6.  Model for Developing Human Rights Protocol Considerations

   This section outlines a set of human rights protocol considerations
   for protocol developers.  It provides questions that engineers should
   ask themselves when developing or improving protocols if they want to
   understand their impact on human rights.  It should, however, be
   noted that the impact of a protocol cannot be solely deduced from its
   design; its usage and implementation should also be studied to form a
   full assessment of the impact of the protocol on human rights.

   The questions are based on the research performed by the HRPC
   Research Group.  This research was documented prior to the writing of
   these considerations.  The research establishes that human rights
   relate to standards and protocols; it also offers a common vocabulary
   of technical concepts that impact human rights and how these
   technical concepts can be combined to ensure that the Internet
   remains an enabling environment for human rights.  With this, a model
   for developing human rights protocol considerations has taken shape.

6.1.  Human Rights Threats

   Human rights threats on the Internet come in a myriad of forms.
   Protocols and standards can either harm or enable the right to
   freedom of expression; the right to non-discrimination; the right to
   equal protection; the right to participate in cultural life, arts,
   and science; the right to freedom of assembly and association; and
   the right to security.  An end user who is denied access to certain
   services, data, or websites may be unable to disclose vital
   information about malpractice on the part of a government or other

   authority.  A person whose communications are monitored may be
   prevented from exercising their right to freedom of association or
   participation in political processes [Penney].  In a worst-case
   scenario, protocols that leak information can lead to physical
   danger.  A realistic example to consider is when, based on
   information gathered by state agencies through information leakage in
   protocols, individuals perceived as threats to the state are
   subjected to torture, extrajudicial killings, or detention.

   This section details several "common" threats to human rights,
   indicating how each of these can lead to harm to, or violations of,
   human rights.  It also presents several examples of how these threats
   to human rights materialize on the Internet.  This threat modeling is
   inspired by [RFC6973] ("Privacy Considerations for Internet
   Protocols"), which is based on security threat analysis.  This method
   is by no means a perfect solution for assessing human rights risks in
   Internet protocols and systems; it is, however, the best approach
   currently available.  Certain specific human rights threats are
   indirectly considered in Internet protocols as part of their security
   considerations [BCP72], but privacy guidelines [RFC6973] or reviews,
   let alone the assessments of the impact of protocols on human rights,
   are not standardized or implemented.

   Many threats, enablers, and risks are linked to different rights.
   This is not surprising if one takes into account that human rights
   are interrelated, interdependent, and indivisible.  Here, however,
   we're not discussing all human rights, because not all human rights
   are relevant to ICTs in general and to protocols and standards in
   particular [Bless1]:

      The main source of the values of human rights is the International
      Bill of Human Rights that is composed of the Universal Declaration
      of Human Rights [UDHR] along with the International Covenant on
      Civil and Political Rights [ICCPR] and the International Covenant
      on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights [ICESCR].  In the light of
      several cases of Internet censorship, the Human Rights Council
      Resolution 20/8 was adopted in 2012 [UNHRC2016], affirming "...
      that the same rights that people have offline must also be
      protected online ..."  In 2015, the Charter of Human Rights and
      Principles for the Internet [IRP] was developed and released.
      According to these documents, some examples of human rights
      relevant for ICT systems are human dignity (Art. 1 UDHR),
      non-discrimination (Art. 2), rights to life, liberty and security
      (Art. 3), freedom of opinion and expression (Art. 19), freedom of
      assembly and association (Art. 20), rights to equal protection,
      legal remedy, fair trial, due process, presumed innocent
      (Art. 7-11), appropriate social and international order (Art. 28),

      participation in public affairs (Art. 21), participation in
      cultural life, protection of intellectual property (Art. 27), and
      privacy (Art. 12).

   A partial catalog of human rights related to ICTs, including economic
   rights, can be found in [Hill2014].

   This is by no means an attempt to exclude specific rights or
   prioritize some rights over others.  If other rights seem relevant,
   please contact the authors of this document.

6.2.  Guidelines for Human Rights Considerations

   This section provides guidance for document authors in the form of a
   questionnaire about protocols and their (potential) impact.  The
   questionnaire may be useful at any point in the design process,
   particularly after document authors have developed a high-level
   protocol model as described in [RFC4101].  These guidelines do not
   seek to replace any existing referenced specifications; rather, they
   contribute to them and look at the design process from a human rights
   perspective.

