Re: [ga] Conspicuous Notice Issue
Dear Danny, the whois story is only a way for some to grab the control of the users directory. A mine of gold left over from the academic administration no one has a technical need for. The only solution is to suppress the WHOIS and to permit willing users to replace it by the QUIEST (Who is in Latin). This is just a very simple page everyone can implement as http://name.tld/quiest or http://quiest.name.tld and document the way he wants. Can even make it his blog. Do we freely use Business Cards or must we be registered in the Who's Who and give your tax ID? This kind of nasty legacy is very poor. Next you will have to quote your RFID (Registered Federal ID). You want to know another one on privacy or wose? The so poor RFC that it is nicknamed the "yellow star" RFC. Consider RFC 3066 (http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3066.txt?number=3066) which deals with language tags in HTML/XML, protocols. It puts in a _single_ information language and country. Simple, clean, neat: the language product and the sales agent. But its security section says: "The only security issue that has been raised with language tags since the publication of RFC 1766 is a concern with language ranges that they may be used to infer the nationality of the sender, and thus identify potential targets for surveillance." Instead of deprecating this RFC, commercial interests now try to build on it with a more stringent version (they try to obtain this way a de facto commercial exclusive on language industry and to introduced a patented "local" file into ... linux) http://ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-ietf-ltru-registry-10.txt. Through a IANA imposed language tag where the publisher and the user style cannot be mentionned (everyone to speak, write and read as per the Word national language version, worldwide). Make people think in using TM languages, while would you want them to be able to oppose. Its security section says: "Language tags used in content negotiation, like any other information exchanged on the Internet, might be a source of concern because they might be used to infer the nationality of the sender, and thus identify potential targets for surveillance." "This is a special case of the general problem that anything sent is visible to the receiving party and possibly to third parties as well. It is useful to be aware that such concerns can exist in some cases. The evaluation of the exact magnitude of the threat, and any possible countermeasures, is left to each application protocol (see BCP 72 [RFC3552] for best current practice guidance on security threats and defenses)." (Pontius Pilatus dixit?) I just asked that at least they identify the threat on people better and nations better: "Language tags used in content negotiation, or in many other circumstances, like any other information exchanged on the Internet, might be a source of concern because they might be used to infer the nationality of the sender, the interest of the receiver, the nature of the content and thus identify, help select potential targets for surveillance, gather statistics, information and intelligence on users and community exchanges, censor contents, block access to information and knowledge, fight national cultures, in particular in using OPES, etc." This is the "cultural bomb" RFC. IAB RFC 3869 says: "The principal thesis of this document is that if commercial funding is the main source of funding for future Internet research, the future of the Internet infrastructure could be in trouble. In addition to issues about which projects are funded, the funding source can also affect the content of the research, for example, towards or against the development of open standards, or taking varying degrees of care about the effect of the developed protocols on the other traffic on the Internet." In the case of the language tags, I fight them for eight months because they only wanty to exclude the open standard/source projects based upon an ISO code they do not control. jfc
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