Time For X-No-Wiretap HTTP Header?

Freshly Exhumed writes "A security blogger, acknowledging that the NSA methodically ranks communications on the basis of their 'foreignness' factor to determine candidacy for prolonged retention proposes, is proposing '...an opportunity for us on the civilian front to aid the NSA by voluntarily indicating citizenship on all our networked communications. Here, we define the syntax and semantics of X-No-Wiretap, a HTTP header-based mechanism for indicating and proving citizenship to well-intentioned man-in-the-middle parties. It is inspired by the enormously successful RFC 3514 IPv4 Security Flag and HTTP DNT header.'"

Comments

Almost as good as Evil BIt!

[CrystalFalcon]

Yes, of course!

This is guaranteed to work almost as good as the Evil Bit, an extra field in IPv4 headers where senders of packets indicate malicious intent, so that people administering firewalls can discard such packets if desired.

(The problem in the first place was that the people wiretapping didn't give a shit about rules, etiquette, and being decent. More rules and etiquette aren't the solution to that problem.)

Rick

USA citizens safe, not care rest of world??

[Anonymous Coward]

It is always so irritating to see that this discussion turns into "I am USA citizen, do not spy on me, dear NSA!" What about rest of the world?? How come that in your US centric viewpoint it's all ok to spy on anyone else, just not on US citizens?? What about Europe? Other NATO allies? All ok to spy on everyone else, on your viewpoint!! Love that fat bellybutton of yours!

Re:Asking them nicely will stop help?

[Oysterville]

Somewhere along the line you were given the incorrect information that the US House and Senate have complete oversight of NSA, when in reality it's more accurately the other way around.

And the rest of the world?

[lurker412]

Few American commentators seem to be questioning the unstated assumption that spying on non-Americans is perfectly OK, even if there is no reasonable cause for suspicion. By that logic, it's perfectly OK for other countries to spy on all Americans.

Aren't we all entitled to a little privacy?

Do you think this will stop NSAGul Black Riders?

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

They are already deliberately violating the law, with impunity. They compromise your security at every step. Adding un-encrypted metadata to your traffic will only:
1 - ID you for possible actions by later custodians of this information
2 - Acknowledge your silent submission to the fact of universal collection as a normative state
3 - Divert efforts from real crypto-countermeasures

People need not to give NSA their complicity and assent, but to resist, and applaud every time somebody manages to FUCK UP their mission.