A tremendous growth in different uses of the Internet has led to a growing need to protect data sent over public networks, including data sent via HTTP. Resorting to the use of end-to-end TLS and https for the majority of traffic looks at first like a most feasible response. However, the more sophisticated the web architecture becomes as it goes beyond the simple client-server model, the more the end-to-end use of TLS shows its downside as it excludes the use of beneficial intermediaries like caches or proxies that provide instrumental services. The need for greater privacy seems to collide with the equally growing desire for better end-to-end performance and user experience. As an example, the use of TLS and https often appears to maximise the benefit for the first but not the benefit for the combination of both. This document describes this dilemma and lays out a number of objectives of what should ideally be achieved, namely catering for sufficient security and privacy whilst providing users with the opportunity to make use of intermediaries' services where considered beneficial. We then introduce a number of characteristics potential solutions could have, with the hope that those will steer us towards suitable protocol mechanisms and data formats. End-to-end protocols which are aware of intermediaries should enable users and/or content providers to exercise fine-grained control over what intermediaries shall be able to do and what exposure to data or metadata they shall be permitted to get. The document then highlights anticipated benefits to key stakeholders like users, content providers and intermediaries. As elements like object security can play a useful role, we encourage the analysis of related pieces of work in order to discern their applicability, limitations, and coverage of use cases. This will allow us to frame an overall architecture and motivate more detailed work on protocols and mechanisms in the future.