Subject: [hrpc] Question About Process - Hi Again

From: Gisela Perez de Acha Chavez <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 18 Nov 2018 15:18:58 -0800

Hi everyone. First of all, apologies for my silence. I started my master's in Berkeley and the change implied time investment that I had to handle before coming back to the list. 

The reason I'm writing this email is because I am trying to get up to speed regarding the status of association draft, that Niels and I coauthored. 
While reading Mallory's notes, and watching the last IETF session, I want to ask why has the draft been taken back to the list and not moved to last call. I thought there was a clear process regarding this. So if I am wrong, please correct me. 

It would be hugely appreciated if we would develop milestones from draft-association (and probably other drafts as well), since as an author it has been quite unclear how to make progress. At several meetings it has been said that the discussion would be taken to the list, but that did not really happen. Does this indeed mean we have reached consensus? Please let me know how we can make progress on this and what the milestones are.

(Also, sorry for the new thread but I needed to write from this new email account)

Happy to be back and discuss these issues further, 

Cheers

Gisela Pérez de Acha
UC Berkeley 
Human Rights Lawyer | Journalist | Writer

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From: [email-masked]
Date: Tue, 20 Nov 2018 01:14:06 -0500

Hi,

A quick reply. 

I do not see this draft as having reached consensus in the group and
last call is at at the discretion of the co-chairs when they both think
the draft is ready and they have the consensus of the group for moving
toward publication.  I have not done a consensus call because I do not
see consensus as having been reached.  If there is rough consensus in
the group that this is a draft is ready for publication then we can move
forward.  I do not think we are at that point.

Personally, I see the draft as more an analysis and polemic than a
research draft at this point. It starts out well with theoretic
discussion, a hypothetical position and some outlining of cases, but
does not establish a research path and does not suggest any protocol
considerations, the goal of the RG.  We are a research group and need
for the documents to relate to a research goal.

Becoming an RG draft does not mean the next step is publication.  It
means that the authors have surrendered their authorship priority and
change control to the will of the group.  When I see this document get
to the point where the members of the RG feel it is ready for  last
call, then, if Mallory and I agree, we can try to aim for last call and
publication.  In the meantime I would like to see some discussion of how
to do further research on the subject and would like to seem some work
on consideration that might be relevant.

As for setting up milestones for the work being done, that is a good
idea and something that in general we should do. 

Thanks for the question.

avri

On 18-Nov-18 18:18, Gisela Perez de Acha Chavez wrote:
> _______________________________________________
> hrpc mailing list
> [email-masked]
> https://www.irtf.org/mailman/listinfo/hrpc

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From: Niels ten Oever <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 20 Nov 2018 08:36:26 +0100

> for the documents to relate to a research goal.

Thanks a lot for your feedback.

As presented during IETF 102 [0] and 103 [1], providing guidelines is a non-objective for this draft. The objective of this draft is the operationalization of the first objective of the charter ('To expose the relation between protocols and human rights, with a focus on the rights to freedom of expression and freedom of assembly'), not to provide guidelines. As discussed the practice of improving the guidelines is pursued in RFC8280, draft-irtf-hrpc-guidelines and through the human rights reviews. So the research goals of this draft is defined by the first objective of the charter.

I am not sure what you mean with a research path. I don't think you mean research design, since there are clear research questions, a methodology, case studies, a discussions of the case studies, the provision of conclusions, and suggestions for further research. So if you could tell us a bit more about what you mean with 'establishing a research path', we'll get on it right away!

Best,

Niels

[0] https://datatracker.ietf.org/meeting/102/materials/slides-102-hrpc-slides-association-final-00 slide 4

[1] https://datatracker.ietf.org/meeting/103/materials/slides-103-hrpc-draft-irtf-hrpc-association-00 slide 2

-- 
Niels ten Oever
Researcher and PhD Candidate
Datactive Research Group
University of Amsterdam

PGP fingerprint	   2458 0B70 5C4A FD8A 9488  
                   643A 0ED8 3F3A 468A C8B3

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From: [email-masked]
Date: Tue, 20 Nov 2018 22:29:16 -0500

What I don't think anyone has talked about vis a vis process is
process.

Specifically should there be a process within the IETF to report,
complain, argue, and adjudicate a human rights violation which has
been allegedly caused or abetted by a protocol or other standard?

Creating a process like that might be of a lot more practical use than
trying to enumerate and agree on possible indiscretions. And help
future design considerations.

That still assumes some sort of critical framework within which to
judge the legitimacy of such a claim but agreeing this should exist
would seem to be progress of a sort.

Otherwise all we have are violations by proxy.

That is, parties who aren't the harmed or affected parties imagining a
harmed party exists and how they were harmed. In legalese that would
"lack standing".

The other issue it would lead to is "remedy" but in this case the
remedy seems straightforward enough: Amend the protocol &c to mitigate
the harm, or abandon it as a standard entirely, or conclude the
benefits outweigh the harm so no mitigation, etc.

-- 
        -Barry Shein

Software Tool & Die    | [email-masked]             | http://www.TheWorld.com
Purveyors to the Trade | Voice: +1 617-STD-WRLD       | 800-THE-WRLD
The World: Since 1989  | A Public Information Utility | *oo*

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From: Mallory Knodel <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 21 Nov 2018 09:58:49 +0300

Hi,

> Otherwise all we have are violations by proxy.

