Subject: Re: delegating (portions of) ietf list disciplinary process (fwd)

From: Dean Anderson <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 2 Oct 2005 00:12:10 -0400 (EDT)

On Thu, 29 Sep 2005, Harald Tveit Alvestrand wrote:

I didn't see this message from Ken Raeburn go to the IETF list. [I just found it
on the IETF archive site, I will respond in detail shortly.  Strangely, I should
have received 2 copies, one to [email-masked] and one from the IETF list. I have
neither.  Must have a mail problem somewhere.]

> I think you illustrate quite well why I'm glad I don't have to talk to Dean
> Anderson any more.
> 
> Any conversation where I can't toss of a casual remark without getting 
> virtually crucified for it is a conversation not worth having.

Harald was never "crucified". His personal remarks were inappropriate, as are
the remarks above.  But he was not reprimanded in any way.  Harald's personal
opinion of anyone is completely irrelevant to any business before the IETF,
unless it is to show that _Harald_ has a conflict of interest. 

		--Dean

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From: Dean Anderson <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 2 Oct 2005 01:27:53 -0400 (EDT)

On Thu, 29 Sep 2005 17:02:48 -0400 Ken Raeburn wrote:

> I'm sad to say, I've actually looked at a little of the stuff you've posted on
> the web page you set up recently, concerning Ted Ts'o. I picked the "July 1"  
> off-list stuff to look at, briefly. From that admittedly small sample... let
> me try to phrase this carefully to avoid anything that might be construed as
> an ad-hominem attack: I disagree with your summary of some of the messages I
> reviewed.

I'll be happy to address your concerns.

> Ted disagrees with you on the importance of some things you bring up, and says 
> what you're presenting isn't very useful (to the discussion at hand, I would 
> assume he meant, on reading his message); your summary turns this into ``Tso 
> says facts are "not useful" to the IETF.'' Without a qualifier like "these 
> facts" and "this discussion", that's an unsupported, even absurd, 
> generalization; you're ascribing to Ted statements that he did not make.

I think you've misunderstood.  Your reading is indeed an absurd generalization.  
However, I have updated the page to address this concern.

> Ted asked for information on the "court-proven liars" (plural, your phrase),
> and you seem to have responded with info on multiple court cases against one
> person.  Ted points that out, and uses the somewhat inaccurate description
> "lost a lawsuit" in doing so. He does acknowledge that this *one* person is,
> in at least one instance, a "court-proven liar" as you put it; his wording
> could be read to suggest, but does not actually state (as your summary says he
> does), that there was only one lawsuit. "Has lost such a lawsuit", to me, does
> not at all suggest "only one"; "person who lost a lawsuit" does suggest it
> somewhat, in this context. "One proven act" would suggest it more strongly,
> though by that point he's talking in more general terms.

He gives the impression that only one lawsuit has been lost, but Tso also adds
in false claims that Brown does not "habitually utter falsehoods", nor "lies
repeatedly".  This can only be read as a claim of a single instance of
dishonesty.  But I could describe Tso as having made these claims falsely 
instead, if you feel that is more accurate.

In http://www.av8.net/IETF-watch/Tso-ad-hominem.html  Tso writes:

    "However, just because someone has lost a particular lawsuit does not mean
     that they habitually utter falsehoods."

And later in the same document

    "(and again, one proven act of a falsehood uttered
    maliciously does not make someone who "lies repeatedly" --- and if you
    believe that anyone who associates with someone who has lied even once, then
    attacking them on that grounds that they are somehow violating societal
    norms is both (a) laughable, (b) nevertheless, still a attack.)"

Tso completely misrepresents the actual facts in a way to distort them. The
facts actually show that Brown does indeed "[lie] repeatedly".  And in fact does
indeed "habitually utter falsehoods". And this fact has implications for those
who associate with Brown.  The word "misrepresentation" I used above is an
understatement: Tso lied.  Tso lied in a professional document in his official
capacity as Sergeant at Arms about the nature of Brown and his associates.  
That is professional dishonesty.

