Guidelines for Human Rights Protocol and Architecture ConsiderationsCentre for Internet and Societygurshabad@cis-india.orgUniversity of Amsterdammail@nielstenoever.net
IRTF
Human Rights Protocol Considerations Research GroupInternet-DraftThis document sets guidelines for human rights considerations for developers working on network protocols and architectures, similar to the work done on the guidelines for privacy considerations . This is an updated version of the guidelines for human rights considerations in .This document outlines a set of human rights protocol considerations for protocol developers. It provides questions engineers should ask themselves when developing or improving protocols if they want to understand how their decisions can potentially influence the exercise of human rights on the Internet. It should be noted that the impact of a protocol cannot solely be deduced from its design, but its usage and implementation should also be studied to form a full protocol human rights impact assessment.The questions are based on the research performed by the Human Rights Protocol Considerations (hrpc) research group which has been documented before these considerations. The research establishes that human rights relate to standards and protocols, and offers a common vocabulary of technical concepts that influence human rights and how these technical concepts can be combined to ensure that the Internet remains an enabling environment for human rights. With this, the contours of a model for developing human rights protocol considerations has taken shape.This document is an iteration of the guidelines that can be found in . The methods for conducting human rights reviews (Section 3.2), and guidelines for human rights considerations (Section 3.3) in this document are being tested for relevance, accuracy, and validity. The understanding of what human rights are is based on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and subsequent treaties that jointly form the body of international human rights law.This document does not provide a detailed taxonomy of the nature of (potential) human rights violations, whether direct or indirect, long-term or short-term, certain protocol choices might present. In part because this is highly context-dependent, and in part, because this document aims to provide a practical set of guidelines. However, further research in this field would definitely benefit developers and implementers.Threats to the exercise of human rights on the Internet come in many forms. Protocols and standards may harm or enable the right to freedom of expression, right to freedom of information, right to non-discrimination, right to equal protection, right to participate in cultural life, arts and science, right to freedom of assembly and association, right to privacy, and the right to security. An end-user who is denied access to certain services or content 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 or dissuaded from exercising their right to freedom of association or participate in political processes . In a worst-case scenario, protocols that leak information can lead to physical danger. A realistic example to consider is when individuals perceived as threats to the state are subjected to torture, extra-judicial killing or detention on the basis of information gathered by state agencies through the monitoring of network traffic.This document presents several examples of how threats to human rights materialize on the Internet. This threat modeling is inspired by Privacy Considerations for Internet Protocols, which is based on security threat analysis. This method is a work in progress and by no means a perfect solution for assessing human rights risks in Internet protocols and systems. Certain specific human rights threats are indirectly considered in Internet protocols as part of the security considerations , but privacy considerations or reviews, let alone human rights impact assessments of protocols are not standardized or implemented.Many threats, enablers, and risks are linked to different rights. This is not surprising if one takes into account that human rights are interrelated, interdependent, and indivisible. 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 : “The main source of the values of human rights is the International Bill of Human Rights that is composed of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights along with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights . In the light of several cases of Internet censorship, the Human Rights Council Resolution 20/8 was adopted in 2012, affirming that “the same rights that people have offline must also be protected online.” In 2015, the Charter of Human Rights and Principles for the Internet was developed and released. According to these documents, some examples of human rights relevant for ICT systems are human dignity (Art. 1 UDHR), non-discrimination (Art. 2), rights to life, liberty and security (Art. 3), freedom of opinion and expression (Art. 19), freedom of assembly and association (Art. 20), rights to equal protection, legal remedy, fair trial, due process, presumed innocent (Art. 7–11), appropriate social and international order (Art. 28), participation in public affairs (Art. 21), participation in cultural life, protection of the moral and material interests resulting from any scientific, literary or artistic production of which [they are] the author (Art. 27), and privacy (Art. 12).” A partial catalog of human rights related to Information and Communications Technologies, including economic rights, can be found in .This is by no means an attempt to exclude specific rights or prioritize some rights over others.Human rights reviews can take place at different stages of the development process of an Internet-Draft. However, generally speaking, it is easier to influence the development of a technology at earlier stages than at later stages. This does not mean that reviews at last-call are not relevant, but they are less likely to result in significant changes in the reviewed document.Methods for analyzing technology for specific human rights impacts are still quite nascent. Currently, five methods have been explored by the Human Rights Review Team, often in conjunction with each other:This analysis of Internet-Drafts uses the model as described in section 3.3. The outlined categories and questions can be used to review an Internet-Draft. The advantage of this is that it provides a known overview, and document authors can go back to this document as well as to understand the background and the context.When reviewing an Internet-Draft, specific human rights impacts can become apparent by doing a close reading of the draft and seeking to understand how it might affect networks or society. While less structured than the straight use of the human rights considerations model, this analysis may lead to new speculative understandings of links between human rights and protocols.Interviews with document authors, active members of the Working Group, or experts in the field can help explore the characteristics of the protocol and its effects. There are two main advantages to this approach: one the one hand, it allows the reviewer to gain a deeper understanding of the (intended) workings of the protocol; on the other hand, it also allows for the reviewer to start a discussion with experts or even document authors, which can help the review gain traction when it is published.Protocols impact users of the Internet. Interviews can help the reviewer understand how protocols affect the people that use the protocols. Since