
Protocol (HTTP/1.1): Authentication", RFC 7235, DOI
10.17487/RFC7235, June 2014,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7235>.
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[RFC7236] Reschke, J., "Initial Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP)
Authentication Scheme Registrations", RFC 7236, DOI
10.17487/RFC7236, June 2014,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7236>.
[RFC7237] Reschke, J., "Initial Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP)
Method Registrations", RFC 7237, DOI 10.17487/RFC7237,
June 2014, <http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7237>.
[RFC7258] Farrell, S. and H. Tschofenig, "Pervasive Monitoring Is an
Attack", BCP 188, RFC 7258, DOI 10.17487/RFC7258, May
2014, <http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7258>.
[RFC7574] Bakker, A., Petrocco, R., and V. Grishchenko, "Peer-to-
Peer Streaming Peer Protocol (PPSPP)", RFC 7574, DOI
10.17487/RFC7574, July 2015,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7574>.
[RFC7626] Bortzmeyer, S., "DNS Privacy Considerations", RFC 7626,
DOI 10.17487/RFC7626, August 2015,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7626>.
[RSF] RSF, ., "Syria using 34 Blue Coat Servers to spy on
Internet users", 2013, <https://en.rsf.org/syria-syria-
using-34-blue-coat-servers-23-05-2013,44664.html>.
[Rideout] Rideout, A., "Making security easier", 2008,
<http://gmailblog.blogspot.de/2008/07/
making-security-easier.html>.
[Sauter] Sauter, M., "The Coming Swarm", Bloomsbury, London , 2014.
[Schillace]
Schillace, S., "Default https access for Gmail", 2010,
<http://gmailblog.blogspot.de/2010/01/
default-https-access-for-gmail.html>.
[Schneier]
Schneier, B., "Attacking Tor - how the NSA targets users'
online anonymity", 2013,
<http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/04/
tor-attacks-nsa-users-online-anonymity>.
[UDHR] United Nations General Assembly, "The Universal
Declaration of Human Rights", 1948,
<http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/>.
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[Walfish] Walfish, M., Stribling, J., Krohn, M., Balakrishnan, H.,
Morris, R., and S. Shenker, "Middleboxes No Longer
Considered Harmful", 2004, <http://nms.csail.mit.edu/doa>.
[Zuckerman]
Zuckerman, E., Roberts, H., McGrady, R., York, J., and J.
Palfrey, "Report on Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS)
Attacks", The Berkman Center for Internet and Society at
Harvard University , 2010,
<https://cyber.law.harvard.edu/sites/
cyber.law.harvard.edu/
files/2010_DDoS_Attacks_Human_Rights_and_Media.pdf>.
[ars] Anderson, N., "P2P researchers - use a blocklist or you
will be tracked... 100% of the time", 2007,
<http://arstechnica.com/uncategorized/2007/10/p2p-
researchers-use-a-blocklist-or-you-will-be-tracked-100-of-
the-time/>.
[bbc-wikileaks]
BBC, "Whistle-blower site taken offline", 2008,
<http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7250916.stm>.
[bitmessage]
Bitmessage, "Bitmessage Wiki?", 2014,
<https://bitmessage.org/wiki/Main_Page>.
[caida] Dainotti, A., Squarcella, C., Aben, E., Claffy, K.,
Chiesa, M., Russo, M., and A. Pescape, "Analysis of
Country-wide Internet Outages Caused by Censorship", 2013,
<http://www.caida.org/publications/papers/2014/
outages_censorship/outages_censorship.pdf>.
[draft-hall-censorship-tech-01]
Hall, J., Aaron, M., and B. Jones, "A Survey of Worldwide
Censorship Techniques", 2015,
<https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-hall-censorship-tech-
01>.
[freenet1]
Freenet, "What is Freenet?", n.d.,
<https://freenetproject.org/whatis.html>.
