Hey everyone, thank you for your patience, and thank you to everyone who engaged constructively. It is clear based on the feedback we’ve received that a bigger discussion needs to take place, and I’m not sure my personal repository is the best place to do that - we are looking for a better forum and will update when we have found one. We want to continue the discussion and collaborate to address your core concerns in an improved explainer.
I want to be transparent about the perceived silence from my end. In the W3C process it is common for individuals to put forth early proposals for new web standards, and host them in a team member’s personal repository while pursuing adoption within a standards body. My first impulse was to jump in with more information as soon as possible - but our team wanted to take in all the feedback, and be thorough in our response.
That being said, I did want to take a moment to clarify the problems our team is trying to solve that exist on the web today and point out key details of this early stage proposal that may have been missed.
WEI’s goal is to make the web more private and safe The WEI experiment is part of a larger goal to keep the web safe and open while discouraging cross-site tracking and lessening the reliance on fingerprinting for combating fraud and abuse. Fraud detection and mitigation techniques often rely heavily on analyzing unique client behavior over time for anomalies, which involves large collection of client data from both human users and suspected automated clients.
Privacy features like user-agent reduction, IP reduction, preventing cross-site storage, and fingerprint randomization make it more difficult to distinguish or reidentify individual clients, which is great for privacy, but makes fighting fraud more difficult. This matters to users because making the web more private without providing new APIs to developers could lead to websites adding more:
sign-in gates to access basic content invasive user fingerprinting, which is less transparent to users and more difficult to control excessive challenges (SMS verification, captchas) All of these options are detrimental to a user’s web browsing experience, either by increasing browsing friction or significantly reducing privacy.
We believe this is a tough problem to solve, but a very important one that we will continue to work on. We will continue to design, discuss, and debate in public.
WEI is not designed to single out browsers or extensions Our intention for web environment integrity is to provide browsers with an alternative to the above checks and make it easier for users to block invasive fingerprinting without breaking safety mechanisms. The objective of WEI is to provide a signal that a device can be trusted, not to share data or signals about the browser on the device.
Maintaining users’ access to an open web on all platforms is a critical aspect of the proposal. It is an explicit goal that user agents can browse the web without this proposal, which means we want the user to remain free to modify their browser, install extensions, use Dev tools, and importantly, continue to use accessibility features.
WEI prevents ecosystem lock-in through hold-backs We had proposed a hold-back to prevent lock-in at the platform level. Essentially, some percentage of the time, say 5% or 10%, the WEI attestation would intentionally be omitted, and would look the same as if the user opted-out of WEI or the device is not supported.
This is designed to prevent WEI from becoming “DRM for the web”. Any sites that attempted to restrict browser access based on WEI signals alone would have also restricted access to a significant enough proportion of attestable devices to disincentivize this behavior.
Additionally, and this could be clarified in the explainer more, WEI is an opportunity for developers to use hardware-backed attestation as alternatives to captchas and other privacy-invasive integrity checks.
WEI does not disadvantage browsers that spoof their identity The hold-back and the lack of browser identification in the response provides cover to browsers that spoof their user agents that might otherwise be treated differently by sites. This also includes custom forks of Chromium that web developers create.
Let’s work together on finding the right path We acknowledge facilitating an ecosystem that is open, private, and safe at the same time is a difficult problem, especially when working on the scale and complexity of the web. We welcome collaboration on a solution for scaled anti-abuse that respects user privacy, while maintaining the open nature of the web.
Well, looking at these comments, one thing is clear: the discussion is not going to happen here. I don’t think there was even one comment of substance, which is unfortunate, since the explainer in OP reads sincere to me.
Maybe instead of jumping on the „google bad“ bandwagon, it would be helpful if people point out the specific issues that they are seeing with this.
As it stands, we might just take literally any commit to chromium and paste the same comments below it.
Edit: since posting this, the comments have considerably improved, I love some of the discussion. Thanks!
We already have sufficient attestation for the web. It’s called SSL/TLS. It guarantees that what the browser sees is what the server put out.
WEI is about blocking the browser from modifying the website in any way on the client side. Can it be used for good? Sure. Will the company whose income is 90% ads, spies on billions of people, and owns 90% of the browser market share use it for good? Hmm…
The explainer explicitly mentions that the proposal allows browser to ignore WEI and the web is intended to work without. It even points out that there will be a continuous group of chrome users of ~5% that have the feature disabled.