human rights are best understood from the perspective of the rights-holder, this approach will improve the understanding of the real world effects of the technology. At the same time, it can be hard to attribute specific changes to a particular protocol, this is of course even harder when a protocol has not been (widely) deployed.The reality of deployed protocols can be at odds with the expectations during the protocol design and development phase . When a specification already has associated running code, the code can be analyzed either in an experimental setting or on the Internet where its impact can be observed. In contrast to reviewing the draft text, this approach can allow the reviewer to understand how the specifications works in practice, and potentially what unknown or unexpected effects the technology has.This section provides guidance for document authors in the form of a questionnaire about protocols and how technical decisions can shape the exercise of human rights. The questionnaire may be useful at any point in the design process, particularly after the document authors have developed a high-level protocol model as described in . These guidelines do not seek to replace any existing referenced specifications, but rather contribute to them and look at the design process from a human rights perspective.Protocols and Internet Standards might benefit from a documented discussion of potential human rights risks arising from potential misapplications of the protocol or technology described in the RFC. This might be coupled with an Applicability Statement for that RFC.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 the following questions, document authors should be able to produce a comprehensive analysis that can serve as the basis for discussion on whether the protocol adequately takes specific human rights threats into account. 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 considerations section (following the example set in ).In considering these questions, authors will need to be aware of the potential of technical advances or the passage of time to undermine protections. In general, considerations of rights are likely to be more effective if they are considered given a purpose and specific use cases, rather than as abstract absolute goals.Also note that while the section uses the word, ‘protocol’, the principles identified in these questions may be applicable to other types of solutions (extensions to existing protocols, architecture for solutions to specific problems, etc.).Question(s):
Does your protocol add application-specific functions to intermediary nodes? Could this functionality be added to end nodes instead of intermediary nodes? Is your protocol optimized for low bandwidth and high latency connections? Could your protocol also be developed in a stateless manner?Explanation:
The end-to-end principle holds that ‘the intelligence is end to end rather than hidden in the network’ . Using the end-to-end principle in protocol design is important to ensure the reliability and security of data transmissions.Considering the fact that network quality and conditions vary across geography and time, it is also important to design protocols such that they are reliable even on low bandwidth and high latency connections.Example:
Encrypting connections, like done with HTTPS, can add a significant network overhead and consequently make web resources less accessible to those with low bandwidth and/or high latency connections. Encrypting traffic is a net positive for privacy and security, and thus protocol designers can acknowledge the tradeoffs of connectivity made by such decisions.Impacts:Right to freedom of expressionRight to freedom of assembly and associationQuestion(s):
Did you have a look at the Guidelines in the Privacy Considerations for Internet Protocols section 7? Does your protocol maintain the confidentiality of metadata? Could your protocol counter traffic analysis? Does your protocol adhere to data minimization principles? Does your document identify potentially sensitive data logged by your protocol and/or for how long that needs to be retained for technical reasons?Explanation:
Privacy refers to the right of an entity (normally a person), acting on its own behalf, to determine the degree to which it will interact with its environment, including the degree to which the entity is willing to share its personal information with others. . If a protocol provides insufficient privacy protection it may have a negative impact on freedom of expression as users self-censor for fear of surveillance, or find themselves unable to express themselves freely.Example:
See Impacts:Right to freedom of expressionRight to non-discriminationQuestion(s):
If your protocol impacts packet handling, does it use user data (packet data that is not included in the header)? Is it making decisions based on the payload of the packet? Does your protocol prioritize certain content or services over others in the routing process? Is the protocol transparent about the prioritization that is made (if any)?Explanation:
Content agnosticism refers to the notion that network traffic is treated identically regardless of payload, with some exceptions where it comes to effective traffic handling, for instance where it comes to delay-tolerant or delay-sensitive packets, based on the header.Example:
Content agnosticism prevents payload-based discrimination against packets. This is important because changes to this principle can lead to a two-tiered Internet, where certain packets are prioritized over others on the basis of their content. Effectively this would mean that although all users are entitled to receive their packets at a certain speed, some users become more equal than others.Impacts:Right to freedom of expressionRight to non-discriminationRight to equal protectionQuestion(s):
Did you have a look at Guidelines for Writing RFC Text on Security Considerations ? Have you found any attacks that are somewhat related to your protocol/specification, yet considered out of scope of your document? Would these attacks be pertinent to the human rights enabling features of the Internet (as described throughout this document)?Explanation:
Security is not a single monolithic property of a protocol or system, but rather a series of related but somewhat independent properties. Not all of these properties are required for every application. Since communications are carried out by systems and access to systems is through communications channels, security goals obviously interlock, but they can also be independently provided. .Example:
See .Impacts:Right to freedom of expressionRight to freedom of assembly and associationRight to non-discriminationRight to securityQuestion(s):
Does your protocol or specification define text string elements, in the payload or headers, that have to be understood or entered by humans? Does your specification allow Unicode? If so, do you accept texts in one charset (which must be UTF-8), or several (which is dangerous for interoperability)? If character sets or encodings other than UTF-8 are allowed, does your specification mandate a proper tagging of the charset? Did you have a look at ?Explanation:
