April 2, 2013

Safe and Secure Internet

The Orlando IETF meeting was sponsored by Comcast/NBC Universal. IETF sponsors get to give a talk on Thursday afternoon of IETF week, and the talk was a panel, "A Safe, Secure, Scalable Internet".

What I thought was interesting was the scope of what the speaker's definition of "Safe" and "Secure", and the mismatch to the technologies and methods being considered. "Safety" included "letting my kids surf the web without coming across pornography or being subject to bullying", while the methods they were talking about were things like site blocking by IP address or routing.

This seems like a oomplete mismatch. If bullying happens because harassers facebook post nasty pictures which they label with the victim's name, this problem cannot be addressed by IP-address blocking. "Looking in the wrong end of the telescope."

I'm not sure there's a single right answer, but we have to define the question correctly.

Medley Interlisp Project, by Larry Masinter et al.

I haven't been blogging -- most of my focus has been on Medley Interlisp. Tell me what you think!