Subject: [Secdispatch] Opportunistic encryption for email with pEp

From: Bernie Hoeneisen <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 1 Mar 2018 10:58:40 +0100 (CET)

Please be informed that the follwoing pEp (pretty Easy pricacy) work is on 
the way and may end up in SecDispatch for dispatching. Therefore, Richard 
asked me to inform also this list (besides saag and dispatch).

After an introduction in SAAG during IETF-99 
https://datatracker.ietf.org/meeting/99/materials/minutes-99-saag , a 
successful BarBoF in Singapore and many hallway discussions we learned 
that there is considerable interest for secure interpersonal messaging, 
which is at the same time also usable and interoperable with systems 
already deployed out in the wild. The main concept of the pretty Easy 
privacy (pEp) work has already been published as I-D:

    https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-birk-pep

Basically it is about enhanced opportunistic encryption in email (and other 
messaging).

The Internet Society (ISOC) is diretly supporting the pEp work and it 
has been selected as an Innovative Projects for Beyond the Net Funding. 
Please find more information on:

    https://www.internetsociety.org/blog/2017/06/12-innovative-projects-selected-for-beyond-the-net-funding/

Just recently we published another piece out of the overall pEp work as 
I-D:

- Trustwords (similar to the PGP wordlist or RFC 2289) to make
   authenticated communications easy for end-users:
   https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-birk-pep-trustwords/
   There has been question some discusion on the saag mailing list on this.

In addtion (and among further I-Ds to come in the near future), we are 
currently working on the following I-D (to be published as I-Ds shortly), 
whose early drafts your may access already:

- New privacy-enhancing formats for email based upon already existing
   standards, e.g. PGP/MIME (minimizing unnecessarily exposed meta data,
   including encrypting the subject):
   https://pep.foundation/dev/repos/internet-drafts/file/tip/pep-email/draft-birk-pep-email-NN.txt

- Rating System and Privacy Status to label secure / private types of
   communications:
   https://pep.foundation/dev/repos/internet-drafts/file/tip/pep-rating/draft-birk-pep-rating-NN.txt

We are seeking more feedback on our existing work as well to find
the right venue (and scope) for this work to continue in the IETF.
We are also still trying to figure out whether this this work should be 
rather in SEC or ART.

What do you think of the pEp work in general? Is this something you 
consider useful also for you and/or your work? If the pEp approach is 
interestig to you, we kindly ask you to express your opinion to this list.

Looking forward to your feedback!

Best,
  Bernie et al.