Re: [Gendispatch] Updated draft: Policy experts are IETF stakeholders

[John Levine <[e-mail]>]

It appears that Christian Huitema  <[e-mail]> said:
>I could see the point of an external reviewer sending a message to "the 
>IETF" explaining that if not fixed, some draft will have a damaging 
>impact on some affected parties. In theory, our processes allow for that 
>to happen during IETF last call. I could see the "policy experts" 
>mentioned in draft-hoffmann-gendispatch-policy-stakeholders subscribing 
>to the last call list and doing just that.

Wow, I hope not.  I can think of several cases where policy people from
the HRPC parachuted into a working group and insisted that we change
or drop a draft because it would do something bad.  Except it was
painfully clear that they did not understand the draft, did not
understand what it did, and the purported danger did not exist.

While policy advice on technical documents can certainly be helpful,
it is simply not possible to provide useful policy advice without a
clear understanding of the technology. That's how you end up with
cryptographers repeatedly explaining why we can't put back doors in
cryptosystems and policy people telling us we have to, just nerd
harder.

I don't have any great advice to offer beyond the obvious observation
that we need ways both to help policy people learn about the
technology, and help technical people learn about the policy issues,
preferably both long before a contentious document goes to last call.

R's,
John