Internationalization refers to the practice of making protocols, standards, and implementations usable in different languages and scripts (see Localization). In the IETF, internationalization means to add or improve the handling of non-ASCII text in a protocol. A different perspective, more appropriate to protocols that are designed for global use from the beginning, is the definition used by W3C:Many protocols that handle text only handle one charset (US-ASCII), or leave the question of what coded character set and encoding are used up to local guesswork (which leads, of course, to interoperability problems). If multiple charsets are permitted, they must be explicitly identified . Adding non-ASCII text to a protocol allows the protocol to handle more scripts, hopefully representing users across the world. In today’s world, that is normally best accomplished by allowing Unicode encoded in UTF-8 only.In the current IETF policy , internationalization is aimed at user-facing strings, not protocol elements, such as the verbs used by some text-based protocols. (Do note that some strings are both content and protocol elements, such as the identifiers.) Given the IETF’s mission to make the Internet a global network of networks, developers should ensure that protocols work with languages apart from English and character sets apart from Latin characters. It is therefore crucial that at least the content carried by the protocol can be in any script, and that all scripts are treated equally.Example:
See localizationImpacts:Right to freedom of expressionRight to political participationRight to participate in cultural life, arts and scienceQuestion(s):
Does your protocol make it apparent or transparent when access to a resource is restricted and reasons therefor? Can your protocol contribute to filtering in a way it could be implemented to censor data or services? Could this be designed to ensure this doesn’t happen? Does your protocol introduce new identifiers or reuse existing identifiers (e.g. MAC addresses) that might be associated with persons or content?Explanation:
Censorship resistance refers to the methods and measures to prevent Internet censorship. See for a survey of censorship techniques employed across the world, which lays out protocol properties that have been exploited to censor access to information.Example:
Identifiers of content exposed within a protocol might be used to facilitate censorship, as in the case of Application Layer based censorship, which affects protocols like HTTP. In HTTP, denial or restriction of access can be made apparent by the use of status code 451, which allows server operators to operate with greater transparency in circumstances where issues of law or public policy affect their operation .If a protocol potentially enables censorship, protocol designers should strive towards creating error codes that capture different scenarios (blocked due to administrative policy, unavailable because of legal requirements, etc.) to minimize ambiguity for end-users.In the development of the IPv6 protocol, it was discussed to embed a Media Access Control (MAC) address into unique IP addresses. This would make it possible for ‘eavesdroppers and other information collectors to identify when different addresses used in different transactions actually correspond to the same node. This is why standardisation efforts like Privacy Extensions for Stateless Address Autoconfiguration in IPv6 and MAC address randomization have been pursued.Impacts:Right to freedom of expressionRight to political participationRight to participate in cultural life, arts, and scienceRight to freedom of assembly and associationQuestion(s):
Is your protocol fully documented in a way that it could be easily implemented, improved, built upon and/or further developed? Do you depend on proprietary code for the implementation, running or further development of your protocol? Does your protocol favor a particular proprietary specification over technically-equivalent competing specification(s), for instance by making any incorporated vendor specification “required” or “recommended” ? Do you normatively reference another standard that is not available without cost (and could you do without it)? Are you aware of any patents that would prevent your standard from being fully implemented ?Explanation:
The Internet was able to be developed into the global network of networks because of the existence of open, non-proprietary standards . They are crucial for enabling interoperability. Yet, open standards are not explicitly defined within the IETF. On the subject, states: “Various national and international standards bodies, such as ANSI, ISO, IEEE, and ITU-T, develop a variety of protocol and service specifications that are similar to Technical Specifications defined at the IETF. National and international groups also publish “implementors’ agreements” that are analogous to Applicability Statements, capturing a body of implementation-specific detail concerned with the practical application of their standards. All of these are considered to be “open external standards” for the purposes of the Internet Standards Process.” Similarly, does not define open standards but does emphasize the importance of an “open process”, i.e. “any interested person can participate in the work, know what is being decided, and make his or her voice heard on the issue.”Open standards (and open source software) allow users to glean information about how the tools they are using work, including the tools’ security and privacy properties. They additionally allow for permissionless innovation, which is important to maintain the freedom and ability to freely create and deploy new protocols on top of the communications constructs that currently exist. It is at the heart of the Internet as we know it, and to maintain its fundamentally open nature, we need to be mindful of the need for developing open standards.All standards that need to be normatively implemented should be freely available and with reasonable protection for patent infringement claims, so it can also be implemented in open source or free software. Patents have often held back open standardization or been used against those deploying open standards, particularly in the domain of cryptography . An exemption of this is sometimes made when a protocol is standardized that normatively relies on specifications produced by others SDOs that are not freely available. Patents in open standards or in normative references to other standards should have a patent disclosure , royalty-free licensing , or some other form of fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory terms.Example:
describes a system for providing critical end-user notifications to web browsers, which has been deployed by Comcast, an Internet Service Provider (ISP). Such a notification system is being used to provide near-immediate notifications to customers, such as to warn them that their traffic exhibits patterns that are indicative of malware or virus infection. There are other proprietary systems that can perform such notifications, but those systems utilize Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) technology. In contrast, that document describes a system that does not rely upon DPI, and is instead based on open IETF standards and open source applications.Impacts:Right to freedom of expressionRight to participate in cultural life, arts and scienceQuestion(s):
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? Is your protocol liberal in what it receives and handles? Will it remain usable and open if the context changes? Does your protocol allow there to be well-defined extension points? Do these extension points allow for open innovation?Explanation:
