Jeff King wrote:

                The current property is that it's safe to fetch from an
untrusted repository, even over ssh. If we're keeping that for protocol
v1, we'd want it to apply to protocol v2, as well.

Ah, this is what I had been missing (the non-ssh case).

I see your point.  I think we need to fix the pager config issue and add
some clarifying documentation to git.c so that people know what to look
out for.

Keep in mind that git upload-archive (a read-only command, just like
git upload-pack) also already has the same issues.

Thanks,
Jonathan