Subject: Human Rights Review of QUIC

From: Beatrice Martini <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2018 19:02:58 +0200

Hello,

I am Beatrice Martini, participant in the IRTF Human Rights Protocol
Considerations Research Group and Human Rights Review Team.

Nice to connect!

Together with co-author and fellow HRPC and HR-rt participant Niels ten
Oever, we worked on a Human Rights Review of QUIC.

Our aim was to contribute to the QUIC WG efforts by providing relevant and
applicable feedback. For this reason, as you can also read in the
"Methodology and Process" section of the document, we conducted our review
analyzing drafts through the perspective of the Guidelines for Human Rights
Protocol Considerations outlined in RFC8280, as well as by doing a series
of interviews with QUIC WG chairs, document authors and participants.

We just published the review as an Internet Draft, as a way to make it more
easy to read and share. You can find the review at:

https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-martini-hrpc-quichr-00

Thanks to all the WG participants and document authors and editors who
contributed to our work and have been so gracious with their time.

We hope you will find the review of interest, and we very much welcome your
input, questions and suggestions.

Thank you!

Best,
Beatrice & Niels

---

From: Niels ten Oever <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 29 Oct 2018 11:15:37 +0100

Hi all,

Thanks _a lot_ for the comments we received off-list! Several of you
asked for clarification on why the review was published as an I-D. So I
just wanted to state again that we are not seeking to make this an RFC,
but rather to have an easy way to share it. To also have it in the list
archives I pasted the markdown of the text below, with the references
underneath.

If you have specific comments, for instance on:
    - issues that are resolved in newer version of the drafts;
    - things that we should add to the issue tracker;
    - things that do not make sense;
please feel welcome to share them.

Happy to discuss on the list or in person in Bangkok.

Best,

Beatrice and Niels

Abstract
========

QUIC is a new transport protocol that provides low-latency communication
and security. QUIC’s key features include faster connection
establishment, stream-based multiplexing, improved loss recovery, and no
head-of-line blocking. This document assesses the potential human rights
implications emerging from the deployment of QUIC. The assessment is
done based on the methodology articulated in {{RFC8280}}.

Introduction
============

This is a review done within the framework of the Human Rights Review
Team, and it was conducted by Beatrice Martini and Niels ten Oever. The
Human Rights Review Team aims to implement and improve the guidelines
for human rights considerations provided in {{RFC8280}}, and seeks to
mitigate potentially adverse human rights impacts that IETF and IRTF
documents might have.

Human Rights Reviews are developed by a group of individuals in the IRTF
and IETF. They work collaboratively and provide their knowledge and
input to the assessments, in an effort to contribute to the IETF open
review process. Human Rights Reviews are individual contributions. The
authors hope that the comments will be taken into consideration by the
draft authors, Working Groups and the IESG.

This review concerns the QUIC protocol in general, and the following
drafts in particular:
draft-ietf-quic-transport-12, draft-ietf-quic-tls-12,
draft-ietf-quic-invariants-01.

Vocabulary Used
===============

Anonymity
: The condition of an identity being unknown or concealed {{RFC4949}}.

Censorship
: Technical mechanisms, including both blocking and filtering, that
state or private actors can use to block or degrade Internet traffic.
For further details on the various elements of Internet censorship, see
{{Halletal}}.

Censorship resistance
: Methods and measures to mitigate Internet censorship.

Confidentiality
: The property that data is not disclosed to system entities unless they
have been authorized to know the data {{RFC4949}}.

Connectivity
: The extent to which a device or network is able to reach other devices
or networks to exchange data. The Internet is the tool for providing
global connectivity {{RFC1958}}. Different types of connectivity are
further specified in {{RFC4084}}.

Content agnosticism
: Treating network traffic identically regardless of content.

Heterogeneity
: "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."
{{FIArch}}

: As a result, per {{FIArch}}, the heterogeneity principle proposed in
{{RFC1958}} needs to be supported by design.

