5.  Methodology

   Mapping the relationship between human rights, protocols, and
   architectures is a new research challenge that requires a good amount
   of interdisciplinary and cross-organizational cooperation to develop
   a consistent methodology.

   The methodological choices made in this document are based on the
   political-science-based method of discourse analysis and ethnographic
   research methods [Cath].  This work departs from the assumption that
   language reflects the understanding of concepts.  Or, as [Jabri]
   holds, policy documents are "social relations represented in texts
   where the language contained within these texts is used to construct
   meaning and representation."  This process happens in society
   [Denzin] and manifests itself in institutions and organizations
   [King], exposed using the ethnographic methods of semi-structured
   interviews and participant observation.  Or, in non-academic

   language, the way the language in IETF/IRTF documents describes and
   approaches the issues they are trying to address is an indication of
   the underlying social assumptions and relationships of the engineers
   to their engineering.  By reading and analyzing these documents, as
   well as interviewing engineers and participating in the IETF/IRTF
   working groups, it is possible to distill the relationship between
   human rights, protocols, and the Internet's infrastructure as it
   pertains to the work of the IETF.

   The discourse analysis was operationalized using qualitative and
   quantitative means.  The first step taken by the authors and
   contributors was reading RFCs and other official IETF documents.  The
   second step was the use of a Python-based analyzer, using the
   "Bigbang" tool, adapted by Nick Doty [Doty], to scan for the concepts
   that were identified as important architectural principles (distilled
   on the initial reading and supplemented by the interviews and
   participant observation).  Such a quantitative method is very precise
   and speeds up the research process [Ritchie].  But this tool is
   unable to understand "latent meaning" [Denzin].  In order to mitigate
   these issues of automated word-frequency-based approaches and to get
   a sense of the "thick meaning" [Geertz] of the data, a second
   qualitative analysis of the data set was performed.  These various
   rounds of discourse analysis were used to inform the interviews and
   further data analysis.  As such, the initial rounds of quantitative
   discourse analysis were used to inform the second rounds of
   qualitative analysis.  The results from the qualitative interviews
   were again used to feed new concepts into the quantitative discourse
   analysis.  As such, the two methods continued to support and enrich
   each other.

   The ethnographic methods of the data collection and processing
   allowed the research group to acquire the data necessary to "provide
   a holistic understanding of research participants' views and actions"
   [Denzin] that highlighted ongoing issues and case studies where
   protocols impact human rights.  The interview participants were
   selected through purposive sampling [Babbie], as the research group
   was interested in getting a wide variety of opinions on the role of
   human rights in guiding protocol development.  This sampling method
   also ensured that individuals with extensive experience working at
   the IETF in various roles were targeted.  The interviewees included
   individuals in leadership positions (Working Group (WG) chairs, Area
   Directors (ADs)), "regular participants", and individuals working for
   specific entities (corporate, civil society, political, academic) and
   represented various backgrounds, nationalities, and genders.

5.1.  Data Sources

   In order to map the potential relationship between human rights and
   protocols, the HRPC Research Group gathered data from three specific
   sources:

5.1.1.  Discourse Analysis of RFCs

   To start addressing the issue, a mapping exercise analyzing Internet
   infrastructure and protocol features vis-a-vis their possible impact
   on human rights was undertaken.  Therefore, research on (1) the
   language used in current and historic RFCs and (2) information
   gathered from mailing-list discussions was undertaken to expose core
   architectural principles, language, and deliberations on the human
   rights of those affected by the network.

5.1.2.  Interviews with Members of the IETF Community

   Over 30 interviews with the current and past members of the Internet
   Architecture Board (IAB), current and past members of the Internet
   Engineering Steering Group (IESG), chairs of selected working groups,
   and RFC authors were done at the IETF 92 meeting in Dallas in
   March 2015 to get an insider's understanding of how they view the
   relationship (if any) between human rights and protocols, and how
   this relationship plays out in their work.  Several of the
   participants opted to remain anonymous.  If you are interested in
   this data set, please contact the authors of this document.

5.1.3.  Participant Observation in Working Groups

   By participating in various working groups, in person at IETF
   meetings, and on mailing lists, information about the IETF's
   day-to-day workings was gathered, from which general themes,
   technical concepts, and use cases about human rights and protocols
   were extracted.  This process started at the IETF 91 meeting in
   Honolulu and continues today.

5.2.  Data Analysis Strategies

   The data above was processed using three consecutive strategies:
   mapping protocols related to human rights, extracting concepts from
   these protocols, and creation of a common glossary (detailed under
   Section 2).  Before going over these strategies, some elaboration on
   the process of identifying technical concepts as they relate to human
   rights is needed:

5.2.1.  Identifying Qualities of Technical Concepts That Relate to Human
        Rights

5.2.1.1.  Mapping Protocols and Standards to Human Rights

   By combining data from the three data sources named above, an
   extensive list of protocols and standards that potentially enable the
   Internet as a tool for freedom of expression and association was
   created.  In order to determine the enabling (or inhibiting)
   features, we relied on direct references in the RFCs as related to
   such impacts, as well as input from the community.  Based on this
   analysis, a list of RFCs that describe standards and protocols that
   are potentially closely related to human rights was compiled.

5.2.1.2.  Extracting Concepts from Selected RFCs

   The first step was to identify the protocols and standards that are
   related to human rights and to create an environment that enables
   human rights.  For that, we needed to focus on specific technical
   concepts that underlie these protocols and standards.  Based on this
   list, a number of technical concepts that appeared frequently were
   extracted and used to create a second list of technical terms that,
   when combined and applied in different circumstances, create an
   enabling environment for exercising human rights on the Internet.

5.2.1.3.  Building a Common Vocabulary of Technical Concepts That Impact
          Human Rights

   While interviewing experts, investigating RFCs, and compiling
   technical definitions, several concepts of convergence and divergence
   were identified.  To ensure that the discussion was based on a common
   understanding of terms and vocabulary, a list of definitions was
   created.  The definitions are based on the wording found in various
   IETF documents; if the definitions were not available therein,
   definitions were taken from other SDOs or academic literature, as
   indicated in Section 2.

