I have discussed this problem with several people
of human rights and internet protocols
and the most common response was
"what?
it's obvious
there's no relationship between human rights
and internet protocols
it’s completely different things
how can there be any connection?”
The IETF has made a big thing
of not being a political organization.
Being an engineering organization.
There are quite a few people in the IETF
that would prefer not to get into politics.
The Internet started as a military
and academic network
with a limited number of users
therefore, it was implicit
that users could trust each other
and that they shared the same objectives.
This was its foundation.
The underlying protocols of the internet
IP, TCP, HTTP, DNS
all of these protocols
are enabling protocols
that allow to do whatever you want
and so you see this wonderful flowering of
of innovation
of new ways of communicating.
The functioning of the internet
is dependent upon standards.
To build the first connection between computers
and have them talk to each other
the Network Control Protocol
NCP
was developed.
It was later on replaced by the more efficient
Transmission Control Protocol
TCP
which confirms that sent messages are received.
On top of that
files are cut into little parts
packets
which allows for more efficient traffic handling.
with this two innovations
packet switching and TCP
the modern internet was born.
Since the internet is a network
made up of other networks
the biggest challenge has been
defining open standards
that allow this networks
to communicate with each other.
A vibrant city needs
well engineered infrastructure
to keep it growing and running smoothly
that’s why we need the
Internet Engineering Task Force
a global organization of volunteers
collaborating to design standards
that provide the infrastructure
for innovation on the Internet.
It's critically important to have global standards.
And one of the reasons the IETF
and organizations like the IETF
are important
where it’s voluntary expert based.
The IETF is open.
Open participation.
Open processes
and open standards.
It’s interesting because the IETF community
is very heavily biased towards
you know
white male
middle class
American engineers.
The people who work on the standards are
sincerely striving for
doing the right thing technically
and in a sense they have to do that because
if they do the wrong thing technically it won’t work.
And so, for the most part
issues of human rights
or ethics in general
are a distraction to them.
IETF is not the protocol police.
all of this control, what happens in the world.
I've been in a space dealing with
data-brokers
and third party surveillors of consumers
for so many years.
Like twenty years ago
we brought together a group of data-brokers
to find out what they're doing
and how much they know about consumers
and I remember so well that of their representative said
Lawrence Lessig said "code is law"
and the code that people write for the Internet
is determined in large part
by what we do in the IETF.
Twenty years ago
we brought together a group of data-brokers
to find out what they're doing
and how much they know about consumers
and I remember so well
that one of their representative said
"you know, the secret to our business
is not so much how much we know,
but just make sure the consumers don't know about it”.
It soon became clear
that the Internet was no longer a trusted space.
The insecurities
inherent in a network based on trust
were being increasingly exploited.
The Internet works because we have
machinery that's designed
that implements particular ideas
particular protocols
particular rules, about how communications work.
And if you do something that violates those rules
your communication won’t work.
We now need to think
what the future internet should look like
what we want to keep
and what we want to leave behind.
Technologists
particularly at the IETF
you guys are the ones
who really have led the charge.
the Internet doesn't belong to us
the Internet doesn't belong to governments
the Internet belongs to the user.
If you want to do something about this
you probably ought to do it pretty quickly
that because Carnivore is not the only way
in which this is going to happen.
Does the NSA collect any type of data at all,
on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?
No, sir.
It does not?
I, sit in my desk,
certainly had the authorities to wiretap anyone
from you or your accountant
to a federal judge, to even the president
if I had a personal email.
This slide shows when each of those services
were added to the PRISM program.
And this slide shows the kinds
of data the NSA have access to.
By the end of the 1990s
the FBI had created an Internet surveillance system
to carry out targeted monitoring of
people's email and browsing behavior.
It was called Carnivore.
It was carnivore, that pushed the IETF
to take a position on privacy.
A 29-year-old intelligence contractor
has revealed himself to be the source
that exposed two major
US government intelligence gathering programs.
The IETF
now has a standard on privacy and security.
Known as RFC 7258
the standard states that:
“IETF standards
already provide mechanisms
to protect Internet communications
and there are guidelines
for applying these in protocol design.
But those standards generally
do not address Pervasive Monitoring,
the confidentiality of protocol metadata,
countering traffic analysis,
or data minimization.
In all cases,
there will remain
some privacy-relevant information
that is inevitably disclosed by protocols.
We can set up communications protocols
that anyone can use
but if anyone can use them
and by using them
you are effectively surveilled
or you can be impersonated,
or you can be censored.
If those protocols leave those options open
then our society basically is saying we don't
we're okay with those outcomes.
If you design the protocols in such a way that
they are resistant to surveillance,
resistant to censorship,
resistant to impersonation,
then that’s a way of I think,
saying we as a society value
these other features.
Different
tracks in technology
might result in different
implications.