Human rights
: Principles and norms that are indivisible, interrelated, inalienable,
universal, and mutually reinforcing. Human rights have been codified in
national and international bodies of law. The Universal Declaration of
Human Rights {{UDHR}} is the most well-known document in the history of
human rights. The aspirations from {{UDHR}} were later codified into
treaties such as the International Covenant on Civil and Political
Rights {{ICCPR}} and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and
Cultural Rights {{ICESCR}}, after which signatory countries were
required to reflect them in their national bodies of law. It is also
broadly recognized that not only states, but also non-state actors must
respect human rights.

Integrity
: The property that data has not been changed, destroyed, or lost in an
unauthorized or accidental manner {{RFC4949}}.

Linkability
: Establishing the identity of a host across several IP addresses.

Open standards
: As stated in {{RFC2026}}: "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 here. 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."

Openness
: Absence of centralized points of control -- "a feature that is assumed
to make it easy for new users to join and new uses to unfold"
{{Ziewitzetal}}.

Ossification
: The increasing inflexibility of the network which results in the
inability to deploy a new protocol or protocol extensions due to the
unchangeable nature of infrastructure components that have come to rely
on particular features of current protocols.

Permissionless innovation
: The freedom and ability to freely create and deploy new protocols on
top of the communications constructs that currently exist.

Privacy
: The right of an entity (usually an individual), 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 {{RFC4949}}.

: The right of individuals to control or influence what information
related to them may be collected and stored, and by whom and to whom
that information may be disclosed.

: Privacy is a broad concept regarding the protection of individual or
group autonomy and the relation between an individual or group and
society, including government, companies, and private individuals. It
encompasses a wide range of rights, including protections from
intrusions into family and home life, control of sexual and reproductive
rights, and communications secrecy. It is commonly recognized as a core
right that underpins human dignity and other values such as freedom of
association and freedom of speech. The right to privacy is also
recognized in nearly every national constitution and in most
international human rights treaties. The right to privacy is also
legally protected at the national level through provisions in civil
and/or criminal codes.

Pseudonymity
: The ability to use a persistent identifier that is not immediately
linked to an individual's offline identity. Pseudonymity is an critical
feature for many end users, as it allows them different degrees of
disguised identity and privacy online. "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)." {{RFC6973}}

Review Methodology and Process
==============================

This section describes how the review was undertaken.

We started our review by examining the Internet Drafts which were active
on June 7, 2018 on the QUIC Working Group Datatracker
(https://datatracker.ietf.org/wg/quic/documents).

Inferential reading of the documents resulted in the decision to focus
our efforts on three specific drafts: draft-ietf-quic-transport-12,
draft-ietf-quic-tls-12, draft-ietf-quic-invariants-01.

>From the study of these documents through the perspective of the
Guidelines for Human Rights Protocol Considerations outlined in
{{RFC8280}}, we formulated a questionnaire, to be used as a tool to
guide semi-structured interviews with QUIC Working Group chairs and
document authors.

We engaged in a total of seven interviews, which took place during
IETF102 (July 14-20, 2018). These were then transcribed and analyzed.
The analysis focused on the identification of potential positive or
negative impacts on human rights, and on the categorization of our
findings according to the Guidelines for Human Rights Protocol
Considerations outlined in {{RFC8280}}.

One particular aspect that is critical to consider is the pace at which
the QUIC Working Group operates, which is regarded across the IETF
community as notably faster than usual. This means that while the
general design that is outlined in the QUIC Internet Drafts is fairly
stable, numerous details are in constant change. When it comes to
conducting an interview-based research, this also means that some of the
expressed points of view might be overtaken by intervening changes. To
address this specific characteristic of the work on the QUIC protocol,
we decided to set a time point to examine active Internet Drafts and
current Working Group discussions. The time point is June 7, 2018. In
addition to that, we also kept discussing with the interviewees,
reviewing notes from the following New York interim meeting (September
19-20), and following selected mailing list threads, until our final
review of this very document, on October 17, 2018.

The content examined until the set time point (June 7, 2018) is what
should be considered the core subject of our examination. However, as we
aim to helpfully contribute to the efforts of the QUIC Working Group, we
also decided to monitor potential updates and emerging discussions which
took place in the following months, with the aim to provide relevant and
applicable feedback.

Human Rights Considerations
===========================

The Human Rights Protocols Considerations Research Group (HRPC) welcomes
the drafts draft-ietf-quic-transport, draft-ietf-quic-tls,
draft-ietf-quic-invariants.