5.2.1.4.  Translating Human Rights Concepts into Technical Definitions

   The previous steps allowed for the clarification of relationships
   between human rights and technical concepts.  The steps taken show
   how the research process "zoomed in", from compiling a broad list of
   protocols and standards that relate to human rights to extracting the
   precise technical concepts that make up these protocols and
   standards, in order to understand the relationship between the two.
   This subsection presents the next step: translating human rights to
   technical concepts by matching the individual components of the
   rights to the accompanying technical concepts, allowing for the
   creation of a list of technical concepts that, when partially
   combined, can create an enabling environment for human rights.

5.2.1.5.  List of Technical Terms That, When Partially Combined, Can
          Create an Enabling Environment for Human Rights

   Based on the prior steps, the following list of technical terms was
   drafted.  When partially combined, this list can create an enabling
   environment for human rights, such as freedom of expression and
   freedom of association.

     Architectural principles                    Enabling features
       and system properties                        for user rights

                      /------------------------------------------------\
                      |                                                |
    +=================|=============================+                  |
    =                 |                             =                  |
    =                 |           End-to-end        =                  |
    =                 |          Reliability        =                  |
    =                 |           Resilience        =  Access as       |
    =                 |        Interoperability     =   human right    |
    =    Good enough  |          Transparency       =                  |
    =     principle   |       Data minimization     =                  |
    =                 |  Permissionless innovation  =                  |
    =    Simplicity   |     Graceful degradation    =                  |
    =                 |          Connectivity       =                  |
    =                 |      Heterogeneity support  =                  |
    =                 |                             =                  |
    =                 |                             =                  |
    =                 \------------------------------------------------/
    =                                               =
    +===============================================+

   Figure 1: Relationship between Architectural Principles and Enabling
                         Features for User Rights

5.2.2.  Relating Human Rights to Technical Concepts

   The technical concepts listed in the steps above have been grouped
   according to their impact on specific rights, as mentioned in the
   interviews done at IETF 92 as well as the study of literature (see
   Section 4 ("Literature and Discussion Review") above).

   This analysis aims to assist protocol developers in better
   understanding the roles that specific technical concepts have with
   regard to their contribution to an enabling environment for people to
   exercise their human rights.

   This analysis does not claim to be a complete or exhaustive mapping
   of all possible ways in which protocols could potentially impact
   human rights, but it presents a mapping of initial concepts based on
   interviews and on discussion and review of the literature.

   +-----------------------+-----------------------------------------+
   | Technical Concepts    | Rights Potentially Impacted             |
   +-----------------------+-----------------------------------------+
   | Connectivity          |                                         |
   | Privacy               |                                         |
   | Security              |                                         |
   | Content agnosticism   | Right to freedom of expression          |
   | Internationalization  |                                         |
   | Censorship resistance |                                         |
   | Open standards        |                                         |
   | Heterogeneity support |                                         |
   +-----------------------+-----------------------------------------+
   | Anonymity             |                                         |
   | Privacy               |                                         |
   | Pseudonymity          | Right to non-discrimination             |
   | Accessibility         |                                         |
   +-----------------------+-----------------------------------------+
   | Content agnosticism   |                                         |
   | Security              | Right to equal protection               |
   +-----------------------+-----------------------------------------+
   | Accessibility         |                                         |
   | Internationalization  | Right to political participation        |
   | Censorship resistance |                                         |
   | Connectivity          |                                         |
   +-----------------------+-----------------------------------------+
   | Open standards        |                                         |
   | Localization          | Right to participate in cultural life,  |
   | Internationalization  |    arts, and science, and               |
   | Censorship resistance | Right to education                      |
   | Accessibility         |                                         |

   +-----------------------+-----------------------------------------+
   | Connectivity          |                                         |
   | Decentralization      |                                         |
   | Censorship resistance | Right to freedom of assembly            |
   | Pseudonymity          |    and association                      |
   | Anonymity             |                                         |
   | Security              |                                         |
   +-----------------------+-----------------------------------------+
   | Reliability           |                                         |
   | Confidentiality       |                                         |
   | Integrity             | Right to security                       |
   | Authenticity          |                                         |
   | Anonymity             |                                         |
   |                       |                                         |
   +-----------------------+-----------------------------------------+

        Figure 2: Relationship between Specific Technical Concepts
       with Regard to Their Contribution to an Enabling Environment
                 for People to Exercise Their Human Rights

5.2.3.  Mapping Cases of Protocols, Implementations, and Networking
        Paradigms That Adversely Impact Human Rights or Are Enablers
        Thereof

   Given the information above, the following list of cases of
   protocols, implementations, and networking paradigms that either
   adversely impact or enable human rights was formed.

   It is important to note that the assessment here is not a general
   judgment on these protocols, nor is it an exhaustive listing of all
   the potential negative or positive impacts on human rights that these
   protocols might have.  When these protocols were conceived, there
   were many criteria to take into account.  For instance, relying on a
   centralized service can be bad for freedom of speech (it creates one
   more control point, where censorship could be applied), but it may be
   a necessity if the endpoints are not connected and reachable
   permanently.  So, when we say "protocol X has feature Y, which may
   endanger freedom of speech," it does not mean that protocol X is bad,
   much less that its authors were evil.  The goal here is to show, with
   actual examples, that the design of protocols has practical
   consequences for some human rights and that these consequences have
   to be considered in the design phase.

5.2.3.1.  IPv4

   The Internet Protocol version 4 (IPv4), also known as "Layer 3" of
   the Internet and specified with a common encapsulation and protocol
   header, is defined in [RFC791].  The evolution of Internet
   communications led to continued development in this area,
   "encapsulated" in the development of version 6 (IPv6) of the protocol
   [RFC8200].  In spite of this updated protocol, we find that 23 years
   after the specification of IPv6 the older IPv4 standard continues to
   account for a sizable majority of Internet traffic.  Most of the
   issues discussed here (Network Address Translators (NATs) are a major
   exception; see Section 5.2.3.1.2 ("Address Translation and
   Mobility")) are valid for IPv4 as well as IPv6.

   The Internet was designed as a platform for free and open
   communication, most notably encoded in the end-to-end principle, and
   that philosophy is also present in the technical implementation of IP
   [RFC3724].  While the protocol was designed to exist in an
   environment where intelligence is at the end hosts, it has proven to
   provide sufficient information that a more intelligent network core
   can make policy decisions and enforce policy-based traffic shaping,
   thereby restricting the communications of end hosts.  These
   capabilities for network control and for limitations on freedom of
   expression by end hosts can be traced back to the design of IPv4,
   helping us to understand which technical protocol decisions have led
   to harm to this human right.  A feature that can harm freedom of
   expression as well as the right to privacy through misuse of IP is
   the exploitation of the public visibility of the host pairs for all
   communications and the corresponding ability to differentiate and
   block traffic as a result of that metadata.

