> Il 18/04/2023 15:54 CEST Benjamin Schwartz <i...@bemasc.net> ha scritto:
>  
>  
>  
> 
> On Tue, Apr 18, 2023 at 7:49 AM Ralf Weber <d...@fl1ger.de 
> mailto:d...@fl1ger.de> wrote:
> 
> > Moin!
> > 
> > On 18 Apr 2023, at 13:11, Benjamin Schwartz wrote:
> > 
> > > The draft's opening words are "DNS filtering is widely deployed for 
> > > network
> > > security".  This is true, but by far the "widest" deployment of DNS
> > > filtering is for authoritarian national censorship, to prevent citizens
> > > from engaging with forbidden ideas.
> > 
> > Do you have any data to back this claim up?
> > 
>  
> According to Freedom House, 64% of Internet users "live in countries where 
> political, social, or religious content was blocked", and "51% live in 
> countries where access to social media platforms was temporarily or 
> permanently restricted". 
> (https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-net/2022/countering-authoritarian-overhaul-internet)
>   In my experience, DNS-based censorship is used for a majority of these 
> blocks (often in concert with other methods).
> 
Ok, so now you just need to prove that that all those countries are 
"authoritarian" and that all blocking of social media or other content is 
"censorship". This really depends on the report's definition of "political, 
social or religious" - if a country blocks nazi or terrorist propaganda or CSAM 
or social fake news or the unauthorized streaming of movies, is that classified 
as "censorship of social and political content"? Many here would disagree, or 
at least find that censorship highly desirable.
 
But, more usefully: there is wide disagreement across the planet and even 
within the Internet community on what constitutes "censorship". I do not think 
that it is acceptable for the IETF to withhold standardization that is useful 
for those who provide filtering systems, and do so on policy grounds. Who ever 
gave the IETF the authority to decide whether country X or operator Y should be 
allowed to block certain types of content? Also, in practical terms, the real 
authoritarian countries won't bother anyway, but not having a way to provide 
meaningful information in reasonable filtering contexts (e.g. blocking illegal 
content in a European country) will just damage end users without reducing the 
extent of filtering in any way.
 
At the same time, your objections on how hard it is to agree on categorizations 
are valid. Of course any explanation of reasons for filtering that comes from a 
resolver should be taken at face value and at the same time presented as only 
worth as the trust one puts in one's resolver. Users are not required to 
believe or agree with the explanation, but it would still be useful for them to 
know it, especially in the many cases in which the filtering was actually 
requested by the user (e.g. parental controls). It may actually help them in 
evaluating the reliability of the service and choosing whether to continue 
using it or not.

--

Vittorio Bertola | Head of Policy & Innovation, Open-Xchange
vittorio.bert...@open-xchange.com mailto:vittorio.bert...@open-xchange.com
Office @ Via Treviso 12, 10144 Torino, Italy
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