Subject: Re: Proposal to revise ISOC's mission statement

From: Miles Fidelman <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 28 Oct 2017 20:31:37 -0400

Good point.  My personal bugaboo is the resurgence of walled gardens.  A platform that connected us is now dividing us.
Which suggests: NO WALLED GARDENS.
-------- Original message --------From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]> Date: 10/28/17  7:54 PM  (GMT-05:00) To: [email-masked] Subject: Re: Proposal to revise ISOC's mission statement 
On 10/26/2017 04:18 AM, Gonzalo Camarillo wrote:

>    The Internet is for everyone.

These words mean something very different to me now than they did in the 
late 1990s.  In the late 1990s, I saw the Internet as entirely a force 
for good - giving people access to information, the ability to freely 
communicate among one another, making governments and businesses more 
transparent, helping to build a global community.

Twenty years later, the reality is somewhat different.   The Internet 
has become a way for the Big Brothers of the world to conduct mass 
surveillance, a way to study people's interactions in minute detail, to 
compile personal information about people and to exploit that 
information for profit.  This is not an accident; it is the business 
model of several powerful companies and the hope behind several product 
lines.  Even the "Internet of Things" is mostly about spying on people.

The Internet isn't for everyone anymore, at least not in the same 
sense.   It's for spying on everyone for the benefit of the few. It's 
also for spreading conspiracy and for dividing people politically, in 
order to give those in power more control.

So basically I think ISOC, if it really wants to continue to pursue its 
original goals and ideals, needs to find a new vision.  I suggest a 
simple change:

The Internet is for *empowering* everyone.

To this end, ISOC needs to explicitly make privacy, freedom of 
expression, and authenticity of information part of its mission.

Keith

---

From: Stephen Farrell <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 29 Oct 2017 12:54:06 +0000

On 29/10/17 01:31, Miles Fidelman wrote:
> Good point.Â  My personal bugaboo is the resurgence of walled
> gardens.Â  A platform that connected us is now dividing us. Which
> suggests: NO WALLED GARDENS. 

Walled gardens are icky. A futile attempt to design Internet
protocols so as to make walled gardens impossible would be
worse.

I do think Keith makes a good point below though, but am not
sure if a change to a vision statement would help there. (Mind
you, I'm generally allergic to vision and mission statements,
so I'm not really the right person to talk to about this;-)

I also like the idea of promoting privacy and freedom of
expression to be first class elements of what we're doing.

Somewhat along the lines of Keith's "empowerment" idea, I'd
suggest also adding something to the effect that we/ISOC want
the outcome to include always providing individual people with
a meaningful level of control over their own experience of
the Internet.

I won't attempt wordsmithing of the above.

Cheers,
S.

> -------- Original message --------From:
> Keith Moore <[email-masked]> Date: 10/28/17  7:54 PM
> (GMT-05:00) To: [email-masked] Subject: Re: Proposal to revise ISOC's
> mission statement On 10/26/2017 04:18 AM, Gonzalo Camarillo wrote:
> 
>> Â Â Â  The Internet is for everyone.
> 
> These words mean something very different to me now than they did in
> the late 1990s.Â  In the late 1990s, I saw the Internet as entirely a
> force for good - giving people access to information, the ability to
> freely communicate among one another, making governments and
> businesses more transparent, helping to build a global community.
> 
> Twenty years later, the reality is somewhat different.Â Â  The
> Internet has become a way for the Big Brothers of the world to
> conduct mass surveillance, a way to study people's interactions in
> minute detail, to compile personal information about people and to
> exploit that information for profit.Â  This is not an accident; it is
> the business model of several powerful companies and the hope behind
> several product lines.Â  Even the "Internet of Things" is mostly
> about spying on people.
> 
> sense.Â Â  It's for spying on everyone for the benefit of the few.
> It's also for spreading conspiracy and for dividing people
> politically, in order to give those in power more control.
> 
> So basically I think ISOC, if it really wants to continue to pursue
> its original goals and ideals, needs to find a new vision.Â  I
> suggest a simple change:
>

---

From: Richard Shockey <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 29 Oct 2017 13:19:31 -0400

RS> Game, Set, Match. Sorry that argument is over. 

-------- Original message --------

From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]> 

Date: 10/28/17 7:54 PM (GMT-05:00) 

To: [email-masked] 

Subject: Re: Proposal to revise ISOC's mission statement 

Keith

---

From: Rich Kulawiec <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 29 Oct 2017 13:35:37 -0400

On Sat, Oct 28, 2017 at 08:31:37PM -0400, Miles Fidelman wrote:
> original goals and ideals, needs to find a new vision.?? I suggest a 
> simple change:
> 

I enthusiastically agree, and offer a friendly amendment to change
"privacy" to "privacy and security" -- the two are certainly different,
but in the contemporary environment they're inextricably linked.

---rsk

---

From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 29 Oct 2017 13:48:01 -0400

> Good point.  My personal bugaboo is the resurgence of walled gardens.  
> A platform that connected us is now dividing us.
>

no it's not.  enemies must always be called out.