The Internet is characterized by heterogeneity on many levels: devices and nodes, router scheduling algorithms and queue management mechanisms, routing protocols, levels of multiplexing, protocol versions and implementations, underlying link layers (e.g., point-to-point, multi-access links, wireless, FDDI, etc.), in the traffic mix and in the levels of congestion at different times and places. Moreover, as the Internet is composed of autonomous organizations and Internet service providers, each with their own separate policy concerns, there is a large heterogeneity of administrative domains and pricing structures. As a result, the heterogeneity principle proposed in needs to be supported by design .Heterogeneity support in protocols can thus enable a wide range of devices and (by extension) users to participate on the network.Example:
Heterogeneity is inevitable and needs be supported by design. Multiple types of hardware must be allowed for, e.g. transmission speeds differing by at least 7 orders of magnitude, various computer word lengths, and hosts ranging from memory-starved microprocessors up to massively parallel supercomputers. Multiple types of application protocols must be allowed for, ranging from the simplest such as remote login up to the most complex such as commit protocols for distributed databases. .Impacts:Right to freedom of expressionRight to political participationQuestion(s):
Have you considered the Privacy Considerations for Internet Protocols , especially section 6.1.2 ? Does the protocol collect personally derived data? Does the protocol generate or process anything that can be, or be tightly correlated with, personally identifiable information? Does the protocol utilize data that is personally-derived, i.e. derived from the interaction of a single person, or their device or address? Does this protocol generate personally derived data, and if so how will that data be handled?Explanation:
Pseudonymity - the ability to use a persistent identifier not linked to one’s offline identity - is an important feature for many end-users, as it allows them different degrees of disguised identity and privacy online. This can allow an enabling environment for users to exercise other rights, including freedom of expression and political participation, without fear or direct identification or discrimination.Example:
While designing a standard that exposes personal data, it is important to consider ways to mitigate the obvious impacts. While pseudonyms cannot be simply reverse engineered - some early approaches simply took approaches such as simple hashing of IP addresses, these could then be simply reversed by generating a hash for each potential IP address and comparing it to the pseudonym - limiting the exposure of personal data remains important.Pseudonymity means using a pseudonym instead of one’s “real” name. There are many reasons for users to use pseudonyms, for instance to: hide their gender, protect themselves against harassment, protect their families’ privacy, frankly discuss sexuality, or develop an artistic or journalistic persona without repercussions from an employer, (potential) customers, or social surrounding. The difference between anonymity and pseudonymity is that a pseudonym often is persistent. “Pseudonymity is strengthened when less personal data can be linked to the pseudonym; when the same pseudonym is used less often and across fewer contexts; and when independently chosen pseudonyms are more frequently used for new actions (making them, from an observer’s or attacker’s perspective, unlinkable).” Impacts:Right to non-discriminationRight to freedom of expressionRight to political participationRight to freedom of assembly and associationQuestion(s): Does your protocol make use of persistent identifiers? Can it be done without them? Did you have a look at the Privacy Considerations for Internet Protocols , especially section 6.1.1 of that document?Explanation: Anonymity refers to the condition of an identity being unknown or concealed . Even though full anonymity is hard to achieve, it is a non-binary concept. Making pervasive monitoring and tracking harder is important for many users as well as for the IETF . Achieving a higher level of anonymity is an important feature for many end-users, as it allows them different degrees of privacy online. Anonymity is an inherent part of the right to freedom of opinion and expression and the right to privacy. Avoid adding identifiers, options or configurations that create or might lead to patterns or regularities that are not explicitly required by the protocol.If your protocol collects data and distributes it (see ), you should anonymize the data, but keep in mind that “anonymizing” data is notoriously hard. Do not think that just dropping the last byte of an IP address “anonymizes” data. If your protocol allows for identity management, there should be a clear barrier between the identities to ensure that they cannot (easily) be associated with each other.Often protocols expose personal data, it is important to consider ways to mitigate the obvious privacy impacts. A protocol that uses data that could help identify a sender (items of interest) should be protected from third parties. For instance, if one wants to hide the source/destination IP addresses of a packet, the use of IPsec in tunneling mode (e.g., inside a virtual private network) can be helpful to protect from third parties likely to eavesdrop packets exchanged between the tunnel endpoints.Example: An example is DHCP where sending a persistent identifier as the client name was not mandatory but, in practice, done by many implementations, before .Impacts:Right to non-discriminationRight to political participationRight to freedom of assembly and associationRight to securityQuestion(s):
Is your protocol designed to provide an enabling environment for all? Have you looked at the W3C Web Accessibility Initiative for examples and guidance?Explanation:
Sometimes in the design of protocols, websites, web technologies, or web tools, barriers are created that exclude people from using the Web. The Internet should be designed to work for all people, whatever their hardware, software, language, culture, location, or physical or mental ability. When the Internet technologies meet this goal, it will be accessible to people with a diverse range of hearing, movement, sight, and cognitive ability. Example:
The HTML protocol as defined in specifically requires that every image must have an alt attribute (with a few exceptions) to ensure images are accessible for people that cannot themselves decipher non-text content in web pages.Impacts:Right to non-discriminationRight to freedom of assembly and associationRight to educationRight to political participationQuestion(s):
Does your protocol uphold the standards of internationalization? Have you made any concrete steps towards localizing your protocol for relevant audiences?Explanation:
Localization refers to the adaptation of a product, application or document content to meet the language, cultural and other requirements of a specific target market (a locale) . For our purposes, it can be described as the practice of translating an implementation to make it functional in a specific language or for users in a specific locale (see Internationalization).Example:
The Internet is a global medium, but many of its protocols and products are developed with a certain audience in mind, that often share particular characteristics like knowing how to read and write in ASCII and knowing English. This limits the ability of a large part of the world’s online population from using the Internet in a way that is culturally and linguistically accessible. An example of a protocol that has taken into account the view that individuals like to have access to data in their native language can be found in . This protocol labels the information content with an identifier for the language in which it is written. And this allows information to be presented in more than one language.Impacts:Right to non-discriminationRight to participate in cultural life, arts and scienceRight to freedom of expressionQuestion(s):
