Privacy Requirements for IETF Protocols
draft-cooper-ietf-privacy-requirements-00

Network Working Group                                          A. Cooper
Internet-Draft                                                       CDT
Intended status: BCP                                          S. Farrell
Expires: March 24, 2014                           Trinity College Dublin
                                                               S. Turner
                                                              IECA, Inc.
                                                      September 20, 2013

                Privacy Requirements for IETF Protocols
             draft-cooper-ietf-privacy-requirements-00.txt

Abstract

   It is the consensus of the IETF that IETF protocols be designed to
   avoid privacy violations to the extent possible.  This document
   establishes a number of protocol design choices as Best Current
   Practices for the purpose of avoiding such violations.

Status of this Memo

   This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the
   provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.

   Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering
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   This Internet-Draft will expire on March 24, 2014.

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   Copyright (c) 2013 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
   document authors.  All rights reserved.

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   the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as
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Table of Contents

   1.  Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  3
   2.  Terminology  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  4
   3.  Recommendations  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  5
   4.  Examples and Explanation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  6
   5.  Security Considerations  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  7
   6.  IANA Considerations  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  8
   7.  Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  9
   8.  Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
   Authors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

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1.  Introduction

   The IETF has long-standing principles that support strong security in
   protocol design and a tradition of encouraging protocol designers to
   take these principles into account.  [RFC1984] articulated the view
   that encryption is an important tool to protect the cofidentiality of
   communications, and that as such it should be encouraged and
   available to all.  [RFC3365] requires that all protocols implement
   strong security.  [RFC3552] provides guidance about how to consider
   security in protocol design and how to document security choices.  In
   [RFC2804], the IETF established a policy of not considering
   wiretapping requirements in IETF protocols.  [RFC6973] explains the
   many different aspects of privacy that can be affected by Internet
   protocol design and provides guidance to help designers consider
   privacy in their work.  This document extends the existing body of
   IETF principles concerning security by articulating Best Current
   Practices for avoiding egregious privacy violations and establishing
   support for privacy as a principle of IETF protocol design.

   These principles, old and new, should be applied when designing new
   protocols, and where applicable, should be considered for updates of
   existing protocols.

   Discussion of this draft is directed to the ietf-privacy@ietf.org
   list.

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2.  Terminology

   The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
   "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "NOT RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and
   "OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in
   [RFC2119].  These words take their normative meanings only when they
   are presented in ALL UPPERCASE.

   "Opportunistic encryption" is defined as encryption without any pre-
   arrangement specific to the pair of systems involved (see [RFC4322]).

   Privacy-specific terminology is provided in [RFC6973].  Of particular
   relevance to this document is the term "personal data," defined as
   "any information relating to an individual who can be identified,
   directly or indirectly."  Identifiers such as IP addresses that can
   remain consistent over time or that particular parties associate with
   directly identifiable information (such as a real name or street
   address) are therefore considered to be personal data.

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3.  Recommendations

   There are inherent privacy risks with protocols that allow the
   communicating parties to store personal data, transport personal
   data, or are vulnerable to other parties observing the personal data
   in the exchanged communications.  Most Internet communications
   involve such risks, which can allow entities to build large databases
   of information that by themselves or in conjunction with other
   databases can identify people and their actions in invasive ways.

   Therefore, to the extent consistent with basic protocol operation and
   management, standards-track IETF protocols that involve transmission
   of personal data:

   1.  MUST minimize their use of such personal data, and,

   2.  where personal data is sent, MUST have well-defined and
       interoperable ways to send such data encrypted for the intended
       recipient(s).

   While existing principles call for strong security, it is important
   to note that strong security only in cases where the other party can
   be authenticated does not by itself solve all privacy problems.  To
   guard against dangers of large-scale privacy attacks, some protection
   is needed also for other situations.  As a consequence, at minimum,
   opportunistic encryption needs to be well-defined for almost all new
   IETF standards track protocols.  In most cases it will be better to
   (also) specify how to do mutually authenticated encryption.
   Encryption provides one aspect of privacy protection, namely
   confidentiality.

   Note that this is contingent on practicality - if some personal data
   really has to be sent in clear for a protocol to be able to operate,
   and even opportunistic encryption is not possible, then a standards-
   track protocol that does not define how to protect that data will be
   consistent with this BCP.  The IETF will have to decide in such cases
   whether standardising that protocol benefits the Internet or not.

   Many IETF protocols allow for some data items to be optionally or
   conditionally sent.  If personal data can be sent, then the
   conditions above apply.

