Subject: [Cfrg] Response to the request to remove CFRG co-chair

From: "Eggert, Lars" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 5 Jan 2014 07:49:04 +0000

Hi,

on Dec 20, 2013, I received a request from Trevor Perrin in my role as IRTF Chair to consider the removal of Kevin Igoe as one of the co-chairs of the IRTF's Crypto Forum Research Group (CFRG). The request stated several reasons for the removal:
 
(1) That Kevin Igoe provided the only positive feedback on the "Dragonfly" key exchange protocol.
 
(2) That Kevin Igoe made technical suggestions that would have weakened the cryptographic properties of "Dragonfly".
 
(3) That Kevin Igoe misrepresented the CFRG opinion on "Dragonfly" to the IETF's TLS working group.
 
(4) That Kevin Igoe is employed by the NSA.
 
I have reviewed the mailing list discussion, as well as the emails that were sent privately. Thank you all for being candid in your feedback.
 
David McGrew, the CFRG's other co-chair, has already posted a detailed timeline of events on points 1-3 to the list and concluded that the research group process has been followed imperfectly. I share this conclusion. However, while unfortunate, the mistakes made were not of a severity that would warrant an immediate dismissal of Kevin Igoe as co-chair. It is also the first such occurrence that I am aware of.
 
As mentioned above, the final point in Trevor Perrin's request pointed out Kevin Igoe's NSA employment and questions whether he can therefore be trusted to co-chair the group. This is an important question, with two aspects to it. First, whether a co-chair of a research group has the ability to unduly influence or subvert the technical work of the group. Second, whether having Kevin Igoe serve as a co-chair otherwise affects the ability of the research group to perform its duties.
 
I would like to discuss these two aspects in a bit more detail.
 
On the first point, RFC2014 details guidelines and procedures for IRTF research groups, and it is important to understand the IRTF and its mode of working. RFC2014 prominently states in Section 1 that IRTF "participation is by individual contributors, rather than by representatives of organizations". This applies to participation in any role, including as co-chair of a research group.
 
RFC2014 goes on to describe that research group co-chairs "perform the administrative functions of the group", and details those in Section 5.3, including process and content management, mailing list moderation, meeting organization and follow-up, community building, and document development and publication.
 
So unlike the title "co-chair" might imply, and unlike in many other organizations, IRTF co-chairs are little more than group secretaries. Their ability to influence the technical work of the group is little different from that of any other group participant.
 
Research groups typically have multiple co-chairs from different organizations, and all currently chartered research groups have open membership, so all IRTF business is conducted in the open, on public mailing lists and in public meetings. Any participant suspecting misconduct can raise any issue either in the group or to the IRTF chair, as Trevor Perrin has done in this case. This is how our process should work, and this is why any individual participant - co-chair or not - is unlikely to be able to subvert ongoing research group work.
 
The second aspect of Trevor Perrin's last point - whether having Kevin Igoe serve as a co-chair otherwise impacts the ability of the research group to perform its duties - is one of public perception more than anything else.
 
"NSA agent co-chairing key crypto standards body" makes a catchy, albeit factually incorrect, news headline, and publicity like this may deter new people from participating in the CFRG, which may limit the amount of technical work it can take on, and may limit the body of expertise in the group. That is obviously of concern.
 
However, would removing Kevin Igoe as a co-chair address this issue? Co-chairs do not wield more power over the content of the ongoing work than other research group participants. Should we then eliminate all individuals affiliated with the NSA from participating? We may be able to identify those that choose to participate openly under that affiliation, but what about consultants or academics that fund their participation partially or fully through NSA contracts, now or in the past? What about participants from or funded by intelligence agencies in other countries that may or may not have collaborated with the NSA?
 
It is a very slippery slope, and we run the serious danger of eliminating valuable contributions to our work by preventing individuals with certain affiliations to participate. That of course also affects the ability of the research group to perform its duties. In the end, it is a trade-off.
 
The IRTF and IETF have always welcomed participation by all, and the open processes that both organizations employ have been our safeguard against any group of participants that attempted to subvert our technical work, in any field we're active in. Widespread wiretapping by nation-state adversaries is a threat unlike any other in the history of the Internet, but I do not believe that preventing interested people from participating in the IRTF or IETF based solely on their affiliation will help us combat that threat.
 
I hope the above explains why I am declining Trevor Perrin's request to remove Kevin Igoe as a co-chair of the IRTF's Crypto Forum Research Group (CFRG).
 
I realize this has been a controversial discussion, and this is likely a controversial decision. Let me therefore outline what I believe the next level of escalation is, should research group participants want to go that route.
 
RFC2014 does not define an appeals process for the IRTF, other than in the case when the IRTF Chair closes a research group that disagrees with that decision. However, the IRTF Chair is appointed by the Internet Architecture Board and serves at its discretion. Ultimately, any disagreement with the actions of the IRTF Chair should therefore be raised with the IAB. (Note that I am an ex officio member of the IAB and will receive any email sent to the normal [email-masked] email address. If that is of concern, my suggestion would be to email the IAB Chair, Russ Housley, and the IAB Executive Director, Mary Barnes, directly at [email-masked] and [email-masked], respectively.)
 
Finally, I want to thank Trevor Perrin to have raised the concerns he had with the situation in the CFRG. Our open process works best when any concerns are brought forward for public discussion, as was the case here.
 
Lars Eggert
IRTF Chair

---

From: Alyssa Rowan <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 06 Jan 2014 19:46:28 +0000

On 05/01/2014 07:49, Eggert, Lars wrote:

> […] The IRTF and IETF have always welcomed participation by all, 
> and the open processes that both organizations employ have been our
> safeguard against any group of participants that attempted to 
> subvert our technical work, in any field we're active in. 
> Widespread wiretapping by nation-state adversaries is a threat 
> unlike any other in the history of the Internet, but I do not 
> believe that preventing interested people from participating in the
> IRTF or IETF based solely on their affiliation will help us combat
> that threat.

> I hope the above explains why I am declining Trevor Perrin's 
> request to remove Kevin Igoe as a co-chair of the IRTF's Crypto 
> Forum Research Group (CFRG). […]

Lars: Thank you kindly for considering the request. I can see it has
been considered with careful gravity and balance. I note the outcome,
and particularly your concern regarding the potential for
precedent-setting, which I also do not think would be helpful.

David McGrew also noted the importance of trustworthiness in the
duties of a research group co-chair - despite their secretarial nature.