   Protocols and Internet Standards might benefit from a documented
   discussion of potential human rights risks arising from potential
   misapplications of the protocol or technology described in the RFC in
   question.  This might be coupled with an Applicability Statement for
   that RFC.

   Note that the guidance provided in this section does not recommend
   specific practices.  The range of protocols developed in the IETF is
   too broad to make recommendations about particular uses of data or
   how human rights might be balanced against other design goals.
   However, by carefully considering the answers to the following
   questions, document authors should be able to produce a comprehensive
   analysis that can serve as the basis for discussion on whether the
   protocol adequately takes specific human rights threats into account.
   This guidance is meant to help the thought process of a human rights
   analysis; it does not provide specific directions for how to write a
   human rights protocol considerations section (following the example
   set in [RFC6973]), and the addition of a human rights protocol
   considerations section has also not yet been proposed.  In
   considering these questions, authors will need to be aware of the
   potential of technical advances or the passage of time to undermine
   protections.  In general, considerations of rights are likely to be
   more effective if they are considered given a purpose and specific
   use cases, rather than as abstract absolute goals.

6.2.1.  Connectivity

   Questions:

   -  Does your protocol add application-specific functions to
      intermediary nodes?

   -  Could this functionality be added to end nodes instead of
      intermediary nodes?

   -  Is your protocol optimized for low bandwidth and high-latency
      connections?

   -  Could your protocol also be developed in a stateless manner?

   Explanation:  The end-to-end principle [Saltzer] holds that "the
      intelligence is end to end rather than hidden in the network"
      [RFC1958].  The end-to-end principle is important for the
      robustness of the network and innovation.  Such robustness of the
      network is crucial to enabling human rights like freedom of
      expression.

   Example:  Middleboxes (which can be content delivery networks,
      firewalls, NATs, or other intermediary nodes that provide
      "services" other than routing) serve many legitimate purposes.
      But the protocols guiding them can influence individuals' ability
      to communicate online freely and privately.  The potential for
      abuse, intentional and unintentional censoring, and limiting
      permissionless innovation -- and thus, ultimately, the impact of
      middleboxes on the Internet as a place of unfiltered, unmonitored
      freedom of speech -- is real.

   Impacts:

   -  Right to freedom of expression

   -  Right to freedom of assembly and association

6.2.2.  Privacy

   Questions:

   -  Did you have a look at the guidelines in Section 7 of [RFC6973]
      ("Privacy Considerations for Internet Protocols")?

   -  Could your protocol in any way impact the confidentiality of
      protocol metadata?

   -  Could your protocol counter traffic analysis?

   -  Could your protocol improve data minimization?

   -  Does your document identify potentially sensitive data logged by
      your protocol and/or for how long that data needs to be retained
      for technical reasons?

   Explanation:  "Privacy" refers to the right of an entity (normally a
      person), acting on its own behalf, to determine the degree to
      which it will interact with its environment, including the degree
      to which the entity is willing to share its personal information
      with others [RFC4949].  If a protocol provides insufficient
      privacy protection, it may have a negative impact on freedom of
      expression as users self-censor for fear of surveillance or find
      themselves unable to express themselves freely.

   Example:  See [RFC6973].

   Impacts:

   -  Right to freedom of expression

   -  Right to non-discrimination

6.2.3.  Content Agnosticism

   Questions:

   -  If your protocol impacts packet handling, does it use user data
      (packet data that is not included in the header)?

   -  Does your protocol make decisions based on the payload of the
      packet?

   -  Does your protocol prioritize certain content or services over
      others in the routing process?

   -  Is the protocol transparent about the prioritization that is made
      (if any)?

   Explanation:  "Content agnosticism" refers to the notion that network
      traffic is treated identically regardless of payload, with some
      exceptions when it comes to effective traffic handling -- for
      instance, delay-tolerant or delay-sensitive packets based on the
      header.

   Example:  Content agnosticism prevents payload-based discrimination
      against packets.  This is important because changes to this
      principle can lead to a two-tiered Internet, where certain packets
      are prioritized over others based on their content.  Effectively,
      this would mean that although all users are entitled to receive
      their packets at a certain speed, some users become more equal
      than others.

