Subject: [hrpc] way forward draft-tenoever-hrpc-research - reviewers needed

From: Niels ten Oever <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 13 Jun 2016 16:15:22 +0200

Hi all,

To create a next RG version of the draft-tenoever-hrpc-research ID, it's
probably good to draft a clear way forward.

We have had some really good comments and reviews during and before the
call for adoption, thanks for that, but if we want to bring this further
we will need some more reviews.

Two people (Shane and Giovanni) are currently testing the guidelines for
human rights considerations on two actual drafts, which we hope can be
presented in Berlin.

Avri mentioned she had elaborate feedback on the current draft and
Collin Anderson mentioned he would do a review of the draft, which would
both be greatly appeciated.

So now we're looking for a third and potentially fourth reviewer who
could review the draft in within the coming two weeks so we can create a
new version ahead of IETF96 in Berlin.

What we're looking for is a review of the whole document with more or
less coherent notes, suggestions and/or criticisms with which we could
improve the document.

Looking forward to hear from you!

Best,

Niels

-- 
Niels ten Oever
Head of Digital

Article 19
www.article19.org

PGP fingerprint    8D9F C567 BEE4 A431 56C4
                   678B 08B5 A0F2 636D 68E9

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From: Harry Halpin <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 13 Jun 2016 16:53:00 +0200 (CEST)

Hi,

Happy to review. I'm new to this group, but an old-time at W3C (started WebCrypto and Web Authentication APIs) with an interest in human rights and protocols. I'm also now co-ordinating an EC project (nextleap.eu) that is investigating how new protocols can help human rights, so hopefully we'll be able to spare more cycles.

  yours,
     harry

----- Mail original -----
> De: "Niels ten Oever" <[email-masked]>
> À: [email-masked]
> Envoyé: Lundi 13 Juin 2016 16:15:22
> Objet: [hrpc] way forward draft-tenoever-hrpc-research - reviewers needed
> 
> Hi all,
> 
> _______________________________________________
> hrpc mailing list
> [email-masked]
> https://www.irtf.org/mailman/listinfo/hrpc
>

---

From: Niels ten Oever <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 13 Jun 2016 17:27:04 +0200

That's great Harry, thanks! James Gannon also offered to do a review. So
now I am looking for one more reviewer for:

https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-tenoever-hrpc-research-02

https://github.com/nllz/IRTF-HRPC/blob/master/draft-report.md

Any takers?

Cheers,

Niels

Niels ten Oever
Head of Digital

Article 19
www.article19.org

---

From: Joseph Lorenzo Hall <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 13 Jun 2016 11:33:22 -0400

Of course, we volunteered to review the document weeks ago... and I
believe we have a bunch of edits we can get back to the group soon.
best, Joe

-- 
Joseph Lorenzo Hall
Chief Technologist, Center for Democracy & Technology [https://www.cdt.org]
1401 K ST NW STE 200, Washington DC 20005-3497
e: [email-masked], p: 202.407.8825, pgp: https://josephhall.org/gpg-key
Fingerprint: 3CA2 8D7B 9F6D DBD3 4B10  1607 5F86 6987 40A9 A871

---

From: Scott Craig <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 27 Jun 2016 11:57:38 +0100

Hi Niels,

I’ve attached a document with comments on the pre-adoption draft.

I am still hoping that someone can address the concerns I raised on the
list about the methodology. I refer specifically to the method by which an
architectural feature has been (or can be) claimed to 'shape the enabling
environment' for a right.

Raised here https://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/hrpc/current/msg00401.html
here https://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/hrpc/current/msg00408.html
and here https://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/hrpc/current/msg00417.html

Though I agree with some of your conclusions, I do not think the
justification for the claims you have made withstands scrutiny. As a result
it’s presently difficult to see how an engineer could justify giving
additional attention to the features highlighted in the draft.

To re-state what I said previously:

I think the method you have described (quoted below)* is great for
identifying **candidate features*. But my concern is that it’s insufficient
to determine that a candidate feature is an enabling (or restricting)
feature.

> *" It is on the basis of these various case studies, elaborate discussion
> on the mailinglist and at various IETF conferences that we came to
> determine whether an architectural feature is a 'crucial ingredient for
> enabling the ability to exercise specific rights’. "*

If no explicit test is applied to the candidate features
after identification, I think this causes three problems:

(1) *Judgements* *are arbitrary    *

i.e there is no basis on which to argue that the threshold for inclusion
was the same for one technical concept as for another.

(2) *Judgements are not replicable. *

i.e it is not possible to claim that different authors would not have come
to significantly different conclusions than you have.

(3) *Judgements cannot be contested  *

e.g if someone were to disagree with your contention that
internationalisation has a bearing on the right to political participation,
on what basis would we adjudicate who is correct?

Scott

-- 

*Scott Craig* | Ford-Mozilla Fellow
Center for Democracy & Technology |* cdt.org <https://cdt.org/>*
*E:* [email-masked] | *D:* 1.202.407.8887 | @scottdavidcraig

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From: Corinne Cath <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 27 Jun 2016 12:24:02 +0100

Dear all,

Thanks for the updates.

