4 ms·

This is a good formal step. The time it took from 'common knowledge' to a formal proposal makes me a little worried. If the IETF isn't really a "council of wi

This is a good formal step. The time it took from 'common knowledge' to a formal proposal makes me a little worried. If the IETF isn't really a "council of wise folks" then in the long term, doesn't their effectiveness get eroded?

smtddr 12y ago
>>The time it took from 'common knowledge' to a formal proposal makes me a little worried. As anti-NSA, pro-snowden as I am(I proudly wear my Snowden t-shirts)... I think it's important for formal steps to make sure they've filtered out the hype and not just react while the general public is on fire about the issue. Waiting about 6 months to a year after Snowden did his thing I think is fast enough. Gives folks enough time to digest the info and for anyone else out there thinking about "leaking" more info that (dis)proves Snowden enough time to weigh consequences 'n such. This way when formal steps begin to happen nobody can complain that they didn't have enough time to respond/defend themselves, etc. USGov has been given plenty of time to quell concerns and haven't done a particularly good job so I feel that Snowden is mostly, if not completely, correct and I can confidently consider the USGov/NSA as the real villains in the world attempting to misdirect everyone else with allegations of boogieman terrorists & spying from Russia/China/Nigeria/whatever. Not that I ever believed otherwise... just that this gives me more talking points in future debates with friends/family/random-online-comments.
- ryanobjc 12y ago
  I guess I kind of expect the IETF to be predictive, and not be pop-culture or mass-market/media driven. I guess ultimately though, that's the only way to go. We knew years before Snowden that something fishy was up, but it took the leaks to really make people care at a level that could facilitate change.
  - jnbiche 12y ago
    >I guess I kind of expect the IETF to be predictive, and not be pop-culture or mass-market/media driven. But that's the GP's exact point: this wasn't a media-driven RFC -- if it had been driven by media, it would have been published last summer. As it stands now, the body has carefully deliberated on the facts and yet still published a very strongly-worded RFC. This pro-Snowden programmer is pretty happy to see the IETF step forward and take on a leadership role here. Let's not forget that the IETF was founded by a consortium of US government agencies and only when private in the 1990s. With this RFC, they are asserting their independence in a surprisingly direct manner (for a standards body).
JoshTriplett 12y ago
Standards bodies are, by necessity, slower-moving than those developing the works they standardize, It's remarkable that they successfully agreed upon a statement like this at all, let alone this quickly. As stated in the article, they had to deal with blatantly broken objections that ought to have been easy to dismiss; I'd be curious how the actual standardization effort managed to achieve rough consensus amid those objections.

smtddr 12y ago

>>The time it took from 'common knowledge' to a formal proposal makes me a little worried. As anti-NSA, pro-snowden as I am(I proudly wear my Snowden t-shirts)... I think it's important for formal steps to make sure they've filtered out the hype and not just react while the general public is on fire about the issue. Waiting about 6 months to a year after Snowden did his thing I think is fast enough. Gives folks enough time to digest the info and for anyone else out there thinking about "leaking" more info that (dis)proves Snowden enough time to weigh consequences 'n such. This way when formal steps begin to happen nobody can complain that they didn't have enough time to respond/defend themselves, etc. USGov has been given plenty of time to quell concerns and haven't done a particularly good job so I feel that Snowden is mostly, if not completely, correct and I can confidently consider the USGov/NSA as the real villains in the world attempting to misdirect everyone else with allegations of boogieman terrorists & spying from Russia/China/Nigeria/whatever. Not that I ever believed otherwise... just that this gives me more talking points in future debates with friends/family/random-online-comments.

ryanobjc 12y ago
I guess I kind of expect the IETF to be predictive, and not be pop-culture or mass-market/media driven. I guess ultimately though, that's the only way to go. We knew years before Snowden that something fishy was up, but it took the leaks to really make people care at a level that could facilitate change.
- jnbiche 12y ago
  >I guess I kind of expect the IETF to be predictive, and not be pop-culture or mass-market/media driven. But that's the GP's exact point: this wasn't a media-driven RFC -- if it had been driven by media, it would have been published last summer. As it stands now, the body has carefully deliberated on the facts and yet still published a very strongly-worded RFC. This pro-Snowden programmer is pretty happy to see the IETF step forward and take on a leadership role here. Let's not forget that the IETF was founded by a consortium of US government agencies and only when private in the 1990s. With this RFC, they are asserting their independence in a surprisingly direct manner (for a standards body).

JoshTriplett 12y ago

Standards bodies are, by necessity, slower-moving than those developing the works they standardize, It's remarkable that they successfully agreed upon a statement like this at all, let alone this quickly. As stated in the article, they had to deal with blatantly broken objections that ought to have been easy to dismiss; I'd be curious how the actual standardization effort managed to achieve rough consensus amid those objections.