   Impacts:

   -  Right to freedom of expression

   -  Right to non-discrimination

   -  Right to equal protection

6.2.4.  Security

   Questions:

   -  Did you have a look at [BCP72] ("Guidelines for Writing RFC Text
      on Security Considerations")?

   -  Have you found any attacks that are somewhat related to your
      protocol yet considered out of scope for your document?

   -  Would these attacks be pertinent to the features of the Internet
      that enable human rights (as described throughout this document)?

   Explanation:  Most people speak of security as if it were a single
      monolithic property of a protocol or system; however, upon
      reflection one realizes that it is clearly not true.  Rather,
      security is a series of related but somewhat independent
      properties.  Not all of these properties are required for every
      application.  Since communications are carried out by systems and
      access to systems is through communications channels, these goals
      obviously interlock, but they can also be independently provided
      [BCP72].

   Example:  See [BCP72].

   Impacts:

   -  Right to freedom of expression

   -  Right to freedom of assembly and association

   -  Right to non-discrimination

   -  Right to security

6.2.5.  Internationalization

   Questions:

   -  Does your protocol have text strings that have to be understood or
      entered by humans?

   -  Does your protocol allow Unicode?  If so, do you accept texts in
      one charset (which must be UTF-8) or several (which is dangerous
      for interoperability)?

   -  If character sets or encodings other than UTF-8 are allowed, does
      your protocol mandate proper tagging of the charset?

   -  Did you have a look at [RFC6365]?

   Explanation:  "Internationalization" refers to the practice of making
      protocols, standards, and implementations usable in different
      languages and scripts (see Section 6.2.12 ("Localization")).  "In
      the IETF, 'internationalization' means to add or improve the
      handling of non-ASCII text in a protocol" [RFC6365].

      A different perspective, more appropriate to protocols that are
      designed for global use from the beginning, is the definition used
      by the W3C [W3Ci18nDef]: "Internationalization is the design and
      development of a product, application or document content that
      enables easy localization for target audiences that vary in
      culture, region, or language."

      Many protocols that handle text only handle one charset
      (US-ASCII), or they leave the question of what coded character set
      (CCS) and encoding are used up to local guesswork (which leads, of
      course, to interoperability problems) [RFC3536].  If multiple
      charsets are permitted, they must be explicitly identified
      [RFC2277].  Adding non-ASCII text to a protocol allows the
      protocol to handle more scripts, hopefully all scripts in use in
      the world.  In today's world, that is normally best accomplished
      by allowing Unicode encoded in UTF-8 only.

      In the current IETF policy [RFC2277], internationalization is
      aimed at user-facing strings, not protocol elements, such as the
      verbs used by some text-based protocols.  (Do note that some
      strings, such as identifiers, are both content and protocol
      elements.)  If the Internet wants to be a global network of
      networks, the protocols should work with languages other than
      English and character sets other than Latin characters.  It is
      therefore crucial that at least the content carried by the
      protocol can be in any script and that all scripts are treated
      equally.

   Example:  See Section 6.2.12 ("Localization").

   Impacts:

   -  Right to freedom of expression

   -  Right to political participation

   -  Right to participate in cultural life, arts, and science

6.2.6.  Censorship Resistance

   Questions:

   -  Does this protocol introduce new identifiers or reuse existing
      identifiers (e.g., Media Access Control (MAC) addresses) that
      might be associated with persons or content?

   -  Does your protocol make it apparent or transparent when access to
      a resource is restricted?

   -  Can your protocol contribute to filtering in such a way that it
      could be implemented to censor data or services?  If so, could
      your protocol be designed to ensure that this doesn't happen?

   Explanation:  "Censorship resistance" refers to the methods and
      measures to prevent Internet censorship.

   Example:  When IPv6 was developed, embedding a MAC address into
      unique IP addresses was discussed.  This makes it possible, per
      [RFC4941], for "eavesdroppers and other information collectors to
      identify when different addresses used in different transactions
      actually correspond to the same node."  This is why privacy
      extensions for stateless address autoconfiguration in IPv6
      [RFC4941] have been introduced.

