Hi Adrian,

Thanks for clarifying the distinction.  I just realized that my understanding of the term authorization server is probably influenced more by my familiarity with the 2005 common criteria protection profile than it is by UMA. I’m curious whether and how well UMA maps to any of the usage scenarios in that document, but that’s a thread that I’m going to choose not to tug on right now.

I do agree that the RS enforces the access control policy because they serve up resources when the required permission tickets are presented.  The AS absolutely has a role in enforcing an access control policy since they are responsible for serving up permission tickets only in accordance with the policy.  Am I misunderstanding something?  I have not found the “Adrian clause”, can you point me to it?

Thanks and regards,

Scott

Scott Shorter - Vice President, Security
sshorter@kimbleassociates.com

On Jun 21, 2016, at 10:54 AM, Adrian Gropper <agropper@healthurl.com> wrote:

Hi Scott,

Thank you for highlighting a critical distinction between the AS as "trusted agent of the patient" and the AS "enforcer". This is a very helpful step to consensus.

I maintain that the RS Is the only "enforcer" in the UMA model. Whatever the UMA AS says, the RS always has the last word and may override the AS to grant either more or less scope. (This kind is a foundational component of UMA as opposed to just OAuth, and is informally referred to in the guidance docs as "the Adrian clause".)

I hope we can settle whether the AS is completely trusted by Alice or not as we continue this thread.

Adrian

On Tuesday, June 21, 2016, Scott Shorter <sshorter@kimbleassociates.com> wrote:

Hi Adrian,

Let me try to convince you that there's no need for HEART to be profiling privacy and that trying to do so would do more harm than good.

While I concur with the premise that HEART should not be profiling privacy, I do not agree that that is what is currently being proposed.  As I mentioned on the call I believe the issue at hand is access control rather than privacy.

During today's HEART call we agreed that "Alice completely trusts her UMA Authorization Server." 

I believe that the proposed statement is incomplete until it specifies what Alice “completely trusts” her AS to do.  I suggest instead that “Alice trusts her UMA Authorization Server to enforce the access control policy.”  Questions of specifically how to protect Alice’s privacy using those access control settings are beyond the scope of the profile, but discussion of how access control would be implemented in the profile is quite appropriate.

So the discussion is not about “profiling privacy” so much as identifying the access control settings that make sense in the context of the use case.   Specifying that the AS is responsible for enforcing an access control policy is well within the scope of defining a profile.  It also makes sense for a use case to specify that certain resources are expected to be protected by default.

I think we agree that the profile should not “profile privacy” by specifying on Alice’s behalf what data may or may not be shared, but it seems entirely in the scope of the effort to stipulate that the Authorization Server will enforce Alice’s expected access control policy.  A specific use case can even describe the access control policies that are assumed to be in place, and the ways that Alice might modify them, as a way to illustrate the capabilities enabled by the profile.

Thanks,

Scott

Scott Shorter - Vice President, Security
sshorter@kimbleassociates.com

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Adrian Gropper MD

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