Subject: Re: bozoproofing the IETF process, was bozoproofing the net

From: John Levine <[email-masked]>
Date: 2 Jan 2006 15:36:14 -0000

Let's see if I can boil this argument down to the nub.

This started with a claim that there is something unusually dangerous
about DKIM so it needs warning labels or hazmat suits to prevent
people from using it to chop the net into pieces.

The first question is: is this problem unique to DKIM (and maybe a few
related techonologies), or is it a general problem that we now are
going to worry about all the time?

If the former, I need to understand concretely how to distinguish a
risky technology like DKIM from a less risky one like, say, S/MIME.
(The distinguishing rule should account for details like the fact that
the DKIM WG doesn't propose to standardize any authorization beyond
keys in the DNS, and that the evidence for partition due to similar
technologies like DNSBLs and SPF and S/MIME is pretty thin.)

If the latter, I share concerns about gratitous or accidental
partitioning, but they really need a WG of their own to produce their
own documents to which future work can refer, just as we refer to RFC
3833 when storing new data in the DNS rather than rehashing the fight
about how secure the DNS is.

If the partitioning issues are particularly related to e-mail, I would
be happy to continue them in the ASRG which is overdue for a good
argument.

If they're for the net in general, it would make a fascinating topic
for a WG where we can re-argue how bad private address space and NAT
are and whether the ICANN/IANA root is good and whether the de-facto
Verisign S/MIME root is bad, and about a hundred other things and wrap
it all up in about 2014 just as the last e-mail user gives up and
switches to one of three proprietary IM systems.

So can people give me guidance?  What problem are we trying to solve
with the danger warnings?

Regards,
John Levine, [email-masked], Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies",
Information Superhighwayman wanna-be, http://www.johnlevine.com, Mayor
"More Wiener schnitzel, please", said Tom, revealingly.

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