[IP] anti-Goodmail coalition resorts to misquotes
Begin forwarded message:
From: Dave Crocker <dcrocker@xxxxxxxx>
Date: March 22, 2006 10:31:20 AM EST
To: dave@xxxxxxxxxx
Cc: ip@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: [IP] anti-Goodmail coalition resorts to misquotes
> The opposition to Goodmail's
> scheme is not based on the idea that change is wrong, but rather that
> this particular idea is flawed.
Dave, et al,
Unfortunately, the opposition to the announced scheme is not
sufficiently careful or constructive to permit such a benign assessment.
By way of example please consider Cindy Cohn's remarkably facile:
There are plenty of ways to do "certified" or "digitally signed" email
without having ISPs choose winners and charge per message.
Apparently Cindy has not noticed that spam and phishing have been
with us for quite a long time. To date, nothing has reduced its
occurrence. If the problem were so easy to fix, does she really
think that we wouold already have fixed it?
Indeed there are likely to be many different techniques that are
useful. Schemes are easy to describe but they are extremely difficult
to make practical and even more difficult to get adopted. If it is
so easy, Cindy, why haven't you promoted one and gotten it used? It
turns out that the world is full of anti-spam proposals that are not
practical. This has even prompted a whimsical-but-useful form to
use, to explain why a proposal won't work. Take a look at <http://
craphound.com/spamsolutions.txt>.
The announced scheme applies to a specific sub-set of email:
Legitimate bulk email with a high requirement for assured delivery.
The opposition effort has arbitrarily chosen to exaggerate this into
dire predictions for which there is no basis.
What was announced certainly describes an important change in email
service, and email certainly is an important human communication
tool. So it is of course reasonable to question the scheme and look
for flaws and dangers. However there is a difference between asking
serious questions, versus resorting to rabid hyperbole and
misrepresentation.
Turning concerns into hysteria guarantees that serious public
discussion about this important topic is impossible.
More than a few people believe that spam and phishing are bad
things. These nasty uses of email occur in sufficient scale and with
sufficient impact to affect the viability of email (and are expected
to have similar effect on other services, like instant messaging.)
The Bad Actors who send the nasty messages have proven to be
astonishingly creative and well-organized. All the indications are
that these problems are here to stay. Indeed, if we look at the
behavior of these Bad Actors and then look for similarities in the
bricks-and-mortar world, we find that their behavior exactly mimics
that of criminals. As the Internet grew to encompass global scale
and diversity, we should not have been surprised that the Dark Side
appeared in cyberspace, along with everyone else. We also therefore
should not expect to fully eradicate it from cyberspace, any time
soon. The most we can hope for is to reduce it to tolerable levels.
How can we do that?
So far, the primary technique has been with filtering at the
receiver's service. (Some larger operators also apply filters on
their outbound mail.) There are two problems with filtering: One is
that effective filters require constant vigilance and adaptation
against new techniques; this is, effectively, an arms race with the
usual implication of infinitely escalating consumption of resources.
The second problem is that filters are heuristics and therefore they
make errors; the worst errors are false positives that lose
legitimate mail. A problem with filtering at the receive-side of the
equation is that failing to stop mail from Bad Actors at its source
burdens the entire Internet with the considerable overhead of
carrying and detecting the bad stuff.
What we need are methods of exerting basic traffic quality control
*at the source*. As Rich Kulawiec noted, some operators do do
filtering at the source and some operators are quite effective at
squelching questionable email. More should do so. However the task
is currently rather more difficult than Rich implies and it often is
impossible. For example, spammers use an army of compromised
machines and can distribute their traffic to an extent that permits
them to operate just under the thresholds imposed by operators, and
they can otherwise tailor their traffic pattern to stay under
operators' radar.
So it is not enough to look only for Bad Actors. We need to have a
means of identifying and differentially handling Good Actors. We need
to add a Trust Overlay to email, to focus on affirmative knowledge
about Good Actors.
This will identify authors and distributors of legitimate mail,
through a chain of accountability back to the source. It needs to be
based on a mechanism that is safe and reliable (e.g., using digital
signatures) and it needs to support using a variety of assessment
(reputation) mechanisms.
These Good Actors can announce their accountability for specific
pieces of mail, and the rest of the chain of email operators can make
handling decisions based on that Actor's reputation. As solid
accountability becomes possible, it becomes easier to identify where
problem mail entered the handling chain and to squelch it at its source.
Note, however, that I said *a variety* of sources of assessment will
be available. We see that variety in the bricks-and-mortar world, and
there is no reason to assume that the Internet should or will be
different. Email is used in many ways. A scheme that helps for one
kind of use may well not be appropriate for others.
There already are efforts underway in the standards arena and the
commercial sector, to pursue the development of a trust overlay. The
announced scheme adds to these efforts; it will not replace them. The
announced scheme pertains to third-party assessment of senders of
legitimate bulk mail for which delivery is critical.
Messing with any social system warrants caution. Email certainly
qualifies as a social system. So concern about the implications of
making changes to email is essential. There are certain to be
appropriate limits for any single scheme that is developed as part of
this trust overlay. I am confident that one example is that personal
mail will require something different than assured-delivery bulk
mail. I am equally confident there are others.
It really would help quite a lot, to have those who are seriously
concerned about the implications of change to put some effort into
serious analysis and dialogue, rather than instantly jumping to
polarizing hyperbole.
Email is too important and too complex to be trivialized.
d/
p.s. I discuss much of this in more detail in a recent article in The
Internet Protocol Journal, at <http://www.cisco.com/web/about/ac123/
ac147/archived_issues/ipj_8-4/anti-spam_efforts.html>. The issue also
has a related article by John Klensin.
p.p.s. In the interest of full disclosure I should note that I am on
the technical advisory board for Habeas, which is also in the
reputation business. However, I do not speak for them.
--
Dave Crocker
Brandenburg InternetWorking
<http://bbiw.net>
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