5.2.3.1.1.  Network Visibility of Source and Destination

   The IPv4 protocol header contains fixed location fields for both the
   source IP address and destination IP address [RFC791].  These
   addresses identify both the host sending and the host receiving each
   message; they also allow the core network to understand who is
   talking to whom and to practically limit communication selectively
   between pairs of hosts.  Blocking of communication based on the pair
   of source and destination is one of the most common limitations on
   the ability for people to communicate today [CAIDA] and can be seen
   as a restriction of the ability for people to assemble or to
   consensually express themselves.

   Inclusion of an Internet-wide identified source in the IP header
   is not the only possible design, especially since the protocol is
   most commonly implemented over Ethernet networks exposing only
   link-local identifiers [RFC894].

   A variety of alternative designs do exist, such as the Accountable
   and Private Internet Protocol [APIP] and High-speed Onion Routing at
   the Network Layer (HORNET) [HORNET] as well as source routing.  The
   latter would allow the sender to choose a predefined (safe) route and
   spoofing of the source IP address, which are technically supported by
   IPv4, but neither are considered good practice on the Internet
   [Farrow].  While projects like [TorProject] provide an alternative
   implementation of anonymity in connections, they have been developed
   in spite of the IPv4 protocol design.

5.2.3.1.2.  Address Translation and Mobility

   A major structural shift in the Internet that undermined the protocol
   design of IPv4, and significantly reduced the freedom of end users to
   communicate and assemble, was the introduction of network address
   translation [RFC3022].  Network address translation is a process
   whereby organizations and autonomous systems connect two networks by
   translating the IPv4 source and destination addresses between them.
   This process puts the router performing the translation in a
   privileged position, where it is predetermined which subset of
   communications will be translated.

   This process of translation has widespread adoption despite promoting
   a process that goes against the stated end-to-end process of the
   underlying protocol [NATusage].  In contrast, the proposed mechanism
   to provide support for mobility and forwarding to clients that may
   move -- encoded instead as an option in IP [RFC5944] -- has failed to
   gain traction.  In this situation, the compromise made in the design
   of the protocol resulted in a technology that is not coherent with
   the end-to-end principles and thus creates an extra possible hurdle
   for freedom of expression in its design, even though a viable
   alternative exists.  There is a particular problem surrounding NATs
   and Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) (as well as other connections
   used for privacy purposes), as NATs sometimes cause VPNs not to work.

5.2.3.2.  DNS

   The Domain Name System (DNS) [RFC1035] provides service discovery
   capabilities and provides a mechanism to associate human-readable
   names with services.  The DNS is organized around a set of
   independently operated "root servers" run by organizations that
   function in line with ICANN's policy by answering queries for which
   organizations have been delegated to manage registration under each
   Top-Level Domain (TLD).  The DNS is organized as a rooted tree, and
   this brings up political and social concerns over control.  TLDs are
   maintained and determined by ICANN.  These namespaces encompass
   several classes of services.  The initial namespaces, including
   ".com" and ".net", provide common spaces for expression of ideas,

   though their policies are enacted through US-based companies.  Other
   namespaces are delegated to specific nationalities and may impose
   limits designed to focus speech in those forums, to both (1) promote
   speech from that nationality and (2) comply with local limits on
   expression and social norms.  Finally, the system has recently been
   expanded with additional generic and sponsored namespaces -- for
   instance, ".travel" and ".ninja" -- that are operated by a range of
   organizations that may independently determine their registration
   policies.  This new development has both positive and negative
   implications in terms of enabling human rights.  Some individuals
   argue that it undermines the right to freedom of expression because
   some of these new generic TLDs have restricted policies on
   registration and particular rules on hate speech content.  Others
   argue that precisely these properties are positive because they
   enable certain (mostly minority) communities to build safer spaces
   for association, thereby enabling their right to freedom of
   association.  An often-mentioned example is an application like
   .gay [CoE].

   As discussed in [RFC7626], DNS has significant privacy issues.  Most
   notable is the lack of encryption to limit the visibility of requests
   for domain resolution from intermediary parties, and a limited
   deployment of DNSSEC to provide authentication, allowing the client
   to know that they received a correct, "authoritative" answer to a
   query.  In response to the privacy issues, the IETF DNS Private
   Exchange (DPRIVE) Working Group is developing mechanisms to provide
   confidentiality to DNS transactions, to address concerns surrounding
   pervasive monitoring [RFC7258].

   Authentication through DNSSEC creates a validation path for records.
   This authentication protects against forged or manipulated DNS data.
   As such, DNSSEC protects directory lookups and makes it harder to
   hijack a session.  This is important because interference with the
   operation of the DNS is currently becoming one of the central
   mechanisms used to block access to websites.  This interference
   limits both the freedom of expression of the publisher to offer their
   content and the freedom of assembly for clients to congregate in a
   shared virtual space.  Even though DNSSEC doesn't prevent censorship,
   it makes it clear that the returned information is not the
   information that was requested; this contributes to the right to
   security and increases trust in the network.  It is, however,
   important to note that DNSSEC is currently not widely supported or
   deployed by domain name registrars, making it difficult to
   authenticate and use correctly.

5.2.3.2.1.  Removal of Records

   There have been a number of cases where the records for a domain are
   removed from the name system due to political events.  Examples of
   this removal include the "seizure" of wikileaks [BBC-wikileaks] and
   the names of illegally operating gambling operations by the United
   States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) unit.  In the first
   case, a US court ordered the registrar to take down the domain.  In
   the second, ICE compelled the US-based registry in charge of the .com
   TLD to hand ownership of those domains over to the US government.
   The same technique has been used in Libya to remove sites in
   violation of "our Country's Law and Morality (which) do not allow any
   kind of pornography or its promotion."  [techyum]

   At a protocol level, there is no technical auditing for name
   ownership, as in alternate systems like Namecoin [Namecoin].  As a
   result, there is no ability for users to differentiate seizure from
   the legitimate transfer of name ownership, which is purely a policy
   decision made by registrars.  While DNSSEC addresses the network
   distortion events described below, it does not tackle this problem.

   (Although we mention alternative techniques, this is not a comparison
   of DNS with Namecoin: the latter has its own problems and
   limitations.  The idea here is to show that there are several
   possible choices, and they have consequences for human rights.)

