Edited/Distributed by HURINet - The Human Rights Information Network --------------------------------------------------------------------- ## author : declan@well.com ## date : 10.11.99 --------------------------------------------------------------------- An Open Letter to the Internet Engineering Task Force November 8, 1999 IETF Secretariat c/o Corporation for National Research Initiatives 1895 Preston White Drive, Suite 100 Reston, VA, USA 20191-5434 +1 703 620 9071 (fax) Dear IETF Members, We are writing to urge the IETF not to adopt new protocols or modify existing protocols to facilitate eavesdropping. Based on our expertise in the fields of computer security, cryptography, law, and policy, we believe that such a development would harm network security, result in more illegal activities, diminish users' privacy, stifle innovation, and impose significant costs on developers of communications. At the same time, it is likely that Internet surveillance protocols would provide little or no real benefit for law enforcement. o Protocols to allow surveillance will undermine network security. Ensuring adequate security on the Internet is extremely difficult. The President's Commission on Critical Infrastructure Protection identified the Internet as a critical but vulnerable infrastructure. Any protocol that requires backdoors or other methods of ensuring surveillance will create new security holes that can be exploited. In addition, the increased complexity of the systems will further undermine security and increase costs of development and implementation. The National Research Council "Trust in Cyberspace" report identified increasing complexity as a core cause of decreasing security. The new security holes will likely cause more economic and personal harm than any interceptions facilitated will prevent. o The proposed protocols will stifle development of new communications technologies. Any requirement to ensure that every new communications system includes eavesdropping capabilities will limit the ability of companies and individuals to fully develop and deploy new communications technologies. In the United States, the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA) has delayed the development of new telephone, cellular and satellite communications technologies as conflicts over the surveillance standards have continued. o There are no legal requirements for the IETF to develop surveillance protocols. There are no current requirements under U.S. law requiring that computer networks facilitate surveillance. The U.S. Congress, when enacting CALEA, specifically rejected the inclusion of computer networks in the statutory mandate. In addition, it is inconsistent with laws in other jurisdictions, such as the European Union Directive 97/66/EC of 15 December 1997 concerning the processing of personal data and the protection of privacy in the telecommunications sector, requiring that every provider of telecommunications services "must take appropriate technical and organisational measures to safeguard security of its services." o Surveillance protocols will not prevent crime. Even if the IETF were to develop protocols that facilitated surveillance, it would not prevent crime as most significant criminal enterprises (i.e., those important enough to warrant being placed under surveillance in the first place) would be sophisticated enough to use end-to-end encryption products to prevent decoding of the intercepted communications. Indeed, almost all national governments have rejected calls for mandatory key-escrow encryption because they recognize that it would not be effective. o Building in surveillance protocols is inconsistent with the previous activities of the IETF. The IETF has long attempted to increase the reliability, security, and privacy of computer networks. The August 1996 Internet Advisory Board (IAB) and Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG) Statement on Cryptographic Technology and the Internet (RFC 1984) called for the availability and development of stronger tools to protect security and privacy of network users and rejected limitations on computer security based on country requirements for interception. More recently, the IETF agreed to incorporate encryption into IPv6, even in the face of domestic and export controls in some countries. It would be a dramatic change in policy for the IETF to now begin work on developing surveillance capabilities for IP Voice. o The proposal will have severe consequences in many non-democratic countries. Privacy of communications is a fundamental human right recognized in the United National Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and many other international human rights agreements that have been signed by nearly every nation in the world. However, in many nations, those fundamental rights are routinely violated by the national governments and others. The U.S. State Department reported in its 1998 survey of human rights that governments in over 90 countries were conducting illegal surveillance of their citizens. The protocols would continue and likely expand that surveillance. In conclusion, we urge the IETF to reject the development and inclusion of these protocols. Sincerely, Austin Hill Zero-Knowledge Systems Steven Aftergood Federation of American Scientists Yaman Akdeniz Cyber-Rights & Cyber-Liberties (UK) David Banisar Attorney and author, The Electronic Privacy Papers Steve Bellovin AT&T Labs- Research Matt Blaze AT&T Labs - Research Caspar Bowden Foundation for Information Policy Research Jean Camp Harvard University Jason Catlett Junkbusters Inc. Roger Clarke Xamax Consultancy Pty Ltd Lance Cottrell Anonymizer Inc. Rick Crawford UC Davis Computer Security Group Professor George Davida University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee Alan Davidson Center for Democracy and Technology Simon Davies Privacy International Lisa S. Dean Free Congress Foundation Whitfield Diffie Sun Microsystems Brian K. Durham Dave Farber University of Pennsylvania Clinton Fein ApolloMedia Corporation Leonard N. Foner MIT Media Lab Michael Froomkin University of Miami School of Law Emily Frye esq. iWitness, Inc. John Gilmore co-founder, Electronic Frontier Foundation Brian R. Gladman Information Security Consultant Ellen Hanratty Medicine Hawk Publications Roger Harrison Independent security consultant Mark W. Heaphy Wiggin & Dana Paul Hoffman Internet Mail Consortium and VPN Consortium Gus Hosein London School of Economics Eric Hughes Signet Assurance Company IEEE USA Joichi Ito Neoteny, Inc. Jerry Kang UCLA School of Law Phil Karn Qualcomm Susan Landau Sun Microsystems Inc. Ben Laurie - Apache Software Foundation, OpenSSL Group and A.L. Digital Ltd Bill Lemieux Technical Alchemy Lawrence Lessig Harvard Law School Ralph Mackiewicz SISCO, Inc. Russell McOrmond FLORA Community WEB William Hugh Murray, CISSP Peter Neumann SRI Grover G. Norquist Americans for Tax Reform Richard Payne Dinah PoKempner Human Rights Watch Jean-Jacques Quisquater UCL Crypto Group and Math RiZK Donald Ramsbottom LL.B, BA (Hons). RAMSBOTTOM & Co. Solicitors Michael Richardson Sandelman Software Works Ronald L. Rivest MIT Marc Rotenberg Electronic Privacy Information Center Pamela Samuelson, Professor of Information Management and of Law, UC Berkeley William L. Schrader Chairman, CEO and Founder PSINet Inc. Bruce Schneier Counterpane Systems Barbara Simons Association for Computing Machinery Tim Skorick Technical Security Contractor Richard M. Smith Independent security consultant David Sobel Electronic Privacy Information Center Shari Steele Electronic Frontier Foundation Barry Steinhardt American Civil Liberties Union David Wagner University of California, Berkeley Coralee Whitcomb Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility Philip R. Zimmermann Network Associates Affiliations for identification purposes only. ---------------------------------- Send mail for the 'huridocs-tech' list to 'huridocs-tech@hrea.org'. Mail administrative requests to 'majordomo@hrea.org'. For additional assistance, send mail to: 'owner-huridocs-tech@hrea.org'. 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