Packed IAB Plenary Debates Pervasive Monitoring Attacks: Internet Society

Packed IAB Plenary Debates Pervasive Monitoring Attacks | Internet Society: "“Surveillance is not a new phenomenon,” Carpenter said. “Don’t have the impression that this is just the NSA or just the US government.”

The first of these IETF debates, held in 1996, dealt with a movement by many governments to restrict the use and sale of strong cryptography, which is a foundational technology for e-commerce. The result of this debate was RFC 1984, signed by both the IAB and the Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG), which encouraged policies that allow ready access to strong cryptographic technology for all Internet users.

In 1999, the IETF had a similar debate about Internet wiretapping. The result of that debate was RFC 2804, also signed by both the IAB and the IESG, which stated that the IETF would not consider wiretapping as a requirement for creating or maintaining IETF standards.

Carpenter said the underlying principal of these two previous IETF debates is that “IETF technology should be able to make the Internet secure, including the ability to provide privacy, but it should be neutral with respect to varying cultural views of legality and privacy.”" 'via Blog this'