In particular, we welcome the efforts to improve connectivity on high
latency, low bandwidth and high loss connections, and the application of
encryption by default. Conclusions and recommendations can be found at
the end of this document.

No implications for Accessibility ({{RFC8280}}, sec. 6.2.11),
Localization ({{RFC8280}}, sec. 6.2.12), Decentralization ({{RFC8280}},
sec. 6.2.13), and Reliability ({{RFC8280}}, sec 6.2.14) have been found.

## Connectivity

Overall, QUIC is expected to result in a greatly improved Internet
service for users worldwide, and in particular for those who currently
do not have high bandwidth or lossless connections. Regions that
currently do not benefit from reliable connectivity, would be provided
with a significantly improved service. These advancements have positive
implications in regards to human rights such as freedom of expression,
freedom of association, right to political participation.

### Latency

QUIC was designed as a new transport protocol to provide connections
with lower latency than previous protocols.

One of the most important differences between TCP and QUIC connections
is that QUIC connection establishment takes 0 RTTs when a server is
known by a client and up to a few RTTs for the first connection to an
unknown server.

By allowing for Zero-Round Trip Time (0-RTT) resumption of connections,
QUIC performs better than TCP on high latency and high loss connections.
When a web client uses TCP and TLS, it requires two to three round trips
with a server to establish a secure connection before the browser can
send a request. With QUIC, if a client has communicated with a server
before (within a specific time period), it can start sending data
without any round trips, so that web pages will load faster.

An example of QUIC’s performance can be observed on a well-optimized
site like Google Search, where connections are often pre-established,
and QUIC’s faster connections can only speed up some requests. Still,
QUIC improves mean page load time by 8% globally, and up to 13% in
regions where latency is higher. {{Behretal}}

### Congestion Control and Loss Recovery

QUIC’s congestion control is based on TCP NewReno {{RFC6582}}, a
congestion window based congestion control. The signals QUIC provides
for congestion control are generic and are designed to support different
algorithms. In this way, QUIC can be configured to fit best in different
contexts.

Compared to TCP, QUIC offers more detailed feedback information for loss
detection.
For example, it uses a monotonically increasing packet number and does
not retransmit on the packet-level but on the content-level. This allows
QUIC to distinguish retransmissions from the originally sent packets,
avoiding retransmission ambiguities.

Overall, comparing it to previously existing protocols, QUIC implements
better estimation of connection RTTs and detects and recovers from loss
more efficiently.

### Reduced Head-Of-Line Blocking

HTTP/2 allows multiple objects to be fetched over the same connection,
using multiple streams within a single flow.

In TCP, if a loss occurs in one stream, all streams stall while waiting
for packet recovery. Differently, QUIC allows other streams to continue
to exchange packets even if one stream is blocked due to a missing
packet {{MolaviKakhkietal}}.

### Resources

QUIC is relatively expensive to implement, both in terms of code (size
and complexity) and processing (including memory overheads). This can
represent a barrier to adoption and the benefits that come with that.

## Privacy

### Encryption

QUIC incorporates the key negotiation features of TLS 1.3, requiring all
connections to be encrypted.

Encryption improves the security and privacy of user data. It is built
into QUIC, using AEAD algorithms such as AES-GCM and ChaCha20 for both
privacy and integrity. QUIC authenticates the parts of its headers that
it does not encrypt, so attackers cannot modify any part of a message
{{Behretal}}.

Furthermore, in addition to improving privacy, encryption helps to
address the ossification of network protocols caused by middleboxes that
assume certain information to be present in the clear {{Kuehlewindetal}}.

### Transparent Proxying

Many cellular and high-latency networks use transparent TCP proxies to
reduce end-to-end delays and improve loss recovery. However, by
encrypting the transport headers, QUIC prevents transparent proxying,
thus protecting their integrity {{MolaviKakhkietal}}.

### Multiple Streams

By establishing connection with multiple streams, QUIC creates higher
opacity for the observer.

Comparing QUIC to TLS over TCP, QUIC significantly reduces the amount of
information that an observer can acquire about communications they are
looking at.

In TCP, all of the information regarding the protocol flow at a
transport layer is exposed, and can be used to identify active
communications.

