Privacy

[mnot]

Jari says:

Section 6.1 talks about relationship between centralization and privacy, and points out that there's sometimes a tradeoff. I would argue that this is heavily dependent on what we're talking about. We're far along on the mission to encrypt all communications. Many of the remaining privacy issues are made worse, not better, by centralization. E.g., one entity has access to all your mail or browser history or other things. Perhaps the 6.1 language could be improved, as it currently reads a bit like focusing on privacy in standardisation and leaving centralisation to other entities. I’m not sure that’s always desirable, particularly if we want to address privacy.

[jariarkko]

I'm not happy with the below text, but to get us started, here's a proposal:

Replace last paragraph in Section 6.1 with:

When we find centralization risk, we should consider its relationship
with other goals, such as privacy. While abstract goals such as these
are rarely entirely separate from each other,
attention should be paid to how effective architectural regulation
(such as a standards effort) is in achieving each goal. For instance,
a technical mechanism might be much more effective at
improving some privacy concerns, whereas some aspects of centralization could be
better controlled by other regulators. This might lead us to conclude that the standards
effort should focus on technical matters such as privacy. However, because topics such as
privacy are not entirely separate from other issues, this is perhaps a too quick conclusion.
For instance, centralization and consolidation often helps increase some aspects of
privacy concerns, such as collecting more data in one set of hands. While such data can be
well guarded by both technical and non-technical means, it also clearly increases the risk of
attacks on such data stores, or commercial or government pressures to use the data in some way.

[mnot]

@jariarkko PTAL

[mnot]

Closing to keep the issues list clean :) but please say so if you're not happy with that.

[jariarkko]

FWIW, the latest version is good on this issue.