I submit trustworthiness is particularly vital here: in a research
group which, though not a ‘key crypto standards body’ exactly,
is tasked with discussing, reviewing and ultimately providing expert
guidance to IETF Working Groups on the correct practical application of
cryptographic techniques in standard protocols for worldwide use
across the internet.

Kevin: Meaning no disrespect, I remain concerned as to the impact of
your remaining as co-chair upon the wider perception that this
research group would be a useful and trustworthy venue for such
discussion and advice.

I therefore respectfully ask, Kevin, that you please personally
consider my request that, though not forcibly removed, you should at
least reconsider whether in all of the circumstances and the wider
position, you wish to remain as co-chair of the CFRG, or would prefer
to participate as a non-chairing member of the forum instead.

Thank-you.

- -- 
/akr

---

From: Trevor Perrin <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 6 Jan 2014 17:48:51 -0800

Hi Lars,

Thanks for considering this request.

Of course, I'm disappointed with the response.

--

I brought to your attention Kevin's record of technical mistakes and
mismanagement over a two year period, on the major issue he has
handled as CFRG co-chair.  You counted this as a single "occurrence",
and considered only the narrow question whether it is "of a severity
that would warrant an immediate dismissal".

I appreciate your desire to be fair to Kevin and give him the benefit
of the doubt.  But it would be better to consider what's best for
CFRG.  CFRG needs a competent and diligent chair who could lead review
of something like Dragonfly to a successful outcome, instead of the
debacle it has become.

--

I also raised a conflict-of-interest concern regarding Kevin's NSA
employment.  You considered this from the perspectives of:
 (A) Kevin's ability to subvert the group's work, and
 (B) the impact on RG participation.

Regarding (A), you assessed that IRTF chairs "are little more than
group secretaries" who "do not wield more power over the content of
the ongoing work than other research group participants".

That's a noble ideal, but in practice it's untrue.  Chairs are
responsible for creating agendas, running meetings, deciding when and
how to call for consensus, interpreting the consensus, and liaising
with other parties.  All this gives them a great deal of power in
steering a group's work.

You also assessed that the IETF/IRTF's "open processes" are an
adequate safeguard against NSA subversion, even by a group chair.  I'm
not sure of that.  I worry about soft forms of sabotage like making
Internet crypto hard to implement securely, and hard to deploy widely;
or tipping groups towards dysfunction and ineffectiveness.  Since
these are common failure modes for IETF/IRTF crypto activities, I'm
not convinced IETF/IRTF process would adequately detect this.

Regarding (B), you judged this a "tradeoff" between those who would
not participate in an NSA-chaired CFRG (like myself), and those
"affiliated with NSA" whom you presume we would "eliminate" from
participating.

Of course, that's a bogeyman.  No-one wants to prevent anyone else
from participating.

But the chair role is not a right given to every participant, it's a
responsibility given to those we trust.  The IETF/IRTF should not
support a chair for any activity X that has a strong interest in
sabotaging X.  This isn't a "slippery slope", it's common sense.

--

Finally, I think Kevin's NSA affiliation, and the recent revelations
of NSA sabotage of a crypto standard, raises issues you did not
consider.

You did not consider the cloud of distrust which will hang over an
NSA-chaired CFRG, and over the ideas it endorses.

You also did not consider that as the premier Internet standards
organization, the IETF/IRTF's actions here will make an unavoidable
statement regarding the acceptability of such sabotage.

We have the opportunity to send a message that sabotaging crypto
standards is unacceptable and destroys public trust in those
organizations in a way that has real consequences.  Or we send a
message that it's no big deal.

This is a political consideration rather than a technical one, but it
needs to be considered.  We're sending a message either way.

--

I understand there's no formal appeal process, but these issues are of
great importance to the IRTF and IETF, and would benefit from the
perspective IAB possesses.

I would appreciate if the IAB would consider reviewing this issue and
expressing its judgement.

Trevor

(a couple comments below)

On Sat, Jan 4, 2014 at 11:49 PM, Eggert, Lars <[email-masked]> wrote:
> David McGrew, the CFRG's other co-chair, has already posted a detailed timeline of events on points 1-3 to the list and concluded that the research group process has been followed imperfectly. I share this conclusion.

Dragonfly discussions started in December 2011.  David's timeline
begins in October 2012, skipping:
 * The early critical feedback which Kevin ignored [1]
 * Kevin's "nitpicking detail" which breaks the protocol's security [2]
 * Kevin's cheerleading for a protocol whose use cases and
alternatives he made no effort to understand [3]

[1]
http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/cfrg/current/msg03046.html
http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/cfrg/current/msg03052.html
http://www.ietf.org/proceedings/83/minutes/minutes-83-cfrg.txt

[2]
http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/cfrg/current/msg03047.html

[3]
http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/cfrg/current/msg03047.html
http://www.ietf.org/proceedings/84/minutes/minutes-84-tls

[...]
> So unlike the title "co-chair" might imply, and unlike in many other organizations, IRTF co-chairs are little more than group secretaries.

The chair is far more than a "group secretary".  As RFC 2014 section 5.3 states:
"""
The Research Group Chair is concerned with making forward progress in
the areas under investigation, and has wide discretion in the conduct
of Research Group business.  [...] The Chair has ultimate responsibility
for ensuring that a Research Group achieves forward progress.
"""

---

From: Adam Back <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 7 Jan 2014 03:30:40 +0100

I want to add my full public support to what Trevor said below.  I expressed
my concerns publicly and also offlist to Lars following his request for
comments.

I will not repeat the arguments as Trevor did a very eloquent job of
summarizing.

For the record (some people were rudely claiming anyone disagreeing with
them must be a "newbie" who just signed up to complain about a "fashionable
issue"), I am not a newcomer to IETF participated back to probably around
1996, have been on this IRTF list for some years, wrote a few IDs, invented
crypto concepts in day to day use in Tor, Bitcoin and other places, wrote
crypto code that is in use by many people and companies.  I have a comp sci
PhD.  I have been working in the cyrpto/security industry for > 20 years.

It pains me that I have to say any of that, but discussion on here became a
bit non-linear recently and I am not sure what is going on exactly.  Maybe
several parties with different slants and motives countervailing the public
interest.  Or just rude "pragmatists" (an exceedingly dangerous species of
engineer in crypto or privacy areas in my experience).

Adam

On Mon, Jan 06, 2014 at 05:48:51PM -0800, Trevor Perrin wrote:
>_______________________________________________
>Cfrg mailing list
>[email-masked]
>http://www.irtf.org/mailman/listinfo/cfrg

---

From: Greg Rose <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 6 Jan 2014 20:19:25 -0800

> Of course, I'm disappointed with the response.