In QUIC, it is possible to have an established connection with an end
point and to run multiple streams over that connection. Consequently, an
observer who is looking at someone's connection, would not be able to
tell the difference between the streams.

### Packet Number Encryption

In QUIC packet numbers are encrypted.

>From a general standpoint, the number assigned to each packet carries
very little information. For example, it is possible to observe that a
packet sent a certain time and the packet that was sent immediately
after probably have increasing packet numbers.

But when traffic is carried over multiple paths, it becomes observable
at many points, and this has privacy implications. For example, as
stated in {{draft-huitema-quic-mpath-req-01}}: "[...] if packets
belonging to a given connection carry some unique identifiers, observers
could use these identifiers to track client migrations through several
paths, and thus potentially expose the successive locations of a
particular user."

### Padding

Bit padding is the addition of one or more extra bits to a transmission
or storage unit to make it conform to a standard size.

QUIC (like HTTP/2 and TLS) offers a padding mechanism that can be used
as a defense against traffic analysis for protected packets. It is
important to note that its use is discretionary by implementations.

### Lawful Intercept

The lawful intercept of content in QUIC works similarly to TLS over TCP.
An intercept can: force the acceptance of an alternate certificate;
cooperate with or coerce the non-monitored endpoints to obtain session
keys for decryption of traffic; exploit endpoint vulnerabilities to
place monitoring devices directly on the endpoint on the other side of
the crypto boundary.

Forcing TLS 1.3 avoids some common exploit vectors in TLS 1.2 and
strengthens the ciphersuites.

### Spin Bit

When Google offered the IETF the opportunity to take the work on QUIC
and produce an open standard that could be used by all {{Wilketal}}, it
sparked off a debate within the IETF as to how much transport
information should be deliberately kept unknown to the network.

As an explicit design goal, QUIC provides far less information about its
operation to devices on path than TCP does. In TCP, the sequence and
acknowledgement numbers and timestamps (if the respective option is in
use) can be seen by on-path observers, and used to estimate end-to-end
latency.

Differently from previous transport protocols, QUIC splits the
information it uses for its own operation from its wire image. As a
consequence, QUIC's wire image currently does not expose any information
that can be used for passive latency measurement techniques
{{draft-ietf-quic-spin-exp-00}}.

At the June 2017 interim meeting of the QUIC Working Group, a proposal
was made to add a latency spin bit to QUIC's wire image, in order to
allow for passive measurability of RTT equivalent to TCP {{Trammell01}}.

The spin bit is an explicit signal for passive measurability of
round-trip time. It causes one bit in the header to ‘spin’, generating
one edge (a transition from 0 to 1 or from 1 to 0) once per end-to-end RTT.

During the following months, the proposal to add this facility to the
QUIC protocol has been further discussed and researched. At IETF101 the
Working Group agreed upon the reservation of three bits for
experimentation with passive RTT measurement, with the result of this
experimentation to inform an eventual working group decision whether to
include the bit in the shipping version 1 of the protocol, scheduled to
be complete by November 2018. {{Trammell02}}

>From its designers' perspective, the spin bit was formulated to be a
minimal-risk, maximum-utility signal fit for a single purpose: on-path
measurement of end-to-end RTT, to generate RTT samples for a variety of
passive latency measurement tasks.

The key argument in favor of the spin bit originates from the notion
that measurement is fundamental to the operation of networks and
at-scale services, whether for management, security, optimization, and
that if it is at all possible to safely design passive measurability of
any metric explicitly into a protocol, this signal represents how to do
it. {{Trammell01}}

The argument made by those who are not in favor of the addition of the
spin bit to the protocol, is that the exposure of any information beyond
the IP header and the base essentials of a UDP header is not necessary
and not safe. They point out that how this bit may be used, were it to
be added to the protocol, is unknown.

This could represent an infringement of the user privacy. Furthermore,
an exposed bit might cause for ossification of the bit itself, which
would, to some extent, defeat QUIC’s efforts to elude the intrusive and
ossifying grip of network middleware. {{Huston}}

### Packet Injection

It is viable for network operators to add data to packets in order to do
traffic monitoring and/or management.
It is not uncommon for network operators to routinely tag packets as
they enter the network for their own purposes, and simply erase the tag
when they leave the network. Packet modification or injection cannot be
prevented in QUIC. However, the protocol takes steps to ensure that its
own state is not affected by this kind of activity.