   Specifications that do not meet the criteria above MUST include (or
   reference) an explanation of why they do not conform to this BCP.

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4.  Examples and Explanation

   This section has some examples and explanatory material.  [[More,
   including references, will be added as discussion evolves.]]

   DHCP is an example of a protocol where it seems quite hard to provide
   useful confidentiality.  Should a new DHCP option be defined that
   carries personal data, then the IETF would have to decide if the
   benefit of that outweighs the potential privacy cost.

   For some protocols, layering on top of a security protocol like TLS,
   SSH or IPsec can be a useful way to provide confidentiality.
   However, just because it could be possible to do that does not mean
   that that is sufficient to claim conformance with this BCP.  For
   example, claiming that Diameter conformed to this BCP becuase one
   could in principle run Diameter over IPsec would not be credible, as
   it seems that such deployments are rare to non-existent.  In the same
   way that being being realistic is important when we consider a claim
   that sending personal data is unavoidable, it is just as important
   when claiming that layering on top of a security protocol can meet
   the requirements of this BCP.

   For some protocols, minimizing the use of personal data involves
   limiting the lifetime of identifiers.  In cases where an identifier
   refers to an individual (or a proxy for an individual, such as a host
   device or software instance), the longer that identifier persists and
   the more contexts in which it is used, the more it can facilitate
   correlation and tracking of information related to the individual and
   his or her activities.  Creating identifiers that have limited
   lifetimes by default reduces the possibility that multiple protocol
   interactions or communications can be correlated back to the same
   individual.  [RFC4941] provides an example in the case of stateless
   autoconfiguration of IPv6 interface identifiers.

   Since the goal here is to have a BCP that covers all IETF standards
   track protocols we clearly cannot address all aspects of privacy, for
   example user participation, since that would only be relevant for a
   small proportion of IETF protocols.

   One could consider mininimising the personal data sent by IETF
   protocols as a form being conservative in what you send, one of the
   longest standing principles in IETF protocol design.  There doesn't
   seem to be an equivalent here for being liberal in what you accept.

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5.  Security Considerations

   This document articulates a set of Best Current Practices for privacy
   that extend the IETF's existing security principles.  [To do: Fill in
   some text about potential tension between privacy and security, e.g.,
   with non-persistent identifiers, etc.]

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6.  IANA Considerations

   This document does not require actions by IANA.

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7.  Acknowledgements

   Thanks to the following for useful comments.  These folks may or may
   not agree with the content.

   Jari Arkko, Bernard Aboba, Benoit Claise, Nick Doty, Spencer Dawkins,
   Eliot Lear, Ted Lemon,

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8.  Informative References

   [RFC1984]  IAB, IESG, Carpenter, B., and F. Baker, "IAB and IESG
              Statement on Cryptographic Technology and the Internet",
              RFC 1984, August 1996.

   [RFC2119]  Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
              Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997.

   [RFC2804]  IAB and IESG, "IETF Policy on Wiretapping", RFC 2804,
              May 2000.

   [RFC3365]  Schiller, J., "Strong Security Requirements for Internet
              Engineering Task Force Standard Protocols", BCP 61,
              RFC 3365, August 2002.

   [RFC3552]  Rescorla, E. and B. Korver, "Guidelines for Writing RFC
              Text on Security Considerations", BCP 72, RFC 3552,
              July 2003.

   [RFC4322]  Richardson, M. and D. Redelmeier, "Opportunistic
              Encryption using the Internet Key Exchange (IKE)",
              RFC 4322, December 2005.

   [RFC4941]  Narten, T., Draves, R., and S. Krishnan, "Privacy
              Extensions for Stateless Address Autoconfiguration in
              IPv6", RFC 4941, September 2007.

   [RFC6973]  Cooper, A., Tschofenig, H., Aboba, B., Peterson, J.,
              Morris, J., Hansen, M., and R. Smith, "Privacy
              Considerations for Internet Protocols", RFC 6973,
              July 2013.

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Authors' Addresses

   Alissa Cooper
   CDT
   1634 Eye St. NW, Suite 1100
   Washington, DC  20006
   US

   Phone: +1-202-637-9800
   Email: acooper@cdt.org
   URI:   http://www.cdt.org/

   Stephen Farrell
   Trinity College Dublin
   Dublin,   2
   Ireland

   Phone: +353-1-896-2354
   Email: stephen.farrell@cs.tcd.ie

   Sean Turner
   IECA, Inc.
   3057 Nutley Street, Suite 106
   Fairfax, VA  22031
   USA

   Phone: +1.703.628.3180
   Email: turners@ieca.com

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