[snip]

Having left my day job, I now feel free to comment on this subject, which I didn't feel able to do last week.

I think it is at best a myth, and at worst willful ignorance, to believe that all IETF participants are acting only as individuals. As such, and because appearances can sometimes be as important as the underlying reality, I would prefer that Kevin voluntarily step down from this position. Of course if he chooses not to, I don't see that he can or should be forced to.

(with apologies for re-kindling the debate)
Greg.

---

From: Trevor Perrin <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 7 Jan 2014 09:42:08 -0800

On Tue, Jan 7, 2014 at 9:34 AM, Mary Barnes <[email-masked]> wrote:
> Hi Trevor,
>
> I am the IAB Executive Director and we have a question as to whether you
> would like the IAB to consider your response below as an official appeal
> request?

Hi Mary,

Yes, if that's an option (I wasn't sure it was).

Thanks for being on top of this.

Trevor

---

From: David McGrew <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 08 Jan 2014 07:36:07 -0500

Hi Trevor,

I recognize and support your right to raise the question of a conflict 
of interest between the NSA and CFRG.  I am confident that the IRTF 
chair and IAB will give it due consideration.

However, I am concerned that your efforts to find evidence in the CFRG 
email archive that support the idea that Kevin is incompetent are 
unwarranted and counterproductive.   While many people agree with you 
about the conflict of interest, many disagree with you on the subject of 
competence.  It is not hard to go through the email archive and find 
examples where someone misstated something, or did not explain something 
completely, but doing so does not advance the security or privacy on the 
Internet, which is the goal that you and I share for CFRG.  That goal 
would best be served by focusing the valuable time of the research group 
members (a scarce resource that we need to manage well) on addressing 
technical issues.   Therefore, I respectfully ask that, in your request 
to the IAB, you focus on the key issue of the conflict of interest.

David

On 01/06/2014 08:48 PM, Trevor Perrin wrote:
> .

---

From: Adam Back <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 8 Jan 2014 14:42:13 +0100

I support Trevor in raising the conflict of interest, its pretty egregious
and Kevin should in my view resign gracefully to end this mess.  If hes
clean and works for IA as he says its a nice way out.  If hes not and is
actually part of the sabotage side its still a quieter way out than being
pushed.  It probably doesnt look as clean either way if he is pushed.  If he
is not pushed it just creates bad impression of the impartiality of IRTF. 
Sort of like the justice system closing ranks and supporting Hoover after
the scandal and him staying in office with immunity by analogy.  I am not
sure of the game theory from NSA sabotage side, if they would prefer Kevin
(whether on their budget or not) to let the noise continue and be pushed or
skip the noise and resign, or noise continue, plus fail to push him and
continue with the resentment and reputation loss to IRTF.

There is some validity in what David said below also.  Some of Kevins stuff
looks suspicious to others also, its certainly not just Trevor, but of
course its not provable - the worst parts are either innocuously
ill-considered/sub-optimal suggestions, as with the next guy prone to human
failure (which is somewhat plausible) or designed to be unprovable. 
$250m/year managed with military intent can achieve that you know, its not
hard.  There are unclassified military intelligence double agent sabotge
manuals that Ian Grigg posts quotes from now and then that show the basic
ideas.  Most of them still seem quite relevant.

Anyway the point I wanted to draw from David's comment is we cant and wont
be able to prove it.  BUT I think anyone is certainly within their right to
comment on things that look suspicious, or insecure.  See I think for
comparison the RNG bias Bleichenbacher found in DSA RNG leading to key
recovery are fair game.  As is Ferguson et al's comments about EC_DRBG.  Or
Trevors about some of the decisions relating to Dragonfly.  Or Prof
Bernstein's comments about Kevin's recent post here about certicom patents
pushing towards less secure curves (see the crypto list).

Its called peer review.  If anyone cant stand their thoughts and public
statements being peer reviewed, probably participating in IRTF/IETF or
uncensored internet discussion in general is not for them.  As we have
pretty incontrovertible proof that NSA has been sabotaging standards,
unfortunately that opens up review of input to the standards influenced by
any NSA participants.  Its ugly but we didnt create the problem, Kevin's
employer did.  Sorry.

So unfortunately it is probably relevant that apart from conflict of
interest, the public record is not suspicionless.  Imagine NSA / NIST
communications about EC DRBG were public.  There'd be a pretty clear public
interest to go over the history of it, see who was supporting it or aware of
it within NIST.  Its really not that dissimilar.

We may in the longer term have to review and even deprecate existing
standards as a result of this militarized sabotage of its own and global
civilian infrastructure.

ps I support Trevor in rejecting Lars assertion that IRTF co-chair has no
influence.

Adam

(IETF participant since 1996).

On Wed, Jan 08, 2014 at 07:36:07AM -0500, David McGrew wrote:
>Hi Trevor,
>
>I recognize and support your right to raise the question of a 
>conflict of interest between the NSA and CFRG.  I am confident that 
>the IRTF chair and IAB will give it due consideration.
>
>However, I am concerned that your efforts to find evidence in the 
>CFRG email archive that support the idea that Kevin is incompetent 
>are unwarranted and counterproductive.   While many people agree with 
>you about the conflict of interest, many disagree with you on the 
>subject of competence.  It is not hard to go through the email 
>archive and find examples where someone misstated something, or did 
>not explain something completely, but doing so does not advance the 
>security or privacy on the Internet, which is the goal that you and I 
>share for CFRG.  That goal would best be served by focusing the 
>valuable time of the research group members (a scarce resource that 
>we need to manage well) on addressing technical issues.   Therefore, 
>I respectfully ask that, in your request to the IAB, you focus on the 
>key issue of the conflict of interest.
>
>David
>

---

From: John Viega <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 8 Jan 2014 09:37:36 -0500

I agree with David that competence doesn’t factor into it.  

Conflict of interest is an issue here.  But again, even before recent NSA revelations, there would often be participants with a conflict— good of the participant’s company vs. good of the world.  Even now, where NSA is part of the threat model, we shouldn’t expect every actor with a conflict is going to walk in with an NSA badge. 

I don’t think conflict of interest is a good enough basis for removing a chair.  The IETF/IRTF needs to be able to design standards when many actors have conflicts, and should be able to give confidence in what they produce.

The most important thing from my perspective is making sure the IETF/IRTF has the public trust.  I think it’s possible to do this without removing Kevin, especially if the IETF/IRTF can clearly communicate how it prevents subversion.