## Content Agnosticism

The QUIC protocol itself is content agnostic. While it is currently
being optimized for HTTP traffic, it can also be used with other
application layer protocols (e.g. see {{draft-huitema-quic-dnsoquic-05}}).

## Security

QUIC improves security by making encryption an inherent part of the
transport protocol, instead of adding it as a optional layer on top of
it. This protects the integrity of the data by preventing tampering on
the path, and ensures end-to-end confidentiality between the two
communicating hosts. Furthermore, it ensure that no on-path party can
emulate an endpoint.

By encrypting all Internet traffic by default it is harder for
researchers and network operators to analyze network traffic. This is a
specific design goal, but it also makes research into the promulgation
of malware, cookies and other artefacts much harder, since in this case
access to the stream needs to be provided by the end point.

## Internationalization

{{draft-ietf-quic-transport-12}} does not define human readable strings,
except for where it states that the Reason Phrase in the
CONNECTION_CLOSE and APPLICATION_CLOSE frames "SHOULD be a UTF-8 encoded
string {{RFC3629}}". The QUIC protocol demands that this SHOULD be an
UTF-8 string, while UTF-8 is actually not required. Also, there is
currently no space to declare the charset used. So it is recommended
that this SHOULD becomes a MUST.

{{draft-ietf-quic-transport-12}} does not allow for the use of language
tags. If it would request these tags, it would allow implementations to
signal in which language Reason Phrases are rendered.

## Censorship Resistance

Encryption makes monitoring and filtering of the traffic more complex,
thus hindering fine-grained censorship.

Furthermore, in QUIC it is also harder to terminate connections, since
in the protocol the only parties that can terminate the connection are
those actually involved in the connection once it exists. This means
that a middlebox cannot reset a connection, but needs to continue to
block it, keeping state. Considering this, it can be stated that QUIC
makes censorship harder because it requires the censor to invest more
resources and efforts.

QUIC is also improving the protection against DDoS through observation
of the handshake for connection confirmation, and through the need to
validate new connections in case of a connection migration.

It is worth noting that it is almost impossible to make the handshake
resilient to injection attacks, and the general consensus has been not
to spend cycles trying. This means that handshakes can easily be
disrupted by a censor. Post-handshake, QUIC is very resilient to
attempts to reset the connection by a third party.

## Open Standards

QUIC is published as open standard.

## Heterogeneity Support

The design of the QUIC transport protocol is currently specifically
tailored to be used with TLS1.3 and HTTP2. It is explicitly constructed
in a modular manner and is designed to support other application layer
protocols in the future as well.

## Anonymity

Persistent static identifiers, consistently linking to a particular
person or small, well-defined group of people, are one of the main
threats to anonymity. This is especially concerning when the identifier
is used in repeatedly used in multiple contexts, thus raising an issue
of linkability.

In QUIC, linkability would occur in case a connection ID was used on
multiple network paths. In order to provide some protection against
linkability in case of connection migration, QUIC uses different
connection IDs when different local addresses are used. Furthermore,
packet numbers are encrypted to ensure they are not used to establish a
link between different connection IDs.

However, it is important to note that traffic analysis might still allow
to correlate different streams.

## Pseudonymity

Keeping different identities isolated from each other is critical to
protect and preserve pseudonymity. QUIC contributes to this by using
different connections IDs for different local addresses.

## Confidentiality

Through the use of cryptography, QUIC integrates security,
confidentiality, authenticity, and integrity directly into the transport
protocol rather than having them layered on top of it. Any server that
offers QUIC to benefit from its latency improvements will automatically
provide all the aforementioned attributes to their user.

## Integrity

The use of TLS1.3 in QUIC makes on-path attacks either visible or nearly
impossible to carry out. So, if an actor forces the traffic to go
through one middlebox and decrypt the traffic itself, their action is
made detectable.
This also protects the integrity of the datastream, prevents tampering,
and averts the injection of extra data in the stream.