      Identifiers of content exposed within a protocol might be used to
      facilitate censorship, as in the case of application-layer-based
      censorship, which affects protocols like HTTP.  Denial or
      restriction of access can be made apparent by the use of status
      code 451, thereby allowing server operators to operate with
      greater transparency in circumstances where issues of law or
      public policy affect their operation [RFC7725].

   Impacts:

   -  Right to freedom of expression

   -  Right to political participation

   -  Right to participate in cultural life, arts, and science

   -  Right to freedom of assembly and association

6.2.7.  Open Standards

   Questions:

   -  Is your protocol fully documented in such a way that it could be
      easily implemented, improved, built upon, and/or further
      developed?

   -  Do you depend on proprietary code for the implementation, running,
      or further development of your protocol?

   -  Does your protocol favor a particular proprietary specification
      over technically equivalent and competing specification(s) -- for
      instance, by making any incorporated vendor specification
      "required" or "recommended" [RFC2026]?

   -  Do you normatively reference another standard that is not
      available without cost (and could you possibly do without it)?

   -  Are you aware of any patents that would prevent your standard from
      being fully implemented [RFC6701] [RFC8179]?

   Explanation:  The Internet was able to be developed into the global
      network of networks because of the existence of open,
      non-proprietary standards [Zittrain].  They are crucial for
      enabling interoperability.  Yet, open standards are not explicitly
      defined within the IETF.  On the subject, [RFC2026] states the
      following: "Various national and international standards bodies,
      such as ANSI, ISO, IEEE, and ITU-T, develop a variety of protocol
      and service specifications that are similar to Technical

      Specifications defined" at the IETF.  "National and international
      groups also publish 'implementors' agreements' that are analogous
      to Applicability Statements, capturing a body of implementation-
      specific detail concerned with the practical application of their
      standards.  All of these are considered to be 'open external
      standards' for the purposes of the Internet Standards Process."
      Similarly, [RFC3935] does not define open standards but does
      emphasize the importance of "open process": any interested person
      can participate in the work, know what is being decided, and make
      his or her voice heard on the issue.  Part of this principle is
      the IETF's commitment to making its documents, WG mailing lists,
      attendance lists, and meeting minutes publicly available on the
      Internet.

      Open standards are important, as they allow for permissionless
      innovation, which in turn is important for maintaining the freedom
      and ability to freely create and deploy new protocols on top of
      the communications constructs that currently exist.  It is at the
      heart of the Internet as we know it, and to maintain its
      fundamentally open nature, we need to be mindful of the need for
      developing open standards.

      All standards that need to be normatively implemented should be
      freely available and should provide reasonable protection against
      patent infringement claims, so that it can also be implemented in
      open-source or free software.  Patents have often held back open
      standardization or have been used against those deploying open
      standards, particularly in the domain of cryptography [Newegg].
      An exemption is sometimes made when a protocol that normatively
      relies on specifications produced by other SDOs that are not
      freely available is standardized.  Patents in open standards or in
      normative references to other standards should have a patent
      disclosure [notewell], royalty-free licensing [patentpolicy], or
      some other form of reasonable protection.  Reasonable patent
      protection should include, but is not limited to, cryptographic
      primitives.

   Example:  [RFC6108] describes a system deployed by Comcast, an ISP,
      for providing critical end-user notifications to web browsers.
      Such a notification system is being used to provide
      almost-immediate notifications to customers, such as warning them
      that their traffic exhibits patterns that are indicative of
      malware or virus infection.  There are other proprietary systems
      that can perform such notifications, but those systems utilize
      Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) technology.  In contrast to DPI,
      [RFC6108] describes a system that does not rely upon DPI and is
      instead based on open IETF standards and open-source applications.

   Impacts:

   -  Right to freedom of expression

   -  Right to participate in cultural life, arts, and science

6.2.8.  Heterogeneity Support

   Questions:

   -  Does your protocol support heterogeneity by design?

   -  Does your protocol allow for multiple types of hardware?

   -  Does your protocol allow for multiple types of application
      protocols?

   -  Is your protocol liberal in what it receives and handles?

   -  Will your protocol remain usable and open if the context changes?

   -  Does your protocol allow well-defined extension points?  If so, do
      these extension points allow for open innovation?