That is, if the world cares enough.  I suspect that very few people are going to boycott IETF/IRTF-driven standards if no further action is taken.

John 

John Viega | cel +1 212-321-0902

On Jan 8, 2014, at 8:42 AM, Adam Back <[email-masked]> wrote:

> is not pushed it just creates bad impression of the impartiality of IRTF. Sort of like the justice system closing ranks and supporting Hoover after
> failure (which is somewhat plausible) or designed to be unprovable. $250m/year managed with military intent can achieve that you know, its not
>> I recognize and support your right to raise the question of a conflict of interest between the NSA and CFRG.  I am confident that the IRTF chair and IAB will give it due consideration.
>> 
>> However, I am concerned that your efforts to find evidence in the CFRG email archive that support the idea that Kevin is incompetent are unwarranted and counterproductive.   While many people agree with you about the conflict of interest, many disagree with you on the subject of competence.  It is not hard to go through the email archive and find examples where someone misstated something, or did not explain something completely, but doing so does not advance the security or privacy on the Internet, which is the goal that you and I share for CFRG.  That goal would best be served by focusing the valuable time of the research group members (a scarce resource that we need to manage well) on addressing technical issues.   Therefore, I respectfully ask that, in your request to the IAB, you focus on the key issue of the conflict of interest.
>> 
>> David
>>

---

From: Watson Ladd <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 8 Jan 2014 06:53:19 -0800

On Wed, Jan 8, 2014 at 6:37 AM, John Viega <[email-masked]> wrote:
> Conflict of interest is an issue here.  But again, even before recent NSA
> revelations, there would often be participants with a conflict— good of the
> participant’s company vs. good of the world.  Even now, where NSA is part of
> the threat model, we shouldn’t expect every actor with a conflict is going
> to walk in with an NSA badge.

The solution is tighter standards about our standards. The conflict of interest
with IPR isn't as bad as not having candor about known weaknesses. We will
need to talk about Certicom IPR at some point: I've seen many emails in which
Certicom employees don't mention patents they have authorship on related
to the ideas they are flogging, as well as some patent FUD related to Montgomery
curves. But that's secondary to weak standards getting pushed through
the process
by chairs, even when the customer WG doesn't want it any more (TLS will not
consider Dragonfly again).

>
> I don’t think conflict of interest is a good enough basis for removing a
> chair.  The IETF/IRTF needs to be able to design standards when many actors
> have conflicts, and should be able to give confidence in what they produce.
>
> The most important thing from my perspective is making sure the IETF/IRTF
> has the public trust.  I think it’s possible to do this without removing
> Kevin, especially if the IETF/IRTF can clearly communicate how it prevents
> subversion.

And as I've documented extensively, the CFRG process that was actually being
followed did not prevent subversion. Kevin's misrepresentation of Dragonfly was
harmless only because Rene Struik and others smelled a rat. Imagine if this
was heading into a WG without any cryptographers, and they had taken
Kevin's suggestion
of exponentiation seriously. That could easily have happened. There
need to be changes
made to the process to harden it against this sort of thing: either
following the process we have
or designing new measures.

>
> That is, if the world cares enough.  I suspect that very few people are
> going to boycott IETF/IRTF-driven standards if no further action is taken.

They already have: DJB doesn't send CurveCP to the IETF, he publishes
it online. Safecurves is seeing large
adoption outside the IETF framework. OpenSSH has pushed a bunch of new
ciphers into production: I don't know how far ahead
of the standard they are.

IETF standardization needs to catch up here: people see a need for
using non-NIST curves and ciphers
(in some cases due to attacks based on implementation properties), and
we aren't helping people with that
need. We also haven't dealt with a lot of terrible, terrible issues in
TLS validation code or lack thereof. Outside
IETF projects exist for this, but I feel that an IETF imprimatur does
matter especially to bodies like PCI DSS
that don't have cryptographers of their own.

What do we do instead? Rehash what the CRYPTO'13 rump session did much
more elegantly [1]. It's easy to
pontificate about how bad the NSA is, but when it comes to protecting
the Internet, we've known for years what
is required, and our job is to find the problems that exist with that
goal, and fix them.

[1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cVUIk6nXVcw
> I recognize and support your right to raise the question of a conflict of
> interest between the NSA and CFRG.  I am confident that the IRTF chair and
> IAB will give it due consideration.
>
> However, I am concerned that your efforts to find evidence in the CFRG email
> archive that support the idea that Kevin is incompetent are unwarranted and
> counterproductive.   While many people agree with you about the conflict of
> interest, many disagree with you on the subject of competence.  It is not
> hard to go through the email archive and find examples where someone
> misstated something, or did not explain something completely, but doing so
> does not advance the security or privacy on the Internet, which is the goal
> that you and I share for CFRG.  That goal would best be served by focusing
> the valuable time of the research group members (a scarce resource that we
> need to manage well) on addressing technical issues.   Therefore, I
> respectfully ask that, in your request to the IAB, you focus on the key
> issue of the conflict of interest.
>
> David
>
> on Dec 20, 2013, I received a request from Trevor Perrin in my role as IRTF
> Chair to consider the removal of Kevin Igoe as one of the co-chairs of the
> IRTF's Crypto Forum Research Group (CFRG). The request stated several
> reasons for the removal:
>
> I have reviewed the mailing list discussion, as well as the emails that were
> sent privately. Thank you all for being candid in your feedback.
>
> David McGrew, the CFRG's other co-chair, has already posted a detailed
> timeline of events on points 1-3 to the list and concluded that the research
> group process has been followed imperfectly. I share this conclusion.
>
> So unlike the title "co-chair" might imply, and unlike in many other
> organizations, IRTF co-chairs are little more than group secretaries.
>

-- 
"Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little
Temporary Safety deserve neither  Liberty nor Safety."
-- Benjamin Franklin

---

From: Adam Back <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 8 Jan 2014 16:17:22 +0100

Hi John

I've seen several people putting forward a similar argument.  There is some
logic but its I think an incorrect conclusion.

I understand the conflict of interest when people are somewhat pushing their
companies approach, related to their product or implementtion choices they
have some investment in, but generally tempered by reasonableness.  All the
companies that care can put their voice in also.  IPR disclosures are also
there.  Loose consensus and running code copes with that ok.

I think NSA sabotage is a significantly different and its unrealistic to
just assume a chair has no influence.  A non-NSA chair would strive for
impartiality with regard to their employers interests.  If certicom wants to
push something and cisco something else they are both pushing for something
reasonably secure as a fundamental assumption and trying to make secure
systems so their customers will buy them.  Forward secrecy is good,
architectural weaknesses bad etc.

