+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 irtf-discuss@xxxxxxxx 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 <spencerdawkins.ietf@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Avri's point ...On Fri, Sep 21, 2018 at 11:18 AM Avri <avri@xxxxxxxxx> 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.SpencerThanksAvri(Co-chair HRPC RG)> 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
