Review of potential negative implications

[ts5746]

Provided feedback often negative implications that do not seem to be accounted for when it comes to how the Whiteflag protocol can be used. For example:

A civilian can, for example, use Whiteflag to send a notification about an on-going attack nearby their house. This information can then amount to military intelligence that can be useful for belligerents that are not aware of the attack. It might also amount to an act of direct participation in hostilities by the civilian(s) using it, and or might endanger the civilian(s) themselves, if the party/persons carrying out the attack manages to locate them. If this occurs repeatedly, it might even lead the party carrying out the attack (which are then reported on by civilians) to consider that the Whiteflag protocol itself is a tool of the enemy used to gather intelligence.

The question here is whether such an issue is within the Whiteflag problem space (just as IHL as such cannot prevent any misuse of protective signs).

[ts5746]

Some additional clarification and considerations:

• Because of the neutrality principle, Whiteflag has no functionality whatsoever for access control or evaluation/censorship of information; it is for the sender to decide to release any information (to a specific party) and for the receiver to (establish criteria to) decide which sender and information to trust - just as with any other open or closed communications channel;
• Whiteflag is a low level communications protocol and most risks or misuse (such as the example of the civilian reporting an attack) are no different for Whiteflag than for any other communication channel;
• Indeed, Whiteflag provides a unique combination of security features for senders to deal with situations where information and the identity of the sender should not be revealed: such as different authentication mechanisms and encryption.