Can your protocol be implemented without a single point of control? If applicable, can your protocol be deployed in a federated manner? What is the potential for discrimination against users of your protocol? How can your protocol be used to implicate users? Does your protocol create additional centralized points of control?Explanation:
Decentralization is one of the central technical concepts of the architecture of the networks, and is embraced as such by the IETF . It refers to the absence or minimization of centralized points of control, a feature that is assumed to make it easy for new users to join and new uses to unfold . It also reduces issues surrounding single points of failure, and distributes the network such that it continues to function even if one or several nodes are disabled. With the commercialization of the Internet in the early 1990s, there has been a slow move away from decentralization, to the detriment of the technical benefits of having a decentralized Internet.Example:
The bits traveling the Internet are increasingly susceptible to monitoring and censorship, from both governments and Internet service providers, as well as third (malicious) parties. The ability to monitor and censor is further enabled by the increased centralization of the network that creates central infrastructure points that can be tapped into. The creation of peer-to-peer networks and the development of voice-over-IP protocols using peer-to-peer technology in combination with distributed hash table (DHT) for scalability are examples of how protocols can preserve decentralization .Impacts:Right to freedom of expressionRight to freedom of assembly and associationQuestion(s):
Is your protocol fault tolerant? Does it downgrade gracefully, i.e. with mechanisms for fallback and/or notice? Can your protocol resist malicious degradation attempts? Do you have a documented way to announce degradation? Do you have measures in place for recovery or partial healing from failure? Can your protocol maintain dependability and performance in the face of unanticipated changes or circumstances?Explanation:
Reliability and resiliency ensures that a protocol will execute its function consistently and error resistant as described, and function without unexpected result. A system that is reliable degrades gracefully and will have a documented way to announce degradation. It also has mechanisms to recover from failure gracefully, and if applicable, allow for partial healing.It is important here to draw a distinction between random degradation and malicious degradation. Many current attacks against TLS, for example, exploit TLS’ ability to gracefully downgrade to older cipher suites – from a functional perspective, this is useful; from a security perspective, this can be disastrous. As with confidentiality, the growth of the Internet and fostering innovation in services depends on users having confidence and trust in the network. For reliability, it is necessary that services notify the users if a delivery fails. In the case of real-time systems in addition to the reliable delivery the protocol needs to safeguard timeliness.Example:
In the modern IP stack structure, a reliable transport layer requires an indication that transport processing has successfully completed, such as given by TCP’s ACK message , and not simply an indication from the IP layer that the packet arrived. Similarly, an application layer protocol may require an application-specific acknowledgment that contains, among other things, a status code indicating the disposition of the request (See ).Impacts:Right to freedom of expressionRight to securityQuestion(s):
Does this protocol expose information related to identifiers or data? If so, does it do so to each other protocol entity (i.e., recipients, intermediaries, and enablers) ? What options exist for protocol implementers to choose to limit the information shared with each entity? What operational controls are available to limit the information shared with each entity?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 pieces of 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 the sharing or express individuals’ preferences to recipients or intermediaries with regard to the collection, use, or disclosure of their personal data? 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 prefer encryption over clear text operation?Explanation:
Confidentiality refers to keeping your data secret from unintended listeners . The growth of the Internet depends on users having confidence that the network protects their personal data .Example:
Protocols that do not encrypt their payload make the entire content of the communication available to the idealized attacker along their path. Following the advice in , most such protocols have a secure variant that encrypts the payload for confidentiality, and these secure variants are seeing ever-wider deployment. A noteworthy exception is DNS , as DNSSEC does not have confidentiality as a requirement. This implies that, in the absence of the use of more recent standards like DNS over TLS or DNS over HTTPS , all DNS queries and answers generated by the activities of any protocol are available to the attacker. When store-and-forward protocols are used (e.g., SMTP ), intermediaries leave this data subject to observation by an attacker that has compromised these intermediaries, unless the data is encrypted end-to-end by the application-layer protocol or the implementation uses an encrypted store for this data .Impacts:Right to privacyRight to securityQuestion(s):
Does your protocol maintain, assure and/or verify the accuracy of payload 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?Explanation:
Integrity refers to the maintenance and assurance of the accuracy and consistency of data to ensure it has not been (intentionally or unintentionally) altered.Example:
Integrity verification of data is important to prevent vulnerabilities and attacks from on-path attackers. These attacks happen when a third party (often for malicious reasons) intercepts a communication between two parties, inserting themselves in the middle changing the content of the data. In practice this looks as follows:Alice wants to communicate with Bob.
Corinne forges and sends a message to Bob, impersonating Alice.
Bob cannot see the data from Alice was altered by Corinne.
Corinne intercepts and alters the communication as it is sent between Alice and Bob.
Corinne is able to control the communication content.Impacts:Right to freedom of expressionRight to securityQuestion(s):
Do you have sufficient 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, DNSsec, HTTPS and other Standard Security Best Practices?Explanation:
Authenticity ensures that data does indeed come from the source it claims to come from. This is important to prevent certain attacks or unauthorized access and use of data.At the same time, authentication should not be used as a way to prevent heterogeneity support, as is often done for vendor lock-in or digital rights management.Example:
Authentication of data is important to prevent vulnerabilities, and attacks from on-path attackers. These attacks happen when a third party (often for malicious reasons) intercepts a communication between two parties, inserting themselves in the middle and posing as both parties. In practice this looks as follows:Alice wants to communicate with Bob.