   Explanation:  [FIArch] notes the following: "The Internet is
      characterized by heterogeneity on many levels: devices and nodes,
      router scheduling algorithms and queue management mechanisms,
      routing protocols, levels of multiplexing, protocol versions and
      implementations, underlying link layers (e.g., point-to-point,
      multi-access links, wireless, FDDI, etc.), in the traffic mix and
      in the levels of congestion at different times and places.
      Moreover, as the Internet is composed of autonomous organizations
      and internet service providers, each with their own separate
      policy concerns, there is a large heterogeneity of administrative
      domains and pricing structures."  As a result, as also noted in
      [FIArch], the heterogeneity principle proposed in [RFC1958] needs
      to be supported by design.

   Example:  Heterogeneity is inevitable and needs to be supported by
      design.  For example, multiple types of hardware must be allowed
      for transmission speeds differing by at least seven orders of
      magnitude, various computer word lengths, and hosts ranging from
      memory-starved microprocessors up to massively parallel
      supercomputers.  As noted in [RFC1958], "Multiple types of
      application protocol must be allowed for, ranging from the
      simplest such as remote login up to the most complex such as
      distributed databases."

   Impacts:

   -  Right to freedom of expression

   -  Right to political participation

6.2.9.  Anonymity

   Question:

   -  Did you have a look at [RFC6973] ("Privacy Considerations for
      Internet Protocols"), especially Section 6.1.1 of that document?

   Explanation:  "Anonymity" refers to the condition of an identity
      being unknown or concealed [RFC4949].  Even though full anonymity
      is hard to achieve, it is a non-binary concept.  Making pervasive
      monitoring and tracking harder is important for many users as well
      as for the IETF [RFC7258].  Achieving a higher level of anonymity
      is an important feature for many end users, as it allows them
      different degrees of privacy online.

   Example:  Protocols often expose personal data; it is therefore
      important to consider ways to mitigate the obvious impacts on
      privacy.  A protocol that uses data that could help identify a
      sender (items of interest) should be protected from third parties.
      For instance, if one wants to hide the source/destination IP
      addresses of a packet, the use of IPsec in tunneling mode (e.g.,
      inside a VPN) can help protect against third parties likely to
      eavesdrop packets exchanged between the tunnel endpoints.

   Impacts:

   -  Right to non-discrimination

   -  Right to political participation

   -  Right to freedom of assembly and association

   -  Right to security

6.2.10.  Pseudonymity

   Questions:

   -  Have you considered [RFC6973] ("Privacy Considerations for
      Internet Protocols"), especially Section 6.1.2 of that document?

   -  Does the protocol collect personally derived data?

   -  Does the protocol generate or process anything that can be, or
      that can be tightly correlated with, personally identifiable
      information?

   -  Does the protocol utilize data that is personally derived, i.e.,
      derived from the interaction of a single person or from their
      device or address?

   -  Does this protocol generate personally derived data?  If so, how
      will that data be handled?

   Explanation:  Pseudonymity -- the ability to use a persistent
      identifier that is not immediately linked to one's offline
      identity -- is an important feature for many end users, as it
      allows them different degrees of disguised identity and privacy
      online.

   Example:  When designing a standard that exposes personal data, it is
      important to consider ways to mitigate the obvious impacts.  While
      pseudonyms cannot easily be reverse-engineered -- for example,
      some early approaches used such techniques as simple hashing of IP
      addresses that could in turn be easily reversed by generating a
      hash for each potential IP address and comparing it to the
      pseudonym -- limiting the exposure of personal data remains
      important.

      "Pseudonymity" means using a pseudonym instead of one's "real"
      name.  There are many reasons for users to use pseudonyms -- for
      instance, to hide their gender; protect themselves against
      harassment; protect their families' privacy; frankly discuss
      sexuality; or develop an artistic or journalistic persona without
      retribution from an employer, (potential) customers, or social
      surroundings [geekfeminism].  The difference between anonymity and
      pseudonymity is that a pseudonym is often persistent.
      "Pseudonymity is strengthened when less personal data can be
      linked to the pseudonym; when the same pseudonym is used less
      often and across fewer contexts; and when independently chosen
      pseudonyms are more frequently used for new actions (making them,
      from an observer's or attacker's perspective, unlinkable)."
      [RFC6973]

   Impacts:

   -  Right to non-discrimination

   -  Right to freedom of assembly and association

6.2.11.  Accessibility

   Questions:

   -  Is your protocol designed to provide an enabling environment for
      people who are not able-bodied?