5.2.3.2.2.  Distortion of Records

   The most common mechanism by which the DNS is abused to limit freedom
   of expression is through manipulation of protocol messages by the
   network.  One form occurs at an organizational level, where client
   computers are instructed to use a local DNS resolver controlled by
   the organization.  The DNS resolver will then selectively distort
   responses rather than request the authoritative lookup from the
   upstream system.  The second form occurs through the use of Deep
   Packet Inspection (DPI), where all DNS protocol messages are
   inspected by the network and objectionable content is distorted, as
   can be observed in Chinese networks.

   A notable instance of distortion occurred in Greece [Ververis], where
   a study found evidence of both (1) DPI to distort DNS replies and
   (2) more excessive blocking of content than was legally required or
   requested (also known as "overblocking").  Internet Service Providers
   (ISPs), obeying a governmental order, prevented clients from
   resolving the names of domains, thereby prompting this particular
   blocking of systems there.

   At a protocol level, the effectiveness of these attacks is made
   possible by a lack of authentication in the DNS protocol.  DNSSEC
   provides the ability to determine the authenticity of responses when
   used, but it is not regularly checked by resolvers.  DNSSEC is not
   effective when the local resolver for a network is complicit in the
   distortion -- for instance, when the resolver assigned for use by an
   ISP is the source of injection.  Selective distortion of records is
   also made possible by the predictable structure of DNS messages,
   which makes it computationally easy for a network device to watch all
   passing messages even at high speeds, and the lack of encryption,
   which allows the network to distort only an objectionable subset of
   protocol messages.  Specific distortion mechanisms are discussed
   further in [Hall].

   Users can switch to another resolver -- for instance, a public
   resolver.  The distorter can then try to block or hijack the
   connection to this resolver.  This may start an arms race, with the
   user switching to secured connections to this alternative resolver
   [RFC7858] and the distorter then trying to find more sophisticated
   ways to block or hijack the connection.  In some cases, this search
   for an alternative, non-disrupting resolver may lead to more
   centralization because many people are switching to a few big
   commercial public resolvers.

5.2.3.2.3.  Injection of Records

   Responding incorrectly to requests for name lookups is the most
   common mechanism that in-network devices use to limit the ability of
   end users to discover services.  A deviation that accomplishes a
   similar objective and may be seen as different from a "freedom of
   expression" perspective is the injection of incorrect responses to
   queries.  The most prominent example of this behavior occurs in
   China, where requests for lookups of sites deemed inappropriate will
   trigger the network to return a false response, causing the client to
   ignore the real response when it subsequently arrives
   [greatfirewall].  Unlike the other network paradigms discussed above,
   injection does not stifle the ability of a server to announce its
   name; it instead provides another voice that answers sooner.  This is
   effective because without DNSSEC, the protocol will respond to
   whichever answer is received first, without listening for subsequent
   answers.

5.2.3.3.  HTTP

   The Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) version 1.1 [RFC7230]
   [RFC7231] [RFC7232] [RFC7233] [RFC7234] [RFC7235] [RFC7236] [RFC7237]
   is a request-response application protocol developed throughout the
   1990s.  HTTP factually contributed to the exponential growth of the

   Internet and the interconnection of populations around the world.
   Its simple design strongly contributed to the fact that HTTP has
   become the foundation of most modern Internet platforms and
   communication systems, from websites to chat systems and computer-to-
   computer applications.  In its manifestation in the World Wide Web,
   HTTP radically revolutionized the course of technological development
   and the ways people interact with online content and with each other.

   However, HTTP is also a fundamentally insecure protocol that doesn't
   natively provide encryption properties.  While the definition of the
   Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) [RFC6101], and later of Transport Layer
   Security (TLS) [RFC5246], also happened during the 1990s, the fact
   that HTTP doesn't mandate the use of such encryption layers by
   developers and service providers was one of the reasons for a very
   late adoption of encryption.  Only in the middle of the 2000s did we
   observe big ISPs, such as Google, starting to provide encrypted
   access to their web services.

   The lack of sensitivity and understanding of the critical importance
   of securing web traffic incentivized certain (offensive) actors to
   develop, deploy, and utilize interception systems at large and to
   later launch active injection attacks, in order to swipe large
   amounts of data and compromise Internet-enabled devices.  The
   commercial availability of systems and tools to perform these types
   of attacks also led to a number of human rights abuses that have been
   discovered and reported over the years.

   Generally, we can identify traffic interception (Section 5.2.3.3.1)
   and traffic manipulation (Section 5.2.3.3.2) as the two most
   problematic attacks that can be performed against applications
   employing a cleartext HTTP transport layer.  That being said, the
   IETF is taking steady steps to move to the encrypted version of HTTP,
   HTTP Secure (HTTPS).

   While this is commendable, we must not lose track of the fact that
   different protocols, implementations, configurations, and networking
   paradigms can intersect such that they (can be used to) adversely
   impact human rights.  For instance, to facilitate surveillance,
   certain countries will throttle HTTPS connections, forcing users to
   switch to (unthrottled) HTTP [Aryan-etal].

5.2.3.3.1.  Traffic Interception

   While we are seeing an increasing trend in the last couple of years
   to employ SSL/TLS as a secure traffic layer for HTTP-based
   applications, we are still far from seeing a ubiquitous use of
   encryption on the World Wide Web.  It is important to consider that
   the adoption of SSL/TLS is also a relatively recent phenomenon.

   Email providers such as riseup.net were the first to enable SSL by
   default.  Google did not introduce an option for its Gmail users to
   navigate with SSL until 2008 [Rideout] and turned TLS on by default
   later, in 2010 [Schillace].  It took an increasing amount of security
   breaches and revelations on global surveillance from Edward Snowden
   before other mail service providers followed suit.  For example,
   Yahoo did not enable SSL/TLS by default on its webmail services until
   early 2014 [Peterson].

   TLS itself has been subject to many attacks and bugs; this situation
   can be attributed to some fundamental design weaknesses, such as lack
   of a state machine (which opens a vulnerability for triple handshake
   attacks) and flaws caused by early US government restrictions on
   cryptography, leading to cipher-suite downgrade attacks (Logjam
   attacks).  These vulnerabilities are being corrected in TLS 1.3
   [Bhargavan] [Adrian].