Alice sends data to Bob.
Corinne intercepts the data sent to Bob.
Corinne reads (and potentially alters) the message to Bob.
Bob cannot see the data did not come from Alice but from Corinne.When there is proper authentication the scenario would be as follows:Alice wants to communicate with Bob.
Alice sends data to Bob.
Corinne intercepts the data sent to Bob.
Corinne reads and alters the message to Bob.
Bob can see the data did not come from Alice.Impacts:Right to privacyRight to freedom of expressionRight to securityQuestion(s):
Is your protocol written in such a way that it would be easy for other protocols to be developed on top of it, or to interact with it? Does your protocol impact permissionless innovation? (See Open Standards)Explanation:
Adaptability is closely interrelated with permissionless innovation: both maintain the freedom and ability to freely create and deploy new protocols on top of the communications constructs that currently exist. It is at the heart of the Internet as we know it, and to maintain its fundamentally open nature, we need to be mindful of the impact of protocols on maintaining or reducing permissionless innovation to ensure the Internet can continue to develop.Example:
WebRTC generates audio and/or video data. In order to ensure that WebRTC can be used in different locations by different parties, it is important that standard Javascript APIs are developed to support applications from different voice service providers. Multiple parties will have similar capabilities, in order to ensure that all parties can build upon existing standards these need to be adaptable, and allow for permissionless innovation.Impacts:Right to educationFreedom of expressionFreedom of assembly and associationQuestion(s): Are the effects of your protocol fully and easily comprehensible, including with respect to unintended consequences of protocol choices?Explanation: Certain technical choices may have unintended consequences.Example: Lack of authenticity may lead to lack of integrity and negative externalities, of which spam is an example. Lack of data that could be used for billing and accounting can lead to so-called “free” arrangements which obscure the actual costs and distribution of the costs, for example the barter arrangements that are commonly used for Internet interconnection; and the commercial exploitation of personal data for targeted advertising which is the most common funding model for the so-called “free” services such as search engines and social networks. Other unexpected outcomes might not be technical, but rather architectural, social or economical.Impacts:Freedom of expressionPrivacyFreedom of assembly and associationAccess to informationQuestion(s): Can your protocol facilitate a negatively impacted party’s right to remedy without disproportionately impacting other parties’ human rights, especially their right to privacy?Explanation: Access to remedy may help victims of human rights violations in seeking justice, or allow law enforcement agencies to identify a possible violator. However, such mechanisms may impede the exercise of the right to privacy. The former Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Expression has also argued that anonymity is an inherent part of freedom of expression . Considering the potential adverse impact of attribution on the right to privacy and freedom of expression, enabling attribution on an individual level is most likely not consistent with human rights. However, providing access to remedy by states and corporations is an inherent part of the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights .Impacts:Right to remedyRight to securityRight to privacyQuestion(s): Have you considered potential negative consequences (individual or societal) that your protocol or document might have?Explanation: Publication of a particular RFC under a certain status has consequences. Publication as an Internet Standard as part of the Standards Track may signal to implementers that the specification has a certain level of maturity, operational experience, and consensus. Similarly, publication of a specification an experimental document as part of the non-standards track would signal to the community that the document “may be intended for eventual standardization but [may] not yet [be] ready” for wide deployment. The extent of the deployment, and consequently its overall impact on end-users, may depend on the document status presented in the RFC. See and updates to it for a fuller explanation.This RG document is currently documenting best practices and guidelines for human rights reviews of network protocols, architectures and other Internet-Drafts and RFCs.Thanks to:Corinne Cath-Speth for work on .Theresa Engelhard, Joe Hall, Avri Doria, Joey Salazar, Corinne Cath-Speth, Farzaneh Badii, Sandra Braman and the hrpc list for reviews and suggestions.Individuals who conducted human rights reviews for their work and feedback: Amelia Andersdotter, Beatrice Martini, Karan Saini and Shivan Kaul Sahib.As this document concerns a research document, there are no security considerations.This document has no actions for IANA.The discussion list for the IRTF Human Rights Protocol Considerations Research Group is located at the e-mail address hrpc@ietf.org. Information on the group and information on how to subscribe to the list is at
https://www.irtf.org/mailman/listinfo/hrpcArchives of the list can be found at:
https://www.irtf.org/mail-archive/web/hrpc/current/index.htmlTransmission Control ProtocolDomain names - implementation and specificationThis RFC is the revised specification of the protocol and format used in the implementation of the Domain Name System. It obsoletes RFC-883. This memo documents the details of the domain name client - server communication.Architectural Principles of the InternetThe Internet and its architecture have grown in evolutionary fashion from modest beginnings, rather than from a Grand Plan. While this process of evolution is one of the main reasons for the technology's success, it nevertheless seems useful to record a snapshot of the current principles of the Internet architecture. This is intended for general guidance and general interest, and is in no way intended to be a formal or invariant reference model. This memo provides information for the Internet community. This memo does not specify an Internet standard of any kind.IAB and IESG Statement on Cryptographic Technology and the InternetIABIESGThe Internet Architecture Board (IAB) and the Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG), the bodies which oversee architecture and standards for the Internet, are concerned 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. This memo provides information for the Internet community. This memo does not specify an Internet standard of any kind.The Internet Standards Process -- Revision 3This memo documents the process used by the Internet community for the standardization of protocols and procedures. It defines the stages in the standardization process, the requirements for moving a document between stages and the types of documents used during this process. This document specifies an Internet Best Current Practices for