   -  Have you looked at the W3C Web Accessibility Initiative
      [W3CAccessibility] for examples and guidance?

   Explanation:  The Internet is fundamentally designed to work for all
      people, whatever their hardware, software, language, culture,
      location, or physical or mental ability.  When the Internet meets
      this goal, it is accessible to people with a diverse range of
      hearing, movement, sight, and cognitive abilities
      [W3CAccessibility].  Sometimes, in the design of protocols,
      websites, web technologies, or web tools, barriers that exclude
      people from using the Web are created.

   Example:  The HTML protocol as defined in [HTML5] specifically
      requires that (with a few exceptions) every image must have an
      "alt" attribute to ensure that images are accessible for people
      that cannot themselves decipher non-text content in web pages.

   Impacts:

   -  Right to non-discrimination

   -  Right to freedom of assembly and association

   -  Right to education

   -  Right to political participation

6.2.12.  Localization

   Questions:

   -  Does your protocol uphold the standards of internationalization?

   -  Have you taken any concrete steps towards localizing your protocol
      for relevant audiences?

   Explanation:  Per [W3Ci18nDef], "Localization refers to the
      adaptation of a product, application or document content to meet
      the language, cultural and other requirements of a specific target
      market (a 'locale')."  It is also described as the practice of

      translating an implementation to make it functional in a specific
      language or for users in a specific locale (see Section 6.2.5
      ("Internationalization")).

   Example:  The Internet is a global medium, but many of its protocols
      and products are developed with a certain audience in mind; this
      audience often shares particular characteristics like knowing how
      to read and write in ASCII and knowing English.  This limits the
      ability of a large part of the world's online population to use
      the Internet in a way that is culturally and linguistically
      accessible.  An example of a protocol that has taken into account
      the view that individuals like to have access to data in their
      native language can be found in [RFC5646]; such a protocol would
      label the information content with an identifier for the language
      in which it is written and would allow information to be presented
      in more than one language.

   Impacts:

   -  Right to non-discrimination

   -  Right to participate in cultural life, arts, and science

   -  Right to freedom of expression

6.2.13.  Decentralization

   Questions:

   -  Can your protocol be implemented without one single point of
      control?

   -  If applicable, can your protocol be deployed in a federated
      manner?

   -  What is the potential for discrimination against users of your
      protocol?

   -  Can your protocol be used to negatively implicate users (e.g.,
      incrimination, accusation)?

   -  Does your protocol create additional centralized points of
      control?

   Explanation:  Decentralization is one of the central technical
      concepts of the architecture of networks and is embraced as such
      by the IETF [RFC3935].  It refers to the absence or minimization
      of centralized points of control -- "a feature that is assumed to

      make it easy for new users to join and new uses to unfold"
      [Brown].  It also reduces issues surrounding single points of
      failure and distributes the network such that it continues to
      function if one or several nodes are disabled.  With the
      commercialization of the Internet in the early 1990s, there has
      been a slow trend toward moving away from decentralization, to the
      detriment of any technical benefits that having a decentralized
      Internet otherwise provides.

   Example:  The bits traveling the Internet are increasingly
      susceptible to monitoring and censorship, from both governments
      and ISPs, as well as third (malicious) parties.  The ability to
      monitor and censor is further enabled by increased centralization
      of the network, creating central infrastructure points that can be
      tapped into.  The creation of P2P networks and the development of
      voice-over-IP protocols using P2P technology in combination with a
      distributed hash table (DHT) for scalability are examples of how
      protocols can preserve decentralization [Pouwelse].

   Impacts:

   -  Right to freedom of expression

   -  Right to freedom of assembly and association

6.2.14.  Reliability

   Questions:

   -  Is your protocol fault tolerant?

   -  Does your protocol degrade gracefully?

   -  Can your protocol resist malicious degradation attempts?

   -  Do you have a documented way to announce degradation?

   -  Do you have measures in place for recovery or partial healing from
      failure?

   -  Can your protocol maintain dependability and performance in the
      face of unanticipated changes or circumstances?

