The Spectre of Surveillance and Censorship in Future Internet Architectures

TL;DR

This paper analyzes how future Internet architectures may be vulnerable to government surveillance and censorship, examining their design principles and proposing privacy-enhancing solutions to mitigate these threats.

Contribution

It provides a detailed analysis of FIA design principles and discusses privacy technologies to counter surveillance and censorship in future Internet systems.

Findings

FIA designs can be targeted by existing censorship mechanisms

Privacy-enhancing technologies are essential for FIA security

Guidelines for evaluating FIA privacy solutions are proposed

Abstract

Recent initiatives known as Future Internet Architectures (FIAs) seek to redesign the Internet to improve performance, scalability, and security. However, some governments perceive Internet access as a threat to their political standing and engage in widespread network surveillance and censorship. In this paper, we provide an in-depth analysis of the design principles of prominent FIAs in terms of their packet structure, addressing and naming schemes, and routing protocols to foster discussion on how these new systems interact with censorship and surveillance apparatuses. Further, we assess the extent to which existing surveillance and censorship mechanisms can successfully target FIA users while discussing privacy enhancing technologies to counter these mechanisms. We conclude by providing guidelines for future research into novel FIA-based privacy-enhancing technologies, and recommendations to guide the evaluation of these technologies.