Like, if you choose this path
for the future evolution of the Internet
then this is going to affect
in this way.
If you choose another path,
it's going to have a different effect.
The IETF does have shared values
for sure.
You know, the idea of
you know, I mean,
you might hear old-timers talk about
rough consensus and running code.
I would say that they're based on shared values.
I wouldn't say that everyone agrees
on what those shared values are.
Enabling communication, I think is probably
the positive guiding force
behind all the stuff we do here.
Since day one
the IETF has taken a very strong
position on connectivity
“the community believes that the goal is connectivity,
the tool is the Internet Protocol
and the intelligence is end-to-end
rather than hidden in the network".
Less than half of the world's population
is connected to the Internet,
soon many more people will come online.
Will they be able to trust
the infrastructure, while global interests
in the network are growing?
What will the Internet of the future look like?
I think, the importance of the Internet
is its openness
is the fact, as I have said in Spanish,
we call it “la plaza pública”
it’s the public space
and it is precisely that public space
to mingle, to interact, to relate,
what makes it so important.
How can we ensure the Internet is an open and free place,
for both new and existing users?
How can we ensure all users
can access information
and express themselves freely?
In the area of freedom of expression,
I think that a lot of advocacy groups
and politicians, and scholars,
are rightly focusing on the area of content
and usage of information,
but I fear that what's being missed here
is more of the infrastructural area
that we sometimes take for granted.
We talk maybe more about
right to privacy
than right to free association,
and relatively, and track association.
I think if you have connectivity
you have freedom of expression, pretty much, right?
A lot of the censorship that happens,
happens by limiting connectivity
to what you can connect to.
The Syrian Internet has just gone down 100%.
In Irak.
In Sudan.
How is it even possible
to cut off an entire country
from the Internet?
Governments deciding that
they are going to cut off Internet services
to their citizens,
they do this for a variety of political reasons,
but it’s not just happening in
areas where there are repressive governments,
we had an example recently in the United States
before a protest was scheduled to happen.
towards action shutting down
the Internet and phone system at four stations.
Nobody should be able to block
the transmission for what you want to express,
by any technical means.
If you added a concept that involved
the ease of expression,
so that connectivity is not just about consumption
but also expression,
then I think you would be there.
Content agnosticism suggests that
the people who are passing on your message
or the parties, the mechanisms that pass on your message,
are fine with whatever the message is.
So they are not going to discriminate on
the basis of the content of the message.
The Iranian government said on Friday
that it is to expand what it calls
smart filtering of the Internet,
a policing of censoring undesirable content on websites,
without banning them completely, as it used to,
and this process will continue gradually,
until the plan is implemented on all networks.
That’s a very obvious example,
it also happens at a less obvious example of infrastructure,
areas that are hidden to the public,
but never the less make decisions about
freedom of expression.
One example of that,
and probably the best example that I can say just off the cuff is
what happened to Wikileaks
after the Cablegate incident.
Wikileaks has been blocked by the United States.
The company that was providing domain
name hosting services, called EveryDNS,
made a decision to stop resolving
the domain name wikileaks.org
into its binary address.
Wikileaks has been blocked by the United States.
In retaliation for the exposure of information
about US policy.
Wikileaks shawn light on war crimes
committed by US troops
in Irak and Afghanistan.
People of the United States and the world,
have a right to know
what the US government is doing.
Still, there's the problem of surveillance.
I mean, it's some sort of
giving everyone a printing press to print paper,
but then you murder at random
some people who distribute the newspaper.
But the other thing that I’m missing is
the ability to say what you want in private.
Last week, The Guardian disclosed
perhaps the most sweeping surveillance program
that’s ever been publicly disclosed.
The US National Security Agency
had intercepted the communications.
If we try to build our technologies
to make censorship and monitoring
as difficult as we can,
or at least make it
more expensive to do.
The uses of the protocol
are abuses of the protocol
could harm user rights.
They developed this tool,
they sell it to governments, regardless of
if they're going to be using it against journalists,
or they're going to be using it against activists,
or they're going to be using it against
regular citizens.
Exactly what we do.
If it exposes
lots of extra information
that makes it easier to censor traffic
for example
that’s problematic, and so
keeping protocol
information leakage minimal
is important, not only for privacy
but also for free expression.
I’m not sure how I could write
technology
that makes censorship harder
and makes monitoring harder,
that doesn't make hate-speech easier.
As a technical definition of freedom of expression?
I have to think about it.
Freedom of expression
through unimpeded connectivity
was a founding feature of the Internet
and it remains essential
for the future development of communication.
Help us ensure
the Internet remains collaborative
and decentralized.
For the benefit of today’s users,
and the users of tomorrow.
We need to make, and ensure,
that rights considerations are part
of the future development of the internet protocols.
How do you think we can define
and protect human rights on a technical level?
Tell us how,
or even better, join us!