Subject: Advanced Collections Requirement: Hiding the Location of a Target

From: "Slein, Judith A" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 15 Sep 1998 15:05:51 -0400

I would like to try to spark more discussion of the issues raised at
IETF 42 on the Advanced Collections requirements and specification.  Jim
Davis provided a very useful summary of those issues in his mailnote of
August 31, "Adv. Coll. items from the 42nd IETF".

This is the first of a series of notes intended to push further on each
of the issues Jim lists.

There was a suggestion for a new requirement that the creator of a
reference be able to hide the location of the target.  

This makes sense only for direct references.  Indirect references cannot
be used at all unless a client can retrieve the URI of the target in
order to make requests directly of the target.  

In the context of direct references, what is the ratoinale for this
requirement? If it's just wanting to prevent users from deleting /
moving / copying the target, presumably that could be done through
access control and would not need a requirement about referencing.  I
would appreciate hearing the rationale before considering adding this
requirement.

--Judy

Judith A. Slein
Xerox Corporation
[email-masked]
(716)422-5169
800 Phillips Road 105/50C
Webster, NY 14580

---

From: John Stracke <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 15 Sep 1998 12:55:24 -0700

> reference be able to hide the location of the target.

[...]

> requirement?

I think the answer is that the target URI itself might be sensitive data.
For example, suppose I were running a startup out of my home while working
for Netscape (I'm not :-), and wanted to keep it private.  Say the
startup's pages are under http://foo/myStartup/ (bit of a giveaway), and
there's a single page in there that I want to show to a Netscape co-worker,
so I create an indirect reference to it.  I don't want them to be able to
see the target URI.

--
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