The NSA is NOT in that boat.  They are explicitly sabotaging security on a
grand and systematic scale at all levels including standardization.  They
dislike forward secrecy, and like architectural weakness and architectural
tap points and sabotaged RNGs, and fragile hard to implement correctly
standards with traps.  There were numerous news articles by Greenwald and
others backed by NSA docs about these strategies.

I suppose I need to go find the declassified military sabotage manual that I
mentioned Ian Grigg quotes from.  You, and others making this argument,
should read and extrapolate (the part is a very short, one page).  "OSS's
Simple Sabotage Field Manual, a 1944 document"

http://svn.cacert.org/CAcert/CAcert_Inc/Board/oss/oss_sabotage.html

No I am not being paranoid, the journalists have the docs, and they are
publishing the summaries and some of the actual docs, and their technical
analysts supporting them are Schneier & Applebaum.

So again I do not find it acceptable to have an agent of a now known
industrial scale sabateur in a chair position.  Maybe you would feel
different if it were Chinese military intelligence and they were shown via
leaks to have succeeded in backdooring a protocol the world is using, based
on abused good faith in open standards, and say used it to exfiltrate info
from US defense contractors and military, and an openly Chinese MI
affiliated guy was co-chair.  Not sure what triggers people to get it.  Its
ridiculously and egregiously inappropriate from where I am sitting.

Adam

(IETF participant since 1996)

On Wed, Jan 08, 2014 at 09:37:36AM -0500, John Viega wrote:
>   Conflict of interest is an issue here.  But again, even before recent
>   NSA revelations, there would often be participants with a conflict—
>   good of the participant’s company vs. good of the world.  Even now,
>   where NSA is part of the threat model, we shouldn’t expect every actor
>   with a conflict is going to walk in with an NSA badge.
>   I don’t think conflict of interest is a good enough basis for removing
>   a chair.  The IETF/IRTF needs to be able to design standards when many
>   actors have conflicts, and should be able to give confidence in what
>   they produce.
>   The most important thing from my perspective is making sure the
>   IETF/IRTF has the public trust.  I think it’s possible to do this
>   without removing Kevin, especially if the IETF/IRTF can clearly
>   communicate how it prevents subversion.
>   On Jan 8, 2014, at 8:42 AM, Adam Back <[1][email-masked]> wrote:
>
>     is not pushed it just creates bad impression of the impartiality of
>     IRTF. Sort of like the justice system closing ranks and supporting
>     Hoover after
>     are unwarranted and counterproductive.   While many people agree
>     with you about the conflict of interest, many disagree with you on
>     the subject of competence.  It is not hard to go through the email
>     security or privacy on the Internet, which is the goal that you and
>     I share for CFRG.  That goal would best be served by focusing the
>     I respectfully ask that, in your request to the IAB, you focus on
>     the key issue of the conflict of interest.
>     David
>     On Sat, Jan 4, 2014 at 11:49 PM, Eggert, Lars <[2][email-masked]>
>     wrote:
>
>     Hi,
>     on Dec 20, 2013, I received a request from Trevor Perrin in my role
>     as IRTF Chair to consider the removal of Kevin Igoe as one of the
>     co-chairs of the IRTF's Crypto Forum Research Group (CFRG). The
>     request stated several reasons for the removal:
>     (2) That Kevin Igoe made technical suggestions that would have
>     weakened the cryptographic properties of "Dragonfly".
>     I have reviewed the mailing list discussion, as well as the emails
>     that were sent privately. Thank you all for being candid in your
>     feedback.
>     David McGrew, the CFRG's other co-chair, has already posted a
>     detailed timeline of events on points 1-3 to the list and concluded
>     that the research group process has been followed imperfectly. I
>     share this conclusion.
>
>     [3]http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/cfrg/current/msg03046.html
>     [4][email-masked]
>     [5][email-masked]
>References
>   1. mailto:[email-masked]
>   2. mailto:[email-masked]
>   3. http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/cfrg/current/msg03046.html
>   4. mailto:[email-masked]
>   5. mailto:[email-masked]

---

From: Stephen Farrell <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 08 Jan 2014 16:20:28 +0000

Hi Adam,

> logic but its I think an incorrect conclusion.

I think there's a bit more subtlety to the conflict of interest
issue than maybe some folks appreciate. (If this is old-news
for you, sorry for wasting the bytes:-)

Within the IETF its not that uncommon to have conflicts of
interest where a company would like to sabotage a piece of
standards work, in ways that seem quite similar to the current
situation and that do not involve IPR, nor the misbehaviour
of an individual chair.

Say company-x have a product doing some proprietary thing
that has significant market share. Then others propose to
standardise that function, which company-x might consider
would lessen their advantage with their product. It would not
at all be a surprise to see people acting for company-x
(employed, as consultants or business partners) trying to
bugger up the standards process by e.g. trying to make the
standard take ages, be over-complex or omit some crucial
functionality. And if company-x aren't dumb then that can
be attempted without any obvious evidence being left about.

Now if company-x are of any size, then its quite likely
that employees of theirs are chairing other WGs. And for
a long-lived WG with a generic charter, it'd not be at
all unusual if someone working for company-X co-chairs
the WG in question.

So - what's different here? Are we saying that if a
company-x marketing department memo leaks that says "let's
bugger up <foo>" then we should fire the person who's
co-chairing that WG?

I do agree that NSA's US$250M/yr for messing up Internet
security is just horrendous, and we should be (and some of
us are) working hard to make that wasted-effort to the
extent we can, but what I'm not seeing is the difference
between the NSA situation and the company-x situation as
it affects a sitting chair in the absence of a smoking
gun that directly implicates the chair involved.

And if Lars or the IAB fire Kevin for his affiliation then
I'd be quite worried about the precedent that'd set especially
since there will be a lot of company-y folks who might in
future see that going down the same route could benefit
company-y and damage company-x, even if the accusations were
baseless. We could be creating a significant DoS vector
that way.

To be clear about the above - I don't think that either
NSA nor company-x are doing the right thing, but we do
need to do our best to make the processes work well and
fairly even if they are bad-actors.

A couple of other points below, but those are maybe less
interesting.

> I understand the conflict of interest when people are somewhat
> pushing their companies approach, related to their product or
> implementtion choices they have some investment in, but generally
> tempered by reasonableness.  All the companies that care can put
> their voice in also.  IPR disclosures are also there.  Loose
> consensus and running code copes with that ok.