   HTTP upgrading to HTTPS is also vulnerable to having an attacker
   remove the "s" in any links to HTTPS URIs from a web page transferred
   in cleartext over HTTP -- an attack called "SSL Stripping"
   [sslstrip].  Thus, for high-security use of HTTPS, IETF standards
   such as HTTP Strict Transport Security (HSTS) [RFC6797], certificate
   pinning [RFC7469], and/or DNS-Based Authentication of Named Entities
   (DANE) [RFC6698] should be used.

   As we learned through Snowden's revelations, intelligence agencies
   have been intercepting and collecting unencrypted traffic at large
   for many years.  There are documented examples of such
   mass-surveillance programs with the Government Communications
   Headquarters's (GCHQ's) Tempora [WP-Tempora] and the National
   Security Agency's (NSA's) XKeyscore [Greenwald].  Through these
   programs, the NSA and the GCHQ have been able to swipe large amounts
   of data, including email and instant messaging communications that
   have been transported in the clear for years by providers
   unsuspecting of the pervasiveness and scale of governments' efforts
   and investment in global mass-surveillance capabilities.

   However, similar mass interception of unencrypted HTTP communications
   is also often employed at the national level by some democratic
   countries, by exercising control over state-owned ISPs and through
   the use of commercially available monitoring, collection, and
   censorship equipment.  Over the last few years, a lot of information
   has come to public attention on the role and scale of a surveillance
   industry dedicated to developing different types of interception
   gear, making use of known and unknown weaknesses in existing
   protocols [RFC7258].  We have several records of such equipment being
   sold and utilized by some regimes in order to monitor entire segments
   of a population, especially at times of social and political

   distress, uncovering massive human rights abuses.  For example, in
   2013, the group Telecomix revealed that the Syrian regime was making
   use of Blue Coat products in order to intercept cleartext traffic as
   well as to enforce censorship of unwanted content [RSF].  Similarly,
   in 2011, it was found that the French technology firm Amesys provided
   the Gadhafi government with equipment able to intercept emails,
   Facebook traffic, and chat messages at a country-wide level [WSJ].
   The use of such systems, especially in the context of the Arab Spring
   and of civil uprisings against the dictatorships, has caused serious
   concerns regarding significant human rights abuses in Libya.

5.2.3.3.2.  Traffic Manipulation

   The lack of a secure transport layer under HTTP connections not only
   exposes users to interception of the content of their communications
   but is more and more commonly abused as a vehicle for actively
   compromising computers and mobile devices.  If an HTTP session
   travels in the clear over the network, any node positioned at any
   point in the network is able to perform man-in-the-middle attacks;
   the node can observe, manipulate, and hijack the session and can
   modify the content of the communication in order to trigger
   unexpected behavior by the application generating the traffic.  For
   example, in the case of a browser, the attacker would be able to
   inject malicious code in order to exploit vulnerabilities in the
   browser or any of its plugins.  Similarly, the attacker would be able
   to intercept, add malware to, and repackage binary software updates
   that are very commonly downloaded in the clear by applications such
   as word processors and media players.  If the HTTP session were
   encrypted, the tampering of the content would not be possible, and
   these network injection attacks would not be successful.

   While traffic manipulation attacks have long been known, documented,
   and prototyped, especially in the context of Wi-Fi and LAN networks,
   in the last few years we have observed an increasing investment in
   the production and sale of network injection equipment that is both
   commercially available and deployed at scale by intelligence
   agencies.

   For example, we learned from some of the documents provided by Edward
   Snowden to the press that the NSA has constructed a global network
   injection infrastructure, called "QUANTUM", able to leverage mass
   surveillance in order to identify targets of interest and
   subsequently task man-on-the-side attacks to ultimately compromise a
   selected device.  Among other attacks, the NSA makes use of an attack
   called "QUANTUMINSERT" [Haagsma], which intercepts and hijacks an
   unencrypted HTTP communication and forces the requesting browser to
   redirect to a host controlled by the NSA instead of the intended
   website.  Normally, the new destination would be an exploitation

   service, referred to in Snowden documents as "FOXACID", which would
   attempt to execute malicious code in the context of the target's
   browser.  The Guardian reported in 2013 that the NSA has, for
   example, been using these techniques to target users of the popular
   anonymity service Tor [Schneier].  The German Norddeutscher Rundfunk
   (NDR) reported in 2014 that the NSA has also been using its
   mass-surveillance capabilities to identify Tor users at large
   [Appelbaum].

   Recently, similar capabilities used by Chinese authorities have been
   reported as well in what has been informally called the "Great
   Cannon" [Marcak], which raised numerous concerns on the potential
   curb on human rights and freedom of speech due to the increasingly
   tighter control of Chinese Internet communications and access to
   information.

   Network injection attacks are also made widely available to state
   actors around the world through the commercialization of similar,
   smaller-scale equipment that can be easily acquired and deployed at a
   country-wide level.  Certain companies are known to have network
   injection gear within their products portfolio [Marquis-Boire].  The
   technology devised and produced by some of them to perform network
   traffic manipulation attacks on HTTP communications is even the
   subject of a patent application in the United States [Googlepatent].
   Access to offensive technologies available on the commercial lawful
   interception market has led to human rights abuses and illegitimate
   surveillance of journalists, human rights defenders, and political
   activists in many countries around the world [Collins].  While
   network injection attacks haven't been the subject of much attention,
   they do enable even unskilled attackers to perform silent and very
   resilient compromises, and unencrypted HTTP remains one of the main
   vehicles.

   There is a new version of HTTP, called "HTTP/2" [RFC7540], which aims
   to be largely backwards compatible while also offering new options
   such as data compression of HTTP headers, pipelining of requests, and
   multiplexing multiple requests over a single TCP connection.  In
   addition to decreasing latency to improve page-loading speeds, it
   also facilitates more efficient use of connectivity in low-bandwidth
   environments, which in turn enables freedom of expression; the right
   to assembly; the right to political participation; and the right to
   participate in cultural life, arts, and science.  [RFC7540] does not
   mandate TLS or any other form of encryption, nor does it support
   opportunistic encryption even though opportunistic encryption is now
   addressed in [RFC8164].

5.2.3.4.  XMPP

   The Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP), specified in
   [RFC6120], provides a standard for interactive chat messaging and has
   evolved to encompass interoperable text, voice, and video chat.  The
   protocol is structured as a federated network of servers, similar to
   email, where users register with a local server that acts on their
   behalf to cache and relay messages.  This protocol design has many
   advantages, allowing servers to shield clients from denial of service
   and other forms of retribution for their expression; it is also
   designed to avoid central entities that could control the ability to
   communicate or assemble using the protocol.