   Explanation:  Reliability ensures that a protocol will execute its
      function consistently, be error resistant as described, and
      function without unexpected results.  A system that is reliable
      degenerates gracefully and will have a documented way to announce
      degradation.  It also has mechanisms to recover from failure

      gracefully and, if applicable, to allow for partial healing.  It
      is important here to draw a distinction between random degradation
      and malicious degradation.  Many current attacks against TLS, for
      example, exploit TLS's ability to gracefully degrade to older
      cipher suites; from a functional perspective, this ability is
      good, but from a security perspective, it can be very bad.  As
      with confidentiality, the growth of the Internet and fostering
      innovation in services depend on users having confidence and trust
      [RFC3724] in the network.  For reliability, it is necessary that
      services notify users if packet delivery fails.  In the case of
      real-time systems, the protocol needs to safeguard timeliness in
      addition to providing reliable delivery.

   Example:  In the modern IP stack structure, a reliable transport
      layer requires an indication that transport processing has
      successfully completed, such as the indication given by TCP's ACK
      message [RFC793] and not simply an indication from the IP layer
      that the packet arrived.  Similarly, an application-layer protocol
      may require an application-specific acknowledgement that contains,
      among other things, a status code indicating the disposition of
      the request (see [RFC3724]).

   Impacts:

   -  Right to freedom of expression

   -  Right to security

6.2.15.  Confidentiality

   Questions:

   -  Does this protocol expose information related to identifiers or
      data?  If so, does it do so to each of the other protocol entities
      (i.e., recipients, intermediaries, and enablers) [RFC6973]?

   -  What options exist for protocol implementers to choose to limit
      the information shared with each entity?

   -  What operational controls are available to limit the information
      shared with each entity?

   -  What controls or consent mechanisms does the protocol define or
      require before personal data or identifiers are shared or exposed
      via the protocol?  If no such mechanisms or controls are
      specified, is it expected that control and consent will be handled
      outside of the protocol?

   -  Does the protocol provide ways for initiators to share different
      pieces of information with different recipients?  If not, are
      there mechanisms that exist outside of the protocol to provide
      initiators with such control?

   -  Does the protocol provide ways for initiators to limit which
      information is shared with intermediaries?  If not, are there
      mechanisms that exist outside of the protocol to provide users
      with such control?

   -  Is it expected that users will have relationships that govern the
      use of the information (contractual or otherwise) with those who
      operate these intermediaries?

   -  Does the protocol prefer encryption over cleartext operation?

   -  Does the protocol provide ways for initiators to express
      individuals' preferences to recipients or intermediaries with
      regard to the collection, use, or disclosure of their personal
      data?

   Explanation:  "Confidentiality" refers to keeping a user's data
      secret from unintended listeners [BCP72].  The growth of the
      Internet depends on users having confidence that the network
      protects their personal data [RFC1984].

   Example:  Protocols that do not encrypt their payload make the entire
      content of the communication available to the idealized attacker
      along their path [RFC7624].  Following the advice in [RFC3365],
      most such protocols have a secure variant that encrypts the
      payload for confidentiality, and these secure variants are seeing
      ever-wider deployment.  A noteworthy exception is DNS [RFC1035],
      as DNSSEC [RFC4033] does not have confidentiality as a
      requirement.  This implies that, in the absence of changes to the
      protocol as presently under development in the IETF's DNS Private
      Exchange (DPRIVE) Working Group, all DNS queries and answers
      generated by the activities of any protocol are available to the
      attacker.  When store-and-forward protocols are used (e.g., SMTP
      [RFC5321]), intermediaries leave this data subject to observation
      by an attacker that has compromised these intermediaries, unless
      the data is encrypted end to end by the application-layer protocol
      or the implementation uses an encrypted store for this data
      [RFC7624].

   Impacts:

   -  Right to privacy

   -  Right to security

6.2.16.  Integrity

   Questions:

   -  Does your protocol maintain, assure, and/or verify the accuracy of
      payload data?

   -  Does your protocol maintain and assure the consistency of data?

   -  Does your protocol in any way allow the data to be (intentionally
      or unintentionally) altered?