the Internet Community, and requests discussion and suggestions for improvements.IETF Policy on Character Sets and LanguagesThis document is the current policies being applied by the Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG) towards the standardization efforts in the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) in order to help Internet protocols fulfill these requirements. This document specifies an Internet Best Current Practices for the Internet Community, and requests discussion and suggestions for improvements.Strong Security Requirements for Internet Engineering Task Force Standard ProtocolsThe Rise of the Middle and the Future of End-to-End: Reflections on the Evolution of the Internet ArchitectureIABThe end-to-end principle is the core architectural guideline of the Internet. In this document, we briefly examine the development of the end-to-end principle as it has been applied to the Internet architecture over the years. We discuss current trends in the evolution of the Internet architecture in relation to the end-to-end principle, and try to draw some conclusion about the evolution of the end-to-end principle, and thus for the Internet architecture which it supports, in light of these current trends. This memo provides information for the Internet community.A Mission Statement for the IETFThis memo gives a mission statement for the IETF, tries to define the terms used in the statement sufficiently to make the mission statement understandable and useful, argues why the IETF needs a mission statement, and tries to capture some of the debate that led to this point. This document specifies an Internet Best Current Practices for the Internet Community, and requests discussion and suggestions for improvements.Intellectual Property Rights in IETF TechnologyThe IETF policies about Intellectual Property Rights (IPR), such as patent rights, relative to technologies developed in the IETF are designed to ensure that IETF working groups and participants have as much information as possible about any IPR constraints on a technical proposal as early as possible in the development process. The policies are intended to benefit the Internet community and the public at large, while respecting the legitimate rights of IPR holders. This document sets out the IETF policies concerning IPR related to technology worked on within the IETF. It also describes the objectives that the policies are designed to meet. This document updates RFC 2026 and, with RFC 5378, replaces Section 10 of RFC 2026. This document also obsoletes RFCs 3979 and 4879.DNS Security Introduction and RequirementsThe Domain Name System Security Extensions (DNSSEC) add data origin authentication and data integrity to the Domain Name System. This document introduces these extensions and describes their capabilities and limitations. This document also discusses the services that the DNS security extensions do and do not provide. Last, this document describes the interrelationships between the documents that collectively describe DNSSEC. [STANDARDS-TRACK]Writing Protocol ModelsIABThe IETF process depends on peer review. However, IETF documents are generally written to be useful for implementors, not reviewers. In particular, while great care is generally taken to provide a complete description of the state machines and bits on the wire, this level of detail tends to get in the way of initial understanding. This document describes an approach for providing protocol "models" that allow reviewers to quickly grasp the essence of a system. This memo provides information for the Internet community.Privacy Extensions for Stateless Address Autoconfiguration in IPv6Nodes use IPv6 stateless address autoconfiguration to generate addresses using a combination of locally available information and information advertised by routers. Addresses are formed by combining network prefixes with an interface identifier. On an interface that contains an embedded IEEE Identifier, the interface identifier is typically derived from it. On other interface types, the interface identifier is generated through other means, for example, via random number generation. This document describes an extension to IPv6 stateless address autoconfiguration for interfaces whose interface identifier is derived from an IEEE identifier. Use of the extension causes nodes to generate global scope addresses from interface identifiers that change over time, even in cases where the interface contains an embedded IEEE identifier. Changing the interface identifier (and the global scope addresses generated from it) over time makes it more difficult for eavesdroppers and other information collectors to identify when different addresses used in different transactions actually correspond to the same node. [STANDARDS-TRACK]Internet Security Glossary, Version 2This Glossary provides definitions, abbreviations, and explanations of terminology for information system security. The 334 pages of entries offer recommendations to improve the comprehensibility of written material that is generated in the Internet Standards Process (RFC 2026). The recommendations follow the principles that such writing should (a) use the same term or definition whenever the same concept is mentioned; (b) use terms in their plainest, dictionary sense; (c) use terms that are already well-established in open publications; and (d) avoid terms that either favor a particular vendor or favor a particular technology or mechanism over other, competing techniques that already exist or could be developed. This memo provides information for the Internet community.Simple Mail Transfer ProtocolThis document is a specification of the basic protocol for Internet electronic mail transport. It consolidates, updates, and clarifies several previous documents, making all or parts of most of them obsolete. It covers the SMTP extension mechanisms and best practices for the contemporary Internet, but does not provide details about particular extensions. Although SMTP was designed as a mail transport and delivery protocol, this specification also contains information that is important to its use as a "mail submission" protocol for "split-UA" (User Agent) mail reading systems and mobile environments. [STANDARDS-TRACK]Tags for Identifying LanguagesThis document describes the structure, content, construction, and semantics of language tags for use in cases where it is desirable to indicate the language used in an information object. It also describes how to register values for use in language tags and the creation of user-defined extensions for private interchange. This document specifies an Internet Best Current Practices for the Internet Community, and requests discussion and suggestions for improvements.Comcast's Web Notification System DesignThe objective of this document is to describe a method of providing critical end-user notifications to web browsers, which has been deployed by Comcast, an Internet Service Provider (ISP). Such a notification system is being used to provide near-immediate notifications to customers, such as to warn them that their traffic exhibits patterns that are indicative of malware or virus infection. There are other