   Nonetheless, there are plenty of aspects of the protocol design of
   XMPP that shape the ability for users to communicate freely and to
   assemble via the protocol.

5.2.3.4.1.  User Identification

   The XMPP specification [RFC6120] dictates that clients are identified
   with a resource (<node@domain/home> / <node@domain/work>) to
   distinguish the conversations to specific devices.  While the
   protocol does not specify that the resource must be exposed by the
   client's server to remote users, in practice this has become the
   default behavior.  In doing so, users can be tracked by remote
   friends and their servers, who are able to monitor the presence of
   not just the user but of each individual device the user logs in
   with.  This has proven to be misleading to many users [Pidgin], since
   many clients only expose user-level rather than device-level
   presence.  Likewise, user invisibility so that communication can
   occur while users don't notify all buddies and other servers of their
   availability is not part of the formal protocol and has only been
   added as an extension within the XML stream rather than enforced by
   the protocol.

5.2.3.4.2.  Surveillance of Communication

   XMPP specifies the standard by which communications channels may be
   encrypted, but it does not provide visibility to clients regarding
   whether their communications are encrypted on each link.  In
   particular, even when both clients ensure that they have an encrypted
   connection to their XMPP server to ensure that their local network is
   unable to read or disrupt the messages they send, the protocol does
   not provide visibility into the encryption status between the two
   servers.  As such, clients may be subject to selective disruption of
   communications by an intermediate network that disrupts
   communications based on keywords found through DPI.  While many
   operators have committed to only establishing encrypted links from

   their servers in recognition of this vulnerability, it remains
   impossible for users to audit this behavior, and encrypted
   connections are not required by the protocol itself [XMPP-Manifesto].

   In particular, Section 13.14 of the XMPP specification [RFC6120]
   explicitly acknowledges the existence of a downgrade attack where an
   adversary controlling an intermediate network can force the
   inter-domain federation between servers to revert to a non-encrypted
   protocol where selective messages can then be disrupted.

5.2.3.4.3.  Group Chat Limitations

   Group chat in XMPP is defined as an extension within the XML
   specification of XMPP (https://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0045.html).
   However, it is not encoded or required at a protocol level and is not
   uniformly implemented by clients.

   The design of multi-user chat in XMPP suffers from extending a
   protocol that was not designed with assembly of many users in mind.
   In particular, in the federated protocol provided by XMPP, multi-user
   communities are implemented with a distinguished "owner" who is
   granted control over the participants and structure of the
   conversation.

   Multi-user chat rooms are identified by a name specified on a
   specific server, so that while the overall protocol may be federated,
   the ability for users to assemble in a given community is moderated
   by a single server.  That server may block the room and prevent
   assembly unilaterally, even between two users, neither of whom trust
   or use that server directly.

5.2.3.5.  Peer-to-Peer

   Peer-to-Peer (P2P) is a distributed network architecture [RFC5694] in
   which all the participant nodes can be responsible for the storage
   and dissemination of information from any other node (see [RFC7574],
   an IETF standard that discusses a P2P architecture called the
   "Peer-to-Peer Streaming Peer Protocol" (PPSPP)).  A P2P network is a
   logical overlay that lives on top of the physical network and allows
   nodes (or "peers") participating in it to establish contact and
   exchange information directly with each other.  The implementation of
   a P2P network may vary widely: it may be structured or unstructured,
   and it may implement stronger or weaker cryptographic and anonymity
   properties.  While its most common application has traditionally been
   file-sharing (and other types of content delivery systems), P2P is a
   popular architecture for networks and applications that require (or
   encourage) decentralization.  Prime examples include Bitcoin and
   other proprietary multimedia applications.

   In a time of heavily centralized online services, P2P is regularly
   described as an alternative, more democratic, and resistant option
   that displaces structures of control over data and communications and
   delegates all peers to be equally responsible for the functioning,
   integrity, and security of the data.  While in principle P2P remains
   important to the design and development of future content
   distribution, messaging, and publishing systems, it poses numerous
   security and privacy challenges that are mostly delegated to
   individual developers to recognize, analyze, and solve in each
   implementation of a given P2P network.

5.2.3.5.1.  Network Poisoning

   Since content, and sometimes peer lists, are safeguarded and
   distributed by their members, P2P networks are prone to what are
   generally defined as "poisoning attacks".  Poisoning attacks might be
   aimed directly at the data that is being distributed, for example,
   (1) by intentionally corrupting the data, (2) at the index tables
   used to instruct the peers where to fetch the data, or (3) at routing
   tables, with an attempt to provide connecting peers with lists of
   rogue or nonexistent peers, with the intention to effectively cause a
   denial of service on the network.

5.2.3.5.2.  Throttling

   P2P traffic (and BitTorrent in particular) represents a significant
   percentage of global Internet traffic [Sandvine], and it has become
   increasingly popular for ISPs to perform throttling of customers'
   lines in order to limit bandwidth usage [torrentfreak1] and,
   sometimes, probably as an effect of the ongoing conflict between
   copyright holders and file-sharing communities [wikileaks].  Such
   throttling undermines the end-to-end principle.

   Throttling the P2P traffic makes some uses of P2P networks
   ineffective; this throttling might be coupled with stricter
   inspection of users' Internet traffic through DPI techniques,
   possibly posing additional security and privacy risks.

5.2.3.5.3.  Tracking and Identification

   One of the fundamental and most problematic issues with traditional
   P2P networks is a complete lack of anonymization of their users.  For
   example, in the case of BitTorrent, all peers' IP addresses are
   openly available to the other peers.  This has led to ever-increasing
   tracking of P2P and file-sharing users [ars].  As the geographical
   location of the user is directly exposed, as could also be his
   identity, the user might become a target of additional harassment and
   attacks of a physical or legal nature.  For example, it is known that

   in Germany law firms have made extensive use of P2P and file-sharing
   tracking systems in order to identify downloaders and initiate legal
   actions looking for compensations [torrentfreak2].

   It is worth noting that there are some varieties of P2P networks that
   implement cryptographic practices and that introduce anonymization of
   their users.  Such implementations may be proved to be successful in
   resisting censorship of content and tracking of network peers.  A
   prime example is Freenet [freenet1], a free software application that
   is (1) designed to make it significantly more difficult to identify
   users and content and (2) dedicated to fostering freedom of speech
   online [freenet2].