> But his emphasis appears to be on the number of defendants rather than
> lawsuits, and that whole aspect isn't the main thrust of his message, which is
> suggesting that the focus should be on the disputed statement rather than the
> character of the person making it. 

This isn't quite accurate. During the SPAMOPS discussion, two sources were
offered to substantiate the draft statements about open relays, which have been
shown to be false by persons operating open relays for a long time. One source
was plainly over-generalized the implications of his data, The other used the
statements of court-proven liars and their associates.  The integrity of those
statements is therefore a valid question.  Tso began by asserting that one
shouldn't question the integrity of statements made by repeated court-proven
liars; that doing so is somehow an ad hominem.  Tso defends these repeated
court-proven liars by lying himself.

> And if you accept Ted's point that the lawsuits aren't as important as
> examining the disputed statement, the difference between the logical "there
> exists a lawsuit" and "there were three of them" isn't very important -- a
> logical step I think he should've made more explicit in his message -- and
> then the references to "a lawsuit" and "one proven act" are more clearly in
> the "there exists" sense. 

If that were the case, then the disputed statement needs to have factual,
truthful support. If Ted wants to discuss the truth of the original draft
statement, he would need to find a source of fact that supports that statement.  
Instead, he is trying to argue that the people making the statement aren't
people who "lie repeatedly".  He does this by lying himself.

But the discussion between Anderson, Carpenter, Tso, and Martinez was not about
the truth of the original statement. The discussion was about whether the fact
that a _source_ of a statement is a 3-time court-proven liar is relevant to any
discussion.  It is relevant.  Tso never directly addresses this question, but 
tries to defend the liars, and to assert that their statements are merely 
coincidental.

Tso tries to dismiss this a being merely coincidental:

http://www.av8.net/IETF-watch/Tso-summary.html Tso writes:

    "some people in the IETF that have made assertions that also happen to
    align with statements made by various extreme elements of the
    anti-SPAM crowd"

None of this is merely coincidental, as Tso tries to assert. These elements were
cited as the source for the draft statements.  The draft statements were false,
and the cited sources of the false facts are known to be repeat liars and/or
associates of repeat court-proven liars. That fact is plainly relevant to the
technical merits of the draft.

> (And if I were in Ted's shoes at that time, I probably would've ignored the
> implied suggestion that I go hunt through your web site or use Google to try
> to find the information I had asked you to provide on the other people your
> use of the plural implies.)

You can ignore it, but then you would still need to prove your assertion that
there is only one lawsuit and that he does not "habitually utter falsehoods" and
"[lie] repeatedly"  using some other source. Having no source at all is not
acceptable.

It might have been reasonable for Tso to say that my references weren't specific 
enough, but he didn't make that claim, and I added more specificity when he 
continued to assert 'only one case'.

> I haven't read up on enough of the context to form an opinion on the
> reputation versus statement accuracy issue in this instance.

> So, to summarize my look at a few of the messages: You both lose points for
> some of your statements or how you tried to make your arguments, and the
> accuracy of the summary page is questionable. None of it, so far, really
> suggests any sort of professional dishonesty on Ted's part to me. 

1) false claims of facts about whether someone was a 3-time court-proven liar.

2) Fabricating statements and attributing them Dean Anderson

> (If this were a research paper instead of an email message, I'd probably want
> him to be much more careful and even pedantic in his arguments, but that would
> be about the quality of the work, not honesty.)

If this were a paper submitted at a course at MIT, Tso would be considered for 
expulsion.

But you are minimizing the context of these messages. The IETF is an activity of
the ISOC, which is a professional membership organization. Tso was acting in his
official role as Sergeant at Arms. These are not random personal muttering on
some email list, but official IETF documents of the Sergeant at Arms.

> Bored now, and not interested in the case under discussion in that old thread; 
> I'm going to stop digging....