[freenet2]
Ian Clarke, ., "The Philosphy behind Freenet?", n.d.,
<https://freenetproject.org/philosophy.html>.
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[greatfirewall]
Anonymous, ., "Towards a Comprehensive Picture of the
Great Firewall's DNS Censorship", 2014,
<https://www.usenix.org/system/files/conference/foci14/
foci14-anonymous.pdf>.
[namecoin]
Namecoin, "Namecoin - Decentralized secure names", 2015,
<https://namecoin.info/>.
[natusage]
Maier, G., Schneider, F., and A. Feldmann, "NAT usage in
Residential Broadband networks", 2011,
<http://www.icsi.berkeley.edu/pubs/networking/
NATusage11.pdf>.
[pidgin] js, . and Pidgin Developers, "-XMPP- Invisible mode
violating standard", July 2015,
<https://developer.pidgin.im/ticket/4322>.
[quic] The Chromium Project, "QUIC, a multiplexed stream
transport over UDP", 2014, <https://www.chromium.org/
quic>.
[spdy] The Chromium Project, "SPDY - An experimental protocol for
a faster web", 2009, <https://www.chromium.org/spdy/spdy-
whitepaper>.
[spiegel] SPIEGEL, "Prying Eyes - Inside the NSA's War on Internet
Security", 2014,
<http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/
inside-the-nsa-s-war-on-internet-security-a-1010361.html>.
[techyum] Violet, ., "Official - vb.ly Link Shortener Seized by
Libyan Government", 2010, <http://techyum.com/2010/10/
official-vb-ly-link-shortener-seized-by-libyan-
government/>.
[torproject]
The Tor Project, ., "Tor Project - Anonymity Online",
2007, <https://www.torproject.org/>.
[torrentfreak1]
Van der Sar, E., "Proposal for research on human rights
protocol considerations", 2015, <https://torrentfreak.com/
is-your-isp-messing-with-bittorrent-traffic-find-out-
140123/>.
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[torrentfreak2]
Andy, ., "LAWYERS SENT 109,000 PIRACY THREATS IN GERMANY
DURING 2013", 2014, <https://torrentfreak.com/lawyers-
sent-109000-piracy-threats-in-germany-during-
2013-140304/>.
[turkey] Akguel, M. and M. Kirlidoğ, "Internet censorship in
Turkey", 2015,
<http://policyreview.info/articles/analysis/
internet-censorship-turkey>.
[ververis]
Vasilis, V., Kargiotakis, G., Filasto, A., Fabian, B., and
A. Alexandros, "Understanding Internet Censorship Policy -
The Case of Greece", 2015,
<https://www.usenix.org/system/files/conference/foci15/
foci15-paper-ververis-update.pdf>.
[wikileaks]
Sladek, T. and E. Broese, "Market Survey - Detection &
Filtering Solutions to Identify File Transfer of Copyright
Protected Content for Warner Bros. and movielabs", 2011,
<https://wikileaks.org/sony/docs/05/docs/Anti-Piracy/CDSA/
EANTC-Survey-1.5-unsecured.pdf>.
[xmppmanifesto]
Saint-Andre, P. and . XMPP Operators, "A Public Statement
Regarding Ubiquitous Encryption on the XMPP Network",
2014,
<https://raw.githubusercontent.com/stpeter/manifesto/
master/manifesto.txt>.
10.2. URIs
[1] mailto:node@domain/home
[2] mailto:node@domain/work
[3] mailto:hrpc@ietf.org
Authors' Addresses
Joana Varon
Coding Rights
EMail: joana@codingrights.org
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Niels ten Oever
Article19
EMail: niels@article19.org
Claudio Guarnieri
Centre for Internet and Human Rights
EMail: nex@nex.sx
Will Scott
University of Washington
EMail: wrs@cs.washington.edu
Corinne Cath
Oxford Internet Institute
EMail: corinne.cath@oii.ox.ac.uk
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