Subject: Re: why exactly is HRPC for, was Diversity and offensive terminology in RFCs

From: "John R Levine" <[email-masked]>
Date: 21 Sep 2018 10:49:29 -0400

>  I strongly agree, and would go further.
>
>  As I see it, the HRPC suffers fundamental problems from both
>  participation and its charter.

Thanks.  I was going to write something like that but you said it better.

There are inherent tensions among different human rights.  Free speech is 
great, but it enables trolling, phishing, and swatting.  Censorship is 
bad, but most of us would prefer to censor phishes to our parents and 
tweets of porn photos with our daughters' faces pasted in.  The 
traditional assertion is that the response to bad speech is more speech, 
but that was from an era when printing presses were expensive, and there 
weren't million-bot armies of screaming trolls.  It is possible to think 
productively about this tension, as Dave Clark did in his terrific plenary 
talk at IETF 98, but unfortunately, he is an outlier.

I have spent over a decade arguing with people who imagine themselves to 
be human rights advocates and are unwilling to consider the implications 
of their narrow focus on speech and anonymity.  (This month in the ICANN 
WHOIS debate, a well known professor in Georgia is spluttering that every 
security researcher who says that they use WHOIS data to shut down malware 
and catch crooks is lying.)  I am not interested in joining HRPC because, 
like Eliot, I see no evidence of willingness to engagem with the real 
range of human rights issues.

In the IETF, yesterday on the regext list, "Human Rights Review of 
draft-ietf-regext-verificationcode" contains a long complaint that 
security features could be used to discriminate against people.  Well, 
yes, that's what they're for.

https://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/regext/current/msg01768.html

In anything like its current form HRPC is harmful to the IETF because it 
gratuitously undermines our security efforts.

R's,
John

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From: Avri <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 21 Sep 2018 12:17:46 -0400

Hi,

HRPC is a research group.    It is exploring the issues in the UDRP (Universal Declaration of Human Rights) context of all Human Rights being linked and indivisible. The work needs to look into this confluence of rights and interests. This often requires messy discussions and brings out contrasting points of view.    While the discussions do range rather widely and on occasion get a little stressed, as far as I can tell, they do lead to better understanding without rancor - though the outcome is unpredictable.  

HRPC, as a research group, is by definition not about changing IETF decisions, but does perhaps try to understand them in the larger context. So we review the work done in the IETF, but have no expectation of directly affecting that work. We are certainly not in the position of overruling the IETF consensus on freedom of expression and freedom from surveillance with the expressions which emanate from our freedom of expression.

HRPC is not an IETF WG that is on a direct path toward some specific engineering goal.    The group is exploring, and occasionally annealing on, some points of consensus. Part of our exploration will look at the impact of decisions made in the IETF, but the results of those explorations are just food for thought and not in any way binding on anyone anywhere about anything. We cannot destroy a consensus.

It would be a pity to have this research group, which I thought was just beginning to find its stride and getting into the tough discussions, censored for its occasionable disagreeableness or touchy subjects.    And while I am not quite sure how the IETF goes about closing an IRTF RG, I do hope no such thing happens as I beleive it would reflect quite badly on the IETF. One value I hope we can continue to strive for is the ability to discuss the difficult without becoming difficult.

Thanks
 
Avri

 
(Co-chair HRPC RG)

>  
> On Sep 21, 2018 at 10:49,  <John R Levine (mailto:[email-masked])>  wrote:
>  
>  
>

---

From: "John Levine" <[email-masked]>
Date: 21 Sep 2018 12:52:38 -0400

In article <32d96826-38ff-4b40-a6c5-f979ac9dbfda@avris-iPad> you write:
>It would be a pity to have this research group, which I thought was just beginning to find its stride and getting into the tough
>discussions, censored for its occasionable disagreeableness or touchy subjects. 

Thanks for your note, but if you reread the message you're responding
to, you'll see that you've gotten the problem exactly backwards.
The issue isn't that HRPC gets into tough discussions or touchy
subjects.  It's that it doesn't.  It has consistently looked only at a
narrow subset of rights issues, and completely ignored the rest of
them.  This myopic focus leads to results that I would say are at best
unfortunate.

Also, even though the HRPC is indeed an RG and not a WG, this
discussion started with a pretty clear request that the IETF change
the way it does business.  We have processes for that.  For starters,
where's the I-D about what the problem is and what to change?

R's,
John

---

From: Spencer Dawkins at IETF <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 21 Sep 2018 11:53:56 -0500

On Avri's point ...

On Fri, Sep 21, 2018 at 11:18 AM Avri <[email-masked]> wrote:

> Hi,
>
> HRPC is not an IETF WG that is on a direct path toward some specific
> engineering goal.  The group is exploring, and occasionally annealing on,
> some points of consensus. Part of our exploration will look at the impact
> of decisions made in the IETF, but the results of those explorations are
> just food for thought and not in any way binding on anyone anywhere about
> anything. We cannot destroy a consensus.
>

Part of my time on the IAB (2010-2013) was spent being surprised at
differences between the IETF (which I thought I understood) and the IRTF,
and I found enough other people in the IETF who also didn't understand the
differences, that Lars Eggert , who was IRTF Chair before Allison, approved
https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/rfc7418/, which is "An IRTF Primer for
IETF Participants".

If you're an IETF person who hasn't spent much time in the IRTF, you might
find it useful, and not just about HRPC.

> It would be a pity to have this research group, which I thought was just
> beginning to find its stride and getting into the tough discussions,
> censored for its occasionable disagreeableness or touchy subjects.  And
> while I am not quite sure how the IETF goes about closing an IRTF RG, I do
> hope no such thing happens as I beleive it would reflect quite badly on the
> IETF. One value I hope we can continue to strive for is the ability to
> discuss the difficult without becoming difficult.
>

I can't speak for any of the people I'm about to mention, but I suspect the
IETF closing an IRTF RG would be a surprise to the IRTF Chair, and to the
IAB who are chartered with oversight of the IRTF, and who typically reviews
an RG at every IETF meeting (the honor of a specific RG being reviewed
rotates). At least in the past, it hasn't worked that way.

Make good choices, of course.

Spencer

Thanks
> Avri
> (Co-chair HRPC RG)
>
> On Sep 21, 2018 at 10:49, <John R Levine <[email-masked]>> wrote:
>

---

From: Allison Mankin <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 21 Sep 2018 13:27:19 -0400

+100 to both Spencer and Avri's messages.

I liked Avri's formulation "a little messy" because research into social
science intersections with technology is still research, and there
are intellectual goals.

I appreciate Spencer reminding this group that IRTF and its processes are
not IETF processes.  The IRTF chair and IAB are the parties in
chartering, review, and closing of RGs.

We can also go to [email-masked] with further discussion of IRTF
matters.

And I'll repeat that if someone see an open research question, gap, or
issue, the door is open in IRTF groups for to initiate discussion with or
without a draft.  All the RGs are open, their mailing lists are listed on
their datatracker pages, and you are welcome.

On Fri, 21 Sep 2018 at 12:54, Spencer Dawkins at IETF <
[email-masked]> wrote:

> I can't speak for any of the people I'm about to mention, but I suspect
> the IETF closing an IRTF RG would be a surprise to the IRTF Chair, and to
> the IAB who are chartered with oversight of the IRTF, and who typically
> reviews an RG at every IETF meeting (the honor of a specific RG being
> reviewed rotates). At least in the past, it hasn't worked that way.
>