If website owners rely on this feature, they are hurting chrome users just as much as other browsers.
inb4 that 5% gets killedbygoogle.com
If you view a WEI-enabled site with Chrome you will see ads and there won’t be anything you can do about it. If you view it with a non-WEI browser you won’t see the site at all.
It creates a fundamental rift in the Web that goes beyond ads. If only one browser can see websites, it proliferates a proprietary Web.
Keep in mind that Google could achieve the same goal they want (no ad blocking in Chrome) by simply not allowing ad blockers in Chrome. But they’re sneaky cunts and want to spin it as a good thing — instead of the immediate backlash they’d get otherwise.
TLS and this proposal are different though. We don’t usually use client certificates with HTTPS. They are proposing something similar though. They want a way to attest the client. There’s really a ton of bot traffic on the web, and these bots are not browsers, and which is the reason we all solve CAPTCHAs. I get the idea, but I’ll support Mozilla’s stance on the subject.
The client’s identity or the client’s state? Because the first can already be done through various means, and the second is an obvious pro-ad move coming from Google.
Verifying client state is an interesting piece of technology but it doesn’t have a general application. Not every browser and every random person browsing random websites needs it.
It has applications for specific use cases but that’s not what Google wants.
Yeah, I agree. Just wanted to say I get the idea, but Google likely can’t be trusted with implementing a solution.
fwiw I think mozilla’s response was the most thought out response available to date. https://github.com/mozilla/standards-positions/issues/852#issuecomment-1648820747
Maybe you should listen to that response.
Makes sense to me!
Adding another issue to the pile:
Even if it isn’t the intent of the spec, it’s dangerous to allow for websites to differentiate between unverified browsers, browsers attested to by party A, and browser attested to by party B. Providing a mechanism for cryptographic verification opens the door for specific browsers to be enforced for websites.
For a corporate example:
Suppose we have ExampleTechFirm, a huge investor in a private AI company, ShutAI. ExampleTechFirm happens to also make a web browser, Sledge. ExampleTechFirm could exert influence on ShutAI so that ShutAI adds rate limiting to all browsers that aren’t verified with ShutAI as the attester. Now, anyone who isn’t using Sledge is being given a degraded experience. Because attesting uses cryptographic signatures, you can’t bypass this user-hostile quality of service mechanism; you have to install Sledge.
For a political example:
Consider that I’m General Aladeen, the leader of the country Wadiya. I want to spy on my citizens and know what all of them are doing on their computers. I don’t want to start a revolt by making it illegal to own a computer without my spyware EyeOfAladeen, nor do I have the resources to do that.
Instead, I enact a law that makes it illegal for companies to operate in Wadiya unless their web services refuse access to Wadiyan citizens that aren’t using a browser attested to by the “free, non-profit” Wadiyan Web Agency. Next, I have my scientists create and release a renamed versions of Chromium and Firefox with EyeOfAladeen bundled in them. Those are the only two browsers that are attested by the Wadiyan Web Agency.
Now, all my citizens are being encouraged to unknowingly install spyware. Goal achieved!
Isn’t it already effectively very easy to force a specific browser on a website? The explainer touches on that, browser fingerprinting is so powerful to date that you can already easily tell individuals and their browsers apart. What’s changing with this proposal wrt your examples?
With regard to my examples, WEI provides full confidence and stability in identifying the browser.
Relying on detecting browsers by differentiating between their features and quirks involves on having a large suite of checks to run, some of which might become incorrect as browsers change over time. It’s a maintenance burden, to say the least.
And here’s a concern about the decentralized-but-still-centralized nature of attesters:
From my understanding, attesting is conceptually similar to how the SSL/TLS infrastructure currently works:
Each ultimately-trusted attester has their own key pair (e.g. root certificate) for signing.
Some non-profit group or corporation collects all the public keys of these attesters and bundles them together.
The requesting party (web browser for TLS, web server for WEI) checks the signature sent by the other party against public keys in the requesting party’s bundle. If it matches one of them, the other party is trusted. If it doesn’t, they are not not trusted.
This works for TLS because we have a ton of root certificates, intermediate certificates, and signing authorities. If CA Foo is prejudice against you or your domain name, you can always go to another of the hundreds of CAs.
For WEI, there isn’t such an infrastructure in place. It’s likely that we’ll have these attesters to start with:
But hey, maybe we’ll have some intermediate attesters as well:
Even with that list, though, it doesn’t bode well for FOSS software. Who’s going to attest to various browser forks, or for browsers running on different operating systems that aren’t backed by corporations?