## Authenticity

Except for the initial handshake, the encryption in QUIC is provided by
TLS1.3, which uses asymmetric cryptography to authenticate the hosts.
This enables verification of authenticity.

## Adaptability

QUIC has a modular approach, and is designed for adaptation. The only
commitments in the protocol are the requirement to run on UDP, the
packet header, and the version negotiation phase. The remainder of the
protocol is quite flexible and can be further adapted.

By preventing the ossification of the protocol by middleboxes through
the encryption of transport headers, QUIC enhances the adaptability of
the architecture.

As a transport protocol, QUIC tries to be agnostic for application layer
protocols, even though it is currently tailored to work with HTTP/2.

## Outcome Transparency

Outcome transparency concerns the intelligibility of the effects of a
protocol in relation to its users, protocol developers, and
implementers, and its potential consequences (e.g. lack of authenticity
may lead to lack of integrity and negative externalities){{RFC8280}}.

QUIC represents a remarkable evolution of the transport layer with
significant impact on the Internet architecture and, most importantly,
the service provided to users.

### Encryption

The IETF has reached consensus on the fact that pervasive monitoring is
an attack (see {{RFC7258}}), and that a response to mitigate this is
represented by ubiquitous encryption, which would also reinforce the
end-to-end nature of the network {{RFC2775}} {{RFC3724}} {{RFC7754}}.

With the advent of QUIC, encryption becomes the default on the transport
level. This has a critical impact on the protection of user privacy.

Furthermore, it has implications concerning network operators that had
previously used visible parts of protocols to, among other things,
manage, operate, and secure their networks {{RFC8404}}.

Encryption also improves the integrity of the datastream, as QUIC allows
to protect users against injections of ads by network operators.

### Permissionless Innovation and Its Challenges

As suggested by interviewees during the research phase of this review,
and to acquire a more contextualized understanding of protocol
development efforts over time, it is relevant to pay attention to the
history of SCTP (Stream Control Transmission Protocol). SCTP is a
protocol for transmitting multiple streams of data at the same time
between two end points that have established a connection in a network,
standardized in {{RFC4960}}.

As outlined in the comparison between SCTP and QUIC presented in
{{draft-joseph-quic-comparison-quic-sctp-00}}, the deployment of SCTP is
not particularly widespread. In-network devices, like NAT gateways for
example, do not support SCTP well. NAT gateways need to be upgraded to
be SCTP-aware, the modification of middleboxes is very expensive, and
Internet service providers, focusing on the sustainability of their
business, update the devices in accordance with the benefit that this
can represent for their revenues.

Furthermore, an early version of QUIC (now popularly called gQUIC) was
initially designed and deployed by a large content provider, Google. It
was implemented in 2012, and the company invested significant resources
to develop it, for example conducting thorough A/B-testing in order to
assess how the protocol would interact with the network, and how the
middleboxes would respond. QUIC is now widely used in Chrome clients
accessing Google services.

In 2015, an Internet Draft of a specification for QUIC was submitted to
the IETF for standardization, and the following year the QUIC Working
Group was established. A growing number of contributors from the
corporate, academic, nonprofit sector have joined the protocol
development work since, and what has been achieved to date is the result
of a notable and labor-intensive collaborative effort.

So, on one hand, the history of QUIC shows that permissionless
innovation is still possible. On the other hand, it also shows what
remarkable efforts and resources are needed to carry out such an
ambitious project.
While permissionless innovation still exists, the threshold and costs
for innovation seem to rise significantly and increasingly.

Also, a look at the actors and dynamics involved in QUIC’s history
should not underestimate the power of Google’s authority. A different
developing actor might have been able to invest a similar amount of
resources into the development of a protocol. Still, without an
impressive user base and traffic stream as Google's, they might have
received a less supportive response from network operators.

Having said that, it is expected that QUIC will improve the current
situation by providing a more capable transport which aims to overcome
ossification and allow for changes in the protocol due to its modularity.

### Privacy, Power and Consolidation

The most relevant privacy advantage provided by QUIC is gained by users
who have different kinds of traffic relations with one end point. In
fact, QUIC does not allow network providers to easily differentiate
between, for instance, HTTP requests, DNS requests and real time voice
packets, thus strengthening user privacy, and also improving
performance. It is important to note, though, that QUIC does not
actually hide or attempt to hide the application protocol being used on
a connection. The ALPN offered by the client is protected only by a key
which can be calculated by any party who can work with the QUIC version
in use.