I think you left out a critical part of that, at least as its
done in the IETF and IRTF - the participants ideally act as
individuals and not on behalf of their employers and are treated
that way. There is a serious danger of going down the slippery
slope to paid membership if we deviate from that, with what I
think would be overall worse outcomes. And there's a constant
pressure to take that slippery slope for other reasons, e.g.
to "better" handle IPR, or to recognise the reality that it
costs a lot to fully participate, so we do need to be very
careful about anything related to affiliation alone lest we
damage the openness that allows an idiot in an Irish university
to end up as a sec AD:-)

> others backed by NSA docs about these strategies.

Other than the headline 250/yr I think I've only seen
convincing evidence related to the RNG stuff though. The
rest afaik is speculation. If I missed more that's been
published, I'd appreciate pointers. Or if the folks with
access to the materials have more evidence on that aspect, I
really hope they manage to publish that sooner rather than
later.

But there's IMO a far more likely explanation for why we end up
with stuff that fits this particular speculation - a lot of
standards work ends up being dominated by people with more
complex requirements and its always hard to keep stuff simple.
In the case of security protocols, the US DoD requirements, as a
customer (e.g. for PKI) are about as complicated as it gets and they
can afford to pay folks to work on that. So we've ended up with
PKI that's over complex for many other use-cases. A sort of
similar thing happened with oauth, where the (non-govt) enterprise
use-cases dominated for similar reasons.

And I think the security folks within the IETF (including
me) also need to take some blame for putting too much
emphasis on "purity" (for want of a better word) and not
enough on deployability and simplicity. I hope (but also
think) we have learned that lesson.

> analysts supporting them are Schneier & Applebaum.

I'm not saying you're paranoid, nor that Bruce of Jake are
wrong, but I'm not convinced by that part of the argument, as
of now.

Cheers,
S.

---

From: Trevor Perrin <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 8 Jan 2014 18:46:10 -0800

On Wed, Jan 8, 2014 at 8:20 AM, Stephen Farrell
<[email-masked]> wrote:
> issue than maybe some folks appreciate.

Hi Stephen,

I'd like to understand the subtlety better.  The IETF/IRTF leadership
seems terrified that considering an egregious conflict of interest in
a chair is a "slippery slope" to membership fees, loyalty oaths, and
purges.

I don't understand this.  Chairs are appointed (I assume) by weighing
many factors:  are they smart?  Fair?  Good communicators?
Trustworthy?  Easy to work with?  Knowledgeable both technically and
of IETF/IRTF process?  I would think being clear of severe
conflicts-of-interest is also good.

No-one wants to make these criteria for excluding participants.  But
if a chair's lack of these qualities threatens a group's performance,
surely it's appropriate to consider a replacement?

> be attempted without any obvious evidence being left about.

And this is just totally acceptable, day-to-day life at the IETF?

> bugger up <foo>" then we should fire the person who's

Depending on the credibility of the memo and the consequences of the
buggering, I would think that's reasonable to consider.

I disagree that this needs to be framed as "fire the person".  That
implies this is some exceptional and insulting process to inflict on
someone.

But there is no other process to replace an RG chair except for having
the IRTF chair replace them.  Kevin has no term limit.  We can't just
wait 6 months and then quietly ease him out, or something.

Perhaps there should be some process for selecting new chairs
periodically that is less confrontational, but unless I'm missing
something, there is not.

> think would be overall worse outcomes.

You lost me - what does "paid membership" have to do with this?

> published, I'd appreciate pointers.

See the BULLRUN reporting and documents:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/06/us/nsa-foils-much-internet-encryption.html
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/09/05/us/documents-reveal-nsa-campaign-against-encryption.html?ref=us

Adam's speculations strike me as plausible and consistent with the
documents we have.  I think acting on "risk avoidance" grounds is
prudent here, instead of demanding absolute proof of what would of
course be covert and "deniable" activities by sneaky people.

> PKI that's over complex for many other use-cases.

Huh.  That's not all that different from the fears Adam has, or my
concern about "softer forms" of sabotage.  At least, the line between
"sabotage" and "not quite working in the Internet's best interest" is
a blurry one.

For example:  It's interesting how NIST tends to standardize
algorithms that work well in hardware but are tricky in software.  And
how DoD's steering of PKI worked for DoD, I suppose, but has not
resulted in working key management for the Internet.

Trevor

---

From: Stephen Farrell <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 09 Jan 2014 10:17:40 +0000

Hi Trevor,

> a chair is a "slippery slope" to membership fees, loyalty oaths, and

Terrified, egregious, loyalty oaths and purges is just irritating
overblown rhetoric and wrong. Do you think such language helps
something or someone? It doesn't. However, the rest of you mail
deserves a response, so I'll skip over that.

BTW, just to be clear, I'm not part of the decision process nor
the appeal process, which is why I feel free to respond. Others who
are in the appeal chain may well not, so please don't misinterpret
their silence.

> conflicts-of-interest is also good.

Yes. Appointment is not the same as firing though, at least IMO.
I figure its right for someone appointing someone to take many
informal factors into account, but its not the same firing someone.

I know that you don't agree that the only issue here is Kevin's
affiliation, but that is what I think, as I said before.

> surely it's appropriate to consider a replacement?

That's probably true in general, and Lars I assume considered all
that as will the IAB. I'm ok with that process.

> And this is just totally acceptable, day-to-day life at the IETF?

No, and I didn't say it was. Do machinations happen in an
organisation involving thousands of people like the IETF?
Of course they do. Analogous things happen in academia as
well of course. The point is not that its acceptable
behaviour (it isn't) but that our processes need to be
designed to counter it, while at the same time enabling
the sausage-making to happen.

My point though was to question the assertion that the
NSA situation is new in this respect.

I do think snowdonia is new in other respects and that
we need to respond to those.

> buggering, I would think that's reasonable to consider.

Fair enough that you think that. I think it'd be wrong if
the firing is solely based on affiliation.

> implies this is some exceptional and insulting process to inflict on

But it is that. Reading some of the comments on the ars articles
about this kerfuffle, the phrase "exceptional and insulting" does
seem accurate. I'm not saying that's your fault, but it has
happened.

> periodically that is less confrontational, but unless I'm missing

There is not. That kind of thing has been discussed, and it is
generally a fine thing to rotate chairs now and then, but in a
volunteer organisation that's hard - chairing a contentious WG
can take 20% of your week and finding capable willing chairs is
hard. I don't think I've seen any credible proposal for term
limits for chairs in either the IETF nor IRTF.

> You lost me - what does "paid membership" have to do with this?