Furthermore, if this is meant to verify the integrity of browser environments, what is that going to mean for devices that don’t support Secure Boot? Will they be considered unverified because the OS can’t ensure it wasn’t tampered with by the bootloader?
Great comment! I don’t understand the proposal well enough to answer that, but I still would like to commend you on taking the time to look into this and writing it up.
Here’s a specific issue: this will obliterate all browsers other than Chrome and Safari. There will be no meaningful competition, because websites will block competing browsers as untrusted. No more Firefox, no more Brave, no more Vivaldi, no more self-built Chromium. Use the official build or be shown the door.
This is “embrace, extend, extinguish” for the web, and it’s terrifying because of how many things require the use of the web. Some banks don’t even have physical branches any more; you’ll have to use Chrome or lose your account.
Firefox will probably survive if they bow and add WEI support.
I can’t imagine Google, Microsoft, and Apple opening themselves up to further monopolization scrutiny by trying to keep attestation restricted to their own browsers on their own operating systems.
Self-built or community forks are probably screwed, though.
Here’s the trick, though: it will be websites (and maybe government regulators) who block everything other than Chrome and Safari, not Google. Google can declare innocence. “It’s not our fault that third parties have chosen to use WEI this way.”
So there’s a silver lining. But the WEI project is still overall a complete disaster that needs to rot on the vine. It’ll wreck not just browser diversity but overall hackability, adblocks, mashups, and above all: accessibility.
As pointed out in another comment, the proposal explicitly states that web sites have to function without this feature; and chrome itself will keep it disabled for a random 5% of users.
Some slight additions:
Google gives their word that Chrome itself will keep it disabled for a random 5% of users at launch.
I’ve emphasized what I view to be the problems.
This requires you to trust that Google will actually do this at launch; and to be fair I expect they probably will. That said, it’s not a legally binding statement. Promises are cheap.
This requires you to trust that the ‘random 5% of users’ figure will remain a thing forever, and not be silently rolled back in a Chrome update two years from release once most of the complaints die down.
Obviously they’re not actually going to implement it that way. Remote attestation is useless unless strictly enforced.
Seeing as you’re having such trouble with people’s reactions to this, maybe you should be the one in this thread to point out the specific reasons why individuals should be in favour of this.
I wouldn’t necessarily agree with that. If you are outraged by something, I think it’s unrealistic to expect other people to explain to you why there is nothing to be outraged about. Otherwise you might as well just walk through life outraged by anything.
Rather, it is your responsibility to take a deep breath and ask yourself, what is it really you are concerned about? And if you deem that serious enough, convince others.
Your advice is applicable to your own original comment, so it seems you do agree with what I said, at least to some degree.
Anyway, in the interests of constructive discussion, let me ask you specifically. Do you think this WEI proposal is good for and why? Does the proposal mention at all what the downsides of this feature might be, or how it could be abused? Is it proposed in such a way that the dominant implementors can’t deviate later from the terms suggested in the proposal?
I do not see how my advice applies to my own comment. To me, this proposal is exactly like all other proposals, I don’t really think about it at all, and I don’t have the context or the background knowledge to judge its usefulness.
But okay, if I try to understand it: this seems to be an attempt at stopping the cat-and-mouse game between browser fingerprinting tech and browser obfuscation tech, and instead make it - optionally - possible to identify yourself as a „real“ user. You can opt out, and I sincerely doubt that Google would lock out users that will opt out or use another browser. Why? Because they would be leaving free ad money on the table, and they don’t do that.
So I don’t really see how that changes the ways of the internet, since fingerprinting is being done already, so, I guess, I don’t really care for this proposal one way or the other.
It’s just that with your current participation in the thread, you’re indistinguishable from a bad actor planted by Google to try to distract from the topic and make those who don’t understand what’s actually being said here think everyone else is being unreasonable. The people here are explaining what they don’t like about this, which you’re actively obfuscating.
Curious.
Wouldn’t it be boring if everyone just agreed on everything? :-)
Don’t get me wrong, I am the first one to criticize Google when they mess up, but recently I have observed that piling on Google is just appears to be en vogue. I think it is important to understand what you are criticizing/outraged by, otherwise you are letting yourself be manipulated somewhat too easily.