@James: see here for all the commits made in the past five hours on the
basis of your review: https://github.com/nllz/IRTF-HRPC/commits/master

@Harry: great, thank you, looking forward to it.

@Scott: Do not worry, have not forgotten about your email but am doing some
more research to see how similar methods were designed for privacy and
security.

Best,

On Mon, Jun 27, 2016 at 11:57 AM, Scott Craig <[email-masked]> wrote:

> Raised here
> https://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/hrpc/current/msg00401.html
> identifying **candidate features*. But my concern is that it’s
> insufficient to determine that a candidate feature is an enabling (or
> restricting) feature.
>

-- 
Corinne Cath

'The management of normality is hard work'

---

From: Harry Halpin <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 27 Jun 2016 14:55:03 +0200 (CEST)

Here's my review, with comments attached inline using the "@@" notation before my comment. Overall, good work!  Also attached is the "Defend the Web" PDF piece by Berners-Lee that brought up some of these concerns in 2012, and notices that Internet architecture might lead to demands for new kinds of rights above and beyond the UN Declaration. While I believe that is out of scope for HRPC, it's an important view point.  

Sadly, I won't make the f2f meeting as (rather absurdly) the IETF meeting in Berlin is booked the same week as the Privacy-Enchancing Technologies Symposium in Darmstadt Germany, although I will be telling people from PETS about the importance of increased IETF involvement and mention this group there. 

   cheers,
      harry

----- Mail original -----
> À: "Harry Halpin" <[email-masked]>
> Cc: [email-masked]
> Envoyé: Lundi 13 Juin 2016 17:27:04
> Objet: Re: [hrpc] way forward draft-tenoever-hrpc-research - reviewers needed
> 
> > Happy to review. I'm new to this group, but an old-time at W3C (started
> > WebCrypto and Web Authentication APIs) with an interest in human rights
> > and protocols. I'm also now co-ordinating an EC project (nextleap.eu) that
> > is investigating how new protocols can help human rights, so hopefully
> > we'll be able to spare more cycles.
> > 
> >   yours,
> >      harry
> > 
> >

---

From: John Curran <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 27 Jun 2016 16:48:07 +0300

On Jun 27, 2016, at 1:57 PM, Scott Craig <[email-masked]> wrote:
> ...To re-state what I said previously:
> I think the method you have described (quoted below) is great for identifying candidate features. But my concern is that it’s insufficient to determine that a candidate feature is an enabling (or restricting) feature. 
> 
> " It is on the basis of these various case studies, elaborate discussion on the mailinglist and at various IETF conferences that we came to determine whether an architectural feature is a 'crucial ingredient for enabling the ability to exercise specific rights’. “

I concur that the methodology is excellent for determining candidates features that 
could impact specific human rights, but that absent an explicit test, the result of the 
analysis is not rigorous but indeed subject to interpretation.   

It would be helpful to formally state the necessary level of relationship between a
feature and exercise of specific rights…  One possibility would be a statement to 
the effect that impact on exercise of a right is “highly likely” absent the technical 
feature, as you suggested as a possibility on 16 May 2016. 

However, I also believe that the draft is remains useful even without an explicit test,
and also does appropriately representation that the output is to be used to start 
discussion of the potential impacts, not as a final result - 

“	However, by carefully considering the answers to the following questions, document authors should be able to produce a comprehensive analysis that can serve as the basis for discussion on whether the protocol adequately protects against human rights threats. “

Perhaps the above point (analysis is to be used as a basis for discussion) should 
be highlighted in the introduction - the guide is intended to help with preparation 
of a HR considerations section by raising appropriate issues for further discussion 
by document authors.

/John

Disclaimer: my views alone.

---

From: Corinne Cath <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 28 Jun 2016 15:20:39 +0100

Dear Harry and others,

Thank you kindly for your review and comments!

I went through them over the past hours, and you can find an overview of
the commits based on your comments here @harry:
https://github.com/nllz/IRTF-HRPC/commits/master. I will continue to merge
in the upcoming days.

@John: thank you for your suggestion, @scott: I will continue to research
the other RFCs for such tests & their necessity. In the meantime I updated
the draft with John's suggestion as you can see in commit #132

Best,

Corinne

On Mon, Jun 27, 2016 at 1:55 PM, Harry Halpin <[email-masked]> wrote:

> Here's my review, with comments attached inline using the "@@" notation
> before my comment. Overall, good work!  Also attached is the "Defend the
> Web" PDF piece by Berners-Lee that brought up some of these concerns in
> 2012, and notices that Internet architecture might lead to demands for new
> kinds of rights above and beyond the UN Declaration. While I believe that
> is out of scope for HRPC, it's an important view point.
>
> Sadly, I won't make the f2f meeting as (rather absurdly) the IETF meeting
> in Berlin is booked the same week as the Privacy-Enchancing Technologies
> Symposium in Darmstadt Germany, although I will be telling people from PETS
> about the importance of increased IETF involvement and mention this group
> there.
>
>    cheers,
>       harry
>
>
>

-- 
Corinne J.N. Cath