Once you start to recognise affiliation in the way that is implied
in the last part of your request, then you need processes that
deal with the organisations and not the individuals and that very
quickly tends to turn into a discussion about membership which
then also quickly turns into one about paid membership and voting.
You can believe me on this or not, but do bear in mind its far too
boring an argument to want to deal with all the ins and outs;-)

> http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/09/05/us/documents-reveal-nsa-campaign-against-encryption.html?ref=us

Well since those are NYT and I don't have a subscription I
can't follow those URLs:-)

But I'm pretty sure I've seen that material already.

> course be covert and "deniable" activities by sneaky people.

I don't think his speculations are convincing on this point, as
I said. Its not surprising that reasonable people differ on how
to interpret partial information like this though.

> "sabotage" and "not quite working in the Internet's best interest" is

Yes. In the latter case, I assert that the motivation is far
more commonly "prioritising one's own set of requirements" and
not "wanting the Internet to work less well."

> algorithms that work well in hardware but are tricky in software.  

That I think is something where we can make improvements all
right, without having to agree on whether or not the current
situation is a result of sabotage or not. I'm delighted to
see CFRG starting down that road (partly spurred by your
request I think).

> And

Actually, I'd argue that someone wanting pervasive monitoring
would be more likely to prefer that a DoD style PKI had been
widely deployed in the Internet, so I really don't think that
the NSA-driven sabotage argument holds water there. That's on
the basis that if everyone had to go to a CA to do stuff then
it'd be easier to track everyone and also to get at their long
term decryption keys, e.g. because they'd often be centrally
generated for mobility reasons.

And like I said there are non-govt examples as well, oauth
as I quoted before, but also SIP and probably others.

Regards,
S.

---

From: Trevor Perrin <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 9 Jan 2014 19:35:29 -0800

> deserves a response, so I'll skip over that.

"Terrified" was too strong.  But BULLRUN was 4 months ago.  It's time
for our leadership to summon their courage and take a stand.

As for the rest - David McGrew indeed mused about "a statement of
purpose of CFRG that contributors need to agree to".

http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/cfrg/current/msg03695.html

And Lars indeed worried we'd have to "eliminate all individuals
affiliated with the NSA".

http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/cfrg/current/msg03736.html

I think these are implausible fears which our leadership seems more
interested in spreading than explaining.

> informal factors into account, but its not the same firing someone.

If those qualities are important at time of "hiring", they're
important 2 years later.

If the IRTF doesn't have a better policy for rotating the chair, then
"firing" (your term) is how it has to be done.

> the sausage-making to happen.

Yes, and countering an unacceptable conflict-of-interest in a
leadership position by removing the individual from that position is
an appropriate policy.

> the firing is solely based on affiliation.

So you would never remove a chair based on an affiliation that poses a
conflict-of-interest?

You also don't seem to care about competence or mismanagement.  What
would be grounds for replacing a chair, in your opinion?

> seem accurate. I'm not saying that's your fault, but it has

I don't think message board comments are relevant here.

The IAB could frame a chair replacement however they want.

I do think Kevin's removal should be a rebuke to the NSA.  We should
make a statement that weakening standards is unacceptable and damages
their ability to work with us, and that there's been a loss of trust
the NSA needs to repair.

> boring an argument to want to deal with all the ins and outs;-)

In what way have I "implied" recognizing affiliation, beyond common
sense?  What new processes would we need to "deal with organizations"?

Please explain.  This is a major objection that's been raised to the
request.  You can't just handwave that we need to believe you, or that
it's too "boring" to get into.

If this is a serious objection it needs to be explained seriously.

> But I'm pretty sure I've seen that material already.

Sorry, see the Pro Publica story (and memos):

http://www.propublica.org/article/the-nsas-secret-campaign-to-crack-undermine-internet-encryption
http://www.propublica.org/documents/item/784280-sigint-enabling-project
http://www.propublica.org/documents/item/784284-bullrun-briefing-sheet-from-gchq.html

And the Guardian story:

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/05/nsa-gchq-encryption-codes-security

I'm sure you and most people have seen these.  But if the shock has
worn off for anyone they're worth revisiting.

The Pro Publica article is almost (though not quite) identical with
the NYT article.  The Guardian article has additional information.

The NYT memos have more commentary and annotations, which provide a
good summary:

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/09/05/us/documents-reveal-nsa-campaign-against-encryption.html

"Documents show that the N.S.A. has been waging a war against
encryption using a battery of methods that include working with
industry to weaken encryption standards, making design changes to
cryptographic software, and pushing international encryption standards
it knows it can break."

"The N.S.A.'s Sigint Enabling Project is a $250 million-a-year program
that works with Internet companies to weaken privacy by inserting back
doors into encryption products."

"One responsibility of the agency is to safeguard United States
communications by promoting encryption standards, and the other is to
break codes protecting foreign communications. Part of the Sigint
Enabling Project's goal is to influence these standards — which are
often used by American companies — and weaken them."

> to interpret partial information like this though.

Certainly this would be easier if there was more information.

> not "wanting the Internet to work less well."

Those aren't mutually exclusive.  In fact, the needs of military
"COMSEC" are probably different enough from public Internet crypto
that simply prioritizing the former goes some way towards
accomplishing the latter (as you note for PKI).

And I would expect the mindset isn't "wanting the Internet to work
less well", but simply "wanting the Internet to remain an easy target
for collection".

Kevin's main involvement with the IETF has been to "ensure various
internet security protocols supported configurations which would be
suitable for use in classified networks".

http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/cfrg/current/msg03644.html

Nothing wrong with that.  But does he care about widespread, strong
crypto on the public Internet?  Is he going to aggressively tackle
end-to-end encrypted messaging; ubiquitous and strongly-authenticated
HTTPS; or improving the deployment of TLS forward secrecy and better
ciphers / curves?

Those are real challenges this group could be contributing to.  Do you
want NSA at the helm?

> see CFRG starting down that road (partly spurred by your

Other people have wondered about this, FWIW:

https://www.imperialviolet.org/2012/10/21/nist.html
http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/cfrg/current/msg03599.html

> generated for mobility reasons.

Someone wanting pervasive monitoring would prefer plaintext.  It's
already easy to track everyone.

>> PKI that's over complex for many other use-cases.

Some military gear is designed to be hard to use by outsiders - you
can't load keys into comm gear, things disable themselves, etc.

Maybe that strategy applies at a higher level, too?  Maybe we're the outsiders.

NSA is here participating so we build things for them.  But do we
trust them to build things for us?