On the other hand, this creates a concentration of different kinds of
traffic with one end point, thus giving the service provider access to
more categories of privacy sensitive information.

In the current reality of the Internet, the biggest hosts are controlled
by large, consolidated, transnational corporations. This creates an
extreme power differential between end users on the one hand, and
service providers and content operators on the other hand.

In order to protect privacy and secure information, it is important that
the user makes a careful and informed decision about the hosting
provider and plan they choose.

While ubiquitous encryption changes the relation between service
providers and content operators, placing them at the same end of the
spectrum, it remains to be seen whether if it can help users take and
retain control within the overall power structures of Internet
governance and economics.

One of the problems with deploying fully encrypted protocols like QUIC
is that deployment is far easier for organizations that already have
integrated observability, traceability, and tooling in their back-ends,
which not surprisingly happen to be the big players.

If there was any chance to make running a QUIC server relatively easy,
thus enabling a greater diversification of end points, QUIC could
contribute to a power shift in favor of the end user.

However, running a QUIC infrastructure is currently expected to be more
demanding than running a HTTP/2 or HTTP/1 infrastructure. It would be
truly compelling if this consideration could be discussed further, and
ideally addressed by the development and release of openly available
tooling allowing for more accessible ways to run a QUIC server.

### Transparency and IoT

End-to-end encryption on the transport layer makes monitoring and
filtering of the traffic more complex, and can lead to the adoption of
other network management practices to obtain this information.

This has implications on the management of Internet of Things (IoT)
devices. If an IoT device adopts QUIC, it will be harder for the user
who owns the device to monitor what data is communicated with third
parties. It would also be more difficult to conduct research into the
promulgation of malware, cookies and other artefacts.

Adequate tooling to protect the right to privacy of IoT users has not
yet been developed.

Conclusions and Recommendations
===============================

The QUIC protocol provides significant human rights improvements for end
users.

It dramatically improves connectivity for users on high-loss,
high-latency connections. Users will benefit from lower latencies and
will not need to restart sessions as often. And in those cases in which
they will need to restart a session, they will able to do so without
having to re-do the initial handshake.

Another key improvement is represented by the use of encryption by
default, which provides authentication, stream integrity, adaptability
of the protocol by overcoming ossification, and improved protection from
third party monitoring and metadata analysis.

The following is a list of potential improvements that we invite the
QUIC Working group to take into consideration, wishing for the protocol
to have even greater positive implications for human rights.

* As the QUIC Working Group is expected to deliberate on the potential
inclusion of the spin bit in the main specification of the protocol at
the upcoming IETF103 (November 3-9, 2018), we suggest to consider not to
include it. Our recommendation is motivated by the concerns raised in
regards to its implications on user privacy, as reported in this very
document, and also shared by some of the interviewees.

* Consider deploying IP header encryption as an optional extension.

* Evaluate the addition of language tagging and charset identification
in the case of Reason Phrase in the CONNECTION_CLOSE and APPLICATION_CLOSE.

* Examine the opportunity to translate the QUIC specification into other
languages.

* Discuss the viability to make tooling for running QUIC servers openly
available.

* Observe and iteratively assess the implications of QUIC on the power
relations between end user on one end of the spectrum, and network
operators and service providers on the other one.

Acknowledgements
================

The authors thank (in alphabetical order) Mike Bishop, Janardhan
Iyengar, Daniel Kahn Gillmor, Mirja Kuehlewind, Mark Nottingham, Martin
Thomson, and Brian Trammell for their generous contribution to our
research and review. This document does not necessarily reflect their
opinion, but solely that of the authors.

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    From: Beatrice Martini <mail at beatricemartini.it>
    To: quic at ietf.org
    Cc: Niels ten Oever <mail at nielstenoever.net>
    Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2018 19:02:58 +0200
    List-id: Main mailing list of the IETF QUIC working group
<quic.ietf.org>

-- 
Niels ten Oever
Researcher and PhD Candidate
Datactive Research Group
University of Amsterdam

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