I, for instance, don’t fully penetrate the WEI proposal, I admit. All the more I am befuddled by the overwhelming news cycle this generates, and I can’t help but wonder … why?
Anyway, when I wrote the top level comment, all other comments were just “suck it google” in various flavors, and I was disappointed by the lack of depth in the discussion.
In the meantime, this has changed, see my edit.
The explainer may be sincere; however, it is clear that privacy and an open web are not in Google’s interests. They contradict that sentiment in the explainer entirely. There’s 0 reason for any one to give them the benefit of the doubt.
From what I can tell, out of all the big tech firms, Google goes to the greatest lengths preserving your privacy. You can even go to your profile settings right now and delete all your data. This was possible even before GDPR, so I am not sure how you get this picture.
For a conversation to happen, there must be trust. I don’t think anyone trusts them, so there is no attempt at serious communication.
They should be treated with contempt.
As a counterpoint, IMHO Google has the best track record regarding privacy of all the big tech firms. Googles data was never sold, leaked, or abused by employees as far as I can tell.
This is in stark contrast to companies like meta and twitter.
Maybe Google isn’t as good communicating that fact, but what is your reason for the distrust in this particular case?
Meta and Twitter are social media companies. They have access to peoples tweets. It’s similar to having access to these messages you and me are typing, except many people use their own names there.
It’s not too bad privacy wise, just social messages.
Google on the other hand has the private searches of billions of people. Everything you put into a search engine because you are worried, afraid, sick, or curious about something.
Google records all this private activity and saves it under your personal profile, and then uses cookies to track every web site you are visiting on the web (using not only Google search but Google analytics cookies that exists on almost every website).
They also combine this data with whatever you are doing on your android phone, or what places you go to using Google maps, or what video meetings you are having with Google meets, what emails you have in Google Mail, what video you watch on YouTube, what calendar events you are having with Google calendar… And so on.
Then they feed all this data into algorithms designed to figure out what you are likely to do next. They sell this data to advertisers so they can target you with ads. They also send this data to American agencies like nsa to be stored and analyzed.
There is a giant difference here between Google and the other companies you mentioned. Google is literally watching moments from people’s entire lives, while the others only see your social media messages.
This is why Google is completely absurdly in it’s own class of anti-privacy. No other company has this amount of data about people’s every moment awake.
Now they use their dominant position to try and take over the entire web, so it’s not possible to escape them anymore using a different browser, blocking cookies and tracking, or using another search engine.
If everyone is forced to use their browser, we have lost everything good about the web.
They should be treated like the cancer to a free web they really are.
Google does not sell data to advertisers, that is incorrect.
You are correct that Google cross-correlates some data for integrating features, but as I said, you can just go and delete your data, and it will continue to work just fine.
Maybe it’s also useful to remind oneself that you do get lots of services from Google for free - and considering they are free (!), imho, Google is taking about the most ethical approach it economically can. (Ie., they will use your data to tune full integration of their products and serve ads for you, BUT you can always opt out and delete it)
I fail to see how meta and twitter are so much different in the range of products they offer. Meta e.g. operates the larges private messaging app on the planet and they DID sell (or accidentally leak, however you want to put it, see Cambridge analytica) their data.
None of these corporations can be trusted at all IMO, simply because they’re corporations in the first place, and WILL always choose what’s better for them rather than what’s better for the community. That’s why I advocate for open source every time I can.
And OK, everything you said is true and valid, but go ahead and try to convice the non-tech people to delete their accounts, while explaining all the little comforts they have will be taken away with it. They’ll simply laugh at you and carry on. That’s how Google and other corporations that follow this “free services” model got so big and influential, and now they’re using their size to do what corporations do: increase profits.
Another problem with this model is you can’t really tell what Google is doing with the data they collect. Can you/anybody tell Google didn’t feed their Bard AI data they collected from you? Can you/anybody tell Google ain’t using your/their data for anything except showing targeted ads? AFAIK, you can’t. Even if they update their ToS regularly, communicate you they’ve changed it and “if you continue using the service it means you agreed with the new Terms of Service”, do you really think people will actually take the time to read the same 20 page ToS every time it changes? Most people I know don’t even read it the first time!
In the end, you may say they’re being as ethical as possible, and the users are simply too lazy and everything bad that happens to them is entirely their own fault. You wouldn’t be wrong at all, but that’s not how the world works.
Also, sorry for the wall of text.
#Insightful