Trevor

---

From: Stephen Farrell <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 10 Jan 2014 16:18:51 +0000

Trevor,

Some responses below but I honestly think this exchange has
otherwise run its course.

On 01/10/2014 03:35 AM, Trevor Perrin wrote:
> It's time

Taking a stand sounds lovely, but ineffective. I prefer that
we try to improve the Internet and harden it against pervasive
monitoring. If you think the IETF hasn't been working on that
then perhaps you need to pay more attention, for example, I
didn't notice any comment from you on the IETF LC for [1], nor
on the perpass list [2] since October, nor on the UTA list [3]
nor have I seen a submission from you for the upcoming IAB/W3C
workshop [4] on this topic that'll happen before IETF-89 (but
you do still have time for that last so why not shoot one in:-).

   [1] https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-farrell-perpass-attack
   [2] https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/perpass
   [3] https://tools.ietf.org/wg/uta/charters
   [4] https://www.w3.org/2014/strint/

Its entirely reasonable that you do none of the above and just
focus on e.g. CFRG or TLS but its neither reasonable nor helpful
to ignore everything else that's going on *and* make grandiose,
calls for "taking a stand" such as the above.

> I do think Kevin's removal should be a rebuke to the NSA.  

I think that would be an inappropriate action. IMO neither the
IRTF nor IETF are the business of "rebuking" NSA or anyone else.
Its fine that you disagree.

> If this is a serious objection it needs to be explained seriously.

As I've said before, I do not believe Kevin's actions warrant
replacing him as chair and therefore the only basis left on which
he would be fired is purely his affiliation. Doing so would mean
recognising participant affiliation in a new and quite damaging
way. Again, its fine that you don't agree.

Were the IRTF or IETF to do that for chairing in an automatic
manner (e.g. "no NSA personnel are acceptable as chair") then
to be consistent and fair we would have to start doing that
for other cases too, e.g. when considering last calls, which
leads quickly to voting, and membership. If you want an example
of how that would go, please see e.g. the giant thread that
starts at [5] and the even bigger discussion in the rtcweb
working group. Or spend a bit of time reading the archives
of IPR list [6] and you'll see how most kinds of increased
recognition of affiliation lead towards membership. (And when
you're done, then tell me its not boring:-)

  [5] http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/ietf/current/msg84566.html
  [6] http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/ipr-wg/current/maillist.html

What is done now is that we trust other individuals to handle
such matters, we do stuff openly allowing anyone who turns up
on the list to have their say, we have appeal processes, and (in
the IETF) recall and nomcom processes for leadership. In this
case the IRTF chair handled your request, with a result with
which I agreed and you disagreed, and the IAB will handle your
appeal of that I guess, and I think that's the right thing
to happen.

S.

---

From: Watson Ladd <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 10 Jan 2014 08:33:00 -0800

>    [4] https://www.w3.org/2014/strint/

And this has made mass surveillance harder how?
This has had about as much effect as the CRYPTO '13 rump session.
In fact, one summary of perpass is that it is entirely taking a stand.
I've only seen one proposal (point to point encryption of optical
lines) come out
that would make life tricker for the NSA, and that one has been kicked to
CFRG.

> Its fine that you disagree.

And draft-farrell-perpass-attack isn't a rebuke?

> way. Again, its fine that you don't agree.

It's the combination of the actions and affiliations. Imagine Dragonfly
had more than just a certificational flaw, and the TLS WG accepted the
CFRG response. Would you still considert hat an innocent mistake?

Kevin has also carried water for Certicom to shed doubt on Montgomery curves,
reiterating baseless summaries of IPR disclosures. This has happened more
recently, but deserves consideration.

> you're done, then tell me its not boring:-)

This argument starts off by saying that last calls are like being a chair.
And that isn't true. The chair has a lot more power than anyone in a last
call. I feel as though the argument for keeping Kevin has taken the arguments
against in the weakest possible form, rather than the strongest.

---

From: "Dan Harkins" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 10 Jan 2014 10:30:42 -0800 (PST)

> And this has made mass surveillance harder how?

  It will; it is work in that direction. Defining the problem and getting
people to think about various solutions are the first step towards
actually reaching that goal.

  You should note that Lao-tzu didn't say that the journey of a
thousand miles begins by taking a fashionable stand or by rebuking
something. It starts with a step. That step has been made.

  Dan.

---

From: Trevor Perrin <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 10 Jan 2014 21:07:27 -0800

> IRTF nor IETF are the business of "rebuking" NSA or anyone else.

As an organization which has relied on NIST crypto standards for many
years we are gravely threatened by NSA's subversion of crypto
standards and the distrust that's been sown in our community.

As the premier Internet standards body we have a voice and moral
authority on the issue that no-one else has.

It's imperative we send the message that subversion of crypto
standards is unacceptable.

Trevor

---

From: Stephen Farrell <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 11 Jan 2014 13:05:40 +0000

Trevor,

> standards is unacceptable.

Imperative? Sigh. (Due to rhetoric-overload:-)

I don't agree as it happens, I think any statement of principle
along those lines is either included in the URLs I sent before,
or [1-4] below, or would likely be stating the obvious. Brian
Carpenter's presentation at the Vancouver tech plenary might also
be useful background. [5]

If there were a non-targetted (i.e. not directly dissing NSA or
GCHQ or whoever) statement of principle along those lines that
usefully added to the stuff I've referenced then I'd be interested
in that but I don't see what it might be to be honest.

S.

[1] http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1984
[2] http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3365
[3] http://www.ietf.org/media/2013-11-07-internet-privacy-and-security.html
[4] http://www.ietf.org/blog/2013/09/security-and-pervasive-monitoring/
[5]
http://www.ietf.org/proceedings/88/slides/slides-88-iab-techplenary-7.pdf

---

From: Trevor Perrin <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 23 Jan 2014 08:30:14 -0800

Dear IAB and Mary Barnes,

On January 6 I emailed CFRG and the IAB objecting to the IRTF chair's
decision not to remove Kevin Igoe from CFRG co-chair.

http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/cfrg/current/msg03778.html

On January 7 Mary Barnes, IAB Executive Director, emailed myself, the
IAB, and CFRG, and asked for "confirmation one way or the other as to
whether you are explicitly requesting the IAB consider this as an
official appeal, in which case we will deliberate and generate a
public response".

I confirmed to the same recipients that I wanted the appeal to be considered.

I haven't heard anything since.  Could the IAB confirm to the CFRG
list whether they are considering this appeal, and provide any
transparency on the process and timeline?

Trevor