1) We have never claimed as a matter of policy that our PKI decisions  
can protect people from malicious governments. It's just not a  
plausible promise for us to make.
2) I think, regardless of government ties, we'd carefully review and  
might well yank trust for any CA that was complicit in MitM attacks.
3) CNNIC complied with our root addition policy, they are in the  
product presently, so this isn't a question of approval, this is a  
question of whether we should review.

It feels to me like that makes our next step clear, here. It won't  
help to tally up the complainants (there will be many), and it won't  
help to demand assurances from CNNIC (since the alleged governmental  
pressure would trump those anyhow). It certainly won't help to cite  
wikipedia.

If there's truth to the allegation, here, then it should be possible  
to produce a cert. It should be possible to produce a certificate,  
signed by CNNIC, which impersonates a site known to have some other  
issuer. A live MitM attack, a paypal cert issued by CNNIC for example.  
If anyone in a position to produce such a thing needs help  
understanding the mechanics of doing so, I'm sure this forum will help  
them.

SSL makes tampering visible to its victims. The certificate has to  
actually make it to my client before I can decide to trust it. By all  
means, let's arm people with the knowledge to detect and record such  
instances. But I don't see any clear step we can take until then.

Does that seem dismissive? I really hope not. I really don't want us  
to trust CAs that we can't actually trust, but I don't want our root  
program choosing favourites in political debates either.

J

---
Johnathan Nightingale
Human Shield
john...@mozilla.com