Subject: [saag] Documenting the pretty Easy privacy (pEp) protocols

From: Hernâni Marques (p≡p foundation) <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 29 Jun 2017 05:44:05 +0200

Dear saag list members

We, the p≡p (or pEp) foundation, have worked for some time on an
architecture and system to achieve "Privacy by Default". pEp stands for
pretty Easy privacy. Our goal is automatic message encryption (starting
with email) to bring not just good, but also easy message encryption for
the masses. That is, including people without any specialized computer
expertise -- which effectively are the vast majority in any general
population. :)

There is a reference implementation to automatize key management,
message transport and including a peer-to-peer key synchronization
protocol to enable all sorts of users to securely engage in end-to-end
encryption and with their messages (including email) readable across
their different devices.

We would be very happy if other people would engage in our efforts. We
are interested in having pEp not just as software, but also documented
as RFCs (for opportunistic encryption [RFC 7435], without vendor lock-in
and with a peer-to-peer approach by design) to achieve what we call
"Privacy by Default".

To help the community to interoperate with the pEp implementions, we
believe engaging with the IETF and documenting our work in RFCs is the
way to go. We intend to document the general principles, message formats
and alike and would like to get input and comment from IETF participants
as we do that.

We have published the most general Internet-Draft on pEp recently,
outling the basic ideas and principles:

   https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-birk-pep/

Besides that, we have already been working on further Internet-Drafts
(not yet submitted) that you can find (alongside with our reference
implementation and some libraries we depend on) on our repos site:

  https://letsencrypt.pep.foundation/dev/

In addition, you can find a white paper outlining the necessity, spirit
and concepts at:

  https://pep.foundation/docs/pEp-whitepaper.pdf

What is your opinion regarding our IETF contribution?
We are looking forward to your opinions and feedback.

Best regards

Hernani (council member of p≡p foundation)

PS:
ISOC just announed their support of this work with a Beyond the Net
Large Grant:

https://www.internetsociety.org/blog/community-grants-community-projects/2017/06/announcing-beyond-net-results-june-2017-grants

-- 
p≡p foundation council member (https://pep.foundation)