5.2.3.5.4.  Sybil Attacks

   In open-membership P2P networks, a single attacker can pretend to be
   many participants, typically by creating multiple fake identities of
   whatever kind the P2P network uses [Douceur].  Attackers can use
   Sybil attacks to bias choices that the P2P network makes collectively
   to the attacker's advantage, e.g., by making it more likely that a
   particular data item (or some threshold of the replicas or shares of
   a data item) is assigned to attacker-controlled participants.  If the
   P2P network implements any voting, moderation, or peer-review-like
   functionality, Sybil attacks may be used to "stuff the ballots" to
   benefit the attacker.  Companies and governments can use Sybil
   attacks on discussion-oriented P2P systems for "astroturfing" or
   creating the appearance of mass grassroots support for some position
   where in reality there is none.  It is important to know that there
   are no known complete, environmentally sustainable, and fully
   distributed solutions to Sybil attacks, and routing via "friends"
   allows users to be de-anonymized via their social graph.  It is
   important to note that Sybil attacks in this context (e.g.,
   astroturfing) are relevant to more than P2P protocols; they are also
   common on web-based systems, and they are exploited by governments
   and commercial entities.

   Encrypted P2P and anonymous P2P networks have already emerged.  They
   provide viable platforms for sharing material [Tribler], publishing
   content anonymously, and communicating securely [Bitmessage].  These
   platforms are not perfect, and more research needs to be done.  If
   adopted at large, well-designed and resistant P2P networks might
   represent a critical component of a future secure and distributed
   Internet, enabling freedom of speech and freedom of information
   at scale.

5.2.3.6.  Virtual Private Networks

   The VPNs discussed here are point-to-point connections that enable
   two computers to communicate over an encrypted tunnel.  There are
   multiple implementations and protocols used in the deployment of
   VPNs, and they generally diversify by encryption protocol or
   particular requirements, most commonly in proprietary and enterprise
   solutions.  VPNs are commonly used to (1) enable some devices to
   communicate through peculiar network configurations, (2) use some
   privacy and security properties in order to protect the traffic
   generated by the end user, or both.  VPNs have also become a very
   popular technology among human rights defenders, dissidents, and
   journalists worldwide to avoid local monitoring and eventually also
   to circumvent censorship.  VPNs are often debated among human rights
   defenders as a potential alternative to Tor or other anonymous
   networks.  Such comparisons are misleading, as some of the privacy
   and security properties of VPNs are often misunderstood by less
   tech-savvy users and could ultimately lead to unintended problems.

   As VPNs have increased in popularity, commercial VPN providers have
   started growing as businesses and are very commonly picked by human
   rights defenders and people at risk, as they are normally provided
   with an easy-to-use service and, sometimes, even custom applications
   to establish the VPN tunnel.  Not being able to control the
   configuration of the network, let alone the security of the
   application, assessing the general privacy and security state of
   common VPNs is very hard.  Such services have often been discovered
   to be leaking information, and their custom applications have been
   found to be flawed.  While Tor and similar networks receive a lot of
   scrutiny from the public and the academic community, commercial or
   non-commercial VPNs are far less analyzed and understood [Insinuator]
   [Alshalan-etal], and it might be valuable to establish some standards
   to guarantee a minimal level of privacy and security to those who
   need them the most.

5.2.3.6.1.  No Anonymity against VPN Providers

   One of the common misconceptions among users of VPNs is the level of
   anonymity that VPNs can provide.  This sense of anonymity can be
   betrayed by a number of attacks or misconfigurations of the VPN
   provider.  It is important to remember that, in contrast to Tor and
   similar systems, VPNs were not designed to provide anonymity
   properties.  From a technical point of view, a VPN might leak
   identifiable information or might be the subject of correlation
   attacks that could expose the originating address of a connecting
   user.  Most importantly, it is vital to understand that commercial
   and non-commercial VPN providers are bound by the law of the
   jurisdiction in which they reside or in which their infrastructure is

   located, and they might be legally forced to turn over data of
   specific users if legal investigations or intelligence requirements
   dictate so.  In such cases, if the VPN providers retain logs, it is
   possible that a user's information could be provided to the user's
   adversary and lead to his or her identification.

5.2.3.6.2.  Logging

   Because VPNs are point-to-point connections, the service providers
   are in fact able to observe the original location of connecting
   users, and they are able to track at what time they started their
   session and, eventually, also to which destinations they're trying to
   connect.  If the VPN providers retain logs for a long enough time,
   they might be forced to turn over the relevant data or they might be
   otherwise compromised, leading to the same data getting exposed.  A
   clear log-retention policy could be enforced, but considering that
   countries enforce different levels of data-retention policies, VPN
   providers should at least be transparent regarding what information
   they store and for how long it is being kept.

5.2.3.6.3.  Third-Party Hosting

   VPN providers very commonly rely on third parties to provision the
   infrastructure that is later going to be used to run VPN endpoints.
   For example, they might rely on external dedicated server providers
   or on uplink providers.  In those cases, even if the VPN provider
   itself isn't retaining any significant logs, the information on
   connecting users might be retained by those third parties instead,
   introducing an additional collection point for the adversary.

5.2.3.6.4.  IPv6 Leakage

   Some studies proved that several commercial VPN providers and
   applications suffer from critical leakage of information through IPv6
   due to improper support and configuration [PETS2015VPN].  This is
   generally caused by a lack of proper configuration of the client's
   IPv6 routing tables.  Considering that most popular browsers and
   similar applications have been supporting IPv6 by default, if the
   host is provided with a functional IPv6 configuration, the traffic
   that is generated might be leaked if the VPN application isn't
   designed to manipulate such traffic properly.

5.2.3.6.5.  DNS Leakage

   Similarly, VPN services that aren't handling DNS requests and aren't
   running DNS servers of their own might be prone to DNS leaking that
   might not only expose sensitive information on the activity of a user
   but could also potentially lead to DNS hijacking attacks and
   subsequent compromises.

