The Man in the Middlebox: Violations of End-to-End Encryption

We consider the ethical issues of the paper "Multi-Context TLS (mcTLS): Enabling Secure In-Network Functionality in TLS", which presents a method to extend the Transport Layer Security (TLS) protocol to allow it to support middleboxes. Specifically, to what extent should third parties be able to decrypt traffic between two Internet endpoints for various purposes, ranging from performance to security? This is the first column in a series about ethics that we hope will encourage ongoing discussion and debate in the research community about ethical considerations that may arise in the course of networking, security, and systems research.