   Explanation:  "Integrity" refers to the maintenance and assurance of
      the accuracy and consistency of data to ensure that it has not
      been (intentionally or unintentionally) altered.

   Example:  Integrity verification of data is important for preventing
      vulnerabilities and attacks such as man-in-the-middle attacks.
      These attacks happen when a third party (often for malicious
      reasons) intercepts a communication between two parties, inserting
      themselves in the middle and changing the content of the data.  In
      practice, this looks as follows:

      Alice wants to communicate with Bob.
      Corinne forges and sends a message to Bob, impersonating Alice.
      Bob cannot see that the data from Alice was altered by Corinne.
      Corinne intercepts and alters the communication as it is sent
      between Alice and Bob.
      Corinne is able to control the communication content.

   Impacts:

   -  Right to freedom of expression

   -  Right to security

6.2.17.  Authenticity

   Questions:

   -  Do you have sufficient measures in place to confirm the truth of
      an attribute of an entity or of a single piece of data?

   -  Can attributes get garbled along the way (see Section 6.2.4
      ("Security"))?

   -  If relevant, have you implemented IPsec, DNSSEC, HTTPS, and other
      standard security best practices?

   Explanation:  Authenticity ensures that data does indeed come from
      the source it claims to come from.  This is important for
      preventing (1) certain attacks or (2) unauthorized access to, and
      use of, data.

   Example:  Authentication of data is important for preventing
      vulnerabilities and attacks such as man-in-the-middle attacks.
      These attacks happen when a third party (often for malicious
      reasons) intercepts a communication between two parties, inserting
      themselves in the middle and posing as both parties.  In practice,
      this looks as follows:

      Alice wants to communicate with Bob.
      Alice sends data to Bob.
      Corinne intercepts the data sent to Bob.
      Corinne reads and alters the message to Bob.
      Bob cannot see that the data did not come from Alice but instead
      came from Corinne.

      When there is proper authentication, the scenario would be as
      follows:

      Alice wants to communicate with Bob.
      Alice sends data to Bob.
      Corinne intercepts the data sent to Bob.
      Corinne reads and alters the message to Bob.
      Bob can see that the data did not come from Alice but instead came
      from Corinne.

   Impacts:

   -  Right to privacy

   -  Right to freedom of expression

   -  Right to security

6.2.18.  Adaptability

   Questions:

   -  Is your protocol written in such a way that it would be easy for
      other protocols to be developed on top of it or to interact
      with it?

   -  Does your protocol impact permissionless innovation (see
      Section 6.2.1 ("Connectivity") above)?

   Explanation:  Adaptability is closely interrelated with
      permissionless innovation; both maintain the freedom and ability
      to freely create and deploy new protocols on top of the
      communications constructs that currently exist.  Permissionless
      innovation is at the heart of the Internet as we know it.  To
      maintain the Internet's fundamentally open nature and ensure that
      it can continue to develop, we need to be mindful of the impact of
      protocols on maintaining or reducing permissionless innovation.

   Example:  WebRTC generates audio and/or video data.  In order to
      ensure that WebRTC can be used in different locations by different
      parties, it is important that standard JavaScript APIs be
      developed to support applications from different voice service
      providers.  Multiple parties will have similar capabilities; in
      order to ensure that all parties can build upon existing
      standards, these standards need to be adaptable and allow for
      permissionless innovation.

   Impacts:

   -  Right to education

   -  Right to freedom of expression

   -  Right to freedom of assembly and association

6.2.19.  Outcome Transparency

   Question:

   -  Are the effects of your protocol fully and easily comprehensible,
      including with respect to unintended consequences of protocol
      choices?

   Explanation:  Certain technical choices may have unintended
      consequences.

   Example:  Lack of authenticity may lead to lack of integrity and
      negative externalities; spam is an example.  Lack of data that
      could be used for billing and accounting can lead to so-called
      "free" arrangements that obscure the actual costs and distribution
      of the costs -- for example, (1) the barter arrangements that are
      commonly used for Internet interconnection and (2) the commercial
      exploitation of personal data for targeted advertising, which is
      the most common funding model for the so-called "free" services
      such as search engines and social networks.

   Impacts:

   -  Right to freedom of expression

   -  Right to privacy

   -  Right to freedom of assembly and association

   -  Right to access to information