5.2.3.6.6.  Traffic Correlation

   Some VPN implementations appear to be particularly vulnerable to
   identification and collection of key exchanges that, some Snowden
   documents revealed, are systematically collected and stored for
   future reference.  The ability of an adversary to monitor network
   connections at many different points over the Internet can allow them
   to perform traffic correlation attacks and identify the origin of
   certain VPN traffic by cross-referencing the connection time of the
   user to the endpoint and the connection time of the endpoint to the
   final destination.  These types of attacks, although very expensive
   and normally only performed by very resourceful adversaries, have
   been documented [SPIEGEL] to be already in practice, and they could
   completely nullify the use of a VPN and ultimately expose the
   activity and the identity of a user at risk.

5.2.3.7.  HTTP Status Code 451

   "Every Internet user has run into the '404 Not Found' Hypertext
   Transfer Protocol (HTTP) status code when trying, and failing, to
   access a particular website" [Cath].  It is a response status that
   the server sends to the browser when the server cannot locate the
   URL. "403 Forbidden" is another example of this class of code signals
   that gives users information about what is going on.  In the "403"
   case, the server can be reached but is blocking the request because
   the user is trying to access content forbidden to them, typically
   because some content is only for identified users, based on a payment
   or on special status in the organization.  Most of the time, 403 is
   sent by the origin server, not by an intermediary.  If a firewall
   prevents a government employee from accessing pornography on a work
   computer, it does not use 403.

   As surveillance and censorship of the Internet are becoming more
   commonplace, voices were raised at the IETF to introduce a new status
   code that indicates when something is not available for "legal
   reasons" (like censorship):

   The 451 status code would allow server operators to operate with
   greater transparency in circumstances where issues of law or public
   policy affect their operation.  This transparency may be beneficial
   to both (1) these operators and (2) end users [RFC7725].

   The status code is named "451" in reference to both Bradbury's famous
   novel "Fahrenheit 451" and to 451 degrees Fahrenheit (the temperature
   at which some claim book paper autoignites).

   During the IETF 92 meeting in Dallas, there was discussion about the
   usefulness of 451.  The main tension revolved around the lack of an
   apparent machine-readable technical use of the information.  The
   extent to which 451 is just "political theatre" or whether it has a
   concrete technical use was heatedly debated.  Some argued that "the
   451 status code is just a status code with a response body"; others
   said it was problematic because "it brings law into the picture."
   Still others argued that it would be useful for individuals or for
   organizations like the "Chilling Effects" project that are crawling
   the Web to get an indication of censorship (IETF discussion on 451 --
   author's field notes, March 2015).  There was no outright objection
   during the Dallas meeting against moving forward on status code 451,
   and on December 18, 2015, the IESG approved "An HTTP Status Code to
   Report Legal Obstacles" (now [RFC7725]) for publication.  HTTP status
   code 451 is now an IETF-approved HTTP status code that signals when
   resource access is denied as a consequence of legal demands.

   What is interesting about this particular case is that not only
   technical arguments but also the status code's outright potential
   political use for civil society played a substantial role in shaping
   the discussion and the decision to move forward with this technology.

   It is nonetheless important to note that HTTP status code 451 is not
   a solution to detect all occasions of censorship.  A large swath of
   Internet filtering occurs in the network, at a lower level than HTTP,
   rather than at the server itself.  For these forms of censorship, 451
   plays a limited role, as typical censoring intermediaries won't
   generate it.  Besides technical reasons, such filtering regimes are
   unlikely to voluntarily inject a 451 status code.  The use of 451 is
   most likely to apply in the case of cooperative, legal versions of
   content removal resulting from requests to providers.  One can think
   of content that is removed or blocked for legal reasons, like
   copyright infringement, gambling laws, child abuse, etc.  Large

   Internet companies and search engines are constantly asked to censor
   content in various jurisdictions.  451 allows this to be easily
   discovered -- for instance, by initiatives like the Lumen Database.

   Overall, the strength of 451 lies in its ability to provide
   transparency by giving the reason for blocking and giving the
   end user the ability to file a complaint.  It allows organizations to
   easily measure censorship in an automated way and prompts the user to
   access the content via another path (e.g., Tor, VPNs) when (s)he
   encounters the 451 status code.

   Status code 451 impacts human rights by making censorship more
   transparent and measurable.  It increases transparency by signaling
   the existence of censorship (instead of a much broader HTTP error
   message such as HTTP status code 404) as well as providing details of
   the legal restriction, which legal authority is imposing it, and to
   what class of resources it applies.  This empowers the user to seek
   redress.

5.2.3.8.  DDoS Attacks

   Many individuals, including IETF engineers, have argued that DDoS
   attacks are fundamentally against freedom of expression.
   Technically, DDoS attacks are attacks where one host or multiple
   hosts overload the bandwidth or resources of another host by flooding
   it with traffic or making resource-intensive requests, causing it to
   temporarily stop being available to users.  One can roughly
   differentiate three types of DDoS attacks:

   1.  volume-based attacks (which aim to make the host unreachable by
       using up all its bandwidth; often-used techniques are UDP floods
       and ICMP floods)

   2.  protocol attacks (which aim to use up actual server resources;
       often-used techniques are SYN floods, fragmented packet attacks,
       and "ping of death" [RFC4949])

   3.  application-layer attacks (which aim to bring down a server, such
       as a web server)

   DDoS attacks can thus stifle freedom of expression and complicate the
   ability of independent media and human rights organizations to
   exercise their right to (online) freedom of association, while
   facilitating the ability of governments to censor dissent.  When it
   comes to comparing DDoS attacks to protests in offline life, it is
   important to remember that only a limited number of DDoS attacks
   solely involved willing participants.  In the overwhelming majority
   of cases, the clients are hacked hosts of unrelated parties that

   have not consented to being part of a DDoS (for exceptions, see
   Operation Ababil [Ababil] or the Iranian Green Movement's DDoS
   campaign at election time [GreenMovement]).  In addition,
   DDoS attacks are increasingly used as an extortion tactic.

   All of these issues seem to suggest that the IETF should try to
   ensure that their protocols cannot be used for DDoS attacks; this is
   consistent with the long-standing IETF consensus that DDoS is an
   attack that protocols should mitigate to the extent they can [BCP72].
   Decreasing the number of vulnerabilities in protocols and (outside of
   the IETF) the number of bugs in the network stacks of routers or
   computers could address this issue.  The IETF can clearly play a role
   in bringing about some of these changes, but the IETF cannot be
   expected to take a positive stance on (specific) DDoS attacks or to
   create protocols that enable some attacks and inhibit others.  What
   the IETF can do is critically reflect on its role in the development
   of the Internet and how this impacts the ability of people to
   exercise their human rights, such as freedom of expression.