proprietary systems that can perform such notifications, but those systems utilize Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) technology. In contrast to DPI, this document describes a system that does not rely upon DPI, and is instead based in open IETF standards and open source applications. This document is not an Internet Standards Track specification; it is published for informational purposes.IP Flow Anonymization SupportThis document describes anonymization techniques for IP flow data and the export of anonymized data using the IP Flow Information Export (IPFIX) protocol. It categorizes common anonymization schemes and defines the parameters needed to describe them. It provides guidelines for the implementation of anonymized data export and storage over IPFIX, and describes an information model and Options- based method for anonymization metadata export within the IPFIX protocol or storage in IPFIX Files. This document defines an Experimental Protocol for the Internet community.Terminology Used in Internationalization in the IETFThis document provides a list of terms used in the IETF when discussing internationalization. The purpose is to help frame discussions of internationalization in the various areas of the IETF and to help introduce the main concepts to IETF participants. This memo documents an Internet Best Current Practice.Sanctions Available for Application to Violators of IETF IPR PolicyThe IETF has developed and documented policies that govern the behavior of all IETF participants with respect to Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) about which they might reasonably be aware.The IETF takes conformance to these IPR policies very seriously. However, there has been some ambiguity as to what the appropriate sanctions are for the violation of these policies, and how and by whom those sanctions are to be applied.This document discusses these issues and provides a suite of potential actions that can be taken within the IETF community in cases related to patents. This document is not an Internet Standards Track specification; it is published for informational purposes.Privacy Considerations for Internet ProtocolsThis document offers guidance for developing privacy considerations for inclusion in protocol specifications. It aims to make designers, implementers, and users of Internet protocols aware of privacy-related design choices. It suggests that whether any individual RFC warrants a specific privacy considerations section will depend on the document's content.Pervasive Monitoring Is an AttackPervasive monitoring is a technical attack that should be mitigated in the design of IETF protocols, where possible.Confidentiality in the Face of Pervasive Surveillance: A Threat Model and Problem StatementSince the initial revelations of pervasive surveillance in 2013, several classes of attacks on Internet communications have been discovered. In this document, we develop a threat model that describes these attacks on Internet confidentiality. We assume an attacker that is interested in undetected, indiscriminate eavesdropping. The threat model is based on published, verified attacks.An HTTP Status Code to Report Legal ObstaclesThis document specifies a Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) status code for use when resource access is denied as a consequence of legal demands.Anonymity Profiles for DHCP ClientsSome DHCP options carry unique identifiers. These identifiers can enable device tracking even if the device administrator takes care of randomizing other potential identifications like link-layer addresses or IPv6 addresses. The anonymity profiles are designed for clients that wish to remain anonymous to the visited network. The profiles provide guidelines on the composition of DHCP or DHCPv6 messages, designed to minimize disclosure of identifying information.Specification for DNS over Transport Layer Security (TLS)This document describes the use of Transport Layer Security (TLS) to provide privacy for DNS. Encryption provided by TLS eliminates opportunities for eavesdropping and on-path tampering with DNS queries in the network, such as discussed in RFC 7626. In addition, this document specifies two usage profiles for DNS over TLS and provides advice on performance considerations to minimize overhead from using TCP and TLS with DNS.This document focuses on securing stub-to-recursive traffic, as per the charter of the DPRIVE Working Group. It does not prevent future applications of the protocol to recursive-to-authoritative traffic.Research into Human Rights Protocol ConsiderationsThis document aims to propose guidelines for human rights considerations, similar to the work done on the guidelines for privacy considerations (RFC 6973). The other parts of this document explain the background of the guidelines and how they were developed.This document is the first milestone in a longer-term research effort. It has been reviewed by the Human Rights Protocol Considerations (HRPC) Research Group and also by individuals from outside the research group.DNS Queries over HTTPS (DoH)This document defines a protocol for sending DNS queries and getting DNS responses over HTTPS. Each DNS query-response pair is mapped into an HTTP exchange.Report from the IAB Workshop on Design Expectations vs. Deployment Reality in Protocol DevelopmentThe Design Expectations vs. Deployment Reality in Protocol Development Workshop was convened by the Internet Architecture Board (IAB) in June 2019. This report summarizes the workshop's significant points of discussion and identifies topics that may warrant further consideration.Note that this document is a report on the proceedings of the workshop. The views and positions documented in this report are those of the workshop participants and do not necessarily reflect IAB views and positions.The Universal Declaration of Human RightsUnited Nations General AssemblyValues and NetworksA Prehistory of Internet GovernanceNote WellIETF10 Internet Rights & PrinciplesInternet Rights and Principles Dynamic CoalitionInternational Covenant on Civil and Political RightsUnited Nations General AssemblyEnd-to-End Arguments in System DesignInternational Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural RightsUnited Nations General AssemblyChilling Effects: Online Surveillance and Wikipedia UseUN Human Rights Council Resolution "The promotion, protection and enjoyment of human rights on the Internet" (A/HRC/32/L.20)United Nations Human Rights CouncilPseudonymityGeek Feminism WikiLocalization vs. InternationalizationW3CGuidelines for Writing RFC Text on Security ConsiderationsIETFThe Internet Standards Process -- Revision 3IETFW3C Patent PolicyW3CMedia without censorshipA Survey of Worldwide Censorship TechniquesMAC address randomizationHTML5W3CThe Future of the Internet - And How to Stop ItFuture Internet Design PrinciplesAccessibilityW3CNewegg on trial: Mystery company TQP rewrites the history of encryptionPartial Catalog of Human Rights Related to ICT ActivitiesSecuring Web Sites Made Them Less AccessibleThe use of encryption and anonymity in digital communicationsUnited Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human RightsUnited Nations