I think this is a really good suggestion. I suspect that this exercise
would lead us in two directions:

1) A few really big violations happening at the application and content
layer, which we could make a tenuous case for being related to some
low-layer protocols.

2) Many, many trivial cases that indicate a massive flaw at the protocol
level. I'm thinking about how SMTP works and while you won't find
quality in the narrative of those violations, you will find quantity.

> benefits outweigh the harm so no mitigation, etc.

So while I agree that this research would be interesting for the group
to do, I am not sure that it would or should spark protocol adjustments.
I think it's more likely that we could use these cases to intervene in
existing standardisation discussions, but probably we would not be
effective at sparking them. Happy to be wrong.

-Mallory

-- 
Mallory Knodel
Head of Digital :: article19.org
gpg fingerprint :: E3EB 63E0 65A3 B240 BCD9  B071 0C32 A271 BD3C C780

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From: Niels ten Oever <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 26 Nov 2018 10:16:02 +0100

Hi Avri,

> I am not sure what you mean with a research path. I don't think you mean research design, since there are clear research questions, a methodology, case studies, a discussions of the case studies, t…

Could you be so kind to indicate what you mean with 'research path' so we can move the document forward? If you have other concrete suggestions we're also happy to work on it, but now we're at a loss at to how to move this document forward.

Best,

Niels

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From: avri doria <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 27 Nov 2018 07:32:14 -0500

Niels,

Thank you for your original note.  And thank you for the resend, which I
guess was due to my not have responded with sufficient alacrity.  But it
was a week leading up to a holiday weekend for many (including me)  and
I wanted to see which, if any, members of the RG disagreed with my claim
that we are not seeing support for immediate LC or even that it should
be on the RFC path as it is currently constructed.

In terms of not including considerations in the Association draft, or at
at least analysis of considerations: this is a consensus I do not
remember the RG reaching on this RG draft. I understand the editors may
not think it necessary, but does the RG agree?  I do not think this
issue has been adequately discussed or decided on.  What do others think?

Personally, I see it as incomplete without at least an analysis of how
the existing considerations affect and are affected by including
association in the consideration complex. Are we considering new
considerations for every  right (hope not) or are we looking for how
other considerations affect the considerations we are already
experimenting with so that we can build a well formed and tested set of
human rights considerations.

With RFC8280 we established an experimental framework.  We formed a
hypothesis based on text analysis and deductive reasoning. In creating
the considerations we created a research framework that could be used to
test whether the principles that drove those considerations are the
right considerations, and would make a human rights difference on th
Internet of not. And would it be a positive difference?  I believe we
still have a ways to go in proving, or at least failing to falsify as
the case may be, our hypotheses and our framework.

I believe the group has basically accepted the common human rights
principle that the various human rights are inextricably interlinked. If
that is the case, then any right we begin to work on has to fit within,
and modify as necessary, the original framework of RFC8280. I think the
Association draft has yet to do this and should.  What do other people
think?

Or does Association-00 intend to propose abandoning the framework
established with RFC8280? I suppose that too could be a reasoned way to
proceed, but I do not see that argument in the current draft either.

On the cases and examples, I have not seen a RG agreement on the
validity of the cases and their description or analysis. I think they
may be a good place to start.  In terms of the conclusion, the doc is
claiming a RG consensus on conclusions I am not sure I have seen.  Have
I missed consensus on the cases, their analysis and the conclusions we
draw from them. Seen some conversation but not enough to convince me
that the RG agrees with the narrative. I see LC as time to confirm a
consensus seen and give everyone a last chance, not a mechanism for
drawing out issues.  We can do consensus calls on various points of
disagreement to try and draw out the issues, and perhaps we should as we
move forward on these RG drafts.

As a co-chair, I think what we have in association-00 is a partial
introduction to work we need to do. I think the group  needs to do the
research, think about how it affects the considerations framework and
reach consensus of the various cases and analyses before we can consider
publishing this as a RG work effort.  I think we need to do the work
beyond the scholastic hypothesis formation.  This might be a good
treatment for a conference paper or a journal article, though, and that
might be a useful side track to take if something must be published
based on external publication pressure.

Thank you

avri

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From: Mallory Knodel <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 27 Nov 2018 19:47:57 +0100

Hi,

> human rights considerations.

I think we don't want new considerations, but it would make sense to
perhaps deepen, or address, the existing considerations on association,
otherwise there is not much connection between them.

One suggestion is to perhaps bring forward the relevant 8280 sections by
expanding a paragraph starting with this sentence:

"[RFC8280] established the relationship between human
   rights and Internet protocols, therefore in this document we seek to
   uncover the relation between two specific human rights and the
   Internet infrastructure and architecture."

> Association draft has yet to do this and should.  What do other people

Taking this further, I think it wouldn't be much work to achieve what
Avri is suggesting. For each of your cases in subsections 6.* you could
add a conclusion that offers suggestions for how protocols should
protect association and assembly.

> move forward on these RG drafts.

It might be worth reaching out to experts within working groups that are
related to each case in sections 6.* for their feedback, if you haven't
done so already.

> based on external publication pressure.

I would argue for making this draft good for this group first and then
to spin off other sections or versions that might be received well in
other journals. I say that mostly because association and assembly are
core to our charter and we should get it right.

-Mallory