Keith

---

From: Phillip Hallam-Baker <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 31 Oct 2017 08:20:27 -0400

On Sun, Oct 29, 2017 at 1:19 PM, Richard Shockey <[email-masked]> wrote:
>
> Good point.  My personal bugaboo is the resurgence of walled gardens.  A
> platform that connected us is now dividing us.
>

I don't think it is, the question has just changed.

We don't have the walled gardens that the carriers hoped for with WAP
but we still have the consequences of AOL Messenger long after AOL has
ceased to be a significant force. Instant messaging is still
Balkanized:

https://xkcd.com/1810/
https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/chat_systems.png

The only apps we have that are not walled gardens are mail and Web.
And mail is currently under threat from alternatives which offer
usable end-to-end security which implementations of S/MIME do not
while OpenPGP implementations are actively hostile to the user.

It isn't just a few left wing agitators worrying about 'big tech' or
the 'fearful five' at the moment. I have been talking to Republican
Senators and House members with the same concerns. It is not merely
the concentration of market power that is worrying people, it is the
casual negligence many of the technologists show when it comes to
security risks.

The question I see is who is going to be in control. Will it be the
user or someone else.

Zuckerberg didn't want his 'community' to think bad thoughts so there
is no way to disagree with people. And so there is no way to say that
'this post is a lie', 'this poster is a sockpuppet'. And the results
of those decisions are two national security disasters.

There is a natural tendency for technology people to assume that what
people want is more 'freedom'. Which invariably turns out to be more
freedom to perform the type of actions that the technologist wants
them to engage in. 'Internet Security' is seen exclusively in terms of
preventing censorship and protecting personal confidentiality. While
those are important, they are not the only things that are important.

Policy makers worry about a much broader range of concerns. They worry
about headline grabbing issues such as child abuse. But they also
worry about cyberbullying, stalking, bank fraud, advance fee frauds
and much more.

At the moment, there is only one member of the fearful five that is
considered to 'get them' at the policy level. Two more do not get in
the way but don't help very much either and two are considered to be
actively harmful.

We have to have a plan to make the Internet safe for users, yes. But
what we also need at this point is a plan to protect society from the
Internet itself. The Internet is the greatest productive engine in
history, it magnifies human capital exponentially. And it does that
for criminals as well as the law abiding.

---

From: james woodyatt <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 31 Oct 2017 14:44:09 -0700

On 10/31/2017 05:20 AM, Phillip Hallam-Baker wrote:
> [...] it is the casual negligence many of the technologists show when it comes to security risks.
> 
> The question I see is who is going to be in control. Will it be the user or someone else.
>[...]
I think you've already answer that question for yourself in the excerpt 
below.

> We have to have a plan to make the Internet safe for users, yes. But what we also need at this point is a plan to protect society from the Internet itself. [...]

According to that view, it will be someone else, unless "our" plan to 
protect "society" from the criminal users of the Internet is adequate.

Absolutely speaking *only* for myself here, but I view talking about 
plans "to protect society from the Internet itself" like a pretty much 
straight up attack on the fundamental idea of an Internet Society as a 
thing worthy of that name.

I mean to say, what does that even mean in an Internet Society?

Instead, it seems to me that we have a philosophical tussle between A) 
people who think of the Internet firstly as a command and telemetry 
system for political and economic data, to be policed by and subservient 
to state power, used mainly as a tool for governing the populace, and B) 
people who think of the Internet firstly as an open standard 
communication technology to which justice demands that everyone is 
recognized to have an equal right to lawfully regulated use for any 
public or private purpose.

How you think about security risks, it seems to me, depends on which 
side of this philosophical debate you align. Accusing the other side of 
"casual negligence," when it's actually the case that the other side has 
set different priorities, is probably not the best way to facilitate 
better mutual understanding.

As IETFers, I hope we can transcend the usual failure to communicate.

--james

---

From: Richard Shockey <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 31 Oct 2017 18:36:26 -0400

In line..

On 10/31/17, 8:20 AM, "ietf on behalf of Phillip Hallam-Baker" <[email-masked] on behalf of [email-masked]> wrote:

    
    
    https://xkcd.com/1810/

RS> Agreed. And its not getting any better.  SMS is almost walled garden but totally insecure. At least mobile RCS is undergoing a well deserved stay at the protocol hospice.

RS> My examples are highly structured closed user groups that are dominating several industries that literally insist on Walled Gardens since our protocol suites do not address their needs, technically or legally.  Financial services and health care being the most obvious use case.   In addition, there are the use cases where actual Identity actually needs to be declared to the counter party whether it be messaging or increasingly voice and certainly transactions.  Anonymous calling or messaging, is under increasing threat and may end up going away.   

RS> Welcome to my world. 

RS> Users have enough problems with day to day life. “Simplify my life.” Or “Do you deliver?” has made more Billionaires than any other concept.  

RS> See above.. Our security protocols are the precise opposite of what people need or want.